In response to Byron, and before I get stuck in to Rodney Stark (which may end up being tomorrow now…) some not wholly formed thoughts about “the Middle East”.<\/p>\n
1. The foundation of Israel was probably unjust and a mistake, in that it is explicitly racist (if you’re a member of a particular race then you qualify for citizenship). I’m not sure such a racist foundation is defensible.<\/p>\n
2. That debate is academic however, in that the state exists and has done for 60+ years. Whatever the pro’s and con’s of the foundation the passage of time confers (imho) a very great deal of legitimacy over and above the legal foundation and, to use the current expression, I fully support Israel’s right to exist.<\/p>\n
3. I see the root cause of the troubles as a rejection of Israel’s right to exist on the part of the wider Arab\/Islamic population. This has a number of components:
– armed hostilities aimed at strangling the state at birth, followed by several further wars over the following decades;
– conscious cultivation of the Palestinian diaspora as a running sore in international relations (the Palestinian problem could have been solved decades ago with good will on the Muslim side);
– refusal to normalise relations with Israel\/ declare that it shouldn’t exist.<\/p>\n
4. I’m quite sure that there have been war crimes committed on the Israeli side, but I don’t see that as exceptional to Israel (ie Israel is not singularly evil, or even particularly evil).<\/p>\n
5. Hamas is an Islamist organisation and I don’t see any practical way for Israel (or indeed the West as a whole) to accommodate Islamist organisations and remain itself. From Israel’s point of view it is facing an enemy which wishes to annihilate it, and I can understand it not wanting to surrender (no responsible state could). But this means that Israel only has bad options to choose from.<\/p>\n
6. I don’t see this crisis ending until either a) Israel is destroyed; b) Islamism is destroyed (possibly via a nuclear bomb being detonated above Mecca, among other things); or c) divine intervention.<\/p>\n
That’s my two pennies anyhow.<\/p>\n
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