What a mess, a mess a long time in the making.
The evolution of sense is, in a sense, the evolution of nonsense.
The senses do or don’t evolve but they only evolve as nonsense evolves and nonsense evolves because it must.
I started this blog as Hamas began its attack on the Jewish settlements in Gaza. There had been no attempt to corral young peoples at a music festival and systematically gun them down nor the almost unbelievable barbaric atrocity of beheading of young babies found in the settlers homes. My blog was a reasoned attempt to set some sort of background to the Hamas/Israeli conflict and I hadn’t considered the almost jihadi death squad wish of Hamas knowing that the result of their actions would bring terrible retribution to Palestinians at large.
Biblical folk law states, in Genesis, that the patriarch Abraham had two sons, ‘Isaac’ from who the tribe of Israel was born and Ishmael who came to represent the Arab in the regional mix.
The development in Israel of an attack by Hamas on the state of Israel highlights the troubling relationship between two societies, Arab and Jew and their sense of a ‘right‘ stretching back to the early period of civilisation human socialisation, a time when we in Europe were still primitive. The Arabs in the region and wider were the leaders in many spheres of learning not least science and literature and the Jews, who lived amongst them as a religious group, through their dint of self assuredness became influential in the region. The region itself had many rulers, from the Egyptians to the Assyrian’s, the Persians, the Romans (who converted to Christianity) and finally the Ottomans who ruled the area up until a United nation mandate handed power to Britain on the proviso that they would effect a two tier state consisting of Palestine and Israel. The depth of feeling and often resentment in their religious differences underpinned much of the incoherence we see today. Judaism through the Old Testament and later Islam through the teachings of the Koran cemented a deep mistrust and much of the inability to find common ground is due to the false surety both sides have in believing they are right and that their interpretation of gods will is the only true one.
Israel’s emergence as a political state in 1947, after the mandate bequeathed to Britain on the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire ran its course and a two state solution was sought. From a tribal entity living with and amongst Arabs, Israel became a strong powerful nation which in no small part came from her strong self-belief and the enormous support of the USA where many Jews had settled and made their fortunes exacting prominence in the seat of power and in the commerce of the nation.
Having been on the wrong end of terrible injustice in many parts of Europe, specifically in Germany under the Nazi program of extermination which culminated in the monstrous event we know as the Holocaust, one would have thought that Jewish leadership would be sensitive towards an underdog over who they had gained power to do much as they pleased but it seems history is no great tutor.
Power is a difficult thing to handle sensibly, many Jews are as intolerant of their Arab neighbours as are their neighbours of them. The internationally agreed rules governing the occupation of the Gaza are often ignored by Israel with the claim that the land settled on by the Palestinians is in fact actually part of Israel and thus the UN directive, ‘not to build new Jewish settlements in Gaza’ is ignored by the Hasidic right wing ultra religious segment of the governing coalition in Isreal who pressed for an accelerated building effort which accelerated Palestinian resentment and culminated in the attack this week.
The claim that the Hamas attack was unprovoked is offset by the daily imposition of the rules of an occupying power which ordinary Palestinians have to circumnavigate daily rules and regulations as they move into and out of Gaza on a daily basis which is needed, according to the Israelis to root out Hamas terrorists.
The fear that people living in Israel have to bear the brunt of a constant threat from Hamas, who openly state their wish to inflict genocide on Isreal also comes from both Hamas in Gaza and the Arab sister organisation, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the power behind them Iran. The threat is real and Israel is right to prepare what ever is needed to survive and the sound of terror in the voices of the young people enjoying a festival which suddenly turns into some sort of horror film as Hamas fighters corral them and start to execute them for no other reason than that they are Jewish is one of the most terrifying sounds I have heard. Also the sound of the Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu telling the world he will destroy Hamas and by juxtaposition the people living in Gaza, women and children along with the aged as he unleashes the firepower of his planes to bomb the inhabitants who live in this closely knit enclave of streets, many, (especially the children) have no connection with Hamas. This pushes the phrase ‘collateral damage’ (citizens who are killed whilst the army fights a battle) beyond our understanding of what is just. His zeal to root out and kill brings into mind the Nazi philosophy towards the Jews from which the Jewish people gained such sympathy but which they are in danger of loosing if an Arab genocide takes place.
The gruesome pictures and stories emerging seem to belong rather to a fatwa where death seems to foretell an afterlife of eternal satisfaction and the ultra religious on both sides seem confident of their place in heaven.
The brutality and deprivation have to bear witness to an unhinged society and whilst we try to grapple with it, if after the Israeli government has levelled Gaza, it might be easily assumed that other Arab states will not stand by but will bring their own army’s in to the conflict. Maybe then the jihadist will feel vindicated since no rational person can see a solution and we would be sensible if we become more aware of the depth and disparity that religious disharmony can plunge us all. Already the pro Palestinians are out protesting on the streets of London and extra police are needed to guard predominantly Jewish neighbourhoods
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