I
was tagged today regarding the following Prager University video that discusses the causes
of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict asking my opinions on the video which can
be found Here. I thought I would share
my thoughts not just on this video but also go a bit deeper into the conflict
as well.
Dr.
Prager, at the beginning of this short video states that the
Israeli/Palestinian conflict is one of the easiest to explain, but one of the
most difficult to solve. He then states
without any supporting evidence that Israel wants to exist as a Jewish state
and that the majority of Palestinians want the death of Jews. He then re-states
this claim of Palestinians wanting the death of Jews repeatedly throughout the
video. This is certainly one narrative
on this conflict and since it is Dr. Prager’s narrative I cannot invalidate
that narrative.
My narrative
differs. I have had literally more than
a hundred conversations with Palestinians and I have yet to meet a single
Palestinian that has stated that he wants to see the death of Jews—I would have
to ask where Dr. Prager’s source for this. Granted, I have met one Palestinian
journalist who survived a gunshot to the face at the hands of the Israeli
Defense Force (IDF) and who has been woken up at 2:00 in the morning during an
IDF night raid with soldiers pointing guns at him in his bedroom. He states that he wishes that Israel did not
exist, but he has never said that he wants to see Jews dead—his weapon of
choice is that of a camera that captures oppression of those that live in his refugee camp called Aida--one of three refugee camps in Bethlehem, West Bank. My second question for Dr. Prager respecting this
video is what was your motivation for producing it? Is it to lay blame? Is it to move the conversation away from mere
explanation and toward peace or is it rhetoric to support your position, i.e.,
to be right?
For me, Dr. Prager makes an argument in today’s context to the exclusion of the context of the time period he is making the argument about. He rightly admits that the day after Israel became a country the surrounding Arab states declared war. Here is the context that Dr. Prager omits. The 1947 United Nations Partition Plan allocated 57% of the land to the Jews who comprised between 20 and 30% of the population. Let’s say that the Blacks and the Hispanics in the United States represent Jews and that the United Nations has just declared that 57% of current U.S. land is going to be given to them to create a country of their own. Can we honestly expect the rest of us to just acquiesce to this decision? Jewish, Tel Aviv, professor Shlomo Sands puts it this way: “I never thought that two thousand years of absence conferred rights to the land, whereas twelve hundred years of presence gave none to the local population.”
Secondly,
this video pits Palestinians and Muslims against Jews and ignores the fact that
there are Christians in Israel, the West Bank and other Arab countries—the
population of Mosul, an Iraqi city, is mostly Christian, that is just one
example. Moreover, last Wednesday I had dinner with a Syrian refugee family that were happy to point out Christian churches in Syria using Google Earth.
This
video begins with 1947 and fails to look at Theodor Herzl and the Zionist
movement that began the process of creating a Jewish homeland. Nor does it look at Zev Jabotinsky and the
revisionist Zionism which forms the foundation of the current ultra-right-wing Likud party
that continues to steal land from Palestinians—the land
that Prager alludes to with the 1947 UN Partition Plan.
Moreover, it fails to recognize that during WWII that Prager’s home, the
United States of America, closed its doors to Jewish immigrants.
Dr.
Prager further fails to mention that the 1967 war or the Six Days War began a military occupation
of the West Bank, what is supposed to be the Palestinian state that continues
to this day--for those counting it will be a half-century next year. Also, shortly after this
war Jews began to create settlements, which are illegal under international
law—these settlements continue to expand today.
I agree with Dr. Prager, that there were other Middle Eastern countries
that were looking to destroy Israel—that is a fair assessment. Even today, I would agree that this is the
case. However, Palestine is not one of
them. The PLO recognized Israel’s right
to exist in 1993 with the Oslo Accords and they continue to do so. Dr. Prager also fails to mention Yigal Amir,
a radical Jew, who assassinated his own Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin because of
Rabin’s attempts at achieving peace—apparently there is one Jew that did not
want to live in peace with a Palestinian state.
This
weekend I finished a book written by a Jewish Tel Aviv University professor
entitled The Invention of the Jewish People.
This book addresses the contradiction of Israel being both a democracy
and a Jewish state. Dr. Prager, mentions
Israel being a Jewish state in the video, but fails to mention that 20% of its
citizens are, in fact, Palestinian and based on a dual system of law these
Palestinians do not have the same rights as Israeli Jews—there are dozens of
laws that pertain only to Palestinian citizens within Israel. Does not a dual system of laws that
discriminates against one group over another perpetuate a conflict? Israel cannot simultaneously be a democracy
and a Jewish state.
I
would ask Dr. Prager for clarification on why, if Israel is for a Palestinian
state, does it continue to militarily occupy the land set aside for a
Palestinian state, why does the separation wall that they have been
constructing for more than the last decade not follow the agreed upon 1967 borders,
but rather intentionally goes over said border cutting off Palestinian farm
lands from the families that farm that land?
Do these tactics not have an impact on why a conflict exists or
continues to exist?
Below
is one look at the economic impact that Israel’s military occupation has on the
West Bank, the land that Dr. Prager alludes to as being for a Palestinian
state. Could this treatment also be a
factor that keeps the region steeped in conflict?
Granted,
I think we need to look at the causes of the conflict if we are going to
address how to solve it. However, merely
looking to point fingers to one side as the culprit, making blanket and
patently false claims that one side wants peace while the other wants the other
side dead, adds little to creating dialogue. Of course, I have presented some of what I perceive as Israel’s faults in
a response to Dr. Prager here. That
said, I would ask that you notice the nuance of framing those observations
with questions. John Paul Lederach
states it this way, “In settings in which polarization has deepened, all of us
tend to highlight the immoral maliciousness on ‘their’ side. We are equally slow to notice anything but
the good intentions, clear justification, and ‘righteousness’ of our
side.” We don’t need further
explanations for who is responsible for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The answer to that question is, as Dr. Prager
suggests, simple—both sides have fallen short and frankly so has the U.S. with
our blind military support for Israel while paying lip service to international
law regarding West Bank settlement expansion.
What if we made our financial military support for Israel contingent
upon them immediately stopping their support for West Bank settlements? Even more, or perhaps most paramount, what if
we stopped pointing fingers and began the hard work of recognizing the humanity
in the other side? With Dr. Prager’s
myopia respecting truth, again quoting Lederach, this time at length, in the
context of truth, mercy, justice and peace from Psalm 85 is appropriate: “Too
often in the midst of conflict, we take these social energies—we can see them
as four siblings—as contradictory forces, voiced by different persons within
the conflict. They are seen as pitted
against each other. Those who cry out
for Truth and Justice are taken as adversaries of those who plead for Mercy and
Peace, and they often understand themselves the same way.
“The
vision of the psalmist is different.
Reconciliation is possible only as each sees the place and need of the other. This approach means that each voice, and the
social energy it produces, is incomplete without the other.
“What
does this mean at a practical level? We
must pay attention and give space to the different energies represented by the
voices of Truth, Mercy, Justice, and Peace.
When these voices are heard as contradictory forces, we find ourselves
mired in erupting conflict and paralyzed by it.
We argue endlessly over which is more important, justified and
proper…Let us create the social space that brings Truth, Mercy, Justice, and
Peace together within a conflicted group or setting. Then energies are crystallized that create
deeper understanding and unexpected new paths, leading toward restoration and
reconciliation.”
And finally, as promised, my own five-minute video (really a video that a friend narrates and helped produce) that describes one problem of the near fifty-year military occupation of the West Bank:
