The Irish-Solution

The Right to Exist: The State or the People

I do not understand why anyone should believe the Hamas attack on Israel proper was not bound to come. But I somehow suppose it is the same lull that prevents many Americans from really grasping the very real possibility that America could possibly fall into what the left is calling the fascism of the right.  What I call it is failing to meet the needs of some of its people. And those some have throughout its history continually challenged it.  I am not speaking of the civil war, but of the hundreds of conflicts America has continually had need to suppress by uprisings of its laboring and farming.  America only survived in the past because the farmers and laborers frequently remained divided.  While I may not quite agree with Jefferson that there should be constant revolution, there nevertheless have been multiple revolutionary attempts and there will continue to be until the attempts succeed.  And so of course Hamas has gained strength and of course this attack should have been expected.  I admit January 6th alarmed me but only because by Jan 6, I had become lulled myself into thinking we had somehow survived what I had expected to be an attempt to violently upend the government in 2020.  Being situated as I am in the midst of the “maga” conclave I was fully aware an attempt was going to be made.  Many a comment to me was, “Me and my people are going to make sure Trump remains president.” I just wasn’t expecting it to happen exactly on January 6th.  I thought it would happen either before that particular date, or after Biden assumed the presidency.  

But In wrote, and no one heeded, in 1984 that 1984 was going to be the result of Reagan’s second ascendency to the presidential throne would create a mini-dictatorship that would culminate in a confused response (that I thought inevitable by the confused allegiance that had gathered the support of those that had no rationale to support Reagan.  So I was under no delusion, and why I became so disillusioned at the ‘84 convention when Mondale was nominated.  It seemed pretty obvious to me Mondale would be crushed because Mondale’s business-as-usual and return America to bygone days of the misinformed days of glory the intellectuals perceived America to be, or had ever been, was not the perception lower America had ever experienced America to have been.  Radical change was needed then, and at that moment when I was escorted from the democratic convention, I knew the inevitability of the end.  But I was scoffed at for my ignorance and my radicalism.  Of course everyone was correct and I was wrong.  It was not thirty years until the attempted overthrow of the “democracy” into an autocracy.It was actually forty.  

The authors of the books and the framers of the dialogue of democracy have never really grasped that the majority of the laboring class has never felt America was democratic to them, some wanted and more socialistic or communistic approach and some wanted a more “fascist’ approach or a more dictatorial moralism.  They all wanted a strongman.  And no one wanted to be strong-armed.  But if “democracy” and “free elections” made them feel strong-armed then the solution was to find a strong arm to free them.  It’s nonsensical, I know, but that is my environment, and it has been the environment that what we call "blue collar” today has always felt.  

And for that same reason I have noticed that the ‘radicals” in the mid-east have abandoned the exclusive hit-and-run tactics of terrorism, and have begun organizing a more concerted “state” approach.  It is useless to talk of state-sponsored actions as terrorism.  state -sponsored actions are only terroristic if another state proclaims them to be.  But guess what?  Those states who sponsor ‘terroism” accuse their accusers of sponsoring terrorism against them.  And though Hamas, Hezbollah, et. al. are not a state that is recognizable, they have consolidated and been organizing themselves as a state in a battle to become a state.  East Pakistani terrorists became a state called Bangladesh.  The Igbo in eastern Nigeria failed to create the state of Biafra.  Long ago, terrorists in the British colonies succeeded in becoming a state and ceased being terrorists, as did Bangladesh. So let’s put it into the proper perspective to rationally grasp that from the Israeli perspective Hamas is terrorists being sponsored by rogue states like Iran; but from the Palestinian perspective the Israelis have perpetrated terroristic actions upon them and they are fighting to establish their own state and Iran’s aid is no more than France’s aid to America was during our own revolution.  This is not taking sides, it is pointing out there are two perspectives.  But I will grant I have a personal bias against both states because I believe both are responsible for harming their own people by subjected them to the internecine battles between the two state perspectives subject their own citizens or people to being endangered.  I favor both peoples and neither state.

This is a two-sided worldwide issue.  No one can wear an undirtied hat in this conflict that actually began not when Israel became a nation (it was never the  historical nation of the Jewish people–the land they reclaimed as Israel; nor would the name Israel have been historically accepted by the people of Jerusalem; that belonged to the nation that broke away after Solomon’s reign.  Nor were there any “arabs’, in the sense that we think of them today as being practicers of religion. There were great nations—Babylon, Persia, and Egypt, and at one time the Hittite nation. The demise of the Hittite kingdom, and the advent of the sea people (who were themselves not of one kingdom or ever necessarily united into any type of unitary government) forced those who were able to break away away from the fallen Hittite empire and forced away from the coastal area by the marauders from the west, and who were caught between the three large empires(Assyria was a fourth but was eventually mostly consumed into the Babylonian empire.  

These people were tribal until David tried to build a short-lived empire that didn’t last more than two generations.  But from the ashes of that fall, although Judah remained an obscure small kingdom, arose the descendants of what has developed into Judaism and the other tribes, many who incorporated themselves as Israel after Jeroboam led them from the shackles of Solomon’s slavery. And out of this successful slave revolt comes the legend of Moses.  Originally it appears that Moses was the hero of the northern kingdom,  Aaron the founder of the centralized  religion in Jerusalem and in the reconciliation of the two into one religion, possibly by Jeremiah, or his school around 600 B.C.E. that we get the origins of what was to be the Pentateuch.  As the northern kingdom of Israel was assimilated into Assyria, and Judah nearly was–refugees from the north were accepted and a new code was created that embraced and attempted to conciliate themselves and develop the “new law” and certainly we know Jeremiah (and many believe he was the son of one of those Israelis who escaped the Assyrian onslaught and fled to Judah).

Here is the first problem today that we face in our confusion.  The descendents of Israel largely adapted the Muslim religion and are today’s Arabs.  The Israelis are the descendants of Judah who were finally ousted of “their” land by the Romans after a failed  attempt to overthrow their own Roman overseers.  The Romans were quite annoyed by the pesky Jersusalemites who were so small numerically and consumed so much of Rome’s resources to control, they banished them from the area after 70 A.D.  Left in place, today Israelites would probably be as Arab as the Arabs, whether they maintained a religious oasis or not, they would be Arabs in the same sense that the Lebanese and Syrian enclaves of Christians became Arab.  

Instead after chasing them away from their homeland, the followers of Judaism continued to isolate themselves into conclaves and remain separate from the inhabitants where they tried to establish themselves.  As a result they often found themselves unaccepted because they refused to become a part of the nations they migrated to, the nations countered by refusing to accept them as citizens of their nation.  

Be that as it may, part of the issue became “the dream” that since God gave them a place to live, that that twas their place, and they crafted a fantasy that they didn’t need to be like the boll weevil and establish a “home” elsewhere; for they could never have a home except in their old home of Israel.  That dream and the preaching of that dream by its rabbis, kept them united in their more or less homelessness.  They didn’t speak Hebrew (except amongst the scholars), they often adapted to native customs, and some members participated in native economies; but without the connection that was taught to them from childhood of “Israel”, I suppose there would be no defining culture of “judaism” and the minor religion would have ceased.  Of course there are orthodox (totally unassimilated) and the assimilated or less religious Jews.  But even amongst the orthodox that splintered into a thousand sects, and the more liberal or totally non-religious, still bound themselves by this notion that their home was not their home. For Christians, and to a lesser degree, the Muslims, home on earth is a temporary home, a preparatory home for their home in the after-kingdom.  But the Jewish people remained Jewish people because of their belief that their real home was a plot of land in the palestinian semi-desert.  While not true of all Jewish believers, heaven is not a golden place in the future but a temporal palace in one city on earth.

So from their perspective (of course not even the perspective of every Jewish person living in Israel), thousands would just like to live in peace and share the land with their neighbors.  But the problem is that they still want to live upon the land others had lived upon for 200 decades and become assimilated upon.  They still think the land is theirs to live upon even if they do not even believe in the god who supposedly gave them the land to live upon.

And those people feel they have been subjected to being stripped of their own livelihood and their own homes upon the land they have connected with for those same 200 decades, even before Islam existed for the first 60 of those decades, these are the Palestinians. 

So the Arabs feel provoked and they attempt to regain what they see has been taken from them, and The Jewish inhabitants, now calling themselves Israelies feel the Arabs are provoking them and trying to take away from them what God gave them 300 decades ago.  

I certainly cannot take The Israeli perspective as very solutive and I think the Hamas reactive violence makes any solution seem less possible and further entrenches the Jewish notion of being oppressed. But I defend the right of both to protect themselves and I condemn both for perpetuating the violence.  

What is needed is the Irish-solution.  First the solution of a separate state (the nation of Ireland), and secondly the solution of some type of accord to share authority in more mixed areas.  Until then Israel’s entrenchments create more dissettlement that in return creates more radicalism that in turn creates more entrenchment of the Israeli position who become more fearful for their own safety.

My only thought is that the issue gets further complicated when one nation “supports'' Israel and another supports the Palestinians, and this becomes a tensive situation that is utilized as a rationale for each side to gain allies among nations to support one or the other side of a meritless contest where both side are wearing the same trunks.  The best solution is for everyone else to cordone them off and let  them fight it out, or recognize the need to negotiate, for themselves. There is no ideological difference, but the conflict is utilized to perpetuate ideological differences amongst the other nations. But the ideology of Israeli and Palestinian is “this is my home”.  But they are bickering because of a divorced inability that continues to harm the children that are the result of the failed marriage of attempting to live in the same house

Today is also Columbus day here in the US.  A worthy holiday dedicated to celebrating the dawn of the genocide of the Caribs and North American inhabitants.  So happy birthday Columbus, you gave us (Americans) this land to ravish, extort, exploit and bring about the demise of its original inhabitants.  Certainly no one is more worthy of being celebrated than you.  It’s parenthetical that even in your era, your genocidal extremes and personal madness of extreme behavior got you recalled and rebuked, nevertheless, you led us all on our glorious path of destroying the land and people of who lived upon this continent. Without your generosity in discovering how to take this land through rape of its resources  and people, well, there would be no United States of America, so let us take a day off from raping and being raped and celebrate you.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am not trying to compare the situation in Palestine with the situation of the conquest of the  northern american continent.  I do not believe they are the same at all.  The Palestinian situation is complicated, it would be more akin to the North American Natives trying to reclaim what they may still as their home from its current inhabitants.  To share a house, whether the land, the resources, or whatever requires the Irish-solution.  It requires giving up the arrogance of one’s right and accepting the other’s right.  I have no right beyond the other’s right and to assume I am entitled to my rights beyond your right is the root of all conflict.  One has no right to conquer or reign supreme over another’s right.  This is the problem with abortion. It is not about whether has a right to decide to carry a child, it is about whether someone else tells her if she has a right to do so.  

The last few days I have heard several indignant people proclaiming about the horrors of the Hamas attack upon Israel proper. Well that is the horrors of war, no worse than anywhere where it is perpetrated upon another people, whether in full out warfare or in a mass shooting at a school or grocery store.  But the indignant proclamation that Hamas doesn’t think Israel has the right to exist?  Didn’t Herzl say the Jewish people should return to Israel and the natives of the land (in Herzl’s day) had no right to “exist” in a land that God’s decree had declared to be theirs?  When the Israeli nation expands into Palestinian settlements and replaces them with Israeli settlements, isn’t that in essence telling the Palestinians that they don't think they have a right to exist in their own homes or upon the land they have settled upon?  

I am not throwing aspersions on Israel, but I will not become susceptible to the indignation that is obviously false.  And frankly, historically speaking, a nation’s right to exist has always been challenged, that’s why we fight wars with other nations.  In the 60’s the American government thought Vietnam didn’t have a right to exist as one nation indivisible.  Instead we thought it should exist as “free” (by the dictatorial leadership of an American sponsored dictator) and  “communist” (by a popular war hero, who was probably more ensconced in battling for national unity than in any dictatorial behavior).   

I simply have no idea what nations have a right to exist.  History indicates the victors have a right to exist until they are victimized by another who takes that right to exist away.  But I believe the people of Israel have a right to exist and the people of Palestine have a right to exist and that both have the right to defend their neighbor.  In the same way I believe a marriage should exist only as long as the participants each have the right to exist beyond the confines of the individual home.  A marriage must have an Irish-solution where the rights of each are more important than taking all (or most, or any portion thereof) of one over another.  So in a state, my thought would be it has a right to exist as long as the state recognizes the rights it does not have rather than the rights it can give or take away. 

And it has been my experience in seventy-odd years of life that the righteousness of any right side of any issue is the creator-god of all immoral behavior that is carried through my justice to the and injustice to the other.  Slavery was certainly a benefit to those who enslaved others, but it was not a benefit to those who were enslaved.  The Jewish people who live in Israel certainly have a right to live in Israel but only if they recognize the right of the Palestinian to exist and they join in an Irish-solution if they wish to live on the same plot of land.  History illustrates two things.  One is that leaders of Nations usually try to proclaim the righteousness of their cause to deny rights to certain others, or to other nations.  The second is that people would prefer to determine their own destiny and not have their rights determined or taken away by the choice of another, state-determined proprietor or their own individuality.

And that leads me to the rather silly contrary idea that Hobbes was wrong and rather than create harmony, governments maintenance of order create rather than dispel the ‘chaos’ of human nature.  I know that seems silly, after all, we are communitarian creatures and we need leaders; but if leaders break down, rather than enhance the Irish-solution, wherein is the idea that  humans are beastly rather than the governments that create the beastliness sponsored by the evidence?  There of course is no perfect solution to end all conflict, but there should be ways to enable the reduction of the conflict and that is all the Irish-solution is.  It is a way to live together, if not harmoniously, then at least attempt to accept the differences less conflictually and recognize I am no more moral and no more right than the other.

Of course,anyone can prefer different solutions than me.  I can’t tell everyone, or even anyone, I know the answers to how they should feel or behave, or what they should want.  The Irish-solution would be for me to recognize your solution and you to recognize mine, and to attempt to seek a common ground.  But if we cannot, do my feelings and ideas become superior to yours, or yours to mine, and do one or the other take away the right of the other? That is the immorality of abandoning the Irish-solution.  That is the creator-god action that defines the Irish-conflict.

If we can determine a conjunctive agreement we may reduce conflict, we may allow one or the other to suggest modifications, and we may continue to be harmonious through cordiality.  When this cannot happen then we need to be allowed to separate, to migrate, and to find people to whom we can feel more cordially inclined.  But I will never be right, or have more right to be more right over another, because then I come into conflict with the other.  Being right equates with immorality.  I return to the abortion issue.  A woman may not wish to carry a child, or she may not choose to carry a child at a particular time, or be the mother of a particular person’s child.  So in what manner does her decision conflict with a woman who may wish to have a child at a particular time or by a particular person, etc…or, with any man who is never going to bear any child?  But if the woman who chooses to not have an abortion, or the man who will never have an abortion tells the woman who wishes not to bear the child she cannot then he creates a conflict with her.

Now I have been talking about the Irish-solution because primarily it marginalized the extremist who didn’t want a solution.  It marginalized the Protestant extremist who would never deny his superiority to the Catholic, it marginalized the radical Catholic who no longer rallied support to his cause.  But it did not end every single conflict.  Now we know many in the Knesset, and many Israeli citizens seek an Irish solution and many Palestinians would as well.  Of course Israel can’t negotiate with Hamas, but the Palestinians can’t negotiate with a Netanyahu who seems to believe that the Palestians don’t have a right to exist (at least not in any territory Israel  wishes to claim).  But relative harmony and security would marginalize support for either Hamas or the Israeli Netanyahus. I do not know how to achieve it for the, they must do it for themselves, but I really believe both the majority of the Israelis and the Palestinians would prefer it to continued conflict .