History from the Twilight Zone of the Mideast

The old cliche that there's always two sides to a story is one that should always remain in mind when dealing with such complex issues--especially those where innocents are killed and enemies are ready to perpetrate every barbarism known and unknown to man or beast.

The invasion of Lebanon by Israel is no less an instance where this cliche should be at the forefront of our reflection on causes and potential solutions to the killing. It is especially important to keep in mind in the Mideast where history's span extends to hundreds and even thousands of years. ...

The continual imagery and plot lines purveyed by the western press pastes together a scenario in which Israel is defending itself against aggressions by Hizbullah. The most immediate cause of the invasion of Lebanon, this scenario goes, it is to "root out," "cleanse," and otherwise destroy the Islamic extremist group Hizbullah and its ability to attack Israel.

What we lose in this contrived scenario is a proper historical perspective. You don't need to go back even a hundred years to figure out what's caused the present bloodbath. While all blame in the western press and in government circles is pinned on Hizbullah, there are those who are intimate with the details of the region and its recent history who see Israel as directly and consistently responsible for much of the violent reaction and instability.

In an excellent article that provides many of the often conveniently forgotten details, Mideast expert Anders Strindberg gives some insight into the very naked and undiluted circumstances that have shaped Israel and the violent reaction to its presence in the region.Writing in The Christian Science Monitor, Strindberg writes:

Since its withdrawal of occupation forces from southern Lebanon in May 2000, Israel has violated the United Nations-monitored "blue line" on an almost daily basis, according to UN reports. Hizbullah's military doctrine, articulated in the early 1990s, states that it will fire Katyusha rockets into Israel only in response to Israeli attacks on Lebanese civilians or Hizbullah's leadership; this indeed has been the pattern.

In the process of its violations, Israel has terrorized the general population, destroyed private property, and killed numerous civilians. This past February, for instance, 15-year-old shepherd Yusuf Rahil was killed by unprovoked Israeli cross-border fire as he tended his flock in southern Lebanon. Israel has assassinated its enemies in the streets of Lebanese cities and continues to occupy Lebanon's Shebaa Farms area, while refusing to hand over the maps of mine fields that continue to kill and cripple civilians in southern Lebanon more than six years after the war supposedly ended. What peace did Hizbullah shatter?

Hizbullah's capture of the soldiers took place in the context of this ongoing conflict, which in turn is fundamentally shaped by realities in the Palestinian territories. To the vexation of Israel and its allies, Hizbullah - easily the most popular political movement in the Middle East - unflinchingly stands with the Palestinians.

Yet, Strindberg’s analysis does not stop with recent current events. He states that the present instability can be traced back to the very founding notions and strategies that went into the founding of Israel and that has formed the guiding principles of its policies towards its neighbors ever since.

According to Strindberg:

Since June 25, when Palestinian fighters captured one Israeli soldier and demanded a prisoner exchange, Israel has killed more than 140 Palestinians. Like the Lebanese situation, that flare-up was detached from its wider context and was said to be "manufactured" by the enemies of Israel; more nonsense proffered in order to distract from the apparently unthinkable reality that it is the manner in which Israel was created, and the ideological premises that have sustained it for almost 60 years, that are the core of the entire Arab-Israeli conflict.

Once the Arabs had rejected the UN's right to give away their land and to force them to pay the price for European pogroms and the Holocaust, the creation of Israel in 1948 was made possible only by ethnic cleansing and annexation. This is historical fact and has been documented by Israeli historians, such as Benny Morris. Yet Israel continues to contend that it had nothing to do with the Palestinian exodus, and consequently has no moral duty to offer redress.

For six decades the Palestinian refugees have been refused their right to return home because they are of the wrong race. "Israel must remain a Jewish state," is an almost sacral mantra across the Western political spectrum. It means, in practice, that Israel is accorded the right to be an ethnocracy at the expense of the refugees and their descendants, now close to 5 million.

Is it not understandable that Israel's ethnic preoccupation profoundly offends not only Palestinians, but many of their Arab brethren? Yet rather than demanding that Israel acknowledge its foundational wrongs as a first step toward equality and coexistence, the Western world blithely insists that each and all must recognize Israel's right to exist at the Palestinians' expense.

Western discourse seems unable to accommodate a serious, as opposed to cosmetic concern for Palestinians' rights and liberties: The Palestinians are the Indians who refuse to live on the reservation; the Negroes who refuse to sit in the back of the bus.

I have maintained for some time that Israelis must acknowledge that its founders made numerous mistakes. I have also pointed out the growing racism within Israeli society. To maintain its stability–both internally and externally–Israel has engaged in an expansionist campaign that is intended both to gain territory but also to keep the Palestinians and those who might come to their aid off balance.