Does Israel Have a Right to Exist in Its Current Location?
We have a culture that says that Israel is good and that Arabs are bad because they want to destroy the State of Israel. Until recently, I felt, like most westerners, that the Arab world is a bunch of crazed militant religious freaks fighting an ancient blood war started when Abraham gave birth to feuding sons.
It turns out that the Arabs have a STRONG case for their animosity towards Israel. The same people who brought you Japanese internment camps also gave the State of Israel to the Middle East at gunpoint. The reason was, that the Jews had been so badly decimated by the German forces in World War II that the Allied countries decided a Jewish State was in order. There were, up to that point in history a lot of Jews, Muslims and Palestinians all occupying the land currently known as Israel, and they resided in relative peace with one another.
As crazy as it sounds, the decision for WHERE to locate a Jewish State came down to a reading of the Old Testament of the Bible. That’s right. Palestinian people were forced from their homes, the land that they had occupied since Roman Times, at gunpoint, for the express purpose of setting up a Jewish State in God’s so-called “Promised land.”
Imagine if today, at gunpoint, Americans were forced to give up land and cities so that the Cherokee nation could have its former land back. How about the Apaches? Americans would have none of it. We tend to think, we won the land. What we did was a travesty, but we won, so get over it. What we fail to understand is that the process of quelling the insurgency among Native Americans who were forcibly removed from their lands took HUNDREDS of years. Even today, there is bad blood between pure natives and white people who occupied their homelands.
The State of Israel is 59 years old. It DID NOT EXIST for 1200 years. It is NOT the Israel of the Bible despite its location. The creation of the neo-nation state of Israel was a travesty done to the Palestinian nation, and the remnants of that nation have continued, with their allies to fight an ever present insurgency over a decision largely made in arrogance that stemmed from the Christian and Judeo belief that a certain plot of land was best for the Jewish State on the basis of a promise delivered by God 6000 years ago.
Recently on Anderson Cooper, Iran’s president gave the most convincing argument I have EVER heard for the destruction of the State of Israel. Sadly, most people will see him as denying the Holocaust and will miss his true meaning when he replied, after being asked about the Holocaust, “If this event happened, WHERE did it happen? The WHERE is the main question, and it was not in Palestine. So why is the holocaust being used as a pretext for occupying Palestinian lands? How is that connected to the occupying regime in Jerusalem?”
While much ado has been made over Iran’s president’s refusal to acknowledge the holocaust, the reality is that wherein that is concerned, for ALL of Mahmoud’s life, the State of Israel has been the enemy. Do we ever demonize OUR enemies? Do we ever teach, spout, and dream up conspiracy theories about a larger design that is out to get us??? I submit YES! How often have we heard tell that BUSH planned and executed 9/11?..and HE’S supposedly on OUR side!. How often have we heard that our OWN government killed Kennedy? How many of us believe those things about the people we LIKE?????
Imagine if you had 59 years to develop theories about your enemy, and artificial political entity, given a name of an ancient land and pushed on you at gunpoint due to an ancient promise in an ancient religious text in which you have no faith! So Mahmoud is a little fuzzy on some parts of history. Does that take away ALL of his credibility on every subject??? I submit that it takes away no more credibility than a false pretext for the Iraq war takes from George Bush. He’s lost a lot, but not all. Don’t get me wrong. I hate George as much as the next liberal, but I still analyze EVERYTHING he says and I STILL give him bits of credit where credit is due.
In the end, it doesn’t MATTER WHAT Iran’s president believes about the Holocaust. What matters is ascertaining those places where he has a POINT! In this case, the point is that he thinks the Holocaust is irrelevant in respect to the location of the nation state of Israel. In 1945, the Allied forces could have and SHOULD have given part of Germany to the Jews so that they could form a nation state. That would have made sense. What made no sense was making a real estate decision based on an ancient text and an ancient religious belief.
We have been conditioned to think the Arabs are a bunch of crazy troublemakers. During his interview with Anderson Cooper, Iran’s President made more sense in a few sentences than George Bush has made on ANY subject in six years as President. It’s no wonder George Bush doesn’t want to debate him. The man is dangerous! Dangerously brilliant. He gets it, and if the Arab nations all come together as a superpower, I believe Mahmoud will be the guy who organizes it. We have a unique opportunity in the world to right what has been wronged. I don’t think we will do it, but I do believe now that the Arabs have a right and a reason to their agendaâÂ?¦the destruction of the artificially created occupation of the Jewish Regime in Palestine.
At the end of World War II, the largely Judeo-Christian based western world decided to set up a sanctuary for Jews as a way of making up for taking so long to prevent the atrocities against the Jews. They settled on Palestine because of an old Testament promise and created a NEW nation State with an OLD name that Religious people could find in their Bible’s, so as to have a religious justification for their geographic decision. While it’s true that the situation has been AGGRAVATED by religion, both by those who started the problem (Judeo-Christian westerners) and by those who perpetuate their insurgency against that injustice (Theocratic govenrments such as Iran) the fact is that the problem is not a religious issue, but a political mess created by the same people that claim to respect the rights of women, and yet failed to pass the E.R.A. We say they are a bunch of religious crazies, but the reality is that we too invoke the name of our Judeo-Christian God when we feel justified in warfare. Before we even WENT to war in Afghanistan after 9/11, the country went to church, live on TV, to mourn, but also to dedicate our hearts to the God we prayed would give us the power to win the day.
Okay� I said my piece. Here come the people accusing me of being an anti-Semite for having a politically based opinion. Have at!
