Name:     Michael L. S.   [E-Mail]
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      Website:  Middle East Resource Center


 

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So who is to blame for the longest running conflict in the world? Is it the Israelis or the Palestinians? After all, this IS a conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. Wrong. It weren't the Palestinian people who attacked Israel in 1947/48 thus instigating this conflict. It weren't the Palestinians who occasioned the Six Day War in 1967. It weren't the Palestinians who tried to sneak one in at Yom Kipur of 1972. Nor were it the Palestinians who necessitated the Israeli infiltration of southern Lebanon. It IS the Palestinians who are sending homicide bombers now but is of their own informed volition? No. Rather, the very first bullet, the last bullet and every bullet in between was fired by the "Arab world", ie. those in control of it. And who IS in control of Arab countries, from Morocco to Egypt to Saudi to Iran? Autocrats, despots, tyrants, theocrats and other assorted anathemas to democracy. The two main characteristics of such dictators are self-interest and self-preservation. The two go hand-in-hand and always have. Dictators need to stay in power at all costs, and people tend not to like gross breaches of their human rights, censorship, political and social oppression, poverty and other abuses. So the age-old recipe has been invoked in the Arab world, too: rally your people around in the fight against an enemy. No enemy? Invent one! Let's have Israel. Let's have an internal enemy, too: intellectuals and reformers! Both these evil Zionists and even more evil women who dare to wear make-up are a threat to the societal order and fabric. They want to destroy the virtual paradise on Earth which is Syria or Jordan, and they have to be fought at all costs. Literally. Of course, it helps an immense deal if this fight against a supposedly common supposed enemy is also portrayed as a fight against the supposed enemies of the ideology on which such societies are based, in this case Islam. And if the protagonists of that ideology (imams in our example) who wield a wide influence among the populace get onboard, you are assured a fervent loathing of the "enemy" develops among your subjects. It's been done since time immemorial: think of the centuries-long strife between Catholics and Protestants in medieval Europe, the USSR with its purges and decades of carefully-crafted paranoia, the parallel developments in the States with the McCarthy Inquiry and rednecks driving up in pick-up trucks, sporting shot-guns, assaying to hunt down the "kum-yoo-nists" ostensibly hiding in the local woods. And most recently, of course, with the "war on terror" which has been used more than anything to erode in a trice the liberties and standards that had taken decades of sweat and blood to stablish speciously so as to "get the bad guys" faster and more efficiently. (The "bad guys", meanwhile, are still roaming Tora Bora or wherever they're hiding, three years after masterminding the single most monstrous terrorist atrocity in the history of terror.) But I digress.

Reviling Israel and presenting is as a threat has greatly aided these abhorrent regimes in maintaining their longevity. If by some miracle the Middle Eastern conflict were resolved and the people of the Arab world could no longer perceive the existence of an enemy threat, what do you think would transpire? My guess is that the people's attention would suddenly be caught by the state in which they find themselves. They'd look at the disparity between them and the dynasties ruling over them. They'd wonder how it is that Saudi Arabia which is drowning in oil musters less than a quarter the GDP produced by a tiny and barren Israel. They'd query why they are unable to express their opinions without fear of being incarcerated and ostracized. They'd wonder why their leaders took them into one war upon another, wasting exorbitant amounts of money when they were barely able to clothe their children. Or why their leaders' offspring were sent to boarding schools in Switzerland when 35% the population was illiterate. They might even want to indulge in the proclivities of the "west" or, at least, have the option to do so without having to answer to the polito-religious establishment which is happy to keep the people benighted for it consolidates their own power. You see where I'm going with this, I'm sure. In short, I'm pretty sure the megalomaniacs and tyrants running the Arab world would be out of power by and by, possibly facing prosecution if not even persecution. So, you see, they NEED Israel, or AN Israel. And that is why they and their predecessors have done everything they could to perpetuate the conflict and they will not cease doing so. If the conflict is to end, the main prerequisite is mass popular enlightenment which will lead to democracy and with it accountability, transparency, compromise. Of course, the existence of a conflict is preventing this from happening and this happening is imperative if the conflict is to end. Oy vey. We can only hope that introduction of media like the Internet will lead to the empowerment of knowledge which will in turn incite all the changes I talked about. It will be slow but it probably the only way.

The whole point of all this is to show Jew-haters that no: it's NOT the "occupation", it's NOT our potential nuclear weapons, it's NOT any religious zealotry which dictates we must have this or that part of land. This conflict could have been terminated decades ago; indeed, it didn't ever have to start. But there was no desire to do this among Arab leadership. Ultimately, ask yourselves this: if the Palestinians got their own state in Yesha, how long would they be happy to keep in power Arafat and his thieving clique? Don't you think Arafat has thought of it, too? 'Nuff said.

Shabat shalom.

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