Human Rights Watch, in its new report, A Threshold Crossed, presented some powerful graphics to illustrate its claim that Israel is an apartheid state.
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I wish I could see any path to Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs being able to live together and enjoy equal rights.
I write this with no feeling of self-righteousness. I think the suffering and loss of innocent life as a result of American policy is much greater than the pain and death caused by Israeli policy.
My fear is that the world will turn against us Americans, because of the many crimes committed in our name, just as it has turned against Israel, and we will suffer the fate that seems to be in store for that country.
LINKS
A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution, a report by Human Rights Watch.
The Complexity Trap by Alex Page for Bookish Leftist Gibberish.
June 6, 2021 at 12:08 pm |
My own view is basically the same as what you express here. I too am all for whatever it would take to obtain peace, equality, and justice in a co-existence between Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews; or between any other populations in the world, including in the US.
And I definitely don’t feel self-righteous, although I do feel righteous — there is a difference between the two. My righteousness comes from knowing that I’m enmeshed in and complicit with the same systems of power and oppression. The US government, acting in my name and using my tax money, has been at the heart of the problem in the Middle East. The guilt is collective guilt for collective actions and also our individual refusal to act in stopping it.
Also, as a US citizen, I benefit from all the harm caused to so many others, even as I don’t support that harm. I’m the product and inheritor of 4 centuries of British and Anglo-American imperialism, settler colonialism, Indian wars, land theft, resource exploitation, genocide, ethnic cleansing, slavery, etc. Various lines of my ancestry have been directly involved in every aspect of this long dark history. The same would be true of so many other Americans.
Your very last point even more powerfully resonates for me. I have the exact fears. It’s where it goes far beyond a mere issue of morality. The practical implications is that injustice often leads to retribution, one era of victimization and violence leading into the next. When the West (US, Britain, Israel, etc) falls out of power, as inevitably will happen at some point, what will stop all of the victims of Western authoritarianism from treating Westerners in the way they were treated?
The Golden Rule is not mere nice-sounding religious rhetoric or wise advice on living a good life. It’s an eminently practical guideline. Even if one lacks moral character, one only needs to heed a sense of fear and trepidation in knowing that what goes around comes around. We should treat others in the way we want to be treated because one day others may be in a position to decide how we are treated. This is common sense, but sadly common sense is a rare trait.
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