What of the Palestinians?

So … what of the Palestinians? 

I recently wrote a post discussing the sudden onslaught of violent anti-semitism facing American Jews within the context of American far left and far right politics. 

But when you’re dealing with people, each side always has another side. Long, drawn out historic injustices always seem to become absolutely serpentine in their complexities. 

The current situation is a horror movie that the whole world is watching. Israel was attacked. The war truly is forced upon them. 

But there is another side to their side, and that is the suffering of the civilian population of Gaza. 

I have had conversations with Palestinian Christians about the oppressive conditions in which they have been living for many years. But I don’t have long-running friendships with Palestinians as I have had with Jews. Most of what I know has come from those relatively brief conversations and from things I’ve read. 

I’m telling you this so you will understand that most of what I’m saying is either a surmise or a guess based on second hand information, and not a lot of that. 

Having said that, what I have been told and what I have read leads me to the conclusion that claims that Palestinians are living in what amounts to apartheid are reasonable. At the very least, it appears that they are living an an overcrowded ghetto that echoes the ghettos imposed on Jews during the Middle Ages. 

I have read about Israel’s origins. I have witnessed decades of terrorist attacks in the name of the Palestinian people against innocent civilians in Israel, Europe and even once here in the United States. I have heard the repeated threats that span decades to kill every Jew in Israel. 

I have also read about and heard at least some of the stories of the oppression and daily indignity and fear that Palestinians live under at the hand of their Israeli controllers. 

I believe that when Hamas attacked Israel and slaughtered so many innocents, including children; that when they raped, tortured, kidnapped and murdered people in such numbers, they understood that they were calling down the dogs of war on the Palestinian people whom they govern. I can see no other explanation for what they did except that they wanted Israel to react the way it has reacted. They wanted their own people bombed. Otherwise they would not have staged this senseless slaughter in the first place.

I also think that they did this because they want to draw the surrounding nations in that part of the world into a larger conflict. They want a big war, a bloody war. The resulting chaos in Europe and the United States is also probably part of their plan. 

Looked at this way, Hamas’ actions make a kind of bloody, sociopathic sense. It is the reasoning of all the killer tyrants down through history. They sacrificed the lives of the people they govern and whose murders they will answer to before God in order to achieve a war which they hope will force the surrounding nations to attack Israel for them. 

It’s a clear logic, if a dastardly one. 

My personal opinion is that both Israel and Hamas have bad leaders. I think Israel made the same kind of mistake when they elected Netanyahu that America made when it elected Trump. Both nations yielded to their darker impulses and put their own destructor in charge of their country. 

Israel is a lot more vulnerable than America, so its consequences came home faster. Israel doesn’t have the margin for error in its governance that America has. However, the bad man we elected actually attempted to overthrow our democracy and have himself put in place as our first unelected dictator. He has so corrupted the Republican Party that they are willing to destroy our democracy for him. 

America is stronger that Israel, but if we keep on dancing through the flames with these bad people, we’ll burn down too.

In the meantime, we are watching while the horror show in the Middle East unfolds. And I am back at the question: What of the Palestinian people?

I think that we need to accept the fact that America cannot control events in the Middle East. We have a lot of influence. But we do not have control. 

American presidents have tried for decades to broker a peace in this region. The greatest success was the Camp David Accord which came about due to President Jimmy Carter’s leadership. Even though Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president who signed the Accord, ended up giving his life (he was assassinated) for the peace he got, the Camp David Accord has created a peace which has held for decades. 

President Biden is quite good at negotiating with people. It’s possible that he might be able to achieve something similar in the future. However, I don’t think there can be a hope of real peace and a better life for Palestinians in their own homeland so long as they are governed by a terrorist organization and Israel is governed by Israel’s answer to Donald Trump. 

To get good government, you have to have people who have the basic moral underpinning necessary for them to accept responsibility for themselves and their own actions. You must have people with a conscience who can act with integrity and who honestly want to use the power of government for the common good. 

Right now, America is hamstrung because half our body politic — the Republican Party — no longer believes in our democracy or cares about the common good. They are literally trying to burn it all down in the hopes that they can gain power from the chaos. 

Israel is equally hamstrung by a bad leader who does not appear to have the necessary concern for all people that makes for successful governance. 

The Palestinians are governed by a terrorist organization which, according to what I’ve heard, uses terror tactics and torture on its own citizens, and which, it appears, called in this war on its own people to achieve some hoped-for political and monetary end. 

The ordinary American citizen does not have the power to directly affect any of this. We can — and should — petition our government to work toward an end to the senseless mass bombing of Palestinian civilians. In my opinion, this bombing is an example of the bad political leadership in Israel. It serves no military objective that I can see. It’s more like Netanyahu wants to kill as many Palestinians as he can to punish them for the attack on Israel. That is not a military objective.  

But while we are petitioning our government and raising funds for aid and saying our prayers, we need to remember that our government does not have the kind of control of that region that extreme left wing rhetoric implies that it has. America has a lot of ability to persuade. But it can’t control the people of the Middle East. 

So what can we do? 

First of all, we can look to our own behavior. Don’t engage in inflammatory rhetoric attacking either Jews or Palestinians. Don’t let your feeling of kinship with one side drag you into denying the humanity of the people on the other side. That, basically, is why I’m writing this post and why I wrote the other one about antisemitism. The only thing you are absolutely responsible for is your own behavior. But you are responsible for that. 

I haven’t heard any of the Islamaphobia I’m sure is out there, simply because I don’t run in those circles. But I’ve witnessed some scalding anti-semitism these past days, including bland calls to remove (ie, kill) all the Jews in Israel. 

That’s why I wrote the earlier post against anti-semitism. 

Other than the things I’ve suggested, I don’t know of much else that you and I can do from this side of the Atlantic. I know that’s not what you want to hear. But I honestly think it’s the truth. 

You can, if you want, whip out your credit card and passport and buy a ticket to go over there and get into it. Or, you can join a demonstration here at home and send emails to elected officials. I prayed the Rosary about this last night and I’m going to continue with that. I’m also writing these blog posts. 

But I have no illusion that I can fix the Middle East. I have no illusion that the United States of America can fix the Middle East. 

I hope the slaughter stops. But unless both the Palestinians and the Israelis get themselves better leadership, I doubt that it it will stop for long. I would add that if Americans continue electing psychopaths to high office, we’re going to end up in the same place or worse.