Insanity

There is an definition of insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. The conflicts between Palestinians and Israelis is an embodiment of that truth.

Here are some pictures that exemplify this on a web site that specializes in providing interesting photography, The Big Picture, at the Boston Globe website.

Pictures sear into your soul. You can read about the conflict there, but until you see individuals and see the utter insanity of their behaviour with each other, you really can't appreciate how intractable the mess really is. Personally, I would move away and avoid the conflict. (I did worked with several Israelis who left Israel and came to Canada because they saw the future as hopeless.)

The fundamental flaw in Israel's approach is to claim to be both a Jewish state and a democratic state. It is hard to be both. You can be a theocracy like Iran that pretends to be a "democracy" (see the current street riots to understand how phoney the claim of democracy is in Iran). Or you can be a democracy. If Israel takes the first approach it will be locked in endless conflict with its non-Jewish neighbors (and will have endless internal disputes of which is the "true" Jewish state/culture). If Israel takes the second approach, then demographics condemns it to be a non-Jewish state within two generations. In short, the conflicts are for naught since there is no way forward.

Sadly, life is cruel. Nature doesn't play the role of "nice guy" rewarding virtue and punishing wrong. Nature is utterly indifferent to human values. Conflicts like the one between Israel and Palestine is a human struggle but the larger dynamic of culture/religion and generations is a natural process and that is indifferent to human values. War is a human activity, but it is not a moral action with rewards for good and punishments for evil. War is a purely natural process where things beyond human values (size, armaments, financial resources, tenacity, fierceness) come to play in a completely inhuman way to realize the result. On the micro level there is all kinds of gripping human interest stories and little vignettes of morality, but one the large scale it is a completely cruel and indifferent process whereby one group/nation crushes another.

Look at picture 7: a Jewish fanatic takes on the Israeli state.

Look at picture 12: this shows you how difficult it is to fight a fanatic, they simply keep coming back at you (think of the Japanese banzai charges in WWII).

Look at picture 14: human cruelty where one side "burns out" the other.

Look at picture 16: where the Israelis harshly put down Palestinian construction (compared to their very slow, very cautious removal of Jewish settler construction).

Look at pictures 24 and 26: and think about how this incursion of settlers must feel to the Palestinians. (OK, I know, the Palestinians have themselves to blame for not reaching a settlement with the Israelis, the Palestinians suffer from a lack of accountable, reasonable governance.)

Look at picture 27: think about the personal tragedies that are embedded in the large theme of "violence".

Look at picture 31: this is a perfect crystalization of the insanity of the "dispute" between the two sides. Nobody is listening. There is no attempt at reconciliation and compromise. There are just two sides yelling at each other. A tragedy.