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BS ‘n’ About…
Palestine & the Palestinians
Until the world comes together and finds a way to do right by the Palestinian people, the Middle East will continue to simmer and boil. Until the West acknowledges the wrong done to the former nation of Palestine, we will be locked in a life and death Holy War with the forces of Islam.
Fifty years of strife, hatred, and warfare show that it isn’t something that is just going to go away. Fifty years of casualties show that it isn’t something that can be resolved on the battlefield. An evildoer to us is a martyr to them. The more we attack the forces arrayed against us, the stronger they grow.
But, like most of the peoples on Earth, the great majority of the Palestinians are farmers, accountants, and mothers. People just like you and me. But they are dirt poor and have been refugees for fifty years. They’ve all attended way too many funerals. Is it any wonder they are driven by their faith? It is all they have. In many ways, it is all we have left them.
Unfortunately for us, it is probably all that they need. The guys with the big armies don’t win the conflicts anymore: Cuba. Central America. Vietnam. Marcos’ Philippines. The Shah’s Iran. Brezhnev’s Afghanistan. Our Iraq. Hearts and minds win most of the conflicts these days. And hearts and minds are on Islam’s side in this one. Must be, because we’re the guys with the big army.
We are a people with everything to lose fighting a people with nothing to lose. They buy a couple of box cutters and it costs us trillions. They’re willing to strap on a bomb and we’re willing to trash our Constitution to stop them. We bomb caves. They bomb World Trade Centers.
There is no justification for the warriors of any cause to take the war to the people. But we are both doing it. Both sides are indiscriminately killing farmers, accountants, and mothers. Both sides are wrong. Our bombers wear uniforms. Theirs don’t. Big deal. Tell that to the acceptable casualties. Tell that to the collateral damage.
The West is going to lose this one if we keep on doing the same old things and hope for different results. What may have started as primarily a political, territorial dispute has evolved into something akin to a holy war. The politics and economics seem to be irrelevant at this point.
But it is too late to turn back the clock and re-do our forbearers mistakes. The Jewish people need a homeland as much as anyone and, this side of Armageddon, Israel is there to stay. But the Palestinian people need to be justly compensated for being ripped from their homes and made to feel like second-class citizens in their own country. The Palestinian people need to be given hope. They need their pride back. They need the resources, tools, and freedom to be players in the modern world, not refugees. They need a viable homeland.
If anyone should understand this, it should be the Israeli people. Their wanderings left a trail of tears two thousand years long. They can’t possibly want to sentence the Palestinian people to the same exile. Until the Israeli people start treating the Palestinian people like human beings, they will keep on acting like animals. Until the Israeli people learn to live side by side with the Palestinians, they will keep on dying side by side.
Something big, grand, and magnanimous needs to be done for the Palestinian people. It would be a cause that brought us together with the Muslim world, working in common cause, doing Good Works. It would be a cause that would dissipate much of the hatred against us and remove much of the terrorists’ support. It would be a start in the right direction. It would be what the Good Guys would do. It would be what God would want.
When the politicians start bombarding us with labels like “evil-doers” and “Islamo-fascists”, it is easy to forget that 99% of the people we are being programmed to hate are farmers, accountants, and mothers. Just like you and me. Just like the innocents who died in the World Trade Center. Just like the innocents who die every time one of our B-52s bombs for democracy.
Osama’s minions and the suicide bombers are no more representative of them than the Israeli generals and Wall Street tycoons are of us. But that isn’t to say that the farmers, accountants, and mothers of all sides are without blame. The Muslim farmers, accountants, and mothers seem to elect crazies every time they go to the polls. Ours seem willing to risk Armageddon to maintain our extravagant lifestyles. The Israelis don’t seem to care how many innocents get killed.
What objectives can all sides be hoping to achieve in the Middle East? Can Israel really hope to survive and prosper as a nation without resolving the hatreds arrayed against it? Can the Muslim world really hope to rid itself of Israel without a conflagration that would devastate both cultures? Can America really think that the Muslim world is going to let bygones-be-bygones, elect some Western puppets, give us their oil, and throw open its streets to Dow Jones and Rock and Roll?
The Middle East is going to be an Armageddon waiting to happen until the Israeli people find a way of being accepted by their Muslim neighbors. The Middle East will know no peace, and the terrorist cause won’t go away, until we find common cause with the Muslim world, a starting point for working together. The solution to both of these seemingly unachievable goals begins and ends with the Palestinian people.
Were the West to do right by the Palestinian people, it would go a long way toward winning over the Muslim people, the Muslim farmers, accountants, and mothers. Carve them out a small but viable homeland. Provide them with the best in schools, hospitals, and social services. Bring them into the 21st Century. Invest even a small proportion of the arms and petro dollars flowing through the region and they could build a Riyadh or Dubai as the cultural center of their homeland. Cut them into the deal. It is what the Good Guys would do. It is what is right. It might be our only hope. It is what God would want.
Palestine as it once was no longer exists and can never again be. Therefore, solutions to the problem require thinking outside the box, envisioning something new where nothing was before, and bringing forth a phoenix from the ashes. Considering the ridiculous amounts of wealth wasted on arms in the region and the wealth, strength, and unity of the Jewish people, this ought to be easily doable financially. It certainly would cost a lot less than World War III.
Unfortunately this is a dispute that can no longer be resolved solely by the diplomats and tycoons. It has become an issue of faith. It has become an issue that can only be resolved by our faiths doing something they’ve never done before: reach accord. We are still fighting the Crusades. Until our faiths reach an accord that filters down to the flocks, the Middle East will be counting down to Armageddon.
It is time our faiths take a stand for peace. Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed all had beautiful messages for mankind that we’ve distorted beyond recognition. Our faiths never reach accord. They never make a stand for peace. They never settle their differences. Once a schism, always a schism. Armageddon: their only answer.
The Middle East will undoubtedly fill the first few paragraphs of Mankind’s obituary unless we do something about it, and soon. And every solution begins and ends with the Palestinian people. With the farmers, accountants, and mothers of Israel in the lead, the West needs to start giving a damn about the Palestinian farmers, accountants, and mothers. Our very ability to have a future at all may very well depend on it.
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