To understand and untangle the thousands of years of Israeli – Palestinian conflict, one would have to take a wider view of mankind, religions, and selfish motives.
The world is populated by 7.9 billion people of many races, cultures, nations, and religions – the planet has enough land, resources, and learned technology to house, care for, and allow balanced bordered regions for all its people – it’s simply a question of whether or not we’ll implement our capabilities, or will we continue tolerating disparities between liberated and oppressed people groups – it’s important to note, these disparities are the result of decisions we all made, and conditions we allow.
Consider this point about religions (it is a religious conflict) – if the top ten dominant religions of the world believed, acted on, and obediently carried out their beliefs, the question of liberated or oppressed peoples would no longer need addressing – I’m not naive, there are natural conflicts between people groups – but in most cases throughout history there are always aggressors and oppressors acting on motives that conflict with their respective religious teachings – the religious teachings are seldom the problem – being obedient to those teachings is the larger problem.
These conflicts typically arise when land, resources or leaned technology are disputed – these disputes typically generate liberated and oppressed conditions for some of the impacted people groups – instead of a equitable neutral application of the resource in conflict, the dominate group defiantly steps away from their religious beliefs to create a legacy of haves and the have nots – followed closely by the dominate group proclaiming some fabricated justification to candy coat their aggression (i.e. Manifest Destiny, Colonialism, and the like).
Furthermore in conflict with the basics of most religious beliefs, dominant religious groups claimed “spiritual motivation” and set out to “enforce” their beliefs on other people groups in the name of their preferred God (The Inquisition, The Crusades, and hundreds of similar efforts across Eastern and Western cultures) – this further separated liberated and oppressed peoples, and caused hundreds of generations of religious division all over the world – again, peoples stepping away from their beliefs in order to oppress other people groups for selfish motives.
In the early 1500’s, the theologian Martin Luther sought to answer similar questions with the publication of his Ninety-Five Theses: Basically, who are the true Christians, and what is the true Church? His writings were responsible for breaking up the Catholic Church (religious powerhouse of the day) and sparking the Protestant Reformation which led to the array of Chrisitian beliefs we have today – Luther was motivated by many disparities in the church, not the least of which was the condition of peasants, the working class poor, and the oppressed – one of many points he recognized was that religion should not cause or tolerate conditions that unjustly lead to the lack of basic human needs and survival.
Luther was just one of hundreds of activists across history that brought attention to common trends which caused liberated and oppressed people groups, and selfish motives – which brings us back to the Israeli – Palestinian conflict – now that we’ve reminded ourselves of thousands of years of aggressors, oppressors, and selfish motives we can easily see how motivations like the following became more normal:
In 1937 Winston Churchill said of the Palestinians; “I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger, even though he may have lived there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance, that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the Black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly-wise race, to put it that way, has come in and taken their place.”
Mr Churchill is not a loan extremist with these dehumanizing opinions – in spite of his paralleled statesmanship and global influence, this man’s crime against humanity strongly diminishes his accomplishments – there are hundreds of millions of people and people groups that support views of this nature with an intent to oppress another peoples – these extremist are all over the world in positions of national leadership, religious influence, impactors of business and industry, and purveyors of news and information – due to this fact, there will never be peace between Israel and Palestinian as long as these horrifying beliefs exist – these beliefs cause the divisive condition of liberation verses oppression – both Israel and Palestinian must be liberated in order for peace to have a chance.
The civil rights activist Kwame Ture reminded us in 1968; “There is a difference between peace and liberation. You can have injustice and also have peace. “You can have peace and be enslaved. So, peace is not the answer – liberation is the answer.”
What’s his point? Peace is a false objective – liberation is a more constructive objective so peace can be the byproduct of liberation.
Now, this is not to say that terrorist groups cannot be effectively dealt with – to this point, targeting a terrorist group does not mean punishing a people group for the crimes of the terrorist – the powers of the world have failed this simple application of justice time and time again – liberation is only possible if our global society justly distributes land, resources and learned technology across all its people groups.
We don’t have to have enemies – however it appears (in many cases) we’re electing to have enemies – perhaps we could make better choices.
Kevin's Thoughts 