Where You Draw The Line
January 17th, 2009Omer Goldman, daughter of the former Mossad chief spoke live to True Talk radio from Tel-Aviv. Goldman says that she has been sent to jail twice for refusing to serve in the Israeli military because she thinks Israel commits crimes against humanity in the occupied territories and right now in Gaza.
She claims that war on Gaza is political game for the coming election in Israel.
It shows that in Israel -which claimed to be the most (so-called) democratic country of the Mideast but has made the previous beautiful Mideast like a blood bath- a young Omer doesn’t have any other choice except participating in a war that she does not believe in it. Her ‘undesirable’ voice get suppressed in jail. It’s something that you might not even get in any ‘undemocratic’ country of the world
On the other hand, yesterday i found this video of Pro-Israeli rally in NYC (i reccommend it ) on Ardent’s blog, containing interviews done by Max Blumenthal with some people who attended the rally. They call for ‘Wiping Out’ Palestinians.
These statements make me think. It raises many questions in my mind. As an Iranian, i’ve been accused of being from a terrorism region with a terrorist government and a terrorist president who said that ‘Israel will be wiped out’, something that was a ‘prediction’ actually and not an ‘assault’.
I am not going to defend or accuse Mr Ahmadinejad here since i might disagree with him, but the fact is neither the government nor my nation attacked any other nations in the world and have never ‘claimed’ directly to wip out anybody. But they wrote thousands and thousands articles and still spread reports or rumors, accusing Muslims i.e Iranians to be anti-semitism, anti-judaism, so and so. While they all know that Iran has the second largest community of Jews in the Mideast and Iranian jews -Praise to God- are the most religious Jews i’ve ever seen.
Then you see that some Israelis call Israel for ‘wiping out’ the Palestinians. And murdering thousand Palestinians with unknown American weapons is justifed as ‘defense’.
It’s allowed to make a blood bath and they’re not allowed to question it, because they might face what people like Omer faced. So what’s the difference? Who is the real terrorist when terrorism means using terror to achieve political goals ? Where you draw the line?
Max then himself comments on the rally and interviews and questions the ultimate brainwashing of the Israeli community:
No one I spoke to could seem to find any circumstance in which they would begin to question Israel’s war. No number of civilian deaths, no displays of extreme suffering — nothing could deter their enthusiasm for attacking one of the most vulnerable populations in the world with the world’s most advanced weaponry. There are no limits, no matter what Israel does, no matter how it does it.
The rally made me think of a passage in “The Holocaust Is Over, We Must Rise From Its Ashes,” a powerful new book by former Israeli Knesset speaker and Jewish National Fund chairman Avraham Burg:
“If you are a bad person, a whining enemy or a strong-arm occupier, you are not my brother, even if you are circumcised, observe the Sabbath, and do mitzvahs. If your scarf covers every hair on your head for modest, you give alms and do charity, but what is under your scarf is dedicated to the sanctity of Jewish land, taking precedence over the sanctity of human life, whoever’s life that is, then you are not my sister. You might be my enemy. A good Arab or a righteous gentile will be a brother or sister to me. A wicked man, even of Jewish descent, is my adversary, and I would stand on the other side of the barricade and fight him to the end.” Source
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It is almost impossible to “draw the line,” especially when strong emotions are blurring the line we’re trying to draw.
On the one hand we have people who will defend Israel no matter what.
On the other hand we have people who will blame Israel no matter what.
And both of these groups are energized by strong emotions, emotions which seem to have a life of their own, and which often blur the line between right and wrong. So who is right and who is wrong?
Sometimes I have the feeling that emotions, one way or the other, can obscure the truth, since the truth of a matter is usually somewhere in the middle between two extremes. Truth is not an extremist position. It usually lies somewhere in the middle between extremist positions. There is usually some truth on all sides of any given question.
It may behoove us, at times, to pretend that we are not human, but reptiles, sitting on a rock somewhere, soaking in the sun, and waiting for some food to show up. Retiles have been around a pretty long time, much longer than us. They don’t seem terribly bothered by emotion. They go about their business doing what they have to do to survive. Can we learn something from them?
Maybe, if we were a little less emotional about things, we could sit down, like reptiles, and get down to the business of making peace. We will be cool, and calculating, and rational, and yes, even cold-blooded, in making the decisions, and taking the steps, that are needed to broker the peace, instead of yelling hysterically at one another about why it’s not already there.
[...] Has been cross-posted on Mideast Youth Posted in Death, Human Rights, Humanity, Iran, Israel, Middle east, Palestine, Politics, Racism, [...]
I’ve seen the video of the “pro-Israel” rally and it makes my skin crawl.
Yet there were also those at “peace activists” at rallies held in solidarity with the Palestinians chanting holding signs calling for “Palestine to be free from the river to the sea” and voicing support for Hamas. I suppose some people just need to learn how to shut-up.
Actually there must be drawn a line. I am againt extremist. But my problem is that Israel has gone so far and nobody seems try to stop her. Iran is called terrorist for “a sentence”, why Israel shouldn’t be called as terrorist, while terrorising civillians is so easy for Israeli leaders to achieve their political goals as Omer mentioned? That’s my point.
Well, as the video shows, yes, there are some Israelis who defend Israel no matter what. But then i am sure those anti-war rallies (and people like Omer or Avraham Burg) know what’s the ‘matter’ of protesting. There is something wrong with Israeli politicians.
True. As i said i am so againt extremism. But then the call of ‘wiping out’ has different result for sides of war. Iranian/Muslim emotion has not harmed people as much as Israeli emotion did. Brainwahsed Israeli emotion can murder 1300 civillians in 22 days. And it’s so horrible, sickening and unique in the history of humankind.
Israel is harming Jews more than what Hitler did. If Hitler claimed to remove Jews ‘physically’, Israel is removing Judaism ‘mentally and spiritually’ too. That peaceful community of jews (that i know they are since i have good jew friends) are getting more hated around the world, while i know many of them even dont realise what’s happening and are not part of story of Israeli sick politicians.
Gregory, the dichotomy you point to at the rallies, of those who support Israel no matter what, and of those who advocate the destruction of the Jewish state, points to the futility of expecting that strong emotions will win the day when it comes to peace.
People like to hear themselves talk, even at the expense of peace. We can either play the blame game, or we can sit down, hard as that may be, and do the hard work that is needed to first condition people for the possibility of peace, and then to actually cut a deal.
I often ask myself; What is harder, waging war, or making peace? I think that in the final analysis, making peace is harder than waging war. When you wage war, you fight for what you believe in, and we all feel good about fighting for what we believe. But when we make peace, we are often asked to give up some of what we believe in, for the sake of something we can believe in even more, like peace. And giving up some of what we believe in is very difficult. It’s like giving up a part of ourselves.
For peace to happen, people will have to give up at least some of what they believe in, and will have to put on a shelf somewhere their emotions, in order to reinvent a better version of themselves.
“…Israel has gone so far…”
Shahrazad, it is hard to argue with that. War is hell, and whether you want to or not, you often do go too far. I think of the five beautiful girls who were killed on their horse-drawn carriage. That is going too far. And I think of the three beautiful daughters of the doctor, a moderate man, who were also killed. That’s going too far as well.
But I look at these tragedies, horrible as they are, and I say to myself; How do we make it better? And I want to be that “reptile,” who may have emotions, but who certainly doesn’t show it, and who goes about doing what needs to be done to make things better.
“Israel is harming Jews more than what Hitler did.”
I can’t really agree with that statement, Shahrazad, even though there may be a hint of truth to it. Israel has brough a lot of good to the Jews, and actually, to the world at large, but it is also true that the endless need to fight is taking its toll on the spiritual essence of Jews.
You say that you have Jewish friends, and you know them to be good people, overall. Well, for the most part, even though there are always exceptions, that is how Jews are, and infact, that is how most people are around the world.
Jews do love peace, and Jews are taught to do good, and to leave this world a little better than they found it.
The fact that Israel finds itself trapped in an existential struggle for its survival is taking a toll on Jewish identity and spirituality.
Some people will look at Israel’s military power and wonder how it is possible that Israel feels so threatened. Well, you brought up Hitler, and if he proved anything, it is that you can never take your survival for granted. The threat to one’s survival has been a dominant theme in the history of the Jews. They were persecuted for some 2000 years, culminating in the Holocaust, which still stands out as one of the most evil acts perpetrated by the hand of man.
So I would agree with you that this war, and others like it, does not bring out the best version of Israel, and of Jews. Therefore, I believe that Israel has no choice but to be even more aggressive when it comes to making peace. Israel should fight for peace as hard as she fights for war. Israel is uniquely qualified, with her technology and her economy, to start the effort to revitalize the economies of the West Bank and of Gaza, and to use that effort as a starting point to broker a fair and lasting peace. Only in this way can Israel restore the promise of her founding, and the legacy of her people.