Israel continues to slide down a slope that appears to have no return. My posts are often critical of Israel. This does not mean that I think Israel is wrong in everything or that the Palestinians are right in pushing Israel into the sea. It's not that simple. There is blood on both sides. But they are both there and neither side is going away.

My concern is that Israel is self-destructing. The think they can "stop terrorsim" without any understanding of what is driving that "terrorism". Their actions keep worsening the situation. Their actions give the Palestinians less hope. People with no hope and nothing to lose are to be feared. Israel thinks that a powerful army can subjugate a people succesfully. Israel will only lose and that will *not* be a good thing.

Last year, just before the world changed, I linked to a series of articles in the New York Review of Books. One of them, in particular (they are all worth reading), was written by a legend of journalism: I. F. Stone. A name few remember. It's a pity. He was what journalism should be and what we need now. But, so it goes. His article was written August 3, 1967. After the 7 Days War.

Holy War
By I. F. Stone

Stripped of propaganda and sentiment, the Palestine problem is, simply, the struggle of two different peoples for the same strip of land. For the Jews, the establishment of Israel was a Return, with all the mystical significance the capital R implies. For the Arabs it was another invasion. This has led to three wars between them in twenty years. Each has been a victory for the Jews. With each victory the size of Israel has grown. So has the number of Arab homeless.
(..)

The experiences from which M. Sartre draws his emotional ties are irrelevant to this new struggle. Both sides draw from them conclusions which must horrify the man of rationalist tradition and universalist ideals. The bulk of the Jews and the Israelis draw from the Hitler period the conviction that, in this world, when threatened one must be prepared to kill or be killed. The Arabs draw from the Algerian conflict the conviction that, even in dealing with so rational and civilized a people as the French, liberation was made possible only by resorting to the gun and the knife. Both Israeli and Arabs in other words feel that only force can assure justice. In this they agree, and this sets them on a collision course. For the Jews believe justice requires the recognition of Israel as a fact; for the Arabs, to recognize the fact is to acquiesce in the wrong done them by the conquest of Palestine. If God as some now say is dead, He no doubt died of trying to find an equitable solution to the Arab-Jewish problem.
(..)

All this may seem anachronistic nonsense, but this is an anachronistic quarrel. The Bible is still the best guide to it. Nowhere else can one find a parallel for its ethnocentric fury. Nowhere that I know of is there a word of pity in the Bible for the Canaanites whom the Hebrews slaughtered in taking possession. Of all the nonsense which marks the Jewish-Arab quarrel none is more nonsensical than the talk from both sides about the Holy Land as a symbol of peace. No bit of territory on earth has been soaked in the blood of more battles. Nowhere has religion been so zestful an excuse for fratricidal strife. The Hebrew shalom and the Arabic salaam are equally shams, relics of a common past as Bedouins. To this day inter-tribal war is the favorite sport of the Bedouins; to announce "peace" in the very first word is a necessity if any chance encounter is not to precipitate bloodshed.
(...)

If in this account I have given more space to the Arab than the Israeli side it is because as a Jew, closely bound emotionally with the birth of Israel, I feel honor bound to report the Arab side, especially since the US press is so overwhelmingly pro-Zionist. For me, the Arab- Jewish struggle is a tragedy. The essence of tragedy is a struggle of right against right. Its catharsis is the cleansing pity of seeing how good men do evil despite themselves out of unavoidable circumstance and irresistible compulsion. When evil men do evil, their deeds belong to the realm of pathology. But when good men do evil, we confront the essence of human tragedy. In a tragic struggle, the victors become the guilty and must make amends to the defeated. For me the Arab problem is also the No. 1 Jewish problem. How we act toward the Arabs will determine what kind of people we become: either oppressors and racists in our turn like those from whom we have suffered, or a nobler race able to transcend the tribal xenophobias that afflict mankind.
[read more]

While I. F. Stone was not an Israeli, he was a Jew who was there in the early days of the creation of the Israeli state. In a footnote to this article he states:

I first arrived in Palestine on Balfour Day Nov. 2, 1945, the day the Haganah blew up bridges and watch towers to begin its struggle against the British and immigration restrictions. The following spring I was the first newspaperman to travel with illegal Jewish immigrants from the Polish-Czech border through the British blockade. In 1947 I celebrated Passover in the British detention camps in Cyprus and in 1948 I covered the Arab-Jewish war. See my Underground to Palestine (1946) and This is Israel (1948). I was back in 1949, 1950, 1951, 1956, and 1964.

I. F. Stone stated it well: "How we act toward the Arabs will determine what kind of people we become: either oppressors and racists in our turn like those from whom we have suffered, or a nobler race able to transcend the tribal xenophobias that afflict mankind."

Israel has all the power while the Palestinians have none. How has Israel used that power? Not for reconciliation as I. F. Stone had hoped. I. F. Stone saw two paths. Israel has not taken the path that would have "transcended the tribal xenophobias." At least there are some Israeli's that see that the old ways of Sharon aren't working.

Interview with Ami Ayalon, former head of Shin Bet

AC: Do you exclude the possibility of an Israeli victory, despite the power differential?

AA: We have had our "victory"! In 1967, we occupied all the Palestinian lands. Once "terrorism is vanquished," what shall we do? This is absurd. The Palestinians want self-rule. Whoever wants to "vanquish" them, then offer them bread and circuses, understands nothing. The Israeli army is stronger than ever, our secret services are excellent; then why is the problem not resolved? Reoccupying the Palestinian Authority lands, and killing Arafat, what would that change? Those who want victory want an unending war.

AC: Yet, since September 11, many think that Israel can change the regional situation in its favor.

AA: An illusion! September 11 has changed many paradigms in the U.S., but nothing basic in the Middle East. Whatever Arafat's errors, the Palestinian people will continue to exist. As long as the Palestinian question is not resolved, the region will not know stability. Only a Palestinian state will preserve the Jewish and democratic character of Israel.
[read more]

Israeli Solider Says: Troops Competed to Kill Palestinians

In a special interview aired at Israeli television, Channel 2, and reported by the Palestinian News Agency, WAFA, a solider who was discharged from the Israeli army a week ago said that Israeli troops and special units carried out "unimaginable" practices against Palestinians.
[read more]

Vertical Descent

Since the beginning of the new Intifada, there were at least seventeen documented cases in which Palestinians were killed while under custody. In some cases they were summarily executed, in other cases there is evidence of torture prior to killing. In none of these cases was anyone brought to justice, or even investigated, as far as I know.
[read more]

With Tul Karm again in IDF hands, Israelis wonder if there's method in the marching orders

A major IDF push - viewed by Palestinians as the "re-occupation" of a West Bank city - touched off fierce debate in Israel over whether the government was carrying out a secret master strategy, or if the Jewish state was revisiting the slippery slope from which it slid into the quagmire of Lebanon.
[read more]

Judah Maccabee he's not

The only strategy the Sharon government can boast of is no strategy at all. We have no leader and no leadership. This elephant, with its 40 ministers and deputy ministers, and a parliamentary majority of 84 mandates, is actually waging a war of attrition against its own citizens. From every possible perspective, we are being pushed off a cliff. This administration is not functioning in any sphere: not defense, not economy, not social welfare, not foreign policy.
[read more]