As a Muslim, people always expect me to have a certain opinion about the Israel-Palestine conflict, which is understandable. But to make something clear, a Muslim means one who wants and lives in peace, so I support peace and not directly any people who label themselves as Muslim. I view the conflict as a human looking at other humans in distress and struggle. And as a person coming from a Dutch family who did not grew up in a traditional Muslim household I do not have the long emotional roots with the conflict as many of my born-Muslim friends. It is sometimes interesting to see them getting mad and very emotional about the current conflict, and I think by myself, I didn’t see this same reaction on you with the Sudan slaughters, or the hundreds of thousands people dying of hunger and disease every year. ‘Of course I feel the same anger about those things’ is their common reply. This is not an attack on them, it is just a common psychological phenomena called association. The association here is based on a common victim feeling among many of the Muslims in the world, which is in their consciousness deemed justified when looking at the horrors in Gaza. Also growing up with the constant images on Al-Jazeera creates an empathy which lacks among many in the West.
In the West, many have grown up with older family members who have experienced World War II personally. In Holland, many of the fictional children’s books are about the war, and of course the diary of the Jewish girl Anne Frank is normal school literature. The many documentaries, movies and memorials are focused on the suffering during the war, and of course, mostly on the Jewish suffering. When talking about the Holocaust, it is mostly only focused on the Jewish suffering, which is logical since they were the majority victims, but the killing of hundreds of thousands of Gipsy and homosexual people in the same Holocaust is downplayed and rarely mentioned. But just as the growing up within a Muslim family and with Al-Jazeera creates a deep emotional association with the Palestinians, in the West an association has been created with the Jewish people. The Muslims had mostly defended and supported the Jewish people in Islamic countries and many times had given them prominent places in governments, and compared to Europe, only rarely had a negative or oppressing attitude towards them. Thus the Muslims do not have the idea of Jews as victims and mostly associate Jews with their modern position in the world; a powerful people with a powerful military state which has acted unfairly towards its neighbors.
For the West, Muslims were always the Other, the people we had fought in the crusades, and later who we had colonized in the 1700’s. The idea of seeing them as possible victims is alien to the Western mind, it was easier to see them as a burden or an enemy. As is clearly expressed in today’s irrational Islamophobia and the easy acceptance of accusations of terrorism being laid at the feet of Palestinian resistance while ignoring the oppressive and deplorable state of these people.
This explains the extreme display of anger among Muslims for the Palestinian conflict, and the silence of the West. The West does see the crimes of Israel, but as it grew up with a feeling of guilt towards the Holocaust, and the eternal ‘victim’ stamp put on the Jewish people, it is hard to disassociate the Jewish people who were for 2000 years victims of the West, and the now very powerful Israel. The Jewish people have come a long way, and they are now far from being victims, they are a powerful nation with nuclear missiles, a large weapons industry that sells weapons to the West and a large army. Because of this, many people in the West are in an inner conflict as they have been programmed to have empathy with the Jewish people and to support them. Who could have guessed these victims would turn into oppressors? The silence because of denial is the result. And in the mean while, the West keeps swallowing ridiculous excuses of Israel so they can keep attacking and oppressing the Palestinians. We still do not accept that these are not the same weak victims of 50 years ago, we refuse to see them as they are, a strong people who do not need our sympathy anymore. A people who not only has the power to oppress other people, but also the confidence to ignore our demands to stop the oppressing.
All major human rights and aid organizations as the Red Cross and UN aid are saying Israel is committing war crimes. Everybody has seen the countless of images of dead or severely hurt children and women. What does it take to break this silence to truly condemn Israel as having fascist oppressive politics? Anti-Semitism is hating the Jews just for being Jews, so how can criticizing and condemning Israel of war crimes and oppression be part of anti-Semitism? The anti-Semitism card has been used far to long by Israel to silence any criticism. Israel is, and has in the past, constantly violated all human rights and war rules accepted by the international community. When will stop ignoring this? We must stop being in denial.
The creation and history of the Israeli attitude
The Western association together with the many politically powerful Christians who believe Jesus will return first in Jerusalem, Israel has always had support from the West. The Zionists who first created the plans of a Jewish owned and ruled country in the 1800’s, started slowly to realize this in the beginning of the 1920’s. Zionism itself was a nationalistic, mostly secular, product of the 19th century, which was a century wherein almost all major European countries created their own form of nationalism. Which eventually created the conflicts of WWI and WWII. Within all these national conflicts, a Jewish idea of nationalism formed based on the idea that their origins was superior (this is the idea of all forms of nationalism) and that they needed a country of their own so they could not be made victims of anti-Semitism. The land of Palestine was of course the most logical choice as the history of their whole culture and religion was centered around this land. This would attract non-religious and religious Jews alike.
After WWII, the small Zionist groups in Palestine suddenly had support from all Western countries by helping Jewish people to move to Palestine. Now there were more and more non-Palestine Jews coming in, the first Jewish terrorist acts against the British rule had already started. After the British distributed the land into two states between the native Palestinians and Jews to solve the conflict, they gave up their rule on the land. Then the new focus of the Jews was on the original Palestine people who lived in the most fertile areas, and for many religious Jews, the most holy places. Palestinians were mostly Muslim, but many also Christian, for example Bethlehem was 80% Christian. As Jews had been unjustly prosecuted and harassed for 2000 years in Europe, a strong inward looking culture was created which was very much focused on ethnicity. So strong, that although many Jews became non-religious, especially after the horrors of WWII because their version of God surely couldn’t exist allowing such atrocities, their identity and culture didn’t became more outward looking or less strong. Zionism was created that bonded religious and non-religious Jews towards the same land and goal, but for different reasons. The religious Jews believed it was their God-given land, and for example many sects want to rebuild the Temple at the Temple mount as they believe their messiah will then come. These orthodox groups also believe that non-Jews are not allowed to live on their holy land.
The non-religious Jews are driven by the mindset which they have inherited from their always prosecuted European forefathers and of course those that survived the horrors of WWII. To not be victims anymore and create a strong well defended country. As through the centuries a very business specialized culture was created, which was also many times the reason for the hate towards them created through envy of their wealth creating potential, the Jewish began to take more and more land from the surrounding countries and the native Palestinians. Driven by these mixed intentions, religious, protective against future horrors and capitalistic, the state of Israel was born with help from the UN. The land was split between Arab and Jewish state. But many conflicts occurred. And eventually Palestinians were driven out of their lands, first through terrorism and raids by small Zionist groups, later on by an official state army. In the 60’s Jerusalem was taken and the surrounding lands, and the Palestinians were getting cornered into small pieces of lands. The surrounding countries were easily defeated in short battles, and Israel was deemed unbeatable. This fascist colonial behavior is clearly the result of nationalistic racist behavior by the Israeli government, which is supported by the majority of the Israeli people. After the centuries of oppression against the Jewish people, now they have taken it over while still seeing themselves as victims of mankind.
The Palestinian despair
The Palestinian state was ruined, before the 60’s it was one of the only really free secular and progressive Arab countries, although it’s conflict with Israel. As all Arab countries were and are ruled by dictators, corrupt governments and monarchs, none of them seemed to like the idea of a free country among their midst which maybe would give hope and ideas to the other Arabs. So silence was the common answer from Arab governments towards the Israel-Palestine conflict. Israel took care of their little problem.
Many view the Israel-Palestine as a Jewish-Muslim conflict, while forgetting that the majority of Israeli’s are secular, and although the majority of Palestinians are Muslim, they also have many Christians (one of the Palestinian leaders in the 1960’s was a Christian). The true conflict was more between Arabs and Jews, Around the 1950’s to 70’s, it was Pan-Arabism against Zionism. Later on it just was an oppressed Palestinian people versus the oppressor Israel. Although this is just a small summary, it does show how complex the situation is, and how important it is to understand the drives of the peoples involved.
Being funded by the West, Israel was given a free hand, and so few protests were raised against their very fascist-like behavior. How sincere were the peace talks organized by American presidents and other Western authorities? Personally, I really don’t know. During the Cold War, the Middle East was a central point in the conflict, so the USA was using every country as a pawn in the Cold War game. After the Cold War, the capitalistic elite game was and is played. In the last 10 years, the UN has given many resolutions against Israel for example for building the wall surrounding Palestine. But no action has been taken against Israel, although they keep ignoring and violating these UN resolutions and international court rulings. Why is this so? One of the reasons used to justify the war against Iraq, was that Saddam had violated UN resolutions. When Russia had its short conflict with Georgia, the whole West was immediately taking action and interfering. Why is the West now just standing by with Gaza?
Hamas was chosen by the Palestinian people as for the people, Hamas was the only one which represented their feeling for the want of freedom, to fight and resist the constant oppression of Israel. Was it a smart choice? How many choices did they have? People have been living in refugee camps for the last 40 years in Lebanon. What hope for resolutions when Israel was given free hand and no actions were taken against any of their violations? Does Israel have a right to exist? Yes, it does. A solution to co-exist equally and fairly with the native Palestinians in one state or two states, sharing the resources and potential of the land is possible. So Israel must be given the chance to pursue this, but with their fascist behavior, Israel must be forced into this. So many of the extremist demands of ‘erasing the state of Israel’ are not realistic and will not create any solution. Also within the Palestinian government and Hamas, there is much hypocrisy, corruption and selfish behavior. This has also created much internal conflicts which made the situation only worse. The resistance attitude of Hamas, and because it doesn’t shun using violence which are condemned as terroristic, a new escape goat was created by Israel and its supporting factions in the West to allow more Israel violence against Palestine and to weaken the people by taking away the humanitarian aid. Of the two nations created by the UN in 1947, 60% of the Palestinian land has been taken by Israel. There is no justification for this colonialism fascist behavior.
When the new offensive (invading a country can hardly be called defensive) started after Christmas, I was watching TV and suddenly on one Dutch channel there was a documentary on a Holocaust camp in Poland. Although this could be just coincidence, to me it still felt strange since normally these documentaries are only aired around the month May as this is the month when Holland was liberated in 1945. Was this a propaganda tactic with the purpose to brainwash us in the illusion to still see the Jewish people as the victims, as a weak people who could never be the criminals? Whatever it was, I certainly see this tactic used in all major media around the world. We are coerced to always believe the Jews are constantly defending itself against others, as the constant victims, as ones that could be only morally right since they have been oppressed themselves.
But thank God, many in the West are finally waking up and understand they must not confuse the fascist people running Israel with the Jewish people who suffered under the hands of the Europeans.
Although the ‘We are eternally victims’ illusion card played by the Israeli government is losing its power on the world’s mind and so hope is there for the Palestinians that the world will interfere more in the future, too much damage has already been done. How could these wounds of oppression be healed? How would you feel if you were born in Palestine, your land been taken, no freedom by living in an open air cage together with 1.5 million others oppressed in one of the most crowded area’s on earth? If your family was constantly oppressed and killed, wouldn’t you take up weapons and just fight? Hamas shooting at civilian target is breaking every international and Islamic rule on struggle, but when an oppressed people is doing this, it is a sign that this people feels there is no way out. Israel uses the missile attacks of Hamas as an excuse to further pursue their colonial plans to take away all the land and hope of a future of the Palestinians, and the West is buying this lame excuse. Yes, Hamas shouldn’t do this, but the world must ask itself; isn’t this a sign of despair? The only criminal in this war is Israel, the Palestinians themselves have for so long being oppressed and deprived of any hope, they cannot be held accountable for their behavior which is based on emotional despair.
In justice courts, a person can be held not accountable for their deeds based on temporarily insanity due to an emotional outrage, this surely must also count for the people in Palestine. The only way the guerilla tactics they use will stop is when they finally get the justice, peace and aid they, as human beings, deserve. People say the Palestinians must change for this conflict can end, which in my eyes is denying the real cause and solution. Israel must change their policy and give the freedom and rights back to Palestine, only then will the wounds heal that will change the Palestinians.
Ask yourself, what would you do if you see no hope for your children?
My heart and tears are with the people of Gaza and I hope the Israeli government will soon be held accountable for war crimes and that people will see the difference between the peaceful Jewish people living around the earth and the fascist Israeli government.