A Matter Of Perspective (Op/Ed)

per·spec·tive (Noun) A mental view or outlook: "It is useful occasionally to look at the past to gain a perspective on the present" (Fabian Linden)., The relationship of aspects of a subject to each other and to a whole: a perspective of history; a need to view the problem in the proper perspective., The ability to perceive things in their actual interrelations or comparative importance: tried to keep my perspective throughout the crisis. (1)

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Once again actions in the Middle East are at the forefront of our lives. As evidenced by the explosion of topics here at ATS regarding Israel recent campaign against Hezbollah. Yet again we have seen years of negotiations, efforts and yes lives amount to nothing. Who is to blame here? Beyond the frequent "Them" or "Us" I dare say we are ALL at fault here.

Israel has the right to exist. It lives in an area of the world where religion has been the focal point of more wars than can counted. It certainly has the right to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity as it sees fit. Of that I have no doubt. It was appropriate for it to respond to Hezbollah and its provocations. However the manner with which it is doing so again raises questions about whether It really has any long term interest in peace. Seeming ignorant of what past activities has caused and created, Israel biggest error in my opinion is failing to learn from its own past history.

Its current target which no sane person can label anything but a terrorist group was founded to fight a past Israeli incursion into Southern Lebanon in 1982. Taking a cue from the Irish Republican Army and Sinn Fein, Hezbollah has both a militant and a political wing. While its militant wing gets all the press, Its political wing has embarked on what could be loosely classified as a public works program in the territories that it occupies. From building schools and hospitals, to feeding people that would otherwise have nothing. No doubt charity is a side effect of this well rounded campaign to win hearts and minds. It also serves as a way to spread their word, their mission, and their terrorism. It has worked too. How else would you explain the elections that one Israeli analyst described as "the rise of the Hezbollah-stan state". As it persecutes its war against Hezbollah, Israel is bombing many of these civilian infrastructure targets. Despite what has been said in the mainstream Western press (or lack thereof) civilian infrastructure targets have been decimated.

As we have seen in the past, in such conditions Islamic radicalism flourishes. When people have nothing, no food, no water, no hope, the radical ideology these groups live and preach appeal to those with nothing to lose.

Recent history is rife with this vicious circle. Hamas, yet another terror group, one which has committed countless acts of terrorism, was founded in 1987. A former research head of Shin Bet (The Israeli intelligence agency) described Hamas as "an authentic product of Palestinian society under Israeli rule, more so than the PA." (2)

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the conditions it created gave rise to the Mujahideen which eventually (I'm oversimplifying a bit) morphed into the Taliban.

As you go back in history, the conditions being created yet again by Israel are sowing the seeds of the next generation of Islamic radicals. Israel needs to defend herself, but its present overreaction extends way beyond that. It is unlikely that this campaign will be the end of Hezbollah, Hamas, or any of the other terror groups. Quite the contrary, it may be sowing the seeds for the next generation of radicals who may be “less” constrained than their predecessors as they may have even less to lose. It boils down to "A Matter of Perspective". To the people of Lebanon and Palestine, it is Israel that is the terrorist, and nothing about this present campaign will sway that view. For Israel, it needs to see the perspective from another view. Benjamin Franklin once said "America is ready to fight fifty years to win." I have no doubt Israel is prepared, but so is her foes and they have nothing to really lose. As we saw in Vietnam and as we are seeing in Iraq, and as Israel has, is and will see, an enemy that has nothing to lose is. Israel may have just sown the seed of conflict for the next 50 years.

Related News Links:
(1) education.yahoo.com
(2) www.hrw.org

[edit on 25-7-2006 by DontTreadOnMe]

Actually, I think the US sealed the fates of many a country on September 12th, 2001, when President Bush declared a war that the US and her allies cannot ever hope to win. This War of Terrorism, as I have come to call it, serves as a way for a small group of people to take control or kill the few remaining "bad guys" that stand a chance of harming the plans of the few.

These "bad guys" were created by the few as a way to segue the world into a conflict that would be open-ended intentionally, insuring the rise of a totalitarian state. In the words of George Lucas, through his on-screen character Emperor Palpatine, "The current Republic will now be reorganized into the First... Galactic... Empire!!" All we must do is apply that same statement to the current situation here, and we realize just how close we are to it. True, it's not galactic, yet... But, it's a start.

Should be an interesting few years, to say the least.

TheBorg

I apologize ahead of time for making this post so long. I'm a 'bit' passionate about this subject. Of course ingesting caffeine didn't help.

When you say that we are all to blame, you're absolutely right. Intolerance, hate, greed, and lack of foresight is to blame here,.... and much of the world contains plenty of these characteristics.

Islam has been intolerant (since it's beginnings) of any other religious groups. It had a difficult time coexisting with the Jews and Christians, even though they all originated from similar roots. Some Islamic rulers tolerated these groups, but only by taxing them, and placing certain conditions on their existance within the Islamic territories.
Christians and Jews have also been known to be intolerant of other groups. Christian rulers who came to power in the Middle East were known to have very little patience for the Islamic Arabs, as well as Jews. These three groups have been slaughtering each other for centuries. Eventually this is what led to the present situation,....setting the West against the Middle East.

As far as I know (and I am by no means an expert on the matter), some of the traditional Arabic people have a very difficult time forgetting the wrong-doings of others. Retaliation is not foreign to them (I must point out that it was/is at one point or another not foreign to any particular culture), even if they continue retaliating for something that originated 500 years ago over the killing of one family member. The Sunni and Shia conflict is a great example of how these things start, and why they continue to this day:
Sunni vs. Shia

I'm not aware (but this does not mean that such a conflict doesn't exist anywhere else in the world) of any other group in the world which continues to slaughter and hate each other with more passion than the Shia and Sunni over something that happened so long ago. Anyone is free to point out other groups.

All these groups (basically) claim ownership over a piece of land that in every sense belongs to all of them equally! Obviously if they can't accept this fact, they (Jews, Muslims and part of the Christian Western world) will continue to struggle with each other, until they anihilate themselves (including this land they are fighting over).

This is the greed and intolerance which is destroying them. If only Muslims, Jews and Christians could accept their differences and coexist, but as long as greed in the form of religious extremism and the inability to forgive and forget prevails, Peace will NEVER be. Even if religion didn't exist, people would STILL find other "reasons" to fight each other, be it race, an idea, height, age, or the size of their ears.

How are we all at fault for this current conflict? Well,..... all we have to do is look into our history. Jews were pushed around by Muslims, kicked out of Palestine by the Romans. They scattered all over the world, and mainly into France. The French decided to eventually persecute the Jews, and began killing them. They fled to Spain. The Nazis eventually collected them from Germany, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria,...etc. etc. Everywhere they went, they were persecuted. After the holocaust, Europe and America felt bad for what happened. Six million Jews were slaughtered! Britain held authority over Palestine, and everyone decided it would be a great idea to give the Jews their own homeland. Thus, Zionism (Jews immigrating back into Palestine) came to be (though the idea was already around for many years). Of course the Muslim inhabitants of Palestine didn't like this sudden influx of Jews, and they simply could not see themselves sharing this land with the Jews. Even though Britain held authority over Palestine, the Arabs who lived on this land had always considered it THEIR land. Legally speaking the Jews were in the right, but to ignore this Muslim hatred for their kind (for religious and land reasons) was a bad move on the part of the world in support of an Israeli State. Lack of foresight,...or overlooking the issue intentionaly?? I think it was a bit of both. In either case it was badly handled.

Why, oh why do people of all faiths continue to use their religion to justify their thirst for land and blood? Why do they ignore the teachings of tolerance, and continue to focus on the passages which promote violence? Why do they fail to understand that peace and prosperity will continue to elude them if they can't put aside their differences? Why do they fail to understand that working together instead of working against each other would do them a world of good?
Anyone,... and I mean ANYONE OF ANY FAITH who uses his/her book of God to persuade their children to do harm to another is doing the WRONG thing in my opinion. Do we really need another "messiah" to come down and repeat to us what some here already know? Where is the common sense?! Would it even help? Certainly didn't seem to help in the past. Is greed and the inability to forgive simply an unavoidable part of human nature? Are we doomed to fight each other for eternity?

What a sad situation. I don't think I can side with any particular country on this conflict. Every single one had a hand in this catastrophy.

2manyquestions:

You bring up a few valid points, and I tend to agree with you on almost all of them. The only thing I think needs to be mentioned is the question of why does this keep happening. It keeps happening because people forget; it's just as simple as that. People like to disacknowledge those things which put a damper on their goals, hence the whole "I forgot" persona.

It's my opinion that no peace will come to that region until one side wipes the other out. To try and make peace, after all of this time, is pointless to be totally honest. I wish that the world would just let them kill each other off, and then we can move in close and buddy up with the winners. Only time I think we should step in is when someone from outside the country tries to aid them. I say we put their leaders into a ring, let them beat each other senseless, and then see how they feel about each other. Might actually make some progress on things that way.

I don't know the solution to this problem, but I do know that no one has the right to tell either side what they should be doing, the US least of all.

TheBorg

Seems like you missed FredT's point and singled out Islam in your post. I'm not gonna bring out facts about how it is about as tolerant as Catholic Christians or whatever...

Hmm, seems you skipped about 2/3rds of his post.

Anyway...

I also happen to agree with him. All sides are to blame.

D'oh! You're right. There's too many trolls on here lately and I'm extra sensitive to what I perceive as attacks on my religion lately. My bad.

No biggie. In your defense,... it did take me quite a while to get to my point. Keeping my posts to a minimum takes a lot of effort on my part.

It has been documented over and over and alleged that the Jews have been persecuted throughout their existence by everyone. Has anyone questioned why this has been the case? Just about every time there has been a time in history for war or persecution there was a documented reason or event that triggered this. What have been the reasons for everyone persecuting jews?

I read about it . . . but some of the reasons has been use for propaganda and for sympathy.

Is true that the Jewish people and the People of Israel have struggles and that they live in an area in which they are not welcome . . . but everything has to do with no only religion but also biblical reasons . . .

But in our obfuscation we tend to forget that is not only one side of the story both many other sides that has to be taken into consideration before deeming the entire middle east evil. . .

Israel has been at war for ever and they maybe fighting a battler that they can never win when it comes to the middle east.

For that I feel for the people of Israel. . .

But Even when the middle east countries are tagged mostly terrorist I can not hate them or be angry because history tells the truth about their struggles also just like the people of Israel has.

I asked myself that question as well. I can't quote the exact text at this time (left the book at work), but there was an incident between the Christians, Persians, and Jews which changed many things. The Persians were trying to conquer Jerusalem. Christians and Jews coexisted in Jerusalem at this time, and the Persians tried to convince both groups to simply give up. The Persians didn't have any siege engines, and the Christians and Jews couldn't get food supplies into the city. Well, The Christians absolutely refused to turn Jerusalem over to the Persians, but the Jews decided to make a deal with the Persians. During the night some Jewish people opened the gates to Jerusalem, and let the Persians in. As it happened, the Persians rushed in, and began slaughtering the Christians one after another. The Jews joined in the killing. Ever since then, Christians haven't been too fond of the Jews.

Of course there's the myth about Jews having killed Jesus, when in fact the Romans were fully responsible. Since Italy eventually became Christian, they couldn't continue blaming themselves for having killed the Messiah, and they blamed it on the Jews. The myth persisted over the centuries, and now finally people are beginning to realize what the truth really is.

Then Hitler came along. I'm not entirely sure why he targeted the Jews. I've heard it said (though I'm not absolutely sure this is true) that a Jewish doctor treated his mother, who later died. I suppose he was bitter, and blamed the doctor for her death. If I'm wrong, someone please correct me.
Jews (from what I read) liked to keep together. They were highly educated, they owned many businesses, and many of them were rich. They helped each other out. Even when living in a foreign land, they retained their mother tongue (Hebrew), and kept mostly to themselves inside their communities. Locals didn't quite understand their culture. They often became jealous of their success, as well as offended that the Jews didn't try to blend into their country's culture as much as would make them happy. They became the perfect scapegoat.
After WW1, the German people were in the midst of an economic disaster. Hitler took this opportunity to get himself into power by blaming the Jews for Germany's ills. He was very good at convincing these desperate Germans that Jews were responsible for the way they suffer. The rest is history.

Christians did not exist until the arrival of Christ. So we still have several thousand years of persecution to find answer to there my friend.

From what I have seen though, and at the risk of being labeled anti-semetic, it appears to me they are resented primarily because it appears that the Jewish people only care about the Jewish people, and noone else in the world. In the past their leaders made deals and betrayed others for their own benefit. I mean just your example is a good show of that 2manyquestions. Are there any examples to contradict my assumption?

Personally you can call me anti-semetic until the cows come home, it will not stop me from observing and seeking the truth.

There are many groups over the ages who have been persecuted over the centuries, all for different and the same reasons. We've all been slaves and Conquerors at one point or another. Hell,...the term "slave" came from "Slav", when the Romans conquered the Slavs, and used them as slaves. The Armenian Genocide was carried out by the Turks in 1915, where they killed thousands upon thousands of people.

The Jews stand out, because the Holocaust was such a terrible event in our relatively recent history,.....and of course because of what is going on in the Middle East today. You have to realize that a handful of people with hatred in their hearts convinced millions of desperate people around the world that the Jews were a problem. Of course they weren't the problem, they just had their priorities straight. The problem was the first World War, and Jews certainly didn't start that war. Sure they were in some ways withdrawn from society, but since when was that a good reason to kill anyone?

Yes, at some point in history (and even today) Jews discriminated against other groups, but what group in the world hasn't discriminated against some other group? Every nation, every race has discriminated against another. Reading through history books will prove my point, yet we continue to focus on the "evils" of Jews. Just as the Original Poster suggested, everything that is going on in this world today is a direct result of the actions of the entire world, not just two nations.



If you are refering to my Persians/Jews vs. Christans example, you have to look at it another way. The Christians refused to give up Jerusalem, even after the Persians had offered them safe passage if they agreed to open the gates. They refused to give up their holy city. Of course the Persians weren't known for their honesty either, and many Christians didn't trust the Persian promises.
Either way, they would have died. They would have starved to death, or died by the sword. Maybe the Jews didn't want to die. Maybe they saw an opportunity,......the only way they knew how to survive,....by making a deal with the Persians. Those were rough times. Death by the sword was nothing new, and a very real danger. Desperate to survive, maybe they did the only thing that would save them from certain death.

Back then people of a particular religion stuck to their own communities, and they cared about their own communities more than they cared for anyone else. That's just the way it was. Even now most people (as far as I know) would save their own families before they saved anyone else. We all feel 'at home' with our own racial, religious or cultural group. That's just human nature. As they say,..birds of a feather stick together.

You have a good point. It is a very complicated subject, and I honestly don't see a quick solution to the problem. Educating people all over the world on religious, cultural and racial tolerance from a very young age might be one way,....but how in the heck do you enforce something like that?? Unless you get all countries to agree (which is a long-shot), or unless you conquer the world,... I don't see it happening.

I will suggest that anybody interesting should read on how the Palestine country was conquered and how Israel became a nation . . .

Also Palestine has been abuse no only by Israel but also by the same people that were there to help defend them from the invaders. . .the same Arab countries that they support. . .

No wonder the Palestinians will never learn to be free and will never accept Israel as a legitimate nation . . .

Israel on the other hand will never find peace and the people will never be able to enjoy true security. . .

I agreed with all of FredT's Op/Ed piece apart from the classification of Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist organisations. To me that is an oversimplification.

Hezbollah was created AFTER Israel INVADED Lebanon to get at the PLO. They formed to fight a foreign invader, that would make them a militia - not a terrorist organisation. Some of their recent actions have resulted in the deaths of Israeli civilians but to say that was the primary goal is not accurate.

The very same rationale used to paint Hezbollah as a terrorist group can easily be applied to the IDF. The term "terrorist" is subjective and emotive and really adds nothing to a discussion past demonization and dismissal of their oft stated goals.

Terrorists are exactly what they are, and there's one good piece of evidence to support this. There sits an entire Israeli army on their Southern Border, and yet Hezbollah continues to lob rockets into civilian territory, killing civilians, while the Israeli army sits on that border, not incurring many casualties. To me, this is a sign that Hezbollah doesn't care at all for who they kill, and it also shows me their blatant disregard for everything they claimed to be fighting for. They have shown their true colors, now the world must deal with them.

TheBorg

Hum...mm I will like to know from where you are getting your news . . .

At the time I wrote the above statement, I was still using what I had heard about a week ago as fact, when the Israeli army had stationed groups of personnel along the roads leading to the Lebanese border. It turns out that they've moved since then; go fogure...

Anyway, my point is still the same, since Hezbollah and other protestors raided an U.N. building earlier today, which served no other purpose than to push the U.N. out of Lebanon. I don't know if Hezbollah just has gone completely AWOL or what's going on, but they attacked a humanitarian aid organization. How is this able to be percieved by the world as anything BUT a terrorist act? You tell me.

TheBorg