"THE MIDDLE EAST"

 “THE MIDDLE EAST”

Today marks the first anniversary of the horrific slaughter of Israeli civilians by fighters from Hamas.  The Israeli response has been the killing of 35,000 Palestinians in Gaza, and now they have added Hezbollah in Lebanon, with likely attacks on Iran to come.  It is a dangerous, dangerous time, with these events baked into hundreds of years of history.  The leader of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, seems intent on pursuing the violence until all the enemies are not only defeated but also destroyed.  He also faces legal difficulties of his own, and I would hate to think that he is stretching out the war to preserve his own skin legally, but there is a strong hint of that.  He seems similar to Trump on that score.

Because of the Jewish connections that my Mother and I had in my hometown, I have always leaned towards Israel in any Mid East conflicts.  But, over the last few years, Israel has gradually turned into an apartheid nation, and that has given me great pause.  Having grown up in a land where the original residents were either killed or dispossessed of their land by my ancestors, and then that same land was worked by people who were enslaved, I have trouble keeping the same level of support for Israel, which dispossessed the original Palestine peoples without compensation.  The “Palestinian problem” continues to plague the nation of Israel, and it led directly to the horrible and brutal attack on Israel by Hamas on October 7.  

     Israel became a modern  nation in 1948 in some of its original territories as a result of lobbying by Jewish leaders, but most of all because of the horrors of the Holocaust, horrors which were a culmination of centuries of mostly Christian oppression and brutal policies toward Jewish people.  The problem is that there were people already living in those lands, and for the most part they were removed.  They have become known as the Palestinians.  Since Israel took their lands 75 years ago, no adequate provision has been made for the Palestinians.  They have been squeezed into the West Bank and into Gaza, much like the Native Americans were squeezed into “reservations” in our country.  There does not seem to be a viable solution to this issue, though the “two state” solution has come back in to diplomatic and public conversations. In the meantime, Israel continues its repressive policies towards the Palestinians – Jewish settlers continue to move into Palestinian areas.  

    Even those who support the Palestinians were shocked by the brutal, terroristic nature of the attacks by Hamas on October 7.  It is hard to justify the killing of so many civilians at a music concert, and nothing justifies the killing of babies.  Yet we must also recognize the level of desperation and rage that was at the heart of those attacks.  That level does not come because the attackers are savages, as the mainstream Western media has called them.  That level is reached because of a deep and continued wounding of the human heart, a wounding so deep that it makes the attacker willing and able to do inhuman acts.

    I am not justifying the Hamas attacks, but I put their rage on the same level that Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, and John Brown had in their attacks on the institution of slavery.   Until there is adequate compensation and justice for the Palestinians, these attacks will continue to rise.  At least two things must happen in the Middle East for any semblance of peace with justice to arise.  First, the nation of Israel must be recognized as a legitimate state – many Palestinians still see Israel as an occupying force over these 75 years.  Those who attacked Israel on October 7 did it as a liberating act against the occupying oppressor.  That can no longer be the rubric of the Middle East.

     Justice must be found and established for the Palestinian people.  I don’t know what that would look like at this point, but Israel and the West must make a strong commitment to it.  I have not seen such commitment from the leadership of Israel since Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in November, 1995.  Yet, that commitment must be renewed, or the war that is now playing out in Israel and Gaza will be deepened to a level that may lead to WW III.  Both Israel and the Palestinians are now saying “Never Again,” and without a bold diplomatic solution, the future for the Middle East and for all of us looks grim.