- It's an age-old story of sibling rivalry and a senseless,
ongoing, bloody feud whose roots extend so far back into history that
members
of the present generation no longer remember why the fighting started in
the first place, or at what point disagreements turned into blinding hatred
and murderous rage. These tribes hail from the same ancestral lineage which
somewhere along the line ended up splitting off into three factions:
Muslims,
Christians, and Jews. All three of these tribes proclaim to be descendants
of Abraham, their religious father and patriarch. All three are guilty
of unspeakable crimes against one another.
-
- The mutual wholesale slaughter committed by the children
of Abraham throughout history is based upon a profound misinterpretation
and subsequent misapplication of the ancient adage, "An eye for an
eye, and a tooth for a tooth."
-
- Over the centuries, many people have used this phrase
in the name of religion and self-defense as "justification" for
murder and war; however, this principle does not sanction the practice
of vengeance. Rather, it merely states and points to the basic spiritual
law of karma which Buddhists have recognized and taught for thousands of
years: That which you do unto others shall return to you in full and equal
measure.
-
- The present-day, escalating violence between the Israelis
and Palestinians is, in light of its greater historical context, clearly
a mindless, unquestioned continuation of thousands of years of "bad
blood" and misguided justification for revenge between them.
-
- Each group lays sole and exclusive claim to common
ancestral
lands and cities by reason of being God's "chosen people" and
hence does not recognize "the other" as equally entitled
heirs.
-
- In fact, each side fails to see "the other"
as human beings at all. Individuals of both camps condemn the murderous
acts of the other as "terrorist" while reserving use of the less
offensive term "self-defense" as a rationale for carrying out
their own brutal acts of inhumanity.
-
- For the past thirty-seven years, the Palestinian people
have suffered occupation, humiliation, and human rights abuses at the hands
of the Israelis. They have seen their homes and businesses expropriated,
their lands seized and built up with illegal Israeli settlements, their
mosques burned, and their holy places desecrated.
-
- They have been held hostage and prisoners in their own
land, denied freedom of movement and self-autonomy by a ruling power that
has defiantly ignored and blatantly disobeyed UN resolutions handed down
since 1967 that address the occupied territories and the proper treatment
of Palestinians.
-
- As a people who have lost all sense of moral leadership
and direction, the Palestinians, in turn, have chosen to sink to the level
of their oppressors by essentially handing over their sons and daughters
to the influence of extremist militant groups where they are sacrificed
on the altar of "martyrdom" by means of the despicable crime
of suicide bombings.
-
- They may have mistakenly hoped to subdue their sense
of despair, anguish and misery in the form of "due justice" and
"wake-up calls" to unsuspecting, innocent Israeli
civilians.
-
- Unfortunately, this myopic approach neglects to take
into account that like begets like and that the use of violence can only
breed more of the same. Rather than awakening the common Israeli to
champion
their cause, that of liberation, they have instead initiated a whole new
cycle of retaliatory killing and violence and are now reaping the wrath
of a powerful, merciless U.S. supported Israeli army.
-
- In the past 18 months, Israelis have killed more than
1,200 Palestinians, including over 120 paramedics. They have savagely
attacked
and sacrilegiously ravished Palestinian refugee camps, places that by their
very definition are meant to provide safe haven for a persecuted
people.
-
- In their reign of terror, Israeli soldiers blew up
electric
transmission lines in these camps - cutting off electricity to over 20,000
civilians - deliberately destroyed drinking water supply lines and rooftop
water tanks, forcefully entered households, wantonly smashed furniture
and property, and even used the inhabitants of these camps - mostly women,
children, and elderly - as human shields.
-
- There have been reports that Israeli soldiers stormed
and ransacked Ramallah's Arab Care Hospital terrorizing patients there.
A Dutch volunteer paramedic, shocked in disbelief at what he witnessed,
equated their actions to Nazi war crimes. Other reliable foreign press
releases report how Israeli soldiers have blocked emergency medical
vehicles
from reaching and treating the wounded, even to the point of arresting
five emergency service drivers.
-
- The prevailing Israeli attitude of "take no
prisoners"
has lead to the capture and summary, Nazi-style execution of ordinary
Palestinian
police officers as well as members of Arafat's elite guard found within
his compound. They have even gone so far as to shoot at international peace
demonstrators, wounding seven. All of the aforementioned actions by Israeli
soldiers constitute an unequivocal perpetration of war crimes under
international
law.
-
- Meanwhile, U.S. President Bush, fully engulfed in
justifying
his own sanctioned U.S. killings of thousands of innocent Afghan civilians
in his "war against terror," chooses to see only Sharon's side
of the "self-defense" equation by placing full blame of this
horrendous situation squarely on the shoulders of Arafat.
-
- Bush remains uncommitted to attempting to fully
understand
and recognize the connection of the recently intensified suicide missions
to the unbearably inhumane and long-term "imprisonment" and
demoralizing
subjugation of the Palestinian people by Israel.
-
- His demonization of Arafat and the Palestinians is most
likely an attempt to hide the fact that U.S. weapons ($2 billion annually)
supplied to Israel are being used against an oppressed and, for the most
part, defenseless people.
-
- To question Sharon's violent military response to
supposedly
"unprovoked" yet nonetheless inexcusable terrorist acts would
be to delegitimize America,s own shower of death rained down upon innocent
Afghans in our hunt for Osama who quite suddenly no longer appears to be
a concern.
-
- To suggest that Arafat is somehow directly giving orders
to carry out these bombing missions in order to undermine the peace process
is ludicrous. Those who utter such an allegation are in total denial of
the fact that he has become, in reality, a powerless leader.
-
- He has proven himself unable to control or stop the
fundamentalist
groups responsible for these suicide bombing missions which seem to have
taken on a life of their own ever since Sharon stopped the peace
negotiations
in 2001 and began trying to cow the Palestinians into submission through
the use of violent military tactics. Even if Israel were to find a way
to carry out their proposal to exile Arafat, they would find the violence
against them unabated.
-
- Seeking to place blame on one side or the other is
absolutely
fruitless at this point. Both share equally in the culpability for the
senseless bloodshed and wanton destruction of lives and property committed
by one against the other.
-
- It is obvious these two tribes of Abraham are so deeply
mired in their hatred for one another that they could never be able to
reach any form of compromise for peaceful coexistence on their own. Some
sort of non-partisan, parental authority figure needs to step in, separate
these adolescent, warring children, and teach them how to tolerate and
respect one another as dignified human beings with equal rights.
-
- What is needed is an international UN peacekeeping force,
culled from a wide variety of nations, that would occupy both countries,
secure law and order, and reestablish some semblance of normalcy and
sanity.
-
- This presence should remain as long as necessary until
a final and definitive peace plan - one that recognizes the rights of both
Palestinians and Israelis to form self-autonomous countries with
well-defined,
respected borders - has been worked out and proven itself to be
successfully
implemented. Only then will the Middle East finally attain its presently
elusive, yet long-desired peace.
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- http://www.yellowtimes.org
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