Israel May Be Turning Palestine Into Afghanistan
When you give your enemy nothing left to live for, he becomes indomitable. It’s a very dangerous thing to do and it seems Israel has finally stepped over that line in Palestine. The quest for an equitable two-state solution has failed the best efforts of thirteen American Presidents, beginning with Harry Truman in 1947.
The Afghans have a lesson to teach in this regard. They live for the independence to fight among themselves and repel all outsiders. Afghanistan has never been conquered, not since Hannibal crossed the mountains with his Elephants and was driven back in defeat. Every invader from Hannibal to Russia to the United States has striven to conquer Afghanistan with overwhelming margins of power and none has succeeded.
Because they will not give up or give in. Afghans will die to the last man and then a woman will pick up the weapon.
Joe Biden will be the fourteenth president to try
When I lay the blame on Israel for lack of progress, most of my Jewish friends nod their heads in sorrow and agree. That’s a lot of decades and presidents. Some have come close, but the two-state solution of Palestinian independence was always a bridge too far for Israeli governments. And without that there remain only the conquered and the conqueror.
The history of terrorism is interesting
In the formative years of the Israeli state those who bombed and burned their way to success were deemed to be freedom fighters. Now that Israel has power, those Palestinians bombing and burning their way toward hoped-for independence are called terrorists.
The late George Carlin, my favorite arbiter of truth in an increasingly confused world, has an elegant take on freedom fighters. “If crime-fighters fight crime and fire-fighters fight fires, what do freedom-fighters fight?”
Jews and Arabs have coexisted since the 16th century
Not always in peace, but side-by-side since the Ottoman Empire and before. By 1947 (excuse the simplicity of my 400 year jump) about 650,000 Jews cohabited Palestine alongside 1.2 million Arabs. The British mandate wanted to get out. As their empire slipped away, Brits developed a more and more refined notion of when to get the hell out. They proposed a plan of partition, splitting Palestine into two states, one Israeli and one Palestinian.
(Wikipedia) Immediately following the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of a resolution recommending the adoption and implementation of the Partition Plan (Resolution 181(II) ), and its subsequent acceptance by the Jewish leadership, civil war broke out between the Arab community and the Jewish community, as armies of the Arab League, which rejected the Partition Plan which Israel accepted, sought to squelch the new Jewish state.
So, the Arabs were the first to refuse
But it was a Jewish state and the U.N., the U.S. and most of the non-Arab world accepted it as such. Fast-forward to the Six Day War between Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Controversy remains over who attacked whom, but there is no doubt about who won and Israel refused to return any land that was taken. Israel gets a lot of heat (much of it from me) concerning their refusal to accept a two-state solution, but there is such lack of trust on both sides that blame is hard to pin.
But today, an annihilation is underway
There is no other word for it, except perhaps for genocide. Israel appears to be in for the kill across Palestine and the destruction is reminiscent of Syria and Yemen. Netanyahu listens to no one, he’s looking for a final solution and the term sends shivers down the world’s spine.
Netanyahu said ‘Never again’ is Israel’s mission. That has long been Israel’s motto, but it rings hollow in the holocaust being delivered upon Palestine today.
I misunderstood that elegant claim of never again by those who had endured their own holocaust in Nazi Germany. Naively, I thought they meant never again for all of humanity. It would have been a phrase to stand the test of time for as long as mankind survives. But I have been proven wrong. In my current view, after decades watching from the sidelines, it’s my opinion that European Jews fled a fascist German state in order to create one of their own in modern-day Israel. Insofar as Palestinians are concerned, they need not apply for the status of never again. It’s for Jews only now and Netanyahu has closed that door, quite possibly forever. We have yet to see if Palestine is Israel's Afghanistan.
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