openDemocracy Debate on Israel

I am embroiled again in

openDemocracy
debate - this time on Israel. Rissasrach is an Israeli.

Dear Rizzasrach

I am sorry to hear of the murder of your grandfather and granduncle, and the loss of your lands. But what do your ancestors want for you, their descendants, as they look on at this world we are creating?

Do they really desire that you all live in fear of the next suicide bomb, the next rocket, do they rejoice when they greet another young great-grandson, torn from his family, his life work not even started, taken away half way through his life?

Or do they wish that their family could live in peace, each under his own vine and his own fig tree, working in cooperation with their neighbours, honouring and conserving every drop of water, nursing the great coastal forests back into existence, fertilising the land in a natural cycle, drawing its power from the god-given sun?

To attain the second case, you only have to become conscious that yours is not the only family to have suffered, and also that Israel is not the only nation to have suffered. Yes, Israel has suffered enormously, more than any one except perhaps a Romany or a Communist or a Gay person who lived and died in Nazi Germany can say. But there are many on this list who would say that Israel has paid that suffering back in some measure to the Palestinians over the years, not least in 2006.

When can we all say that the collective suffering is enough? Do we all have to go through a Third World War, which will almost certainly be a nuclear holocaust, before we can turn our backs on violence and turn our hand to reconstruction?

I hope not. I hope that we can all see that Israel and Palestine have now seen enough violence, conflict and suffering. It is time to attend to reconstruction.

Shalom

Richard

Israel's apartheid, Palestine's suicides

When peace comes to the Middle East, it will come from both sides, in small steps at first, just as the conflict came, in small steps that inflamed the other side into taking bigger steps.

When death and unhappiness comes, it comes from both sides. Killing creates anger creates killing creates anger...and so on, not for ever, but until both sides become tired of bloodshed. How many corpses does it take before this tiredness comes?

Both sides can quote this atrocity from their side as being worse than that neccessary killing from our side.

Israel's bombs are bigger, but Islamic mullahs preach more hatred &c &c.

We can give way to confusion, and say it will never end, just as they did about Northern Ireland.

Or we can try to understand just one thing about Israel's attempt at apartheid.

Palestinian suicide bombers provoke the apartheid reaction, just as surely as a thorn under the skin will provoke inflammation and pus formation. The Israeli state has the task of trying to protect its people from attack. To fully protect against suicide bombers they have to segregate Palestinians and Israelis. Suicide bombers help the Israeli apartheid

I take no sides. I just want to see peace in the Middle East. I am in touch with a brave member of the Christian Peacemaker Team who is working in Israel. I know how the Palestinians are oppressed. I know how my Israeli friends feel.

The conflict is not the fault of one side or the other, it is a system, where each part affects the whole and the whole affects each part. Hatred is a form of misunderstanding, and creates more hatred. Understanding is an antidote to hatred. Someone has to start the process.

Can we start by understanding that suicide bombings can only make the Israeli apartheid worse?