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This may very well get the Dog into some hot water, but he is going to venture into the I/P situation once again. Before the Dog starts let him say that he feels that there is no moral high ground for either Israel or Palestine in this situation. That might piss off many (or even most ) that read this essay, but the list of atrocities and provocations on all sides have gone on for so long as to make the idea of being morally justified on one side ridiculous. The Dog believes that there needs to be a viable Palestine and that there needs to be a viable Israel, and there must be a way for them to live in peace with each other. How that is accomplished will, of necessity, have to come from them.
But this is not what the Dog wants to write about today. There is a lot of anger in this conflict, obviously. To some here it is focused small scale, e.g. the kids on either side that live in fear, that have been wounded in the fighting, killed or seen their homes damaged or destroyed in the randomness of falling munitions. That is easy to grasp, but it does not really tell the whole story.
The Dog, being a canine that works with numbers, thought that it might be useful to give some perspective on the amount of suffering and fear we are seeing on both sides. Most of us know that the recent rocket fire is disrupting the lives of 1 million Israelis (every rocket warning means going to a bomb shelter, day or night. No sleep, fear of going outside, work and home life completely interrupted) and that 1.4 million Palestinians are in the Gaza Strip war zone, with all of the fear of dying, moving, staying and being injured that being in a war zone entails. But that is still a distant land and hard to comprehend what that would be like for Americans.
In order to give you some perspective, the Dog has compared the numbers there to what it would mean in if a similar number of our population where proportional to the US population.
First the Palestinians – There are about 10 million Palestinians world wide (estimates vary as many of them are refugees and it is hard to get an exact count). This means that about 14% of their population is in the war zone right now. If that were US citizens it would be the same as 42.7 million of our fellow citizens in an active war zone. It would be equivalent to all of California, Oregon and half of Washington State being in a war zone. Let that sink in for a minute. Think about the level of anger you would be feeling.
If we just look at the Gaza Strip, the active war zone the numbers go way up, since all of the population there is in risk. Basically the population of Gaza is 1/220th of the US population. So, if we take the around 500 Gazains killed so far and multiply it by 220 we would have a proportionate number of 110,000 Americans killed. We went to war in two countries over an attack that killed 3,000 of our citizens, or 2% of the proportional size as has died in Gaza since the start of this war. As the Dog said above, he is not going to get into justification, but it is easy to see that if we were to suffer the level of loses that the Palestinians have, it would be enormously hard for anyone to call for restraint in our responses.
Now the Israelis – Their overall population is 1/43rd of the United States. So the 1 million or so people that are under random rocket attack on a more than daily basis would be equivalent to all of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Delaware being under constant random bombardment from rockets. Think about the level of social and economic disruption this would cause. Think about the level of anger not just the citizens of those states but the entire country would have if this were the current state of affairs.
This conflict and its raising and falling levels of violence is a disaster for our species, not just those in the war zones. We can talk all we like about the causes, but the overriding reality is that for those that are in those situation it is a daily and deadly thing. Nothing can be more important than ending violence on both sides. There can be no justification for the level of fear and death that is being inflicted on each side, and there can be no solution until there is an end to violence.
The Dog is going to encourage (since that is about all he can do) the people on both sides of this issue here in the States, to stop trying to justify actions by the side you support. It does not help; it only continues the level of fear and anger on the other side that is part of the fuel that keeps this wild fire burning. We will can not make the peace work, that is the sole responsibility of the people directly involved, but we can help by saying that none who use violence in this conflict have our support. The Dog doubts that this will be a popular idea, but it is the one he is putting forward.
The floor is yours.
19 Comments
How about a donation to aid civilians in the war zone?
Thank you, Mr. Dog. It’s a shame that our government doesn’t get it. If they did, they would have already called a cease-fire so that Israel would stop shooting missiles into Gaza, Hamas would stop shooting rockets into Israel, and all sides can get back to negotiating a peace deal.
“We will pursue terror as if there is no peace process, and we will pursue the peace process as if there is no terror.” — Yitzhak Rabin.
Sage words for both sides to consider and act upon. In current situation neither side is acting on the second half, and both sides are acting on the first half in the sense of applying terror tactics.
You know, I get why, the anger, the desire to punish those that have hurt your family is something my culture (Irish) really engages in. The problem is one that Gandhi pointed out, an eye for an eye leaves the world blind.
Every thinking person understands the need for vengeance, although most of us prefer to delude ourselves by believing it’s justice we’re after.
The first step back is to decide that it really is justice that you seek. Then you have to ask how to achieve a just end point, victimizing as few as possible. In an ideal world, the number victimized is zero, but in an ideal world we don’t have the current situation in Gaza.
Sitting on the outside, it’s easy to look in and say what I think a just settlement looks like:
(1) Israeli settlements on the West Bank post-19xx must all be abandoned, and the territory returned to the Palestinian government. Settlers may or may not be given a choice of remaining in their property, but the governing authority will change.
(2) No right of return to Israel for ‘displaced’ Palestinians. This would probably go down best if settlers were removed.
(3) Jerusalem will be a dual capital, shared equally between Palestine and Israel.
(4) For the forseeable future, Palestine is a demilitarized state with borders guaranteed by the UN Security Council and protected by a multilateral peacekeeping force.
As I said, it’s easy to say. It’s much tougher to get people to act on it.
thank you for articulating so eloquently the essence of how to begin moving towards peace.
Thank you, that is kind of you to say, though it makes me feel no less helpless in the face of this human tragedy.
NO.
not need.
desire for vengeance maybe, but not need.
I wish it was a desire, selise, but I think my wording is correct. It’s a need, until you understand the consequences of meeting that need.
It’s a “need” but only in the sense of that used by an adolescent who says something about “needing” the latest fad clothing or sneakers or technology so they can run with the kewl kidz.
then i must not be a thinking person because i don’t understand it as a need.
It may be that people don’t understand it as a need until they’ve lost something sufficiently precious. I thought of it as a desire for vengeance until my aunt was murdered by her husband. My father still mourns her death, and is angry that her murderer was never brought to trial. The DA decided he had better things to do than prosecute a 70-something murderer, and the PD’s office was complicit in it. At the time she was murdered, I was an opponent of capital punishment. I’m still an opponent of capital punishment, but I could have fitted the noose and pulled the lever on her murderer.
Capital punishment is wrong, it’s bad public policy for any number of reasons. But I understand the proponents position better now.
The lesson was reinforced when my uncle was murdered by a crazed woman who broke into his home. She was killed by Sheriff’s Department deputies who were trying to apprehend her as she attempted to escape. It’s not rational, but I think it is a need.
It’s possible that there are some more highly evolved folks who won’t ever have the need. I’m certainly not one of them.
Note, though, that I said that it’s possible to consider the consequences of fulfilling that need and to decide that the costs outweigh the benefits.
oh, BC, i’m so sorry for your loss. and especially the way it happened.
of course, i can’t understand. not going to pretend otherwise.
but that doesn’t mean that every thinking person understands it the way you do, or even that every thinking person who’s experienced something similar understands it the same way.
((((((BargainCountertenor))))))
Thanks, selise.
And I probably shouldn’t have used a universal quantifier. Most (not all, most) of the survivors of murder victims have had the same sorts of feelings. The question is what do you do with those emotions. Some people are eaten up by them — they keep a deep-seated need to see the murderer punished. Others are able to move past the lower-brain response.
I see the first group as the on-going victims. They go and witness the execution, then feel cheated because the condemned’s death was ‘easier’ in some way than their loved one’s.
Most not all of the survivors I have met …
I don’t know how I edited that clause out.
i was thinking some more about what you wrote, and i think i over reacted with my first reply which was more about how we as a society respond to attack and not what you were writing about which was the personal response. if anything i wrote caused you trouble, i’d take it back if i could.
also really appreciate your explanations. thank you.
No grief here, selise. One of the things I love about this place is that it helps me clarify my thoughts on things. Yes, I was thinking about personal responses rather than societal responses. But I wasn’t entirely clear on that.
We get in big trouble when we allow personal emotions to drive societal responses. Pick your favorite examples from history, this mess in Gaza is just the latest example.
And to dakine, yeah, it’s related to a kid’s “need” for cool stuff. But I think that’s because both responses are driven by the limbic system. I don’t equate the two things, though. I think it’s more closely related to an adolescent’s “need” for fairness. Adolescents really want the world to be a fair place, that justice (in their lights) be done. But that could just be me saying it’s okay for me to have those feelings about two murderers.
once again, i think you are missing the boat by describing the conflict as something with two sides. there is a moral high ground and it is with the israelis and palestinians who are working together for a just peace. every time you characterize this as a two sided conflict, you are making them invisible when one of the most important things we can do is to make their work and their vision visible to more people.
i utterly reject this. i support the well being of ALL the people – why this need to find righteous victims to support? should a kid who throws a stone loose our support? should his human rights become forfeit? if not then where should the line be and who decides where the line is?
Dog-
Great point. Thanks for the Gandhi quote. An eye for an eye does make the world blind. If only the Israeli government & Hamas could realize that…