Most of us come with a pretty good "BD" or Bullshit Detector as standard equipment. People lie, so we need it. Not that it always works but it's still pretty good. The more obvious the lie the better our BD works. White lies sometimes get past us but whoppers rarely do.
So, why?
Why have we spent decades listening to Israeli leaders tell us how they support the "Two State" solution only to then authorize new Israeli settlements on land that plainly belongs to the Palestinians? Look at it this way - there are now more than 600,000 lies illegally occupying the West Bank. Why do we still believe this nonsense?
How in hell would Israel ever relocate, oh let's use the term "repatriate" all those settlers back into Israeli territory? Do you think they haven't already asked and answered that question? Of course they have. They're not stupid. And the answer is, and always has been, "we won't."
Take a look up top. Can you foresee Israel going back from Map 4 to Map 2? Of course not. So then you're pretending to believe that this Two State business is at least possibly in the cards. You're making this up in your mind. The only place it has any illusion of reality is between your ears.
There aren't many people still breathing who know the doctrine of "profit a prendre" or "long user." They're old real property terms from the days of the ancient British land registry system. Long user describes the situation where a farmer crosses your field to access his own. Over the course of 20 or 30-years he acquires a right of long user. It's sometimes a right of carriageway or an easement. Profit a prendre is a right to take something (okay, let's call it groundwater) from land belonging to another.
Israel has another term for "long user" when it comes to Palestinian lands. They call it "reality on the ground." It's another way of saying, "my tank is parked on that hill, ergo it's my hill." I don't think the Israelis have come up with their own term for profit a prendre but they don't need one, they just take the groundwater without it.
At this point further talk of the Two State solution should have your BD buzzing hard enough to loosen your fillings. So what's the point of pretending it's not? Is it because we don't like to think bad thoughts? Is it because we realize we're complicit in the armed conquest and illegal seizure of the Palestinian homeland? Is it because we don't like to trouble our beautiful minds with images of two generations of Palestinians already born into captivity with a third not far off? Is it because we know that what we're watching is slow-motion ethnic cleansing?
Whatever our excuse, it sucks.
2 comments:
The last time I still had any faith left at all on this point died the same day a right wing Israeli settler assassinated his own PM. Since then, I've just grown more and more disgusted, sadden, infuriated, and resigned to what I am being forced to watch happen. Isreal has not had any moral authority in my eyes for over 2 decades, and it was the way they themselves acted as a State that cost them that, it has nothing to do with religion, or support for an ideology, it has everything to do with the basic value of human life, rights, and dignity, and the way a nation founded after the horrors of those being systemically murdered appears all too willing to embrace the methods that once were used against them to suit their own national interests. I find that simply too sickening for words, and I find all the pious mouthings about how Israel is the only true democracy in the region and therefore must be supported while ignoring this blatantly obvious reality on the ground highly offensive.
Israel went beyond simple self defence a LOOOOOOOOONG time back, this has been exploitation and yes even become apartheid wrapped in that democracy flag, and I refuse to be a supporter of it. Anyone that still believes there is any real good faith within the Israeli government, any at all, for a real solution is kidding themselves, when that settler murdered his PM he murdered what shreds of that position was left within that government in my view.
I've stopped on the Israel situation because I have only so much strength for arguments, and the situation in this country takes enough out of me as it is, but I am glad voices like yours are still out the MoS, and at the least I can offer my agreement as I am here.
Is it possible that Canada closes its eyes because our colonial history of genocide and dehumanization of native peoples, chinese and japanese immigrants as well as our east indian canadians?
For Canada's decision makers to recognize the inhumanity of Isreal apartheid would cause a conitive dissonance that might even trigger a leap forward towards empathy.
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