Click here (NewYorkTimes) to read an opinion piece about the massacres that happened 30 years ago this week at two Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon...
Do you think that catastrophes such as this (as well as the 1929 Hebron & 1948 Deir Yassin massacres) can ever be 'defused' politically and diplomatically? Or will the pain and outrage surrounding the events drive the conflict forward?
Do you think that catastrophes such as this (as well as the 1929 Hebron & 1948 Deir Yassin massacres) can ever be 'defused' politically and diplomatically? Or will the pain and outrage surrounding the events drive the conflict forward?
6 comments:
Events like this, in which Israel indirectly allowed vile fascist Phallange thugs and murderers to have their way with the Palestinian inhabitants of two refugee camps in Beirut, provide a solid case for pessimism about the future of the region. Events like this (and for that matter, the actions of people like Sharon) aren't likely to be forgotten, no matter what apologies or restitutions for them are offered, however sincere, and will provide a driving force for the present conflict for generations to come. Massacres and genocide have a way of lasting in an oppressed peoples memory long after the event.
-Nate
The New York Times, despite its 160 Pulitzer prizes, is not an entirely reliable source of information. “All the news that is fit to print” has morphed into “Only the news that fits we print”. This is particularly the case with regard to Israel and the culture wars. Sabra and Shatila as well as Mai Lai are the frequent side effects of any war. Sometimes they are also the main objective. Israel conducted a post-mortem that was fair and objective (which is impossible to achieve for us mortals) and did not attempt to evade its responsibility in the final report (see URL below). William Caley was court-martialed and sentenced to life by the US Army (though later pardoned by Nixon). The United States and the State of Israel do not as a policy support the intentional targeting of civilians for purposes of terror. Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad do. This is an important distinction to keep in mind. Contemporary Judaism does endorse the murder of civilians; when Jews murder civilians or non-combatants they are contravening the prohibitions and precepts of Judaism as it is understood by the vast majority of Jews in the modern world. When Islamist deliberately target civilians for maximum kill number, for instance, in the World Trade Center, Islamists cite the Qur’an and the Hadiths for justification. They do not think of themselves and their actions as “highjacking” but rather as “purifying” Islam. The reaction to such horrific acts in the Islamic world, as was the case with the West Bank Palestinians when they received the news on 9/11, seems to say that they had a great deal of support from the Arab street.
Sabra and Shatila
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Sabra_&_Shatila.html
Thoughtful comments, folks. Ben, you are of course correct about the NY Times' leftward slant, which might subtly (and not so subtly) influence which news is seen as 'fit to print'. I appreciated your link to the Jewish Virtual Library... which, of course, has a rather different slant, described by the site thus:
"The American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) was established in 1993 as a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization to strengthen the U.S.-Israel relationship by emphasizing the fundamentals of the alliance — the values our nations share."
pdk
The metaphor of the two brothers fighting mentioned in the first class came to my mind after reading this article. Palestine and Israel have the power to control the conflict, in the same way that brothers who disagree can use a fight to either grow from the experience or feed the fires of revenge. Definitely, this is a difficult conflict to diffuse, since there were so many casualties and such high tensions between us. However, all we can do is hope and act for peace, right?
You all (PDK, Nate and Valerie) have made very good observations which deserve serious reflection. Daniel Pipes, who is someone to be taken seriously when he speaks of the middle east, said recently something like this: “If you tell me your position on Israel, I can tell you your position on just about everything else.” That’s because Israel is at the very center of the culture wars in America—the canary in the coal mine. True, my gut instinct is to make Israel the 51’st state and slug it out in Armageddon. But I want to be open to learning something new in my senility. I think I will retreat into silence for a couple of days to ponder the issues. But before I go into occultation I want to reiterate this one parting point: the metaphysical narrative, and by this I mean the Bible and the Qu’ran, are not tangential to the Israel/Palestine issue; they are at its very core.
The town where I was at in Switzerland last year had a disagreement with a town 15km away. The argument turned into a mini skirmish and neither side is willing to forget what the other side did. The fight was over 500 years ago.
It's hard to say if the peoples will forgive and forget this kind of stuff, or if they just have to live with it. The US had a hard time with the Civil War 150 years ago, but we seem to have gotten over that ourselves. Time will tell.
-Shaun
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