Mid-East crises flow from foreign policies of others
The United Kingdom bears some responsibility for today's mess
Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire before World War I, having been a contested area for centuries. The region came under British Rule in 1922 when Britain assumed control over the region from the Ottoman’s. Five years earlier, with no particular right to do so, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration proposing to make the region the home of the Jewish people. I know of no other event in world history where one country determined to create another country to host people of a particular faith. At the time, the region had only a minority Jewish population.
The Balfour Declaration was hardly benevolence. It seems more likely it was anti-Semitic, an attempt to encourage people of the Jewish faith to move away from Britain and Europe and set themselves up in the midst of a hostile competing Islamic faith that would surround them on all sides. Another theory is that the creation of Israel was driven by a desire to control the nascent oil industry, as set out below.
Following World War II the League of Nations, the predecessor to today’s United Nations, created the State of Israel using the Balfour Declaration as justification. The purpose of seizing land from the people who lived their to create this Jewish State was less altruism and more commercial - it was (according to some historians) to establish Israel as the “lynchpin” for control of the world oil industry by the Rothschilds who controlled Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum, among other interests.
Regardless of its motive, it should come as no surprise that the residents of the area, mostly Muslim, didn’t see this as a welcome change. Why European Jews accepted the creation of Israel is either necessary or as somehow beneficial (as opposed to being welcomed into society with the same rights and privileges as all other citizens), millions did accept the new nation and moved into the region.
Theocratic justification for war or for creating a particular state is tenuous at best. There are many faiths. Democracies typically provide citizen with freedom of religion and include constitutions that separate church and state. Faith is fraught with debate, as the late comedian George Carlin made comedic in a famous spiel introduced with the statement “In the bullshit department a businessman can’t hold a candle to a clergyman”.
Following the unforgiveable acts of Nazi Germany during the Holocaust, there was widespread support for the Jewish State although not from the Palestinians displaced by having their lands seized. But the new country has become home to brilliant scientists, and is a bright spot of democracy in an area where democratic regimes are in short supply. The situation may well have remained stable until the new Israeli state, using the Bible as justification, decided its borders omitted lands they say belonged to Jews owing to the scriptures’ dictates, and began a process of “settlements” taking more land from Palestinians and treating the displaced people quite poorly in my opinion. Life in Palestine is pretty well hopeless for young people. Hatred is borne of desperation.
The data on casualties on both sides of the disputed territory from 2008 to 2020 show Palestinians bearing the brunt of those killed or injured. Palestine has a population of about 5.5 million and Israel about 9.5 million.
The collision between religious belief and practical reality has made the Palestinian issue a hot potato with little progress in finding a peaceful process where people of all faiths in the region can get along. Today’s tragic events are not really news - they are symptoms of an irresistible force colliding with an immovable object, that is, religious differences colliding with ownership of land by people who have lived there for centuries, both Arab and Jew.
I am an admirer of the Israelis and people of the Jewish faith generally, not because of their faith but because a derivative of their faith is an emphasis on education, public service and strong family values. While Christianity provided similar values in Western societies they were never as well entrenched as they became under Judaism. Nobel prize winning scientists, advances in medical research, and a disproportionate number of doctors and lawyers, are all characteristic of the Jewish stereotype, and many famous comedians were Jewish with self-deprecating humour. The success of Jewish merchants and businessmen is legendary and deserved.
Eugenicists - beginning with Sir Francis Galton and his classic 1869 book “Hereditary Genius” justifying the British class structure “ argue race determines intelligence. Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin who wrote “Origin of the Species”, followed concepts which began as early as Plato suggesting the state exert some control over who could have children. Eugenic theory has no place in modern society in my opinion. I don’t buy the eugenics argument - there is a wide dispersion of intelligence among people of every race and each has its share of geniuses. What distinguishes Jews is their values which promote study, hard work and high standards of personal achievement.
Violence has been a daily occurrence in the Israel-Palestine region since Israel was founded in 1948 and I suspect will continue for decades to come unless the situation is resolved. In my opinion, the current war between Palestine and Israel will never achieve a peaceful two-state solution. I believe the involvement of world powers providing arms and encouragement to the Israelis just stiffens the resolve of Israel’s Arab neighbours who provide similar support to Hamas and Hezbollah and the conflict is as likely to deepen as abate.
One sensible option is for foreign countries to back off and let the Israeli’s and Palestinians work it out without foreign intervention. Like most wars, it will be bloody and rife with atrocities, but ultimately it has a chance of being resolved by force, historically more successful than diplomacy despite its tragic legacy. For war to bring an end to the conflict, it must include the victor’s embrace of the right of all people in the region to live under one government and at peace with one another with the same rights, responsibilities and privileges regardless of their faith or ancestry.
The American War of Independence and Civil War demonstrated that it is possible for nationhood to result from conflict with the emergence of a Constitutional Republic. Israeli army is a well-trained and well-organized fighting machine that has a better than even chance to prevail without foreign involvement.
Foreign involvement in offshore wars has an unenviable legacy. Of the 3.8 million people killed in the Vietnam war, less than 60,000 were Americans. Of the 243,000 people killed in the war in Afghanistan, the vast majority were Afghani. Almost 300,000 people were killed in the Iraq war (a war initiated by fake news alleging weapons of mass destruction), most of them Iraqi. American involvement in offshore wars has not been kind to the host country.
Whichever side prevails, and end to war would be a good outcome in the mid-East. Sometimes, hatred can only be resolved through violence that produces both a clear victor and those clearly vanquished. The 1917 Russian revolution, the 1911 Chinese revolution, the 1789 French revolution and the 1783 American revolution all resulted in stability once the violence ended.
Hmm , so first it was the British that made the unequal treaty then the Jews made it worse out of pure selfishness.
Israel clearly has the upper hands and the most advance weapons, to let them fight it out means the end of Palestinian aka ethnic cleansing, no?
I would say both Pakistan and Bangladeshi were created for similar reasons. Anyway Lebanon has been purified and virtually all the rest of the middle east. Sudan and others heading south to the Congo, it’s only a matter of time before Africa will be. Israel at best has 10 years as the deliberate push to keep people locked in small areas with the only thing to do is have children and/or carry out terrorist activities. Coming to a country near you.
Then it will be down to the Su and the Sh, they will fight it out to the end. A few hundred years, but these groups are similar to gangs and there will never be piece…
I would also add that you clearly have a bias, not entirely based on actual events..