MAY 16, 2021 – Yesterday I spent hours outside—trail cutting on the “back 40,” inspecting the budding pine in the “tree garden,” hikes along the shore path, and working on our granddaughter’s treehouse. When surrounded by nature for days running, you begin to notice how everything is connected. And that’s before you don a scientist’s hat. Symbiosis seems to rule.
In the midst of your nature walk, you pull out your smart phone to take a picture. While you’re at it, you sneak a peek at news headlines—surely the trees won’t notice your quick “connection” to the outside world.
Big mistake. You leave the world of the serenely connected and poke your nose under a raucous circus tent. Granted, you’re only a 10-second observer, but it’s enough to remind you that as much as you admire woods, water, wind, and waves, you’re a human being and always will be, which makes you part of the circus, like it or not.
In Israel and Gaza, it’s more than a circus. It’s another battle in an age-old conflict. Back when I was an ardent supporter of Israel, no matter what, I reacted with blind loyalty to friends. I’d never even met a Palestinian. Now it’s different. I’ve read a bunch of books, including From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas Friedman, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and Creation of the Modern Middle East by David Fromkin, My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel by Ari Shavit; tons of articles—right, left, and center. I’ve listened to people who’ve been “on the ground” at Ground Zero. I have Muslim friends. My thinking has shifted as my understanding has expanded. Perhaps most critically, I realize Israel is anything but monolithic, and thus, support for “Israel-no-matter-what” is anything but viable.
As is the case with any deep-seated conflict, the one playing out now between Netanyahu’s government and the Palestinians combines brutal, long-running history and current, myopic politics. What we see in the headlines is an eye for an eye, a rock for a flash grenade, a rocket for a bullet barrage, and more human suffering to fuel the next chapter of violence.
Where will it end . . . and when? It won’t. Why? Because the Holocaust—and exodus of survivors to Palestine—can’t now be averted any more than the Sykes-Picot Agreement (a secret arrangement between France and Britain for partitioning the Ottoman Empire after WW I) can be undone. Nor can the sale of Palestinian lands for a multiple of fair market value—by rich, absentee, Arab owners to Jews fleeing anti-Semitism in Europe—be rescinded.
If there’s one lesson to be learned by hard-left Democrats, it’s that the ultimate fruit of anti-Semitism is . . . injustice.
A universal lesson: bigotry breeds bigotry, and violence begets violence. If an understanding of far-off hatreds is too far for most Americans to grasp, at least we can work to avoid intractability among ourselves. If we don’t, our close-up injustices will mimic far-off conflicts.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
