It's with humble embarrassment I admit that until recently, I knew next to nothing about the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Since reading, I've been trying to write an article on the subject which would be succinct enough to captivate an audience of younger generations whose attention span can only be judged in seconds--to be generous. The object of the article is not to instruct, but to provoke interest in the subject, to provoke consideration and dialogue. But how do I go about doing this without covering the entire history, which essentially begins in Genesis? Something tells me I would lose my audience.
Without homogenizing too much, it's important to know that the Jews and Arabs have both been in the area of Israel/Palestine for thousands of years. The only difference is that the Jews have an early documented history, while the Palestinian Arabs don’t. The Palestinian Arabs failed to historically identify themselves early on as an ethnicity and a nation. Does this by extension, nullify their claim to the land? They have lived there as long as the Jews have and have since had an overwhelming majority population. But does living in a place entitle the occupier to claim it as their own? The Jews also believe that the land of Canaan(1) was promised to them by God, literally. Perhaps more importantly, the Jews were promised a homeland in the land of Palestine by the British Government (British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour) in 1917:
"Her Majesty's government views with favor the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country..." sounds fair enough to me.
But wait, two years earlier, the British Government had also promised the Arabs that upon their liberation from the Ottoman Empire, they would have a homeland in Palestine. This is an excerpt from what is known as the Hussein-McMahon Letters:
"...1. That, subject to modifications stated above, Great Britain is prepared to recognize and uphold the independence of the Arabs in all the regions lying within the frontiers proposed by the Sherief of Mecca...." the proposed area being Israel/Palestine, the modifications were the exclusion of western Syria and most of Lebanon.
Two promises. Two groups of people occupying the same piece of land, both with arguably legitimate claims to it. It needs to be said that neither group are without fault. However, the Palestinians have been painted as terrorists, and the Israeli's have been shown almost exclusively unwavering sympathy and compassion, for a number of reasons, chiefly because of their client status to the United States of America. The majority of us accept this as fact, because this is what we’re told. But still the mind rebels; and one can’t escape the feeling that somehow it’s not all that it appears to be. Even superficial consideration of the topic reveals innumerable questions to its validity. Terrorism is a broad term. “If we like them, they're freedom fighters...if we don't like them, they're terrorists. In the unlikely case we can't make up our minds, they're temporarily only guerrillas.”(2) We are meant to believe in this context that the Palestinians are a threat to democracy and as such, they become the terrorist enemy. It has been the goal of our respective governments to define the meaning of terrorism in such a way that the general population will view it as black and white, good versus evil. Yet “U.S. terrorism is an oxymoron, on par with “thunderous silence” or “U.S. aggression.” Israeli state terrorism escapes under the same literary convention…”(3) But why are the Palestinians terrorists? Don’t they breathe the same air as us?
Without trivializing the hardships which the Jews have suffered, it's difficult to ignore the blatant hypocrisy in what they're doing to the Palestinians. While this is certainly not the perspective of all Zionists, it's important to note the political climate of then and now:
"We interpret the war not just as a victory, but as a kind of providential messianic event that changed history permanently and gave Israel the power to dictate the future....[the new Zionism] says that we will not give any territory back; if the Arabs don't like it here they can get the hell out, and if they stay we will not give them human rights, and being Jewish is more important than being democratic."(4)
Although that was quoted in 1987, it still applies today. The Palestinians have no home. They have the Occupied Territories of Gaza and the West Bank. Imagine waking up every morning with no identity. An unwelcome visitor in an unfriendly house. You are not a Palestinian, even though you are by right of your genealogical heritage. You are a Jerusalemite. They are terrorists because of our subjective definition of "terrorism". But consider the facts -- in the 1940s, prior to the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, the population of Palestinians was more than double that of the Jewish population. Since 1948, the Jewish population has been mostly the majority, but only by about 55% to 45% (bearing in mind that the total population of Israel is counted at approximately 7 million). Yet the Palestinians are squeezed into smaller and smaller pockets of land, or they leave entirely.
Can you honestly say, with conviction, that you would not take up arms against your occupier under these conditions? Consider the options.
"It is at a time like this that the voices of the bereaved, those courageous enough not to hate, should be listened to most closely(5):
My beloved son Arik, my own flesh and blood, was murdered by the Palestinians. My tall, blue-eyed, golden-haired son who was always smiling with the innocence of a child and the understanding of an adult. My son.
If to hit his killers, innocent Palestinian children and other civilians would have to be killed, I would ask the security forces to wait for another opportunity. If the security forces were to kill innocent Palestinians as well, I would tell them they were no better than my son's killers.
We lost sight of our ethics long before the suicide bombings. The breaking point was when we started to control another nation.
My son Arik was born into democracy with a chance for a decent, settled life. Arik's killer was born into an appalling occupation, into an ethical chaos. Had my son been born in his stead, he may have ended up doing the same. Had I myself been born into the political and ethical chaos that is the Palestinians' daily reality, I would certainly have tried to kill and hurt the occupier; had I not, I would have betrayed my essence as a free man.
Let all the self-righteous who speak of ruthless Palestinian murderers take a hard look in the mirror and ask themselves what they would have done had they been the ones living under occupation. I can say for myself that I, Yitzhak Frankenthal, would have undoubtedly become a freedom fighter and would have killed as many on the other side as I possibly could.
My son Arik was murdered when he was a soldier by Palestinian fighters who believe in the ethical basis of their struggle against occupation. My son Arik was not murdered because he was Jewish but because he is part of a nation that occupies the territory of another.
I know that these concepts are unpalatable, but I must voice them loud and clear, because they come from my heart -- the heart of a father whose son did not get to live because his people were blinded with power."(6)
It's not necessary to choose a side. The choice, for me, is currently obvious. The oppressed or the oppressor. More important than the particular alignment, is where to go from here. Like the Native Americans in our own countries, it is impossible to simply give the land back, the state of Israel and its people are established now. But the denial of basic civil and human rights to the Palestinians needs to be culled. These people deserve their freedom. They deserve an identity. Our very awareness of the conflict and its injustices, as North American countries (with the influence we enjoy over the rest of the world), could be an extremely large step towards their liberty. Don't remain uninformed.
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1. Genesis 17:8 - "And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God."
2. Carl Sagan, Contact, Part I : The Message, Ch. 2, "Coherent Light", 1985
3. Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions, 1989, pg 114
4. Article on Abba Eban by Thomas Friedman, New York Times, 14 June 1987, pg 3
5. Paul Middleton, Israel vs. Palestine: What's it all about?, 2007, pg 95
6. From a speech given by the chairman of Families Forum at a rally in Jerusalem. Published in the The Independent, 2 August 2002.
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Resources
Online:
Current coffin count in the Israel vs Palestine conflict - http://www.moiz.ca/coffin2.htm
A Brief History of Israel - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EATEeKJcTA
Map of Israel throughout history - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FspfOI_YRU
Literature:
Noam Chomsky: Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians
Paul Middleton: Israel vs Palestine: What's it all about?
Kathleen Christison: Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy
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