To Win One Must Defeat; Or Can Peace Cannot Come From Victory

Israel, if it has any desire for peace, if it really chooses to “wipe out” Hamas, as it stands today with armies poised, to become safer, then after it invades Gaza to achieve peace for its people, will it really accomplish that peace, or will the conflict itslf give rise to even greater strength to the ashes that the next Hamas that arises from those ashes.

 If it is Israel, not American diplomacy, attempting to acheive some type of marginal coalition of acceptance (recognition) from the other regional governments, if Israel would look at its actual situation and seriously understand its position were it indeed to have to stand alone in the region, then perhaps it would recognize if they actually wish to survive it is they who now need to turn to their neighbors in humility and ask for peace.  To ask to become a regonized state amongst the 22 Arab states, to say to them in humility we want to be the 23rd nation in the region, can you—the Arab nations help us have our little reservation amongst you?  

I started thinking along these lines as I’ve been reading several sources comparing the Palestinians and the Middle-East situation to Natives in New Zealand or the North American continent.  It is more contiguous to Northern Ireland or South Africa, I shouild think.  What does anyone mean by suggesting Israel is a majority oppressing a minority, though?  If we are strictly speaking of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza the population is 9:5 in Israel’s favor, if you include an additional 5 million former residents that had fled to Iraq, Syria, Quator and two to Lebanon, then it’s roughly 50-50 at best.  But if you compare the regional Arab population of 441 million to Israel’s measly 9?  I think that’s around 49:1 Arabs to Israelis.  But wait, just in Israel alone 20% of the population is Arabic. Throw into the mix the non-Arabic Persians of Iran that are also a regional threat to Israel of seventy-nine million.

I don’t wish to say one side is acting better, who began the conflict, etc.  Neither have acted very well towards the other but the entire problem is too multi-layered and historically complex and I cannot get my mind around good guys and bad guys.  Beheading babies? Of course bad action.  Dropping bombs and blowing babies to smithereens is better because the rules of war support that? But Hamas killed children in front of parents, that’s bad.  Yeah, the parents do have to live with that memory.  So it probably is better to drop a  bomb and maybe with a direct hit you can just kill the whole family (if you’re lucky).  

I’m sorry, there are no good actions in a war, and labeling the enemy terroristic does not make one’s actions better.  War is terror.  My only experience in a declared war was loading people trying to escape a war zone onto a helicopter.  But I don’t know what the riot in St. Louis after MLK’s assasination if it was not a war zone that I was in the middle of.  Yeah, it was mostly directed against property, but it kind of felt warish to me.  So did Chicago in the same year, a few months later.  And even though the police acted badly in Chicago ( I thought), I also thought they were provoked, and I thought the provocation of the police by the crowd was provoked by the police ready to respond.  

It’s not that I do not ever think any side is more correct, but primarily I do not think claims of one side acting by the rules of war make their actions better or labeling the other side’s actions evil make any sense. If there is any guilt to pass around let’s pass it all to the leaders who create the conflicts.  And sometimes (from my perspective) we can establish bad behavior.  Certainly Hitler’s actions against Poland and the Sudentenland appear to me to be one-sided acts of aggression and certainly I feel people have the right to defend their neighbors.  So of course I see Putin’s actions in Ukraine in that same manner. 

But the Middle Eastern conflict does not dileniate to me such a distinction.  I can’t find the good guys and the bad guys in this situation.  I can’t even be convinced that Israel does have a right to exist in the region.  But that does not mean I don’t think that the Jewish people don’t have a right to exist in the region.  But were I a Jew living in the region (and there are many Jews in the region who feel as I do), I would prefer a negotiated manner of being permitted to live in the region rather than a conflictual one.  

And I am sorry, I do not buy “they don’t think Israel has a right to exist” a barrier to negotiation.  Probably Hamas would not be a good partner to attempt to negotiate with. But there are 22 Arab nations in the region and only one amongst them is a democracy-Tunesia, and they are substantially about as far from the conflict as an Arabic country can be.  But supporting Israel only because it is a democracy?  Since when (although more so recently) has being deemed such necessary to garner U.S. allegiance.  I think we’ve been known to topple democratically ‘elected’ governments.  No democracy satisfies all of its citizens, including Israel, including the United States.  The point however,is that we are perfectly willing to ally with autocracies, and are allied  (to some extent) with many of the Arab autocracies, and are not completely allied with all of the world’s purported democracies.  

The “Israeli” problem in the region, however, is a deflected issue that the autocratic Arabic states can use (whether they are technically at peace with Israel or not) and they much rather have the anger of their own citizens directed at them, redirected at Israel.  And that is exactly why Egypt doesn’t want Hamas in Egypt and why Jordan’s borders are closed to immigrants from the West bank.  

ISIS was in Iraq and creating difficulties internally for Iraq, and both Iraquis and Iraqui Kurds joined the U.S. to eliminate ISIS.  Syria has been in an internal battle for who knows how long.  Of course they don’t want the Palestinian refugee problem interfering with their own control. 

But the prime example is Lebanon.  When I was growing up Lebanon was the middle-eastern model of corporatism.  It was a nation that was nearly divided between Christan and Muslim (51-49, if memory serves) and they had created a religious power-sharing government.  And while there was a lot of discussion about corruption, it was nevertheless a democracy, and quite functional as a democracy.  Then as a consequence that began with Israel's seizure of land after the six day war and the exodus of many from their homes to Lebanon, the  government collapsed.  And while there has been no government census since apparently 1932, it is estimated that the demographic shift from 51% Christian is now only 33%.  As the tide was turning with the influx of refugees, we sent marines to attempt to stabilize the situation, and Mr. Ronald Reagan suffered probably the biggest embarrassment of his presidency.

But there are still governments within the region that though all Arab, are not all Muslim.  While Syria is now nearly all of the Islamic faith,only a century or century and a quarter ago, it was nearly 65% populated by various offshoots of Christianity, primarily eastern Orthodox and Marcionism which had survived in the region of its birth despite the Roman and Eastern churches attempt to not grant Marcions the right to exist.  But both the UAE, Bahrain, and especially Qater with over a third of its population being non-Muslim have dealt with the religious problem and granted minority recognition to other religions and have  taken their rights into consideration.  But even Egypt (10% Christian) and Kuwait (15% non-Muslim, with large Sikh and Hindu populations) are quite capable of recognizing minority religious rights, albeit Kuwait has sometimes faced problems but that is more because their non-Muslim population has been increasing to a greater extent than probably any other regional nation.  

And saying all of this within the context that they are all autocratic governments that suppresses most rights.  So while I cannot predict what the negotiation process might result in, I think Israel needs to bargain as a minority within the region.  It is Israel that needs to go before the nations and be willing to negotiate from the position of not being the strongest regional voice, but the weakest, and it  will take more than American or other nations being intermediaries to convince Arabic nations to recognize Israel, it will take, I believe, Israel recognizing their own regional weakness, and that their “strength” as a power player is totally dependent on the promise of being backed my western nations. They must negotiate from the position as if there were no western backing.  

Finally, there is a misconception that somehow the Jewish people in Israel are somehow just “European.”  Actually the diaspora after 70 A.D. (the final, largest diaspora) did not send all of the Jewish people to Europe.  The truth is that less than a third of the Israelis are of Askenazi (European) heritage. And over half are of Sephardic or Mizrahic (African/North African) descent .  The rest are nearly evely divided between those whose ancestors had dispersed to the Near East or Far East and those of Palestinian ancestors.  Palestinian?  Yes, roughly one in ten Israelis never dispersed but remained and co-existed in Palestine, even after first Chritianity, then Islam became the dominant religion of the region.   They survived by recognizing their minority status.  But many of the Ashkenazi began agitating for their return to Palestine, and upon beginning to emigrate  in the1890’s , it was the Ashkenazi that began to agitate as if they were not a minority, and this only increased post World War I with the British regional mandate that began to side with Israeli interests over the majority of the population, granting British strength to the Israeli weakness.

The whites in South Africa had to relinquish their majority political status and recognize their minority populative status, the protestants in Ireland had to do the same.   If the political leaders in Israel fail to recognize that there will never be regional peace and the armageddon that some like to suggest that will occur in the middle-east, could actually occur as the nations of the world align on one or another side of the conflict.  

In the United States the colonial organization was never designed to be a single nation.  The delegates at the constitution attempted to do so. As I’ve written before, there were delegates at the constitution, notably Washington and Hamilton, and perhaps Mason who confuses me (his objection to the constitution was that the compromises were incomplete and would exacerbate rather than alleviate regional conflicts; and therfore refused to sign).  Despite Lincoln’s belief that we had to remain one nation, the civil war’s conclusion continued to heighten inter-regional tensions.  For this reason I believe Lincoln was wrong and that the United States should not have fought a war over the union.  But on the other hand, I for a unique challenge to my prime belief over fighting wars over popular issues distorted to be a rallying cry because the majority would not fight for the concept of union–I think the popular rallying cry ofslavery was a cause worth fighting over.  But even though  the union was solidified again, it further fractured and slavery persisted—the blacks treated as slaves; and the working class treated as slaves to industry as corporatism exploded.

So I see no similarities in the Middle-East conflict to our conflict in America.  Anti-Semitism is not the problem in Israel.  Israel is not a majority running roughshod over a minority population.  They are a minority population attempting to subdue majority populations by assuming excessive authority as a nation to have an equal right to exist without an equal willingness to accept their minority status within the regional population.  

So from my perspective, their right to exist is contingent upon their recognition that that right to exist is contingent upon their recognizing their own precarious position, and that if they wish to exist peacefully, they must wave the flag and recognize that to have that right to exist they must negotiate from a perspective of weakness and not of either equality or strength.  Then perhaps the nations within the region will accept their right to exist.  

Peace never really comes from “detente” because detente leaves the hostilities intact.  In the same way majorities must recognize that majorities do not have a right to rule against minorities, minorities cannot become partners by trying to assume superiority.  Equality and fairness come only from recognizing one’s weaknesses and one’s needs for each other’s strengths. 

It is the concept of the strong (numerically, militarily, or economically) making the weak deperndent on their strength, that strengthens the weak against the strong without anyone that peace within the human community is built upon using one’s strengths to shelter theweak and recognizing their own strengths also have weaknesses and that the presumed weak do have strengths to share that will strengthen the presumed strong.  It is recognizing that the strength comes not by being stronger than another, but the combined strengths of the entire community.

I do desire to reiterate, I am not wishing to cast blame on anyone, I am merely attempting to suggest that others doing so, be it the Palestinians or those claiming to support them, here or abroad; or Israel, or those claiming to support them, here or broad are the cause of the problem, i.e. unlikely to find victory through either indignation or battle; and therefore bring about a desired end of the conflict.