Watching the Israel/Palestine shoot-out start up again, I just want to put my head down on a table with a sad sigh and keep it there forever. Because there was no justice in Germany, there will be no peace in Palestine. Because there is no justice in Palestine, there will be no peace in Israel. And until both sides are willing to sit down and eat a very large bowl of bitterness, injustice and irreparable sorrow together, there will be no peace for anyone.
And because the Palestine authorities (Hamas, or whoever the hell claims to speak for The Palestine People from year to year) don't seem to have been able to figure out that you don't mess with Israel. You mess with Israel and Israel will punish you; measured, calculated, carefully calibrated, escalated punishment that will go on and on and on until Israel decides you've had enough (or you run out of ammunition.) It's wash-rinse-repeat, year in, year out. And the dead remain dead and the suffering continues and the arc of justice remains stubbornly unbent amidst the fury and death and bitterness, with no way out.
I don't know how Ruanda managed to bend their self-inflicted arc of injustice and horror. It seems unimaginable how human beings could even begin to return to a normal life, to say good morning, How do you do, to a neighbor or co-worker who . . . . slaughtered your family with a panga, a murderer who is, nonetheless walking around free, life back to normal. How is that possible? No justice there, yet there is "peace" in Ruanda.
South Africa, too. A kind of rough, uneasy peace that "Truth and Reconciliation" somehow managed to carve out of State-imposed injustice. For both countries, the bitter dish of confession must have worked some kind of magic. Confession, repentance, absolution, reparation.
Would that work with the Israel/Palestine Gordian Knot? I don't know. But I don't think the present situation is sustainable. Ultimately, Israel itself is not sustainable as a democracy in a part of the world awash with boiling religious sectarianism, and a growing demographic of non-Jews within its borders.
Which is why I end up laying my head down on the table with a sigh, wishing to keep it there forever.
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Calhoun's Can(n)ons was originally published in 1990 in the (now defunct) Morro Bay, CA, Sun Bulletin, and since 1992 has continued in the various resurrections of the Los Osos, CA. Bay News, Bay Breeze, Bay News, Bay News-Tolosa Press. A few years ago, the Can(n)on was added to the Central Coast NewsMission blogsite. Ann Calhoun lives in Los Osos. You can email her at Churadogs at gmail dot com
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11 comments:
Worms best kept canned.
Well stated, and stated sparsely.
Perhaps Irland and Bosnia should be included for their improbable outbreaks of peace.
The old paradigm continues.
The world (Europe) supports Palestinians perpetual position of victimization, mistaking it for self-determination and helping it become a perpetual self-victimization.
The de-facto three state solution exists.
The moral dilemmas posed by a one state solution can remain unstated, as it will not happen.
There is a grim practicality, in having Hammas exhaust most of their Arrows in their quiver.
Ya Allah America!
One day, a bunch of foreigners will fly planes into your tallest buildings,
then you will wake up.
And then, much much later, perhaps you will begin to understand.
Alon, yes, all of which causes me to lay my head down on the table with a sigh. There is a way forward, a way through, but it involves a cup of bitterness being sipped by all. And that's hard to do. Also, at this point, there's too many hidden agendas too well served by keeping the status quo.
Just tribes of arabs who will fight over anything and have been since they crawled out of their caves. They don't have anything worth while to the western world, so let them kill each other in that sand spit until there is only one left standing. Either arm them to more quickly finish their war or completely cut off all aid and don't allow any of them to "immigrate"!!!
Anon: Actually, I suspect the Islamic world is simply going through what Europe did in the 16th century with their religious wars. And Ireland did in the 19th & 20 centuries with their religious wars. Same old. Much of this mess was created by France, England during WWI when the Sikes Picot Treaty carved up the middle east to suit European interests, not Arab interests. (Same thing happened in Africa, which was likewise carved up into "nations" that made NO SENSE.) (There are several new books on T.E. Lawrence that you really should read to educate yourself better.)The seeds planted then and watered by U.S. oil interests are now coming to their logical, ugly, deadly fruition. Hopefully, these countries will find their way through the "Crazy" and into the 21st century. Unless western powers screw things up . . . again.
Islamists, Jews and Christians in the "Holy Land", all the same desert fleas, just different head dresses. The west will never provide a solution, it should be left in the hands of the tribes to decide how they wan to live and die.
There is no right or wrong, they just hate each other and teach their children to do the same. Hopefully they will soon kill each other until they are all dead.
Anon, your comment is ignorance personified. Sad.
Keep banging your arrogant head on the table Ann, nothing is going to stop those tribes from killing each other!
Actually, Anon, In the 100 years war, for example, the European "tribes" (just like the middle eastern "tribes" today kept killing each other until economic realities changed the dynamic and "new management" {kings, parliaments, etc. changed the dynamic and new technology changed the dynamic. The same thing will happen here. If you had bothered to educate yourself even a tiny bit you'd know that.
Also, a puzzle to me, something I see a lot of: Ignorant people (not stupid, not dumb, just uneducated, uninformed -- often deliberately so )very often call people who have taken some time to get themselves educated, "arrogant." Like learning is some kind of snooty, class-based thing. It isn't. Knowledge and information is as near as The Google, as near as the nearest public library, is totally accessible by anybody.
So what's your excuse for remaining so uninformed?
Oops, correction (above), the Thirty-Years War, not 100. (See, even that mess resolved itself in less time than 100)
Aren't you such a special "educated" person. You know so much more than us peons!
I take exception to your remarks to that Anon. While it wasn't me, I can see where they were coming from. To bad you can't.
BTW, I have a MS Mech Engineering, minor in History, served in the military, now recently retired. You might want to look in your own life's mirror and then take off your narrow view blinders and get off your high horse. You're not nearly as "intellectual" as you would like to believe and to try to preach to the few who actually try to read this blog. You lately seem to be down to a very few who try to respond and then you put on your holier-than-thou persona.
Oh, please, Anon. Take a gander at what Anon 7:30 had to say. That's just ignorant. And that sort of ignorance has to be willful.
Of course, it could be that it's not mere ignorance at all but just pure bigotry? Most of that is willful as well.
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