Israel and Palestine

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  • The Middle East problem will never be solved until all parties accept a two state solution. I can understand the resentment about Israel building on the West Bank but a lot of the blame for lies at the door of Hamas. Israel knows that if it gives up the West Bank they will be attacked from there just as Hamas have consistently attacked them from Gaza since they gave up it up, supposedly in exchange for peace.

  • While there are two implacably opposed versions of Islam knocking nine bells out of eachother, when they're not united in hating Christans, Isrealies and the west it's always going to be a tinderbox. Even IF there's a solution to the Palastinian problem it'll just kick off elsewhere. Like any dog fight if you interfear you'll get bitten but the West never seems to learn. Maybe once we're all less dependant on oil then the incentive to get involved will be much less.

  • I'm going to update and expand my OP soon, but I can hardly let this story go by without mention here:

    President Donald Trump has announced that the US now recognises Jerusalem as Israel's capital, overturning decades of official US policy.

    Mr Trump described the move as "a long overdue step" to advance the Middle East peace process.

    The fate of the ancient city is one of the thorniest issues between Israel and the Palestinians.

    That was yesterday and was widely condemned by the world's countries, all of them, with a few exceptions.

    The Palestinians called this a disaster and end to the peace process while the Israelis said the opposite and said it will move the peace process forward.

    Unsurprisingly, violence has broken out in Jerusalem with Palestinian youths attacking Israeli security forces who don't need much of an excuse to shoot back at them.

    Hamas has called for a new intifada.

    Was this the correct move by Trump? What happens next?

  • Hamas has called for a new intifada.

    Which will have no effect other than getting more gullible youths killed.

    Quote

    overturning decades of official US policy.

    This is curious because back in 1995 there was a bill passed by congress, The Jerusalem Embasy Act, that did officially recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital but through a loophole in the legislation the president could put a six month delay in enactmant. That same loophole has allowed successive presidents to keep putting the law off every six months. What Trump has done is to actually do nothing and let the legislation take its course.

    The Palestinians will allways kick-off at anything Israel does, or another power does on Israels behalf or benefit as they deny the right for that state to even exist.

  • I think it was an unnecessarily partisan move on Trump's part. Of course it will trigger an intifada. It's what extremists live for. He played right into their hands, and one can't help thinking that he did it on poipose.

    If I were the Palestinian leadership, I would tell Israel to shove Jerusalem and put out offers to Muslim nations to help build a new city in Palestine, one that represented a modern Islamic world, free of extremism and home to a number of growing industries. I would use Trump's move to catalyze a new beginning. God doesn't exist, so what is seen as the place where he lives and some holy citadel is just ancient mental baggage. if God existed he would never allow what goes on.

    So pack up your troubles, tell Israel to get stuffed and make your own good news. I strongly suggest the Palestinians and any other folk who are going to let themselves get wound up by God, Israel and Trump to take a new road out of all that crap. They won't be sorry.

  • Tomorrow is prayers, expect it to kick off big time.

    Obviously, it's a partisan move and the Americans can no longer claim to be impartial anymore, even beyond this current president. I would like to think that this move by Trump is part of a wider strategy, so I'm going with that theory for the time being, rather than just Trump helping out his own business and family interests.

    If I were to take the liberal view that's been on the news all day and smothering the front pages of the papers, then this move is indeed a disaster. But, I'm afraid I'm going to take the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfield neo-con view here and I think this move is part of a plan that they formulated all those years ago now. Some might argue that the plan was written hundreds of years ago.

    Where has this so called peace process got anyone? Some might argue nowhere, but that's not my view, but there is a complete absence of any meaningful progress here. There is no real peace and just because the media has other things to titillate itself on up to now, does not mean the situation in this part of the world has been stable or peaceful.

    Yes, there has been far less deaths and no widespread violence, but missiles are still fired into Israel regularly and Palestinian youth end up getting shot by trigger happy Israeli troops. It goes on and on and on.

    Time for a change, perhaps? This move is forcing things. If it works, there maybe less deaths than if this move didn't happen. As Trump says, the Israelis see Jerusalem as their capital. It's where their parliament and main courts are, this just legitimises that, but it closes the door permanently to the current two state policy, at least, in its current form.

  • Agree that it's a moot point whether it is a dumb selfish move or a calculated one. I've been thinking about it all day and that's a first for me as I never waste a single second thinking about Israel. If it can in any way make things better there somehow, then go ahead. If not, then Trump will go down for having stepped in a sinkhole of poo and dragged everyone else into it with him.

  • I agree. One way or another, this is a massive change and that's why he's probably done it.

    I know, I think, where the Americans are going with this and it goes all the way back, in part, to the Sykes-Picot agreement, but specifically to the UN 1947 partition agreement to create two states, one Jewish, the other Arab. If that had happened, there would have been no problem, but obviously for the Arabs trapped in the Jewish state to be, their views differed somewhat to those who were agreeing and signing treaties on their "behalf."

    I think this is a first move to that goal and will eventually result in the expulsion of the majority of the Palestinians from Israel. If the Israelis by conducting this mass expulsion leaves hordes of bodies of men, women and children in their wake, then for the next two thousand years, they will be known as the nazis. Either way, a lot of blood is going to get split. I hope its worth it.

  • Good post, H.

    Already, there is trouble. The Palestinians are in no mood to be told by an Israel sympathetic American that their history is bunk. There will be even more cack in the fan blades as the international community is well aware of the Palestinian plight, the theft of their land, the expulsions, the nasty squatter camps and poverty where the unchosen were dumped, etc.

    I suspect that there will be the mother of all backlashes from the international community. And I would support this. The saga of Palestine is one that a lot of Christians point blank refuse to acknowledge. And as I am not a Christian, I do not give a flying fandango for their precious religious fantasies. Nor those of Islamic terror merchants and fundamentalists.

    This is a case, and always has been, of a displaced people who were simply considered to be insignificant in the redrawing of the territory. An issue that has affected other people too in the history of triumphant conquerors deciding where we all should go.

    It will not be the first time the Israeli state has been likened to the nazis nor to the apartheid regime of South Africa and now, Trump may drag America into this appellation too. Mind you, as they are also keen on religious motivation for many of their wars against socialists and Muslims, I think this might be appropriate.

    For justice to be done, one needs objective reasoning and intelligent compassion. I don't think that exists in the present State of Israel's ambitions (although there are many among the populace who disagree and are silenced by the powers that be), nor does it exist in America's hatred of everything and anyone who isn't a Protestant and a sympathiser with the imaginary birthplace of their adopted God.

    Just my opinion, but it has always been my opinion and I'm sticking with it, and I'm almost certainly not alone in this opinion.

  • First, I must declare my personal position because otherwise my comments will be viewed as anti-Semitic. Like Jonathan Miller, I am not so much a Jew, more Jew-ish.

    It must have been about 30 years ago when I was in a bookshop in Heathrow deciding what to take for my journey and I saw a paperback titled "The Israeli-Palestinian conflict explained in 100 pages". I almost bought it and then at the last moment I put it back on the shelf on realising the explanation was already clear in my mind: they're mad buggers .... on both sides.

    I've yet to find a more persuasive explanation - even after seeing the play "Oslo" 2 nights ago.

    Sure, it's also religion and racialism but in the case of Israelis and Palestinians I think these are often just facilitating reasons for animosity, hostility and self-righteousness.

    You could blame the whole mess on Balfour and the vacuous platitudinous signing off by the UN. Or you could blame the mess on the Jewish preoccupation or mania for Zionism, perpetually reinforced since WW2 by "remember the Holocaust". Or you could blame the mess on the US endless drive for hegemony and oil having made Israel into their 51st state. Or you could blame the mess on the hypocrisy of Jews remembering the holocaust and yet forcing or acquiescing in ousting Palestinians from their land and, worse still, continued to turn the the knife in the wound building Jewish settlements on the diminishing amount of habitable land that was occupied by Palestinians. Israel's so-called justification for this is a freehold covenant from the Bible, as being God's "Chosen Few". From the Palestinian's point of view, "what's not to dislike?"

    You could also blame the problem - be it pogroms, holocaust or other persecutions throughout the centuries - on the refusal of so many Jews to assimilate. If Jews didn't choose to parade their religious self-identity in such a conspicuous way, they would just be regular people like you and me, with their own personal private beliefs or non-beliefs, like you and me, who have personal foods they like or dislike, like you and me. In a mostly mono-cultural country, say Christian/Catholic, they might still be slightly discernibly Jewish from an above average tendency to gesticulate, a Sephardic nose or eyelids or an above-average tendency to start a sentence with "already" or "so" - but that is hardly in itself the stuff of segregation. An uncritical live-and-let-live co-existence could become far more likely. But every time a Jew is seen walking the street with a long black gabardine coat, a skull-cap, a bushy beard and a prayer shawl sticking out of his trousers - or a TV documentary depicting the weird backward, oppressive lifestyle of Jews who live in places like Stamford Hill - this increases the probability that my gentile wife will get asked by friends inviting us to dinner "is there anything that Rob can't eat?". It is why, when I took the wrong footpath, got lost and found myself trespassing on a farmer's land, the farm owner strode up to me and said "get off my land, you yid". You don't forget that in a hurry. Yet even if that happened too often I'd still rather move to New York or Miami than than to a Jewish homeland surrounded by neighbours from hell.

    Maybe the problem doesn't have to be that deep. Maybe if the Israelis had less arrogance, less presumption of being The Chosen Few, they would have voted for Tzipi Livni rather than Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could have reached an understanding.

    That said, just as long as Israel is a homeland for Jews, it can never be a country shared between Jews and Palestinians. Not just because Israeli's Jand Palestinians - and their respective religions are, to say the least, uneasy bedfellows - but also because the Palestinian birth rate is far greater than the Israeli's birth rate and, in 1-2 decades, Israel will have lost it's identity as a Jewish homeland. Sharing Jerusalem would just be the thin edge of the wedge towards the dissolution of a Jewish homeland.

    A two-state solution is a daft concept. Israel already has a state and Jerusalem is its de-facto capital. And if one insists on using the spurious justification of biblical or historic entitlements, then Israel has more of that bullshit than does Palestinian.

    With some common sense humanity and financial help among Middle East nations, Palestinians could live anywhere in the Middle East.

    For me the bigger point is that In an improved world of live-and-let-live, a religion shouldn't need a homeland. Okay, Israel has one. But let's not make a habit of it.

  • I think the problem was the Jordanian King, the original one. There was too much support for him from the West and the growing unease at the time of the House of Saud and their Wahhabi supporters. The West never pushed the Jordanian King into turning "his" state to-be into the new Palestine as the 1947 agreement originally envisaged.

    Why the other Arab nations never support the Palestinians, including with financial aid, is something I will never understand, perhaps that will happen now if they now get "displaced," as I suggested that might happen.

    On the Jews around North London, that is a minority although there are still thousands of Orthodox Jews in London with very extreme views. They have their own schools, shops and even have their own police and ambulance service. Hardly integration, I agree.

    Yes, there are a lot of mad buggers over there and all this started well before the Holocaust occurred, so the wish of the Jews to have their own homeland cannot be attributed to that, but that event was the "icing on the cake" for them. You can't blame them for that.

    Anti-Semitism had been rife in Europe for centuries before Zionism started. I think I read that the Jewish population of Britain/England had been expelled at least on three different occasions. Clearly, the Jews felt they needed their own place to live and the events of the Holocaust just accelerated that wish into a fierce demand.

    In a nutshell, the problem is two tribes claim the same land, that can never work. One tribe came along and with support from its powerful ally America, drove off the others. The Jews are not going anywhere, the Arabs tried twice to destroy Israel and failed. It's terrible for the Palestinians, but if they are unable to live with the Jews in peace which most of them aren't, then they need to go elsewhere, in the process destroying what little of their lives and culture remains.

    Perhaps Trump's move is just stating the reality. The country and its capital does belong to the Jews now, until someone has bigger guns than them to drive them away. (unlikely)

  • For justice to be done, one needs objective reasoning and intelligent compassion. I don't think that exists in the present State of Israel's ambitions (although there are many among the populace who disagree and are silenced by the powers that be), nor does it exist in America's hatred of everything and anyone who isn't a Protestant and a sympathiser with the imaginary birthplace of their adopted God.

    Most of the Israelis are modern, moderate and West facing. Some are not. Their thinking and actions are something from thousands of years ago. They're the ones in the driving seat at the moment.

    Religion does play a VERY important role in all this mess, but as I said its even more basic than that. You cannot have two very different tribes trying to share the same land. Where does that work anywhere else in the world? God is just another excuse to fight over, but whether they have jobs, can get their kids to school and live their lives as they wish are far more important that God to both of the tribes.

  • At least two previous presidents said they wanted to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel but didn't because of fear what that would unleash from Arabs, especially Palestinians. There is an appealing innocence or straightforwardness in Trump getting off that diplomatic fence. The majority criticise him for acknowledging this hard truth, even though most conflicts around the world are prolonged by interminable negotiations which are mired in fudge or unworkable compromises.

    Perhaps one of the reasons why the Arab world doesn't support the plight of the Palestinians is that they realise that the Palestinians have become their own worst enemy, or a bunch of losers, choosing self-martyrdom rather than move forward. Certainly Arafat didn't do the Palestinian cause any favours. Nor does Hamas.

    A possible second reason is that much of the Arab world gravitates to strength rather than weakness, to an un-pitying degree.

    A third reason is that the most obvious way the Arab world could help the Palestinians is to re-arrange their borders, shaving off an inconsequentially small proportion of their land-mass to enable the Palestinians to form their own state in a habitable land-mass (not easy but do-able) but the Arabs would then have the Palestinians on their doorstep making a nuisance of themselves.

    The fourth reason why the Arab world is content to let the Palestinians be Israel's biggest neighbour from hell is that it gives Israel a hard time and deflects from the hostility or ambivalence to Israel felt by other Arab nations.

  • Personally, I don't see Trump as non-partisan on this. His daughter is married to a very wealthy Jew and has converted to modern orthodox Judaism. When you see pictures of Trump, wearing a yarmulke and touching the ancient wall, attending Hanukkah, etc you get the distinct impression that he is partisan and using his power as US President to send a message to others, including the United Nations, that things will go the way that suits him and his interests and his interests will lie ideologically with Israel and economically with oil producers. The Christian factions of America are literally jumping with excitement at this recognition of Jerusalem because they think it's the capital of their God and Saviour. (Their adopted God and Saviour.) That is far madder than any real connections real Jews or Palestinians have with it in this context. The Americans of that stripe are, to me, a scary bunch and we all know they rush off to war at the drop of a hat if you tell them it's for their God. There is little difference between that kind of nutter and any other religious kind. They come in vast numbers and are perilous to world peace, as Hitler and his nazis proved without doubt when they decided they were the chosen people and Jews were the spawn of Satan. No one wants a repeat of any of that lunacy from anyone - ever again.

    Trump's family and personal connections are a very volatile inclusion, but it seems to be one America follows, believes in and has every intention of finally implementing. In this respect, all this Islamic terror and radical fundamentalist antics from Muslim clerics has highlighted what looks like a dire need to be on Israels' side on this issue to those who uphold the forces of Armageddon that fight for the Jewish version of this God, bearing in mind the original deific persona is one and the same. One might also bear in mind that Richard the Lionheart slaughtered Jews as well when he rampaged through the region and his Knights waded ankle deep in both Jewish and Muslim blood. So much for that special relationship in the cold light of day.

    The Israeli/Palestinian conflict seems similar to the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland. This, too, is ongoing, based in ethno/religious animosity and seemingly without a solution. Underneath, lie invasion and conquest issues that make the foundation for ongoing strife.

    And so it is with the Burmese and the Rohingya and the Serbs and the Muslims in Kosovo, etc. These conflicts are so complex and so entrenched in the problem of ethnic rights and nationalist aspirations that simply bombing people into submission doesn't usually make them go away, although genocide inside that wrapper can mean that one side becomes unable to keep up the fight. This happened to the Serbs who were outnumbered by their fast breeding Muslim enemy and Rob has mentioned this with regard to the Jews and Palestinians and it is the same complaint of the Buddhists of Myanmar and the fast breeding Muslim Rohingya among whom radical insurgents were taking up residence.

    What can be done about these conflicts? I don't agree with the "we are all the same, let's just hug" theory. We are only fighting because we are all so diverse. Once the social engineers have their bland "humans" they will discover that this begins to diversify into new groups. That is how Nature works and no matter how much of a world citizen and bigtime hugger anyone might be, Nature usually comes round to clobber any of our ideological aspirations with a weapon made out of our innate drive to diversify in order to survive and our genes.

    Trying to deny or oppress those instincts is probably not a good idea. They grow under the surface like boils and then erupt when they are least wanted or needed.

    What to do? I don't know but I think shrinking is better than ballooning. This means that education is the only way to prevent religious ideology and beliefs from wiping away progress. How does one educate people who reject anything outside of the context of their Holy Books? Even reject science because it flies in the face of myth? I don't know. Once there are mobs of crazed acolytes and a small spark, you have a large conflagration and as everyone gathers to celebrate the glorious dead of two unspeakably dreadful global conflicts every November, I find it odd that many are so keen to risk this again.

    I come from a generation that was utterly against war, other than for self defence, obviously. To have peace one has to have a certain objective comprehension of what maintains peace and what causes war. One cannot live in John Lennon's realm of "imagine" unless one is permanently stoned on weed. That is what was causing him and others to see things this way. One needs solid rationale and genuine compassion for the needs and aspiration of humanity's groups. One doesn't have to bring God into anything. After all, he never acts. It is humanity that acts and creates problems where solutions are prevented by dogma and dogmatic attitudes to overcoming problems.

    So maybe the question should be, how does one get humans to co-exist on this planet without blowing each up and, finally, irradiating the world they live on because they have lost all sense of reality and can only think in terms of cash and a God who has told them they are special? The Jews are now only a small group who have the chosen people ideal and many Jews are secular. It is the vast number of nutters in the rest of the world's huge populations who are ideologically ensnared.

    What to do about them???

  • Inspired by Little Wing’s comments, I’m tempted to create a new pseudonym: The Wondering Jew”. My personal bias is against strictly orthodox Judaism. Mercifully, there isn’t too much of that around. Jared Kuchner is described as a “Modern Orthodox Jew” but the reality is that Jewish observances are a movable feast. The adherence to the trappings of Judaism is often little more than an aesthetic-spiritual sense of identity. In Jared Kushner’s case, he comes from an orthodox Jewish family and yet has married a gentile (“Shiksa”), albeit a convertible one (comments deleted) I think that Jared is a Modern Jew, at best, a Modern Practising Jew. After all, research has revealed that at least 25% of so-called Modern Orthodox Jews don’t light candles on Friday night, 17% don’t keep a kosher home and 20% handle money on the Sabbath. I say “at least” because these are embarrassed rather than proud admissions.

    When seeing Trump wearing a skullcap, reverently stroking the wailing wall and attending Hunukka celebrations, Little Wing is entirely right not to be so distracted as to overlook his political partisanship which includes preserving Israel as the US outpost to protect or further US interests in the Middle East. We also see Trump engaged in some idiotic dance with a sword when meeting senior people in Saudi Arabia. In neither of those ingratiating performances do we think Trump has “gone native”. In the final analysis, on this and related matters, the Jewish Lobby in the US calls the shots.

    On most matters of social, political or religious conflict, very few of us are non-partisan. I suspect the true opposite of being partisan is to not give the matter any thought, not care either way, remain in a state of blissful ignorance, or adopt a viewpoint that will best meet one’s needs and aspirations such as affording a house, a holiday or going to a crowded shopping centre without losing a leg.

    When Trump chose to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, I believe it was the right thing to do, in spite of being approved by Jews and condemned by everyone else. Whether deliberately or unwittingly, it could be argued that Trump has lanced a boil that would otherwise carry on festering until the end of time. I see it as analogous to using explosives to blow out a persistent oil-well fire.

    Let’s get real here: Jerusalem remains a holy city open for worship to all those devout, tiresome, excitable people who set store by that sort of thing. Trump added that assurance when recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. But most of the media deliberately excluded that assurance because it contradicted their eternal prejudice against Trump. Israeli spokespersons have also confirmed that Jerusalem remains an open holy city and most of the media, from Channel 4 upwards, have excised that part of the news. (Why isn’t there a website which exposes how the media’s deliberate lies and omissions ferment wars and civil disorder, and reveal or postulate some uncomfortable home truths?).

    It would have been nice if Trump had also added that while Israel is celebrating Jerusalem as its recognised capital, this would be a good time for Netanyahu to announce cessation of building further Jewish settlements on Palestinian’s land. (However, I fear most of the damage caused by those settlements has now occurred).

    Fake news and fake political posturing are probably made for one another. For instance, for the Palestinians to get fanatically and violently worked up about this on religious grounds is a convenient excuse or displacement activity to mask their materialistic but entirely understandable ambition, which is to (re-)gain a piece of real estate. Hamas and the media are bedfellows in fanning these flames of outrage and violence.

    Thanks to Trump, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will accelerate and maybe eventually blow out, and Groundhog Day negotiations will resume. Worse case scenario: nothing changes. A few deaths brought forward.

    Personally, I don’t think Palestinians need a land of their own, any more than do the Welsh or the Scottish or Jehovah Witnesses or Irish Catholics or the Rohingyas or for that matter, the Jews. Instead, I think what happens is that co-existence within a country occurs because birds of a feather flock together. It is when they don’t that the trouble begins. Yet without diversity, life gets dreary.

    It is interesting that along with food, water and shelter, one of the primary needs of all living things is stimulation. It might be atavistic that stimulation flourishes more easily through bellicosity than tranquillity. It is significant that monkeys, on waking up, even before foraging for food and water, rush to the edge of their “territory” and scream threateningly at monkeys on the opposing side. The mad buggers of the Middle East do it with bombs. I think Little Wing is entirely right in maintaining that conflict arises from diversity, creating tribalism, creating hostility. By contrast, co-existence stems from territorial homogeneity that remains un-threatened. The Buddhists in Burma demonstrate how peaceful homogeneity reacts when threatened. The Roman Catholics in Croatia have demonstrated a sufficiently intolerant insistence on maintaining a closed-shop Roman Catholic society to persuade Muslim migrants to look for a softer touch elsewhere in the Mediterranean. Even the Italians, who obtain most of their appetite for stimulation by arguing only among themselves (in a good-natured way) - and who have survived, tolerated or shrugged away a succession of conquests - have finally baulked at rescuing an endless procession of dinghies headed to their shores containing Muslim migrants.

    Little Wing asks what to do? I dunno either! From my own selfish standpoint, thanks goodness for mortality! This is becoming an over-crowded planet and maybe one day that will change in a Darwin-esque kind of way. Or maybe the so-called civilised world will increasingly recognise the perils of political correctness and blind tolerance – there is at least a trend in that direction. Maybe secularism will increase and foster a new live-and-let-live attitude where it becomes recognised as anti-social or infra dig to parade one’s religious identity or proselytise. One thing is sure, these healthier trends won’t gain traction under a democracy where politicians are compelled to win the votes of the majority, reinforcing rather than challenging existing precepts.

    As for what to do about Israelis versus Palestinians, maybe Trump will suggest that an additional "New State of Israel", which will be formed from a large chunk of Florida, far larger than the existing one ("bigly" or "big league" as Trump would put it). For the young Israelis, disinclined to bang their head against a brick wall, holy or otherwise, this could be far more appealing than being stuck somewhere surrounded by neighbours from hell. I'm not being entirely facetious. Florida would be certainly be better than Uganda, which was being seriously considered by Zionists in the early part of the previous century, as was Texas, which already contained a large enough number of Jews.

  • I think the nazi Holocaust made many Jews reaise that those outside their belief system, or even their biological identity, were extremely perilous to their survival if anything went wrong. Their literal survival, not necessarily their survival as practitioners of Judaism. In Hitler's increasingly crazed thinking a drop or two of Jewish blood was a good enough excuse to send someone to the showers, and many neo-nazis tend to have taken this up. I went on a sort of journey of discovery years ago to see what was left of a folkish way among the people to whom I belong. I ran straight into the racism of the nazi era and found that the ideal of a black-clad, jackboot wearing Aryan with an SS badge was not just an ideal it was a romantic ideal and that ideal was centred on a sense of supremacy. The huge kick small people get from taking on the disguise of big people is difficult for many to resist.

    I complained. As a Norse Pagan, I tried to explain that our pre-Christian ancestors did not know how to hate Jews because they had nothing to blame them for. This was not accepted and I was drubbed as a left wing spy, a "pathological liar," and a wrong 'un of monumental proportions. And I was given the identity of a woman I do not know and had never heard of and they made sure this stuck by poisoning everyone through the pm system and by email that I was this woman. The woman concerned even came to the forum and explained that I was not her and this didn't help. They laughed her off and continued trolling me and some of them still do so to this day. It was hopeless. I received the same treatment when I mentioned that snuggling up to Christianity just because it is the historical enemy of Islam is equally stupid and invalid. A similar response ensued. After much dung throwing and exhausting effort, I gave up. (And so did others like me.)

    The circus continues.

    Trying to dissuade people from a stupid or unwise idea causes one to get into the role of Cordelia in King Lear. Telling the King you love him as fresh meat loves salt is looking for trouble. The King wants presents and worshipful acolytes and so the King rejects the loving daughter, places his faith in the cunning daughter and goes mad. The loving daughter dies. There is a big lesson in this. If you are Cordelia, and the King looks crazy to you, for Pete's sake get outta there before they do you in. Because they will. There are none so blind or crazy as those who prefer one sort of idea to another and base this on how much it appeals to their egos.

    Although I think the Israeli/Palestine conflict is a sort of eternal struggle caught up in one of these kind of ideas, I do think that Palestine could break away from the circuit if it had different leaders who were more interested in finding a way for Palestinians to survive, rather than spending their energy and wasting their lives on ancient struggles and animosities, especially when their enemies are friends of charismatic Christian America. It might be a bitter pill to swallow, but many of us whose forebears left the old countries for one or other reason, or who were overthrown in the old countries, know that you have to make compromises if you want to survive. I realised that the wisdom and advice we may have is not going to be accepted by our fellow travellers in the old countries. I also realised, to my surprise, that the fellow travelers in the old countries see us as foreigners and are aggressive towards us. You learn something new every time you poke your helmet on a stick above the parapet.

    I think a deep alteration occurs in the way the descendants of immigrants think and often, despite our respect for and interest in, our relatives from the old countries, they don't like us any more. They reject us if we try to support them. So be it.

    I agree with Rob that dying is a way of escaping anomalous situations and I look forward to the journey. While I'm still here, I will try to do as much that is positive that I can, but I no longer believe in the beautiful dream of a united folk and a return to the principles that are enshrined in my belief system. I see too much blistering aggro and partisan loyalty, too much war and too little interest in Mother Earth, virtually no comprehension of our ancestors and connections and so I leave them to their tea table at the Mad Hatter's party and I cut the cord that used to bind me to them so tightly. I have to move on and they are only interested in carping ad infinitum on the conundrum of how Time got choked by the butter of material success. No one has thought to do the dishes so they have run out of clean crockery and the future looks like an asylum full of little supremos, all fighting to be King.

    When Alice leaves Wonderland and starts waking up, it is also Lewis Carroll saying goodbye. And it's always a good thing to seek the future without ballast if the past is dead and the people have changed. In my religion, the people who matter are with the legions of the dead and wait for us to join them. For me, less and less of the people are now here.

    I had a dream once, where a figure took me to a room with tables and chairs and folk sitting at these. He said, "These are your ancestors. If you want to see which are still living, I will turn off the light and those who are dead will vanish." First he let me wander among the folk in the room. They were all happy to see me and told me what they used to do. Then, when I returned to the figure, he switched off the light and three quarters of the folk in the room disappeared. Those left were all that was left of my direct family on earth. I accepted this lesson and so have adapted myself to its ramifications.

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