Guest post: Everything is more complicated
Originally a comment by Athel Cornish-Bowden on It is important to distinguish.
We should never forget the Deir Yassin massacre carried out by Irgun terrorists led by Menachem Begin, who later founded Likud, the current party of government, which continues the ideas of Irgun with less overt violence. Likud is largely responsible for the humiliations and hardships that Palestinians suffer every day, starting with the continuing invasion of the West Bank. If some Palestinians feel pushed into retaliating in horrific ways then we still need to ask who is ultimately to blame. A few years ago we had a colleague older than us — well into her 70s and maybe 80s — who was involved in non-violent support of Palestine. She and a group of like-minded people went to the Gaza Strip to see for herself how the the people were living. She had of course to go through Israel to get there and encountered extremely hostile officials who tried to stop her, and considered it quite normal to knock down an elderly woman whose opinions were not ones they approved of.
At the same time not all Israelis are like that. I have quite a few Israeli colleagues and friends, of whom few, if any, would contemplate voting for Likud, I guess. Some were quite vocal about criticizing the colonization of the West Bank when I went to a meeting in Beer Sheba (once a predominantly Christian and Muslim city, but not now) in 2013. The queue for checking in at the airport of Marseilles was interesting. The people going to Tel Aviv were all mixed up with people going to Constantine (Algeria), thus almost half Jewish and half Muslim (plus a few oddities like me). I didn’t detect any sort of hostility between the two groups: it seemed perfectly possible for Jews and Muslims to meet and chat on a personal level without any displays of antipathy.
If one is brought up as a Christian one almost automatically assumes that the Christians are the good guys when they’re involved in a dispute with non-Christians (for example in the current hostility between Armenia and Azerbaijan), but they certainly weren’t the good guys during the Lebanese civil war or during the break-up of Yugoslavia. Everything is more complicated than one may want to think.
In my view the difference between Likud and Hamas is that one has state power… They’re both groups of Middle Eastern religious conservatives…
No.
I object to defending atrocities in this way. The Israeli government can point to the Holocaust, to thousands of years of antisemitism, to Islamist rhetoric and terrorism. They are still the ones responsible for their actions. Likewise, Hamas is responsible for its horrific actions.
Many serial killers were terribly abused as children. It’s recognized that child abuse or parental rejection can cause secondary psychopathy, but we hold perpetrators responsible for their own actions.
Playing “But HE started it” is NOT how to end cycles of violence.
After generations of fighting what use is the “who started it?” question? Everyone involved has plenty of incentive to kill people on the other side. It’s not a question of who started it but who is gonna end it?
I’m with Lady M. Atrocity, if it can be justified, must be so in virtue of something other than blame.
Remember Chomsky’s famous quip: The worst atrocities are always committed by someone else.
I agree. We each have to take responsibility for our own choices and actions in this life. To be allowed to blame childhood trauma etc etc for whatever probably lets Adolf Hitler off the hook..
The attack on Deir Yassin would not have happened if medical and supply convoys to Jerusalem hadn’t been massacred. And, of course, the actual events and death toll at Deir Yassin are lost forever in the fog of lies since then.
Lady Mondegreen: “I object to defending atrocities in this way.”
I’m surprised that you found it appropriate to say this. How did my use of the word “horrific” lead you think that I was defending what happened on 7th October?
#7. That’s an argument worthy of Hamas. They (including women and children) deserved to die, so we killed them.
Athel–
Emphasis added.