A simple proposal for solving the mideast crisis, now and forever, followed by how I really feel about the mess that we’re in.

I have a Middle East solution that would kill several birds with one stone, or feed several birds (depending on your perspective).  We find three big, really big, mountains in the region, one for Jews, one for Muslims, one for Christians who all share the common belief that god gave this land to them and the other two groups are infidel invaders.  Attendance by all believers will be mandatory.  There will be an upfront cost shipping people from around the world, but I think you’ll agree that it would be worth it in the end.  Since the shipping costs will likely be one way, particularily if my conditions are followed to the letter, very little else would be required other than delivering the people to the actual site.  Also, if it’s too crowded, then members of each group can come in waves until the problem is solved.

The Plan:
1.  Each group is forced to sit on their respective mountain without food and water (ok, maybe they can have water), no shelter, no nothing (however, yarmulkas, crosses and prayer mats will be allowed).
2.  A giant concrete tablet is poured in the middle, between the three mountains, for all to see.
3.  All groups are required to stay until god inscribes his true intent on the cement.  No leaving until god has inscribed his instructions.  No exceptions for age, health, or any other cause.  They have to stay until god speaks.
4.  I mean, how long should that take?
5.  All parties will accept god’s word, but being pious people, that should be a given.
6.  End of mid east problem! And it requires no violence, weapons and the different parties don’t even have to speak to each other.

This has several great benefits, no matter what happens.
1) It solves the current mideast conflict - who would dare argue with god - we get peace and an end to terror.
2) If god doesn’t show up, then we’ve solved the problem since all of the combatants should have starved to death somewhere around the third week (no eating of the dead allowed, it’s prohibited by all religions).

Extra benefits for option #2 above:
3) It answers the question as to whether or not there is a god - at least in the judeo-christian-muslim tradition.
4) It reduces the global population (remember about 35% of the American population will be required to attend)
5) It reduces global warming because the population of the major polluting states will be greatly decreased.
6) It reduces pressure on water and on food supplies - there should be plenty of water and food to go around when this is over.
7) It means we’ll have enough oil to last us until we transition to a hydrogen economy and we’ll have more time to make the transition.  (See points 4 & 5 above.)
8) It’s a solution that can easily be applied to other conflicts, particularly those centered around who god “really” favors.

So how do I really feel?

This debate is both troubling and deeply perplexing.  I find the London bombings to be horrifying, I’m going there in a month and it’s put a real chill on my enthusiasm, yet I can’t bring myself to be more outraged by that, than I am by the enormous civilian casualties inflicted on the Afghan and Iraqi people every day by US, or by the brutal treatment inflicted on the Palestinians by the Israelis.  The toll of innocents on all sides is deplorable and it only fosters the most demonized visions that we can conjure up about each other.

But there are things about this discussion that i don’t get.
We all seem to be horrified by the use of terrorism and it’s practitioners.  But terrorism is not an ideology, or a system that one group is trying to impose on another.  I don’t see terrorism as anything other than a tactic in a struggle.  I’m sure that the Palestinians would prefer to have tanks, F-16’s and decent, accurate rockets, along with a well-equipped and trained army.  (Throw in biological and nuclear weapons that Israel has, so they, too, could guarantee that won’t lose a conflict, even if they can’t win it.) I don’t doubt that bin Laden wouldn’t have preferred to have had similar equipment as he watched the Israelis rocketing apartment complexes in Lebanon.  But they don’t have that option, do they, to fight a “fair” or “honorable” war, played by the rules of those who own the most toys.  So what they’re left with are the limited means to inflict as much pain and suffering as possible, the means of terrorism.  And they wield them to show that we can’t get away with insulating ourselves from the effects of war, even if we do our bombing from cruise missiles launched from the Med, or from a bomber cruising at 60,000 ft, a hundred miles away from its target.  They do it to force us to confront the question:  is what we’re doing worth the price?

We, of all people, should understand that.  What is Israel’s bulldozing of communities, rendering any kind of economic existence impossible, anything other than terror?  What about the inevitable “collateral damage” done when Israel’s or our rockets produce more dead innocents than “terrorists”?  The purpose of that level of brutality is nothing less than to send the message “harbor our enemies, die with our enemies”, or, more simply, the terrorization of civilians.  The US imposed sanctions on Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis fit the mold of what happened in London perfectly - except our sanctions lasted longer and killed more people.  How dare I compare the two?  Because in both cases the goal was to inflict suffering on innocent people in the hope that they would act to produce “regime” change.  I don’t know why we ignore everything that bin Laden says, other than that by ignoring him it let’s us continue the fiction that we’re at war with “terror” that is bent on destroying our way of life.  bin Laden, of whom I’m no fan and would have gladly seen killed years ago, has said pretty clearly, bomb our cities, we bomb yours; kill our civilians, we’ll kill yours.  And the fact that we are his targets is just their interpretation of the American claimed right to “go to the source”.

I don’t for a minute think that there is, yet, a generalized war against the West, though we’re working hard to create it.  Certainly, the declaration of such a war would give the West the perfect justification to occupy all the oil fields of the Middle East.  Right now, there’s a struggle against Israel and a struggle against Western occupation and/or domination of Arab countries.  Those are legitimate struggles, even if I don’t like what some of the strugglers want.  I would much prefer to see the secular Muslim left prevail in those struggles but, and Iraq is a beautiful case in point, we’ve done everything we can do kill of the secular left which in Iraq meant handing Saddam a list of 800 “communist” intellectuals and having him kill them, which he did immediately on his rise to power.  But at this point, none of the terror attacks had even the remotest connection to an assault on our freedom and our culture (those assaults have been carried out quite ably by those claiming ot want to protect us from terror.) Their objectives are limited, regional and pretty understandable, but they are not the hyperbolic assault on our way of life that people are talking about.  That’s pure rubbish, just our “spin” to ensure that the real issues don’t get addressed.  These attacks, this terrorism, does not come without a context and we’re deluding ourselves if we think them nothing more than acts of anti-Western hatred.

I don’t know how we can talk about the relationship of our two worlds out of context - not ancient history, but even recent history, the history of western occupation of the Middle East, of boundaries drawn to reflect political decisions made in the capitals of europe, of dictators and murderers put on thrones or otherwise propped up in order to protect the economic and geo-political goals of europe and america.  How can we not understand the Arab world’s outrage at the creation Israel?  It’s not like it was plopped down in an empty space.  (I am Jewish, by the way, and raised with the then prevalent belief that the only good german or arab was a dead german or arab.) How could Israel claim the “right to return”, then deny it to the Palestinians.  Reading the bible, the jews left Israel about as voluntarily as the Palestinians did.  And when they returned to “claim” the land that “god gave” them, they actually had to exterminate the people who lived there (and who did not kick the Jews out the first time).  The notion of basing their right to return on the bible is ludicrous because the people they removed in the first place would have an even earlier right to return.  And the Palestinians bear absolutely no responsibility for the diaspora.  My god, if we’re going to start arguing that, then we’ve sunk to the level of lunacy that permeates other societies where blood grudges are borne and acted on over centuries.  As for Balfour and rest, it’s just the West dividing up other people’s lands - something they had the power to do, but certainly not the right to do.  And the claim that the Palestinians “voluntarily” left in 1949 is equally specious.  they “voluntarily” departed a land, the land where they lived and worked, because it was recast as a Jewish theocratic state created on the principle that even if the Arabs were to ever outnumber “us”, they would never be allowed to have the political power that goes with being the majority population.  So those horrible Palestinians, unwilling to accept permanent second class citizenship in a theocratic state dared to leave and even rebel. utterly shocking!  The nerve of them to not accept being made slaves in their own land.  I wonder what we’d do, or will do, when Jerry Falwell and gang impose the American Taliban regime on us.

Then when we really stretch, we justify Israel’s behavior based on how bad the Arabs are, and blame the Palestinians suffering on the unwillingness of other Arab countries to take them in.  Sure, the other Arab governments suck, never mind that we’ve propped up and armed most of them, and, sure, Palestinians aren’t well treated in other countries, but the conclusion from those facts is not that they deserve what they get and Israel gets a pass.  And the PLO probably has elements of corruption and some even misuse the power of government for the personal gain of their leaders - nothing that hasn’t been true in Israel with scandals touching numerous Jewish leaders, and nothing that isn’t true in America (can anyone here say Enron, Halliburton, Prick Cheney).  None of this justifies what Israel has done - but nothing justifies the barbarity that ANY of the parties have been a part of this deadly dance.  When you find the “good guys”, paradise, or a truly just social system, please let me know.

I also don’t believe that the Holocaust somehow justified the creation of Israel.  Doing so was only possible because the racist, Christian West hated Muslims more than it hated Jews - no doubt a product of its own historical entanglement in the Middle East that lasted longer than its conflict with the Jews.  I view Europe as extremely anti-Semetic.  I don’t believe that Europe would have lifted a finger to save the Jews had Hitler not also chosen to run over the rest of Western Europe.  Anti-semitism was no German invention.  No less a vermin than Winston Churchill was trying to negotiate with Hitler as late as 1942 to get him to pull back from his assault on Western Europe and join in a grand assault on the Communists.  Like, Churchill didn’t know what was happening with the Jews?  Like, if Hitler had decided to join this grand coalition we’d have let bygones be bygones?  My favorite t-shirt is a Killing Joke shirt (they’re a punk band) that has a picture of the papal emissary striding to greet the Nazi leaders between a phalanx of German soldiers.  I’m touched by that picture every time I see it.  To me, the creation of Israel was Europe’s final act of revenge on the Jews, their way of saying:  “You want a state, we’ll give you a state.  We’ll put you in the Middle of the Moslem world, take away Arab land, let you create a theocratic state which is sure to infuriate the country we’re giving you’s current residents.  You’ll spend the next 20 centuries trying to defend your precious Jewish state, and we can wash our hands of you and your complaining.  Now please leave because we don’t want you here either.”

I don’t put any stock in the intentions of either side of this conflict.  Israel, having been created, is not going away.  I don’t see constructive solutions emanating from any quarter.  I don’t at all accept that the last deal offered by Israel was a good one, or fair one.  And from the Palestinian side, i don’t hear any offer of conditions for a lasting peace at all.  What is this nonsense about accepting a two-state solution - for now.  What happens later?  And how much later?  How can all these people be so f’ing crazy?  Don’t they get tired of seeing their loved ones splattered all over their sidewalks?  Don’t they see every act of revenge, begets another in return?  does anyone there really think that they’re entitled to the last word?

So what would I do?
Force Israel to go back to the ‘67 borders.

Create a Palestinian State on the West Bank and Gaza with one or two corridors to the sea.

Allow the right of return, and/or offer compensation - serious compensation, like rebuilding modern cities with economic infrastructure that can integrate into the Israeli economy.

A solution to water right’s that ensures that water doesn’t become the impetus for the next war.

Have Israel commit to the economic development of the Palestinian state.  They were very Westernized, modern, and educated people before Israel and the West managed to make all things Western thoroughly repugnant.  It was only 20 years ago that the other Arab states feared the Palestinians because they were more modern in outlook and seen as a destabilizing force within traditional Muslim communities.  We drove them into the arms of the fundamentalists, they didn’t start there.

Disarm the region, certainly refuse to sell any weapons to any country.  If it were up to me, I’d send an international strike force to blow up every plane, tank and missle that everyone of those countries had, and tell them that if they insist on fighting they’re going to have to use rocks.

Amnesty for all, on all sides.  Not a forgiveness, that would be asking too much, but a recognition that this stops here and now.

Put an international force on the border long enough for the two sides to develop a constructive working relationship ‘til they get to the point where no one has to worry about whether the next bus ride is the last.

Settle the Palestinian issue, and get the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and bin Laden and friends have no traction.  No one believes for a second that West is an impartial arbiter - we need to become the impartial arbiter.

As distasteful as it is, engage the other side.  Unlike Richard, I don’t believe that bin Laden is leading an offensive against the West.  Most of his targets have been military, but given his view of our complicity in atrocities against Arab civilians, it’s certainly logical that he’d strike against civilians of states that he feels commit those atrocities.  Understanding why people do things is not the same as being an apologist for them. It’s not like we’re the rational people in the room and everyone is irrational.  I don’t agree with their reasons, but they are reasons and they are understandable and, frankly, if I were in one of those countries, suffering under an American sponsored dictator, or under the yoke of Israel, I’d probably be thinking the same way.  I don’t think I’d watch my kids and family suffer without end and be content to say, “accept your fate, they’re too strong.” No, I think I’d fight back any way I could, and when I saw innocent people dying, I’d probably want my adversary to feel the same pain I feel.  It’s totally human, totally understandable and totally the making of tragedy.  But that’s the dance we’re in, so it seems.

So Richard, I think all pointless death is sad.  I condemn them all - equally.  I have no use for ANY of them.  But I don’t think a white life is worth more than a brown one, that their barbarity is worse than our barbarity, or that our way of mass murder is civilized while their way is uncivilized.  I think it’s wrong for everybody to engage in practices whose purpose is wear down their foes by convincing them that their is no limit to the pain and death that they would rain on their opponents in order to achieve their end.  It is making monsters out of all of us.  I’m not into comparative barbarism, comparative terrorism, comparative suffering, or comparative injustice.  The lesser and greater of two evils are still both evil.  I won’t take sides in a contest of evil and I sure as hell wouldn’t offer up my life, the life of my children, or the lives of your children for such a contest.

I don’t think that our interests in any of those countries are worth a drop of blood - unless you’re talking about fighting the war with the children of the elites who dragged us into this, and even then I’d feel bad for the kids.  I would not send my kid to die in any country, or for any country, in the Middle East.  I would not ask any other child to die over there.  It is not worth one drop of blood of our children.  It’s not worth a drop of our own blood.
And if it’s not worth it for me to die for, it’s not worth it for me to kill for.

Marc