Stalemate needs to move beyond 1948

[bemildred]

Something a bit more measured to help "educate" you.

The people of Israel and Palestine are, it seems, trapped forever in a
demonic Groundhog Day where they endlessly rerun 1948. As I have
traveled around Israel/Palestine over the past few weeks, it has been
startling to hear just how old the arguments between the two sides are. At
heart, everything still boils down not to 1967 -- when the occupation of
Gaza and the West Bank began -- but to the events of 1948 itself;
almost all the arguments I have been engaged in could have happened in
the winter of that year.

More than a fight between armies, the Middle East conflict is a clash
between two national stories. Each side sees every event through the
prism of its own mythology about 1948 and ignores the other side's story
completely. The first of these stories -- the more well known in the West
-- is the official Israeli narrative. It goes something like this: The
Holocaust was the last, terrible demonstration that without a state of their
own, Jews would be slaughtered. Therefore the Jewish people, after
millennia of persecution, finally and bravely decided to return to the
homeland that the Roman Empire stole from them 2,000 years before.

They revived a dead language and made the desert bloom; they created
a thriving democracy with Jews from all over the world. Only the hostility
of anti-Semites in Europe and of genocidal Arabs, who tried repeatedly to
destroy Israel for their own mad reasons, explain why Israel is not widely
admired today. In the most extreme versions of this narrative, the land
was empty when the Jews returned to it, except for a few wandering
nomads. Those who claim to be displaced Palestinians are malicious liars
who want to snatch Israel's land and wealth.

And then there is the Palestinian story, less well known in the West (and
entirely unheard in America), but almost the sole version of the conflict
told in the Arab world. It goes something like this: The god-fearing Arab
peasants of Palestine lived peacefully alongside a Jewish minority for
thousands of years, especially during the 400 years of the Ottoman
Empire.

Seattle Post Intelligencer

[StandWatie]

1. like hell..

I wish you could kill either selective narrative but it doesn't seem possible.

[Darranar]

2. Agreed completely

n/t

[jos]

3. Great Article!

Thanks.

[Violet_Crumble]

4. So true...

It is time to admit -- and this is not woolly third way-ism -- that both national myths contain truths and ridiculous lies. At the moment, the two sides stare at each other in blank, hateful mutual incomprehension. Of course, if you don't know about the Naqba, Palestinian anger at Israel looks simply like a disembodied, crazy loathing. And if you don't know about the terrible history of anti-Semitism, the creation of the state of Israel looks like unjustifiable wickedness.

Maybe it's easier for people to keep themselves all pumped up and feeling righteous to demonise the other side and ignore the injustices done to them. What's sad is that I've seen people who know about the Naqba and still insist no wrong was ever done. And of course to ignore the long history of anti-semitism in what drove the Zionists to want a national homeland in the first place does place the creation of Israel in the realms of something incomprehensible and evil...

The article mentioned the Balfour Declaration. I've just been reading about it and didn't realise that the Balfour Declaration was dated Nov 2 1917 and the British didn't conquer Jerusalem till December 9, 1917. There's something ever so imperialistic British in promising a nation they hadn't even conquered yet to another nation...


Violet...