Tuesday: Sunrise from 7H
Any number of times over the past soon eleven years that I've been fooling with this blogging, I've recalled the trip we took in spring 1969, the Naval War College class of male officers, by chartered coach from Newport, RI to downtown Manhattan for a week at United Nations Headquarters. The ambassadors of many and various nations coming in to our private auditorium to speak to us, to help us learn first hand about their countries, their politics, their issues and concerns, especially in international relations.
As I've said before, the sessions in which I learned the most and the most enduringly helpful to me for a lifetime were the session with the Israeli ambassador and the session with the Palestinian ambassador. And what I learned, and has remained true, is about absolute intransigence on each side, not only in the Middle East then and now and forever, but in life in general.
In my own Time, especially as priest and pastor, I've worked to see both sides of opposing situations in life, to understand when views differ. It's a self-assignment that's not always easy or been easy, and I seldom feel completely comfortable or completely successful; and as well as friends, I've made enemies; but then Mark Twain or somebody said "anybody who never made an enemy ain't worth a gee-damn".
Because I've encountered a lot of mindless stupidity that seems almost "chosen" but isn't because it's simply the result of being born and bred in the briar patch and never breaking out; and I've observed an awful lot of evil, not all but most of it in sociopolitical stance, the ultimate sin of certitude, entrenched certainty.
Someone I admired and respected once said "liberals are for others, conservatives are for self" and even though it doesn't sound nice, I've noticed it, even being conservative on this issue and liberal on that. Most bitter differences, and unswerving hatred, seem to be inbred, learned, heritage, what we grew up knowing for sure. I grew up there too, and over my lifetime have tried to challenge myself: I no longer know what my parents and grandparents knew for sure. I was wrong, and so were they, though I'm not cutting them off from my Being like the statue topplers and those rushing madly to change street names and the names of high schools. And to disown and discredit generals and theologians who lived and thought and knew in their day and age, just as Jesus lived and thought and knew in His day and age.
By no means does it always work for me, but I've tried and try to be "for others" in a gospel sense, including trying to understand and sympathize if not always empathize.
But, our "sophisticated" "post-modern" age notwithstanding, there is in fact absolute right and absolute wrong even when we can't see it because of our fouled Beings. An example might be Adolph Eichmann, who, I read recently, never comprehended, because he was incapable of it, never comprehended that he and all that he stood for was absolute evil. A case of being soaked in evil that had reinvented itself as good. Where evil may be defined as people hating each other, people wanting to be rid of each other, people harming each other, people killing each other. If you step back, get out your telescope and gaze out beyond the Firmament of Genesis One into the Universe of Creation, you see that we are no different from the ants in neighboring and warring anthills, it's not human nature, it's animal nature, the nature of life itself, we are each individually and corporately for ourselves alone.
Which brings me into confrontation with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that we are called away from our selfish human nature into the godly life of being exclusively for others, as Jesus came to show and tell us that God is for others. It is the Baptismal Covenant, unnatural and difficult, even impossible; for as Jesus said, many are called but few are chosen. And it is a far cry from the usual, totally egocentric abomination, of Christian belief that Jesus came to die for our sins so as to save us from hell and into heaven after we die. We are to live the godly life because we love and want to please our Creator, NOT because we want to avoid punishment or earn a reward.
Enough, where am I going? It started with the two sides, Palestinian and Israeli. I'm thinking of the two intransigent, certitudinous sides of the abortion issue in America. I'm thinking of those who wore facemasks against covid for themselves and others, and those who refused to wear facemasks because the requirement violated their rights. I'm thinking of the restaurants and other small businesses that are closing because in the pandemic situation that is evolving socially and economically people would rather stay home on welfare than work eight hours a day including evenings away from home taking orders and kissing-ass as waiters and waitresses and busboys and working as janitors. I'm thinking of an anomalous nation that refuses to pay for universal healthcare for its people yet considers itself so worthy under the sun that it spends most of its budget on national defense.
I'm thinking of the two sides of our citizenry increasingly divided by certainty of opposites and by hatred of each other, and being thankful that I lived my life in a sort of political and social Middle Ages after its most evil Time and before, but heading into, its most divided Time that will destroy it. Sort of an Enlightenment before the next civilization of extremes. I lived in a shelter of mostly national realization and loving if forceful change, and I'm thankful for that.
How the alphabet did I get here this morning? It was in reading the well said article (scroll down) in this morning's NYT, a newspaper that is itself a benchmark for certainties on both sides. But this says it well ->
Also recommended and relevant http://ummforat.com/en/quiet-in-raleigh-less-so-in-the-jabalia-refugee-camp/
 May 18, 2021 |
Good morning. As the fighting continues in Israel and Gaza, we lay out both sides’ cases. |
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Israel vs. Hamas |
The latest conflict between Israelis and Palestinians had its own specific sparks. But just as important as those sparks is a larger reality: Both sides in the conflict are led by people who are relatively uninterested in compromise. |
Many Israeli and Palestinian leaders have given up on the idea of lasting peace, such as a two-state solution in which Israel and a sovereign Palestine would coexist. They are instead pursuing versions of total victory. For Hamas, the militant group that rivalsFatah as the dominant Palestinian political party, that means the destruction of Israel. For Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel, it means a two-class society in which Palestinians are crowded into shrinking geographic areas and lack many basic rights. |
The result is the worst fighting since 2014. |
“It would seem as if the current round of violence emerged out of a complex series of events in Jerusalem,” Vox’s Zack Beauchamp wrote. “But in reality, these events were merely triggers for escalations made almost inevitable by the way the major parties have chosen to approach the conflict.” |
I recognize that some readers are deeply versed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with strong views about it. And they may bristle at the above description as false equivalence. But I also know that most readers of this newsletter do not follow every turn in the Mideast and often find it bewildering. Today’s newsletter is mostly for them. It will lay out the basic arguments that the two sides are making. When you strip both down to their essence, they help to explain the situation. |
The Palestinian case |
One spark for the current fighting is an attempt by Jewish settlers to evict six Palestinian families from their East Jerusalem homes, where they have lived since the 1950s. The settlers have cited a 19th-century real-estate transaction to establish their ownership. Initial Israeli court rulings upheld the evictions, and the Supreme Court has yet to rule on the case. |
It is just one example of how Israel has imposed control over places where Palestinians have lived for decades. As The Times’s Patrick Kingsley has written, “Israeli law allows Jews to reclaim ownership of land they vacated in 1948, but denies Palestinians the right to reclaim the properties they fled from in the same war.” Netanyahu and his allies believe that they can reduce the chances of a future Palestinian state by displacing Palestinians and expanding Jewish settlements. It’s a version of imperialism. |
More broadly, the East Jerusalem case is an example of how Palestinians must endure frequent humiliation. They often cannot travel without enduring checkpoints and roadblocks. They can be denied Israeli citizenship. Their economy suffers from blockades. “The Israeli regime implements laws, practices and state violence designed to cement the supremacy of one group — Jews — over another — Palestinians,” B’Tselem, a human rights group, has written. |
These inequities fuel Palestinian anger, which occasionally explodes. When it does, Israel’s military strength, financed partly by the U.S., allows it to inflict disproportionate damage. Over the past eight days, more than 200 Palestinians have died in the fighting, compared with at least 10 people in Israel. |
Refaat Alareer, a professor in Gaza, has lost his brother, and his wife, Nusayba, has lost her grandfather, brother, sister and sister’s three children, all in Israeli attacks over recent years, as he explained in a Times Opinion piece. This toll, Alareer writes, makes him and his wife “a perfectly average Palestinian couple.” |
Israel’s critics — including a growing number of American progressives — see it as using military force to perpetuate a brutally unjust society. The best hope for change, many Palestinians believe, is pressure from Israel’s most important ally, the United States. |
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The Israeli case |
The current conflict did not escalate into something approaching war until shortly after 6 p.m. last Monday. That’s when Hamas launched missile attacks on Jerusalem’s civilians. Hamas, which is backed by Iran, has now fired at least 3,350 missiles toward Israel. |
Many Israelis ask their critics: What would you do if a terrorist group (which Hamas is, according to the U.S. and European Union) committed to the elimination of your country fired missiles at it day after day, inducing widespread terror? “If it happened to Washington or to New York?” Netanyahu said on CBS this weekend. “You know damn well what you would do.” |
Israel’s answer is both defense and offense. It has built a defense system known as Iron Dome, which has intercepted many missiles. And Israel has launched bombing attacks on the buildings and underground tunnelswhere Hamas stores its missiles. The point of the bombings is to degrade the Hamas threat. |
Israel insists that it tries to minimize Palestinian civilian deaths, going so far as announcing some bombings in advance, even though Hamas fighters can then escape. But Israel says that Hamas deliberately stores missiles near civilians, knowing that the resulting casualties help it win global sympathy. |
That tactic is consistent with decades of Palestinian political dysfunction. When the United Nations proposed a two-state solution in the 1940s, Arabs rejected it, David Harris recently wrote in The Times of Israel. When Arab countries controlled Palestinian territories in the 1950s and ’60s, they could have created a nation and did not. When Israel and President Bill Clinton offered a two-state peace deal two decades ago, the Palestinians said no. |
Even many supporters of Israel who despair over Netanyahu’s leadership believe the larger problem is the Palestinians’ unwillingness to empower competent political leaders, rather than militants like Hamas. Israel can’t make a peace deal, its supporters say, until it has a partner more interested in building a prosperous society than trying to destroy Israel. |
What now? |
Before this conflict started, an optimist could imagine how the next few years might bring progress. Israel and four Arab nations recently established diplomatic relations, a breakthrough that could eventually offer a framework for resolving the Palestinian question. |
But the new fighting seems to be squelching most optimism. Major street violencebetween Israel’s Arab and Jewish citizens has broken out for the first time in years. It remains unclear when the missile attacks and bombings will stop or if they will instead escalate into a ground war. It also remains unclear when either the Israelis or Palestinians will have political leaders whose priority is peace. |
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