I'm going out on a limb here (and as I stated in a previous blog entry, I don't care if I get "C"s to "F"s as long as I'm doing what's right); so here I am. I'm out on the limb. Being "out on the limb" means getting a "C" (if I'm lucky) or even a "F" (which is probably what will happen). After all, this is supposed to be a midterm essay that I'm writing on my blog first (as I've done with other school papers, which makes writing at least some papers a heck of a lot easier).
By the way, I need to make a full disclosure first. That is, I need to confess that I did not do all of the readings that I should have done. Now that I've made the full disclosure, I need to make a statement about what readings I did do (or at least skim over, or even of which I read only the introduction and conclusion). The statement that I need to make is this: for as much as Israel has her own problems, we don't need Anti Semites like Rashid Khalidi and bulls****ers like deterrence theorists adding to our problems.
In other words, the State of Israel and we who are her people have enough self-caused issues to which we don't need the Rashid Khalidis and the deterrence theorists adding. I should know, since I'm an Israeli who's directly affected by these issues. I'm a Patrilineal Jew whose more-recent ancestors were Crypto Jews, who was born as an Ashkenazi Jew in the Jewish (read "Israeli") Diaspora, and who is a Messianic Jewish Republican (read--for example--so-called "proselytizer", "religious nut", "right winger", and "ultimate sellout"). I didn't even know that I am Jewish until after March 12, 2008 (the date on which I joined Ancestry.com to research if I am Jewish, as I suspected way before. After all, why else--for example--my dad have taken pains to pronounce my name as "Nicole Charnetski"). So, I obviously don't fit into the Israeli Diaspora, let alone Jewish community back in my homeland--to which I have yet to even be able to make aliyah.
So, I've done at least some of my homework over the years--I'd be remiss if I didn't. Based on my homeworking and conclusions that I've formed while and from doing it, my simple statement about the Arab-Israeli conflict is, again, that we have enough self-caused issues to which we don't need the Rashid Khalidis and the deterrence theorists adding. If you want a more-complex statement than that--in other words, the rest of my midterm homily--, keep reading. Now that I'm done the backgrounding work, I can break down the Arab-Israeli conflict in light of my class about it for you.
Firstly, I will address the--and I say this with all due respect--ridiculous statement that "States cause war; wars cause states." Maybe states affect wars, and wars affect states; but neither states nor wars cause each other. Then who causes states and wars, you ask? As the Traditional Jewish Bible (that is, the Bible without the New Testament) states, Yehovah "form[eth] the light, and create[th] darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I am the LORD, that doeth all these things."
The same Yehovah, "[w]hen [He] gave to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the children of men, He set the borders of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel. For the portion of the LORD is His people, Jacob the lot of His inheritance." Yehovah also guaranteed, through the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, "it shall come to pass, that as the chased gazelle, and as sheep that no man gathereth, they shall turn every man to his own people, and shall flee every man to his own land." For, "for fear of the oppressing sword they shall turn every one to his people, and they shall flee every one to his own land."
The old sayings go that safety is found in numbers and that family is one of the most imporant factors in a person's life. The sons and daughters of Adam have been and are still quickly carving out their respective nation states and returning to them in at least trickles, if not droves. For example, Syrian statelessness ended in 1947. Indians and Pakistanis finally had their own united states in the same year. The Czechs and Slovakians peacefully split up into Ceska Republika and Slovenska Republika in 1991 (Let's face that they were geared to split up with the 1989 Velvet Revolution; the USSR fell on Christmas 1991, and--as I found out when double checking the 1991 date with the "CIA World Factbook"--, they had their respective constitutions well before New Year's Day 1993). The Bangladeshis became a reunited family with their own land twenty years before the Czechs and Slovakians became reunited, nation-stated families.
The final example of a reunited, nation-stated family who I'll give as an example is my own family--'am-Yisra'el b'Ha'Eretz Yisra'el--the People of Israel in the Land of Israel. Yehovah indeed kept His promise to "bring Israel back to his pasture, and he shall feed on Carmel and Bashan, and his soul shall be satisfied upon the hills of Ephraim and in Gilead. In those days, and in that time, saith the LORD, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none, and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found; for I will pardon them whom I leave as a remnant." We were officially given our homeland back on May 14, 1948.
The foolish Arabs knew that, as Masada2000.org taught me (and for as much as they sometimes go too far). I used to fall hook-line-and-sinker for the idea that the Arabs are the "Palestinian" people. Then, as I looked at the Bible and sites like Masada2000.org, I learned the following--which brings me to the second point:
- Ishmael, one of the patriarchs of the Arabs, "hall be a wild ass of a man: his hand shall be against every man, and every man's hand against him; and he shall dwell in the face of all his brethren." Thus, Ishamel hates Isaac.
- Esau, who married his cousin who was a daughter of Ishmael, "saith: 'We are beaten down, but we will return and build the waste places'; thus saith the LORD of hosts: They shall build, but I will throw down; and they shall be called the border of wickedness, and the people whom the LORD execrateth for ever. And your eyes shall see, and ye shall say: 'The LORD is great beyond the border of Israel.'" Esau. like Ishamel, is one of the patriarchs of the Arabs. Esau has long hated Jacob, and the "Palestinians" complain that Israel "occupies" the land of "Palestine", which they have attempted to rebuild since the "Nabka".
- The Philistines are also patriarchs of the Arabs, and David has never been liked by Goliath.
Therefore, Yehovah stated, "They have roused Me to jealousy with a no-god; they have provoked Me with their vanities; and I will rouse them to jealousy with a no-people; I will provoke them with a vile nation." Because of our iniquities He has roused and provoked us with the "Palestinians"--not a people, but a mix of peoples. Thus, concerning longstanding rivalries (the second point), the long-term rivalry between the "Palestinian" Arabs and Arabs goes as far back as Ishmael and Isaac down to Goliath and David--and is an example of why long-standing rivalries can and need to be used to study crises and wars.
As far as the narrative of the "Palestinians" goes in the Arab-Israeli conflict, then, the narrative affects the Arabs only in that the Arabs have chosen to believe themselves to be the "occupied Palestinians". As goes for any narrative in any conflict, a narrative affects any conflict only insofar as it is believed and perpetuated, whether or not it is a lie. Therefore, in the case of the "Palestinians", they have created an Anti-Israel lie with which they delude themselves and which they perpetuate.
They, therefore, are the suspicious "other" in Zionist identity, especially they make us to be the "other" and destroy us. They also, to this day, resent the Balfour Declaration, Points Declarations by Wilson, the Traty of Versailles, the Locarno Treaty, the King-Crane Commission, and --which really had no contradictions, but just disadvantages for "Palestinian" dominance and Anti Semitism.
They also hate that Yehovah used the Holocaust to motivate Jews, including David ben-Gurion, to get out of Europe and no longer "remain in all the places whither I have driven them", including Europe. They also resent that the refounding of Israel was an idea from 70 CE to 1892 CE, and that Theodore Herzl was the one who gave Proto Zionism the kickstarter jump to become Zionism. They can say that the Holocaust motivated the refounding of Israel all that they want, but they'll have to face history and when it judges them.
Also, their "Nabka" myths are not accurate. Jacob was given Canaan. Then, Moses led the Israelites into Canaan and Joshua to help the other Israelites conquer Canaan. After that, the 586 BCE and 70 CE Exiles happened, but yishuvim were still in the land and olim yishuvim quickly came back into the land. Only when Israel started to take "Palestine" fully back from 1892-1917 did the "Palestinians" have problems.
Thus, the "Palestinian"-Israeli rivalry endures, and rivalries within Pro-"Palestinian" and Pro-Israel communities endure. The Pro-"Palestinian" camp has different approaches on how to commit further Anti Semitism; the Pro-Israel camp has different approaches on how to stop the Pro-"Palestinian" and Anti-Semitic nonsense. For example, some "Palestinians" and Pro-"Palestinian" people are merely propagandists while some are active terrorists. As for the Pro-Israel camp, some Pro-Israel people are merely Philo-Semitic awareness raisers while some go as far--or even farther than--the late Meir Kahane.
The 1948 War or the "Nabka", for instance, was a huge part of that--that is, we Jews wanted to live back in our land peacefully; the "Palestinians" wanted to ragingly destroy us. To this day, though, the Anti Semites like Rashid Khalidi blame the Jews and call the 1948 Israeli victory the "Nabka", "oppression", "occupation", and "persecution" of "Palestinians". Meanwhile, I have no time for the likes of Rashid Khalidi. I also have no time for the likes of traitorous Zeev Maoz, who I will have to discuss later. I further have no time for the "Palestinian" and other infiltrators who invaded Sinai, the West Bank, and other areas--especially since the Anti-Semitic infiltrators became worse overtime.
Therefore, Israel did not do enough in the 1956 War. We shouldn't have let anyone buy Nasser's excuses about the Suez Canal, the "oppressive" Anglo-French forces, or the "Palestinian" infiltrators. Our problem is that we didn't take Nasser out right there and then, and we didn't take care of the "Palestinian" infiltrators who were trying to destroy us. We didn't learn from history--we didn't take out the Canaanites as we were supposed to, and now we didn't defend ourselves as much as we should have against our "Palestinian" enemies. This is also part of why we had to escalate--because we were still surrounded by our enemies and at risk of being destroyed at any time.
By the way, Nasser can also used the Gaza Raid as an excuse. I don't buy it. Zeev Maoz can call Israel the aggressive occupiers and oppressors of "Palestinians". I don't buy it. I also know that Nasser knew better because he tried to mess with us much less up until 1967, despite that other Anti-Semitic Arabs and other Anti Semites were calling him to do so. Even in 1962, the year of refounded Israel's entry into adulthood from teenagehood, Nasser didn't attack when he could have. He knew that "[n]o weapon that is formed against [Israel] shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their due reward from Me, saith the LORD".
This, therefore, makes any psychological, brinkmanship, strategic rationality, institutional, and any other defense or attempt at defense of Nasser an excuse. Thus, in conclusion, it all boils down to "Palestinian" revisionism and Anti Semitism, and Israeli self defense.
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