A blogger has an opinion about Israel...

This past semester, as I have explored issues of antisemitism in my courses, as I have had students who are Israeli nationals, and as I have seen even the most moderate suggestions made by the US to Israel blasted by the right, and now, as I see Helen Thomas (who is older than fuck, by the way) leave her position as cantankerous ol' broad (said with affection now, but probably how she was seen when she started there) of the White House press pool, I think that I can officially say I can find almost nothing to support among the various parties who take a serious self-interest in Israel.

As best I can tell, not a single genuine hero has come out of the 60 years of strife in the region. Not one! Sadat and Begin managed to agree to not kill each other. No applause here. You should have been doing that all along.

The Israel-Palestinian conflict is, in every conceivable way, an intractable intergenerational cluster-fuck, awful from the inception of the Israeli state, a rallying cry for idiots of all stripes, and a black hole of hyperbole from which no useful information escapes. The whole Israel-Palestine region is a hodgepodge of nationalistic nightmares, pigheaded ideologues, and opportunistic posturing. It is an excuse for group A to do whatever the fuck they want to group B and an excuse to not compromise. It is perhaps where the most obviously gray areas in international relations are routinely portrayed as if they were black and white.

I don't hate any individual. I don't hate any ethnic group. I don't prefer any religious creed over another (I think that they are all equally infantile). I don't have any personal investment whatsoever in the region or in any party's success. I think the whole Israel-Palestine area is the most ridiculously overvalued parcel of land on the planet and that you'd have to be fucking crazy to want to live there...and guess what?

I hate that some absurd traditional loyalty to the integrity of Israel exerts so much influence over American foreign policy. It don't think that it is "the Jews" who hold so much sway. It's clearly a homegrown lobby. As a little kid, I thought that Israel was an ally in a generally Soviet-sympathetic region, and that's why we supported them. When the global balance of power shifted, I truly expected the US to reevaluate its strategic interest in Israel and be able to address the pressing human rights issues there through diplomacy and making it clear that our friendship was conditional, as it should be with every nation. That reevaluation seems to me to have never been made, nor does it seem likely to.

I see two huge problems: religion and colonialism. The religion issue alone makes it unlikely that the region will see peace in my lifetime--Jerusalem is where stupid creeds go to have it out. Too many world religions have fetishized this truly useless gateway to nowhere. As long as the religious/ethnically affiliated rule Jerusalem, there will be no peace. Seriously. So, we take the toy away from the fussy babies. I propose that we take Jerusalem away from the Israelis because they can't fucking share, and that we establish the city as a UN-governed International Reality Zone. Israel should have no problems with this if they are genuinely concerned for the safety and prosperity of its citizens more than they are with saving "face" (how they can look at that face in the mirror when they maintain state-sponsored ethnic internment camps...well, I don't understand why they'd want to save that face, honestly) or keeping land. You can have all the rich fucking religious traditions you want there, you just don't get to own it anymore because you are just not up to it.

Maybe sell Jerusalem to Disney and turn it into a religious amusement park or something. An international monument to Bronze Age brutality? Or maybe something useful, like a parking lot. Honestly, I have no ideas about how to salvage the region because you can't get any information that is not spun beyond recognition. What you are usually left with is two diametrically opposed positions, and you are forced to choose/accept as truth whichever one you like more. That's no way to forge a first-world nation. A pox on all of them.

HJ