Israel/Palestine
In reply to the discussion: The Global March to Jerusalem, a brave and admirable attempt to awaken the world’s conscience [View all]Ken Burch
(50,254 posts)Nothing would be better in Gaza if Israel had stayed. Obviously the settlers were going to have to go, since their presence there was never anything but toxic and negative. From what I've seen, the Gaza settlers never bothered to try treating the people of Gaza as their equals, or to recognize that those people had a real history and connection to that place. They acted like it was THEIR land, and that the Gazans had no real right to stay in the place where they'd lived for generations.
I'm not in agreement with rightsts on anything. And I'm not a nationalist. What I am is an opponent of the idea that any one nation or group has the right to make another nation or group live at its mercy, or to treat all the inhabitants of the subjugated nation as if they are collectively responsible for the worst choices of the most extreme people in the subjugated group.
It's impossible to make a progressive case, in the 21st Century for the idea of one nation's army holding another nation perpetually under siege, in THIS day and age. The days when Occupations might have had any positive or hope-inducing effects on a country ended with the end of the Occupations of Germany and Japan-and those were occupations of an entirely different nature, both of which pretty much left the civilian populations of both countries alone. Also, Palestinians have done nothing that could possibly merit treating them like post-World War II Germany or Japan. They weren't trying to take over the world, OR trying to create a Judenrein planet. They didn't operate death camps or subject anybody to the equivalent of the Bataan Death March. Also, it's never going to be possible to get them to sign a document of unconditional surrender.
Your attitude about Gaza and the West Bank is very Kiplingesque...in every post you make, you sound like you're committed to "tak(ing) up 'The White Man's Burden" to quote Brecht). And the tone you take has a lot to do with why Palestinians, from what I've seen, regard the Occupation as a form of colonialism. It's not possible to make peace with another country by talking down to them and expecting them to accept that YOUR country is "their betters". Peace can't be built on subjugation.
I want civil rights, and equality for all. But neither can be created in the Territories through keeping IDF troops in place, OR by maintaining the Siege of Gaza. Saying that is no slam on the IDF-it's simply a recognition that, in the end, however "enlightened" anybody thinks the military occupation they defend in any particular area to be, in the end, that occupation will become just as arrogant as that of the Romans in Judea, Samaria and Galilee. Israel does NOT need to go to that place to survive.
The way to make a democratic future for Palestine is to give THEM a chance to make it-not to treat Palestinians as if democracy and "human rights" can only come to them as things imposed by the Israelis as a badge of conquest.
You have to LET people breathe, if you want them to breathe free.