Jewish-Arab peace

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Just wondered, are there any other people besides me who belong to Jewish/Arab descent and just sick of these hatred-based identity politics?

I hate the Israeli leadership, and the Palestinian, and the Turkish one, and most of leaderships, I guess.

Just so sick of it, and wanted to make sure I'm not alone here. Especially appreciate it if people who live/lived in Israel would comment. Because I hate Israel's actions, but then again, I have Arab friends who support independence, and understand the Jewish point of view. Because, what do you know, life is not so simple.

So anybody else here who is Jewish and thinks Palestinians should have their own country, and/or is Arab and understands why Jews want their own land?
Peace-supporting comments from outside viewers are also welcomed. As long as it's not "the Jews are wrong/right" or "the Arabs are wrong/right". While keep being self-righteous, my people and my neighbours keep on dying. And it's not worth it. If you would live here, you would understand.

I hate Israeli fascism as hell. Still, don't see how it's wrong for my family to want to live in Israel, as my family is leftist, and never had any problems with Arab neighbours. I just don't accept it when people divide it to "us and them" politics, and tell me I should hate my Arab friends, who also refuse to hate me.

f**k all politicians.

A song in Hebrew and Arabic pro-peace:
[youtube]HBah38_9smo[/youtube]

My bad translation:

Childern blinded by fire and grenades
Babies dreaming to be like heroes
From the curtain, but the curtain's down
Suddenly you're not stronger from a bullet
In the eyes of the soldiers, that are crawling there
And can only kill, and are tied to the floor
There's nothing hateful more than hatred
And it's no good dying, no, what for?
In the TV they are always "sharp", and so right
With 4 advisors - you always have something to say
But in their own rooms, there they fall into a crisis
And then you can see that they really think
Look into my eyes - we both have the same blood
We'll both be buried the same way
Let's stay brothers and not enemies
Because there's nothing more important than life

CHORUS
Look into my eyes, tell me what you see
I'm the same, who do you hate?
One kills another one, and in the name of the Lord!
And a man in a suit pushes the button
We are born as targets for cannons
They are selling missiles, selling another war
In the school they teach about dead heroes
About Zionism, what a BS, only the money speaks

(Don't remember the exact translation from Arabic - trying to work it out, will be edited)

CHORUS

A country of God? A jury of God!
And they're sitting with maps there, barking and biting
Marking borders, and sending armies
You turned our contry into a Cowboys film
And blood spills blood spills blood, mothers crying
In war there are no winners, there are only funerals
One time the victime, the other time the cause
And meanwhile the whole cemetary is filled
Look into my eyes - don't call me a nation!
You are not the judge, you are just a human being
Children die, they don't become saints
Maximum - a small name in a giant stone

Last edited by Omerik on 10 Jun 2010, 9:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Amen to that.

Double down on that.


I can understand wanting a land...but why THAT particular land? I mean, it's not exactly a great location. Deep in history but so are Iran and Iraq but I'd never want to live there.

Israel will be at peace when the muslim nations recognize Israel's right to exist. The muslim nations won't, so there will be peace when the muslim nations all attack Israel and Israel annihilates them against all odds.

You hate muslims and think they're all antisemitic regressive suicidals, we get it.

Irony topic

Browning was not being hateful, just ironic. I

Middle East Peace: Even if you saw this pig fly, you would not believe it.

Yes, but it's not YOUR history, I guess. You have to understand Jews felt foreigners everywhere, and always remembered Israel as a home. We really don't have anywhere else to go. I hate it when I hear people abroad tell Israelis "go back to Europe". First of all, not all are European - if you were an Iranian Jew, would you go back to Iran? If you were an Ethiopian Jew, would you go back there?

Second, we have different origins in our own families. Where the hell should I go myself? To hungary, where my family tried to fit in but suffered antisemitism, and now they say it's worse? To Carpathian Ruthenia, where my grandmother lived, as a Jewish minority inside a Hungarian minority, and left after she came back from Auschwitz, because she felt unwanted and travelled all over Europe, before coming to Israel because felt no place could be her home? Now it's Ukraine, and she never spoke Ukrainian, so what do I have to do with the Ukraine?

Or take my mother's side of the family - do you think Turkey is a place for me right now? Even when her parents lived there, and actually they had flourishing relations with their Turkish neighbours, they just respected each other - as much as they loved Turkey, Turkish wasn't even their native tongue. It was Spanish, which they preserved since 1492, though haven't been living there for the past 500 years.

So here's your answer - I have no any other place to go. My family wouldn't go back, and me? I was born here. My friends, my home, my language, my football team, my culture, it's all here. Would the American people go back to Europe/Africa/wherever their families came from? I sound like the fascists right now - because they use it as an excuse to everything Israel does. But while it's not an excuse, and while Arabs have the same right to live here - that's the truth. Telling me to get out of my land is not fair. I was born here, my family kept mentioning it in Europe and dreaming of being a free nation, what other place do I have?

Why wanting this land in the first place? Because Jews were haunted in Europe, went through progroms and genocide, and Theodor Herzl, father of Zionism, just wanted antisemitism to stop. He first wanted the Jews to convert to Christianity, just to end this issue... He was secular and just wanted to stop being persecuted. He agreed to be considered European and not Jewish. Zionism began in Europe as a response to grown antisemitism - Jews tried to fit in, but had a hard time, some wanted to preserve their culture and heritage, some didn't but weren't so much wanted. So they started thinking about a new solution - a homeland for Jews.

Now, if you understand wanting a land, and understand the circumstances, what other land could we want? And it's not that Israel was the only option. But it was the fairest one. Some proposed other locations. Israel was the most practical one, and felt the most "right". It was a land which we're related to through our history, and it didn't belong to anyone else. While people say it was "stolen", it was all sand here, and only after the Ottoman Empire collapsed, Arabs living here started developing their identity. There was no Palestinian nation back then, even Palestinian leaders themselves admitted so.

While an Anarchist, and thus believe everyone should have the right to live wherever they want, I agree that Zionism as a movement isn't so much relevant today. Post-Zionism they call it. Saying it was needed back then, but it's ideals aren't relevant for now. Yet, I don't live here because I'm a Zionist, I live here because I was born here. It doesn't even matter if you agree with Zionism or not - I don't agree with stealing lands from Native American people, but I don't think Americans should pay for it today... Since I was born here, since I don't know any other home, people should accept my right to exist here.

Same thing for Arabs who were born here - I just gave the view from where I stand.
What's there to understand with people wanting to live in their homes? Most Israelis welcome a two-state solution, so do most Arabs, according to all surveys I know. Problem is leaders, and lack of trust in one another. The problem is not wanting a land, is that people want it for themselves, or don't allow others the same rights.

*This thread might seem meaningless, because it's easy to say "I support peace", but I was drunk and so frustrated at recent events, and angry towards everyone - Hamas, Israeli government, Turkey, Israel supporters, Israel opponents, Jews, Arabs. I just want people to let me be, in my home, and to let others be, as well.

Wasn't the Jewish Diaspora around 200AD? You're expecting me to believe that Israel existed to generations 10+ down the line after this Diaspora as anything more than a mythic "Jews aren't hated here" land? Sorry but it just seems like romantic myth than hard historical fact. The tone of universality in much of the narrative sounds like hyperbole.

And I didn't mean it as "go back to Europe" so much as "why didn't you guys think this through a little more?"

For all of those centuries, each year at Pesach we say, "Next Year in Jerusalem." Why there? Well aside from the fact that it is the land from which the Jews were expelled by the Babylonians and later the Romans, it is the only place where the Temple can be erected. (Okay, the Haram is now occupying the site, but that doesn't mean that we can suddenly build it in Mexico somewhere).

Each year in summer we lament on Tisha B'av, mourning the loss of the Temple. In the diaspora we celebrate most festivals for two days to ensure that our observance overlaps the observance within Israel.

These are aspects of Jewish culture and practice that have survived for all of these centuries. Yes, it is a romanticised notion--but it is no less a part of Jewish identity.

So....it's a Jewish Jihad to reclaim the holy land?




Yet another layer to this onion that I STRIDENTLY don't relate to.

/seriously, isn't it bad enough with one sect of religious nutjobs in that area?

“If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel.”

— Benjamin Netanyahu

They don't need to put down their weapons yet. Stopping the settlements would be a good start and reigning in the rogue settlers that harass others would be a start.



[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjgP33-Hi1c[/youtube]



^Now it's understood that these kids are just punkasses who should be locked up...but that kind of attitude doesn't help things.

The destruction of Israel is stated as one of Hamas' primary goals in their charter.

You must have pretty good shoes to make an intellectual leap like that.

You begin by dismissing the concept of Israel in the diaspora as a romantic notion. I respond by suggesting that cultural practice makes Israel meaningul throughout the diaspora and that becomes in your mind a, "Jewish Jihad to reclaim the holy land?"

Israel is important, yes. But not to the exclusion of all else. Even a cursory review of my posts on these topics will demonstrate my belief that Israeli policy with respect to settlements is wrongheaded and that a two state solution is necessary, but impractical until Palestinians develop the capacity to exercise self-government.

Only a very few have ever suggested rebuilding the Temple. Many Orthodox will not support any Jewish State or rebuilding of the Temple until the coming of the Messiah. Others take the eminently practical view that the destruction of the Haram would be an unconscionable act.

Your intellectual leap leaves no room for nuance. Support for Israel does not mean support for everything that Israel does. Support for the Palestinians can be tempered by the view that Hamas is in no position to effectively run a government and manage a State.

You're talking about a temple and a holy land. It's religious, not cultural, therefore the quest is the same as that of a jihad.

At what point did religious practice cease to be part of a community's culture?

I will grant you that the word, "culture," has a multiplicity of definitions, but I know of none that draws an arbitrary line to exclude religiously motivated practice from the term. Is Bach's B Minor Mass to be excluded from Western European cultural history because it is a musical setting for a religious service? Is Michaelangelo's David excluded because the subject is a character from scripture? Is the Haram to be excluded from the architectural culture of the Arabian peoples because it is a building erected for a religious purpose?

I choose to take the view that with respect to any given population, their "culture," is a sum total of their shared values, attitudes and practices, sufficient to distinguish the population from other populations. In that sense, Religion is inseparable from the cultures in which it fourishes--both for good and for ill.

I am a participant in many cultures: the City in which I reside has a culture distinct from other cities; my country has a culture distinct from other nations; my ethnic heritage brings in other cultural practice; my religious heritage brings in yet others. Consider kashrut. I have kept kosher in the past (though I do not do so at present). My motivation for doing so was entirely cultural--it was a common link between me and other Jews. I do not believe that it is a divinely mandated practice, and my reasons were not a matter of religious belief, but the cultural practice cannot be separated from the religion that inspired it.

Putting a mezuzah on my doorposts is as much a cultural practice as is wearing a kilt on Burns Night. The fact that a common practice amongst a people has a religious origin does not make the practice any less a part of their culture.