Israel

Had an argument with J tonight, and we're both angry with each other for our views. It was an argument about Israel and Palestine, of course. Such a controversial topic! It bothers me precisely because it is controversial. Why on earth is it more controversial than, say, Sri Lanka or Sudan or Congo or any other conflict on the earth? The wars of Israel have affected far less people than wars in Pakistan and India, or in East Timor and Cambodia. Why do newspapers devote column after column to this small conflict in the middle east? Why do these troubles in an area far away from the major spheres of influence generate many thousands of protestors, and even violent protestors

I don't think these questions have definitive answers. Of course the protesters will say that there are such answers - namely that Israel is presiding over an Apartheid state or, more fashionable these days, it is comparable to the Third Reich and its crimes. None of this is credible in my opinion. Apartheid was a brutal establishment which bears no real approximation to present day Israel and the comparison to Nazism is ludicrous. So, to a sensible person, why is Israel  / Palestine in the news disproportionately to it impact in world politics? Well, in my view, Paul Berman seems to make fairly good sense. Yes, I've posted to that link twice. But I think it's very good. It's quite clear that the Jews are, historically, the target of mankind's hatred. This is demonstrated by the Inquisition, expulsion from Western European Nations, Russian pogroms, the Nazi Holocaust and also, without referring to any book, contemporary viewpoints. I have friends, sadly enough, who are adamantly anti-racist but will proclaim that Jews somehow run the world economy.

Mr Berman says all this far more eloquently than me. So what's my point? Well I'm angry with my (Jewish) girlfriend's views on the Israeli / Palestinian issue. She has no time for the Palestinians who live in the areas occupied by the Israelis. She asks "Why won't the Arab neighbours of Israel take them as refugees?" "Why did they vote Hamas?" "Why are they so anti-Semitic?" It is not long before she is flinging the term "they" around in any conversation. "They" are responsible for this and that. As if all of them can be put neatly into a little marked pigeon hole. Of course this generalisation is more approximate to the fascist Hamas than to a mother in the Gaza strip who is merely trying to make a living and avoid any kind of violence.

It makes me especially angry when she asks "why won't the Arab neighbours take them as refugees?" How exactly have they become refugees? Is it because she intends to kick them out? This is where her theory breaks down into pure bigotry. It has to be - but she is blinded to it because in her eyes it is all healthy support of Israel, a place where she knows people and has lived for several years. It is those people who deserve her support - not the anti-Semitic Arabs who fire rockets into Sderot.

And so she sees my support for the two state solution as an act of high treason against her people and her Holocaust surviving grandfather. So, I am suddenly anti-Semitic for being pro-Palestinian. Now, that irritates me because I am in the ridiculous position of acknowledging the growing tide of anti-Semitic attitudes in our ever-irrational world and, at the same time, of being somehow not sympathetic enough to the Jews in strife in Israel.

Perhaps this would have all been avoided if we hadn't had so much to drink? Ha ha.