Painted into a Corner

Personal history to the side for a moment, let's examine the nature of violence on a larger scale.  Almost everyone agrees, even most pacifists, that war is sometimes necessary.  The test case, now and probably forever, is World War II.  Forget Japan in this whole discussion, let's just talk Hitler.  Hitler has become the very definition of a madman, a megalomaniac, an unbalanced person consumed by hate and fear who wrought horror on Europe, and especially on the Jewish people.

Here's the narrative that we have been taught in history class: WWI was a pretty typical struggle between nation states for control of territory, it still involved Kaisers, Kings and various other feudal sounding figures (like Archdukes).  It was a pretty horrible conflagration where human beings first started trying out some of our new tricks, like chemistry and airplanes in the service of war.  It literally chewed up a good part of the European continent, and since Germany lost, they had to be punished.  That punishment was the Treaty of Versailles, which helped make Europe well again, largely at the expense of the German people.

As is usually the case, the next generation of Germans did not appreciate being the red-headed step children of the European community because of something that happened when they were little kids or not even born.  Along comes Uncle Adolf and his hyper-nationalist, angry young man Nazi propaganda.  And the whole Nazi thing is: we're going to show everyone how hard we can punch.  The despair and anger that allowed Hitler to take power is the same desperation and despair that has formed Al Quaeda and ISIS: our life is not as good as it should be, and it's somebody else's fault.

Basic human problem.

Enter the Jews, or rather, just sort of notice the Jews, because they were already there.  Throughout history, the Jews have been the perfect scapegoat for bad stuff; there are usually not that many of them compared to the general population, they insulate themselves from others, keeping all their secret religious days and eating their secret religious food and wearing those little funny hats.  When stuff starts rolling downhill it's really easy to make sure most of it lands on the Jews.  Seriously, it happens a lot over the course of history.

There's a fair amount of bigotry against Jewish people in America and Europe, for no really good reason.  And G-D help them in the Middle East, where the nation state of Israel has actively dispossessed an entire nation in the name of safety and security.  And this is where the rubber really hits the toad, because Arabs (particularly Palestinians) and Israelis have legitimate beef with one another.  This is no manufactured paranoia and no simple misunderstanding.  Hitler taught an entire race of people that they cannot just ignore hatred and bigotry and hope it will go away.  Israel is, even to moderate and dovish Israelis, the only hope of security in the world for the children of Jacob.

To an Israeli the threat of attack from people that live on their doorstep is no abstract threat.

To a Palestinian the notion that something precious and irreplaceable has been forcibly taken from them is not an abstraction either.

We have demonstrated the ability to fight massive wars over abstractions and ideologies.  The US and the USSR spent a good 70 years threatening to annihilate human life on this planet over different economic strategies, so I'm not throwing stones from this glass house, but this sort of thing has no happy ending, it's like Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, it's a freaking tragedy.

It's a tragedy, because the people involved are painted into a corner.  One side cannot just back down and go away, it is their life and their identity.  I have been reading a book about Zionism, written by an Israeli, and what surprises me, and brings a lump to my throat is that there are people on both sides who know this, it's not a matter of understanding, it's an utter inability to do anything about that understanding.  The thing would be for Israelis and Palestinians to live together, there is apparently plenty of room.  The problem is that Israelis cannot and will not sacrifice their security, and the Palestinians are too angry to stop trying to blow them up.

Honestly, I don't blame either side.

Intervention from the west usually just makes things worse.  We like absolute solutions, we like clear-cut win/lose decisions.  We like to be the good guys, and in this case there are no good guys, there are only gradations of wrong.

I suppose we could just hunker down and wait for the paint to dry, but that's hard, and it means you have to stop adding new paint.  I suppose also we could just walk across the wet paint and then try to clean up the mess, but in this case the mess in human lives, so don't start that stroll casually.