Re: isn't that what we did with the Native American? I don't hear your heart bleeding over them.
Well, the Palestinian/Native American parallel is quite a spurious, if hackneyed, argument... I guess we ought to think of nations, countries, empires and states as "(geo)political life forms" that all belong to specific, limited spans of History.
Millions of years ago, dinosaurs roam the earth... yet today, apart from sci-fi authors like Crichton, Spielberg,..., nobody is seriously contemplating the return of a dinosaur-ruled world. Dinosaurs had their time, they enjoyed their "window of opportunity", but now, they are history --prehistory, that is.
Likewise, the setup of a Jewish colonial enclave in Palestine in 1948 can also be viewed as an anachronistic fancy. I think that Israel would be much more legitimate today if it had been enforced in, say, 1830, that is, in the XIXth century --the golden age of the Nation-State. To contrive nation-states in the middle of the XXth century, somehow, is as ludicrous as to call for the restoration of Europe's dukedoms, baronies, and earldoms of yore! For instance, four hundred years ago, Belgium didn't exist as such: the country was made up of the Brabant dukedom, the Hainaut earldom, the archbishopric of Liège, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, etc., all vying with each other as sovereign fiefdoms. Yet, despite the colorful and prestigious memories of those times, you won't find many Belgians calling for the restoration of a medieval Belgium --quite the opposite: you'll find Flemings and Walloons urging a post-Belgian republic....
So, the fact that dukedoms and baronies thrived throughout Europe 500 years ago doesn't make them credible, workable institutions for the 21st century! Likewise, the fact that the 19th century spawned almost all of the nation-states that are still extant today doesn't make the creation of the Israeli nation-state in 1948 the silver bullet against anti-Semitism....
Gus |
