Okay, I'm not sure I really want to turn the Feelings thread into a debate about the Jews and the Palestinians, since it barely withstood the argument about handguns, but I will try to explain a little about my thoughts on this issue.
There are lots of Palestinians in San Francisco, most of them Christians incidentally, some of whom I had friendships with when I was younger. Having bought without really thinking the entire U.S. position on Israel, I was stunned to hear about them having their houses and orchards and farms confiscated, living in refugee camps in Jordan, and a host of other atrocities.
When I started reading books about the Middle East, and really studying what newspapers were reporting, their stories made sense. Just the other day a nine-year-old Palestinian boy was killed by Israeli soldiers who deliberately aimed at him although they were supposed to be responding to a couple of adults who were throwing rocks at them. This is a lot like the situation in Northern Ireland to me, where people in power decide that another group of people has no civil rights anymore, and that then their culture can be destroyed and turned over to someone else.
If you read biographical information about them, you will notice that all the leaders of Israel prior to Netanyahu were terrorists--well, freedom fighters, depending upon what side of the debate you are on. Right now Israel is rife with human rights abuses against the Palestinians. I don't particularly like the conservative, activist Muslin response to these injustices, but just like the IRA is a logical and expected response to the brute force of a dominant, unethical interloper, it certainly is understandable. Terrorist armies are created time and time again in situations where a people have been treated unjustly and have no other obvious strategic response available to them. This is all just action and reaction, almost like science!!!
I think another thing that troubles me about Israel is the sheer perserverance of the Zionists in their society, continuing to take more and more Arab territory even as less orthodox Jews are arguing for moderation and peace. Settlements are being built in excess of the Jews able to occupy them, simply to grab more land. But the fact is that Israel is strategically isolated, that America is its only real friend, and that aside from costing billions of dollars to U.S. taxpayers, because we are defending militarily a position that is almost indefensible, in the sense of fairness and justice as well, our own citizens have been put in jeopardy not only in the Middle East, but in America. I personally find it objectionable to defend a people who in some ways are treating the Arabs much like they were treated historically--in other words, very brutally.
If you are Jewish and are aware of how much agony was caused to your people, how could you justify doing the same thing to another people? This I will never understand, and do not feel morally like spending my tax dollars in this way either.
The fact that these warring peoples are doing it all in God's name (or Allah's), simply reinforces my belief not only that organized religions are polarizing, often violent influences on the way we behave, but that religious fervor provides a cover for barbaric, murderous, behavior on a large scale.
How could all this really be a positive influence if it brings such evil with it?? There are very few Christians following Christ's teachings, and the conservative, Bible Belt Christians in America are intolerant, bigoted, narrow-minded and just plain mean-spirited in their belief systems, in my opinion.
I am not sure that it is ever moral to take away a people's land, livelihood, and destroy their culture simply to solve a problem in another place, with another culture, (although I am sure the Randians would disagree with me). There was HUGE collective guilt in America and Europe about the way the Jews had been treated in World War II, and giving them Palestine was a neat way around it. Very much like the way the English gave Ireland to the Scottish Protestants. In both cases there were already people living there, families who had lived in the same place for hundreds of years, summarily booted off their land and told to vanish, or exploited for their cheap labor.
Here is a url giving a little of the other side on the Palestine issue. This is definitely an issue where the press in America is very slanted towards the Zionist view, and in all fairness I think it is important to consider both perspectives:
utexas.edu
Well, Alex, perhaps we should armor the soapbox so that it can withstand a frontal attack!!! With a see-through dome like the Pope Mobile!!!! Incoming!!!!!!!!!!
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