|
|
|
Helpful Sites
|
Shame, O Israel, Shame By Jay Ray I never thought I would be saying this. All my life I have been pro-Jewish. Many of the people that have helped me in my life when I needed it were Jewish. I like their sense of humour and their cultural peculiarities. Most of all I love their deep intelligence. So much of the world has been shaped by Jewish scientific and creative minds. Now I am in a dilemma. How can I conscience what they are doing to the Arab people and maintain my affection?? It is very hard. Lets be clear here. I am not just talking about myself as someone who likes the sound of a Brooklyn accent. I was once so stirred by the exodus if Jews journeying to their lost homeland after the atrocities of the WW1 that I wanted to go live there and joint a kibbutz, just to help them establish a home. My partner wouldn't go but I wore a Mogen Dovid (Star of David) for 14 years in support of their cause. But what it has cost the Palestinian people to allow that homecoming is real and terrible. The British mandate that allowed Jews to have half Palestine without discussion with the incumbent population was another one of those colonial interference that we are seeing so much today from America and its British ally. By what right did they make that offer??? If a homeland Israel was to become, it had to be willingly given by the people who lived there, not the errant landlords. If Israel was to have peace, not more distrust from her neighbours as she has had while in exile, it needed to be done differently. But it wasn't. It was the same old annexation story that has created wars from the beginning of time. The Maori have the expression 'utu' which is their word for revenge. When a insult is offered to a family member, then 'utu' comes into play. Of course, the minute that has been fulfilled, the other group now have utu to exact from them. And on and on it goes. What is different in what happens here and what is happening in the Middle East between the Sons of Abraham??? And will it go on until no one is left?? There, or anywhere else??? What is happening in Lebanon right now is a disgrace. The Lebanese people are not strong enough to stop Hezbollah or anyone else. Israel and the rest of the international community know this, but still Israel demands the impossible as an excuse for wholesale slaughter of Lebanese people. Why??? For two soldiers, it kills 400 civilians and destroys a countries infrastructure?? Where is the sense in that?? I think not. Is this a push for more territory when Lebanon has been emptied? Is it a favour to Israel's fuel hungry ally, America, to give it a way into the Iranian issue?? I hope not. Making people pawns in a game has a tendency to backlash. As we speak I suspect there are more so called terrorists being created in Lebanon from displaced young men that are angry about what has happened to their families. More fodder for the war machine. Is this what return to the ancient homeland is all about?? I don't think that was what the Jewish people on the exodus ships pouring out of Europe in 1948 had in mind. But that's what's happening. And opportunistic U.S. plays the power games with such aplomb no matter who is on the other end of the gun or laying dead in a ditch. The country who only twice had the war come to its own territory and each time reacted with such disproportionate force that the world will never forget their actions. But it will not stop the displaced from rising up wherever injustice hits. When will this medieval method of problem solving ever end?? Do we all have to go to our graves to end the human carnage? So, I am in this dilemma. How can I love the Jewish people and hate the actions that are coming out of their state?? It is my challenge: to be pro-Jewish and anti-Israeli. But it is a challenge that the current world politics are presenting me with daily. I must not condemn the American people for the actions of their President-but they voted him in. I must not condemn Australians for their electoral choices either. I can despise the weak actions of Tony Blair but somehow not blame my own people for putting him in the position he is to be able to take Britain into unfair wars. But then, Britain has done a good job of unfairness across the whole of her colonial spectrum and much of world-wide violence we currently experience is from the carve up of land after WW1 anyway. Who were most instrumental in that? Britain and America I fear. Oh, the wheel come full circle. How can I love my friends and not their actions? I am going to have to learn too, and so is the rest of the world if we are ever going to stop the effects of world wide 'utu' on both the personal and the political scenes. But we are going to have to go a few steps further, I feel. We are going to have to look at other ways of acting differently so that the end results stop being more of the same/shame wholesale slaughter. But right here, right now: Israel, find another way!!
|