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PSA
If you believe that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and sundry conflicts throughout the Middle East, will never be solved while current political and economic structures are intact, then I think you're likely right.
If you believe that said conflicts will not be resolved because you are the sort of curmudgeon who believes that people will always be fighting for some reason in one part of the world or another, then I disagree with you, but I'll shrug it off and not think any less of you for being cynical. I like cynics—I am one, at times—but if I didn't think a better world was possible, I'd have to pretty much give up, y'know?
If, however, you believe any of the following:
• there is something different about people in the Middle East that makes them fight more than people elsewhere, either because of a genetic factor or because of deeply rooted cultural values;
• Jews and Arabs have never gotten along and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been going on since the beginning of time and they never will get along because of something moronic written in some book somewhere;
• the ones who want to fight should be put on an island somewhere where they can duke it out and everyone else will shrug their shoulders and go on with their lives, and furthermore you are very clever for coming up with this solution all by yourself;
• "they" don't want peace;
• a resolution will only be reached once one population is deported or slaughtered; or
• the only way there will ever be peace in the Middle East is if a) the desert is turned to glass, b) the desert is turned into a parking lot, or c) someone drops a giant fifth-dimensional alien squid on a heavily populated area;
then really, you are an idiot, you lack historical perspective, and you are a racist schmuck. I got over that "turn the desert to glass" bullshit in high school at around the same time I got over Ayn Rand. It's basically the fascist end of the liberal "a plague on both their houses/cycle of violence" mentality and is just as absurd. The only reasons to think that you're living at the end of history are because you have an ego problem or are heavily invested in your own apathy, or both.
Yeah, just braid my hair and call me Pollyanna, motherfuckers. This too shall pass.
If you believe that said conflicts will not be resolved because you are the sort of curmudgeon who believes that people will always be fighting for some reason in one part of the world or another, then I disagree with you, but I'll shrug it off and not think any less of you for being cynical. I like cynics—I am one, at times—but if I didn't think a better world was possible, I'd have to pretty much give up, y'know?
If, however, you believe any of the following:
• there is something different about people in the Middle East that makes them fight more than people elsewhere, either because of a genetic factor or because of deeply rooted cultural values;
• Jews and Arabs have never gotten along and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been going on since the beginning of time and they never will get along because of something moronic written in some book somewhere;
• the ones who want to fight should be put on an island somewhere where they can duke it out and everyone else will shrug their shoulders and go on with their lives, and furthermore you are very clever for coming up with this solution all by yourself;
• "they" don't want peace;
• a resolution will only be reached once one population is deported or slaughtered; or
• the only way there will ever be peace in the Middle East is if a) the desert is turned to glass, b) the desert is turned into a parking lot, or c) someone drops a giant fifth-dimensional alien squid on a heavily populated area;
then really, you are an idiot, you lack historical perspective, and you are a racist schmuck. I got over that "turn the desert to glass" bullshit in high school at around the same time I got over Ayn Rand. It's basically the fascist end of the liberal "a plague on both their houses/cycle of violence" mentality and is just as absurd. The only reasons to think that you're living at the end of history are because you have an ego problem or are heavily invested in your own apathy, or both.
Yeah, just braid my hair and call me Pollyanna, motherfuckers. This too shall pass.
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A few people have asked me if I'm ever going to use my Birthright Israel privilege to get a free trip... and my answer has always been no (and that privilege will expire when I turn 26 in four months). I last visited Israel with my family, roughly around the time Saddam Hussein decided Iraq would invade Kuwait. Perhaps if some time in the distant future, Israel is no longer a 15 on a scale of 1 to clusterfuck, I will consider it.
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Though, you can just read the funny pages.
Though I have to wonder what is causing you such angst because this problem doesn't directly effect you. Though perhaps it's lack of material effect on your own life is why you can have such an easy time to just avoid it.
I'm not criticizing your choice of not trying to understand this, but it makes me wonder why you read this post and participated in the thread.
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If Israel is a 15, Baltimore is a 120.
"Israel 2006:
5.4 deaths from crime, terror and war per 100,000 inhabitants
United States 2006:
5.7 deaths from murder and non-negligent manslaughter per 100,000 inhabitants
Various U.S. metropolitan areas* report above-average deadly violence. Here are a few examples from among many. The numbers represent murders per 100,000 residents:
New York City, 7.3
Los Angeles, inside city limits, 12.4
Los Angeles metro area, 8.4
Miami metro area, 7.6
Philadelphia (AKA the City of Brotherly Love), 27.7
Washington, D.C., inside city limits, 29.1
Baltimore, inside city limits, 43.3
Detroit-Dearborn metro area, 23.0
The numbers come from data announced by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation in its Uniform Crime Reporting Program. This program compiles data from local law enforcement agencies throughout the United States.
The FBI reported that 17,034 acts of murder and non-negligent manslaughter took place in the United States in 2006. This was at a rate of 5.7 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants.
By contrast, Israel's 188 conventional homicide victims plus 30 people killed by suicide bombings and other acts classified as terrorism represented a rate below 3.1 violent deaths per 100,000 residents. The Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006 took the lives of 119 Israeli soldiers and 44 civilians. This added 2.3 points to Israel's violent-death rate, raising it to about 5.4 per 100,000 inhabitants.
As a percentage of population, the deaths of 119 Israeli soldiers in a six-week war were more than six times as great as the entire U.S. military death toll in Iraq for all of 2006. Despite this, Israel's rate of deadly violence including the Lebanon war deaths was not only below the 2006 U.S. murder rate but was less than the lowest yearly homicide rate ever recorded in the United States (5.5 per 100,000 inhabitants)."
Violent death---updating the U.S.-Israel comparison.
Ofcourse, Canada is way safer than the U.S., but I don't know to many Canadians who let the U.S.'s high murder rate stop them from visiting.
* I changed the order of the cities in the metro report to list those with a high Jewish-American population. Dearborn has the largest Arab-American population for a city of it's size.
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I never used my Birthright privilege. Not because I was afraid to go there—I still am planning to go there—but because when I was in my early to mid-twenties, I met a Palestinian woman who'd been forced to flee from Jerusalem when she was 12 and was never allowed to go back. And I don't think it's right that I'd get my plane ticket paid for and she couldn't set foot in the city where she was born.
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