Ichabod's Kin
A place for politics, pop culture, and social issues

          The tragedy of it all. Who is most at fault is not the greater problem, if it ever were. It’s an eternal struggle in a “holy land.”

          It began when certain people had nowhere to go. They had been persecuted and/or run out of every place in the world, including by the great powers whom no one blames now, yet are complicit in this painful modern history. The U.S. and Britain among others had denied Jews safe haven long before they strode the Nazi killing fields all over Europe and the horrors of Holocaust—known before World War II was over.

          With no assurance that their persecution would be unceasing, the movement called Zionism, once but a romantic notion, took hold in the Jewish soul. The soundtrack lyrics of the movie Exodus were, “This land is mine, God gave this land to me”–to restore Israel to its ancient land, though it had been home to many more.

          God gave the American Southwest to Mexico but that meant nothing to our big land-grab. Were we forced to give it back, Texans for one would never get over it and would be hurling rocks and Molotov cocktails over the disputed boundary.

          Taking territory longtime in others’ keeping is not a workable plan. Never has been and never will. It might have worked had the Brits’ Balfour Declaration included input from the Palestinians, but it didn’t. And what became support from powerful, wealthy nations like ours kept Israel alive in the aftermath of conquest. Ironically, said plan was also referred to as solving the “Jewish problem.”

          Add to that the resistance of Israel to Palestinians having their own state. Add again that Israel got nuclear power, incurring Eisenhower’s wrath when the French, behind our backs, assisted Israel in that little coup. Egypt’s closure of a strategic strait brought an Israeli attack that blamed Egypt for starting the ’67 war. Before that, LBJ had assisted Israel with combat support, against prevailing agreements.

          So it’s not about who’s done the worst now or before. Is it the recent, horrible attack by Hamas or the manifest injustices of Israel’s long, slow, grinding occupation and its increasing settlement of the West Bank? We are hostage to headlines and emotions seized by the latest screams from one side or the other. Netanyahu, the Israeli Trump, dropped his guard and Hamas did its worst, so that’s on him, and he hopes to get his rep back by winning a war and that means the devastation of Gaza and its inhabitants.

          Many of us an grew up enamored of biblical stories of David’s and Solomon‘s heroics and how the Canaanites were godless enemies. When modern Israel was created we may have been too young to be political. We didn’t know there was another side.

          Here is what everyone should know but doesn’t: criticism of Israel is not antisemitism, and sympathy toward the Palestinian plight is not pro-Hamas. The Mid-East is a cauldron that enflames the region and threatens to suck all the world into it; and when touched by questions, let alone opinions, makes enemies of friends and draws all into the maelstrom.

          The horror story now is that neither side now can see the humanity of the other. This is a loss of soul regardless of what religion or system of morals either holds.

          I hurt for Jews I know and those I don’t know because they are targets of the oldest continuous hatred in the history of mankind. They look and sound more like us, and Palestinians don’t. But the latter are rendered homeless and stateless and that is what war does: it destroys morals and humanity. And it kills more innocents than it does the guilty. A two-state solution seems promising but there again the newcomers don’t want the others to have one on their own soil.

          Whatever we’re grateful for in a season of Thanksgiving, it’s not for the cruelty of that or the world’s other wars. For all of them we can only say, Thanks but no thanks.