Gaza, the Horror and The Hope

The following quotes stick out in my mind as exemplifying the salient points in the current situation in Gaza. The first is from an interview with Arnon Soffer, one of the intellectual architects of official Israeli policy with respect to the Palestinians. Whether you agree with him or not (I don't) he gives a clear indication of why the "peace process," whatever that means, is a meaningless fiction. I'm quite sure there are those on the Palestinian side who feel pretty much the same way Soffer does. I believe the term intractable foes applies.

[W]hen 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.

If we don’t kill, we will cease to exist. The only thing that concerns me is how to ensure that the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings. ~ Arnon Soffer

From my perspective the policy of the United States should be neutrality. We have no moral authority or national interest in supporting one side or the other. Unfortunately, as Glenn Greenwald has pointed out here and here, there is little chance of our current policy is going to change. It is too firmly entrenched in both parties. The hope, such as it is, lies in the fact that the United States simply cannot afford to maintain the current foreign policy. It will change when the reality of our economic system rears its ugly head.

William Grigg, as he usually does, cuts right to the quick in his analysis of the situation.

U.S. withdrawal wouldn’t palliate ancient ethno-religious grievances, or those of a more recent vintage rooted in the dispossession of the Palestinians. But it would force the antagonists to make a more realistic accounting of the actual costs of the conflict, which might prod them to make the kind of grudging, halting, agonizingly reluctant material overtures that eventually lead to peace.

Of course, American withdrawal is going to happen anyway when the destruction of the dollar is consummated, a fact that should not be lost on those interested in Israel's survival. That nation's ability to dominate its rivals militarily is a particularly pernicious variant of an investment bubble, one that has distorted Israel's priorities and discouraged it from creating a security framework on assumptions that don't involve leveraging U.S. power on its behalf.

The bubble of U.S.-Israeli dominance in the Middle East will burst as soon as the fiat dollar's global hegemony ends. ~ William N. Grigg

The sad thing is when that happens it will be to the betterment of Israel and the Palestinians, but it will be a catastrophe for us. They'll be forced to find a solution, we'll be standing in the wreckage of our dreams.

Israel Has No Right To Exist

by Puck T. Smith

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I have been watching with horror as the current escalation of violence between the government of Israel and Hamas thrusts itself upon the consciousness of the world.   It has prompted me to consider the oft repeated canard about Israel's "right to exist."   Based on the principles that have come to inform my political philosophy I am forced to conclude Israel has no such "right."

Now before you brand me as antisemitic let me explain what I mean.

From my perspective no nation has a "right to exist" because nations do not have rights, they are artificial legal constructs, much like corporations.

At one time the word nation had a valid definition as a group of people who shared a common culture, language, ethnicity and history--among other things--that distinguished them in general from everyone else.   Nation sat at the top of the hierarchy of individual, family, clan and tribe.   With the advent of rapid travel, instant communication, world wide commerce and mass migration that higher level of the hierarchy has lost its meaning.

Nation now refers to a geographical territory enclosed by arbitrary boundaries, usually established by military action, ruled by a government that claims a monopoly on force within that territory.   In most people's minds that government is synonymous with the nation, so much so that a government is able to propagandize that a threat to itself, that is a threat to its monopoly on power, is a threat to the people as a whole.   As a result people have been lead to commit horrible atrocities in defense of their nation when in reality the only threat was to the power and privilege of the people who rule them.   Nations, that is the governments who claim to represent them, do not have rights, they have power, generally usurped from those unfortunate enough to be enclosed within their borders.

People have rights.   Every Israeli, every Palestinian--every person in the world--has the right to life, liberty and lawfully acquired property.   As long as those rights are not respected there will be neither justice nor peace.

The government of Israel unlawfully suppressed the liberty and expropriated the property of a vast number of individual Palestinians.   Until that is addressed those people and their progeny have a legitimate grievance.   On the other hand, Hamas, and before them the PLO, have targeted the lives of individual Israelis who did not participate in the government of Israel's crimes for no other reason than they happen to be in range.   Both governments are concerned only with preserving and expanding their power, neither is concerned with the welfare of the people under their control.   They exploit their suffering for political reasons.   If that were not true Israel would stop encouraging and subsidizing the expansion of settlements on the property of Palestinians, knowing full well it will draw reprisals, and Hamas would stop provoking the wrath of Israel onto innocent Palestinians by targeting innocent Israelis and then hiding in residential neighborhoods.

Neither the Palestinian people nor the Israeli people are to blame.   The blame lies with the amoral elites who rule them and who will stop at nothing to expand their power, privilege and control.

The state of Israel has no "right" to exist, neither does the state of Palestine.   The people who live in the land occupied by those two regimes have every right to live free of the pernicious parasites who will not be happy till the sea is filled with blood.

December 29, 2008

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Puck T. Smith is the nom de plume of a man who wishes to live his life in peace and obscurity while at the same time sharing the insights he has acquired through both suffering and joy in more than half a century of living in this world of terrible tragedy, radiant beauty and dizzying possibilities.