I'm always trying to record tidbits of observations I have here - consider it a bit of a running log of observations and random ideas that pop into my head but which likely have some relevance to the world around us and don't amount the to flavor of ice cream I ate today.

Anyway...

I have a video by a Palestinian "artist" - his name escapes me now. I say "artist" because the song and video is nothing more than a propaganda clip to demonstrate the suffering of the Palestinian people; I'll try to get it on here if I can one day. If you look at the clips and think about them, the short tidbits shown have nothing to do at all with the actual content of the song but they are arranged in a rather way convicing way - this is nature of propaganda.

Anyway, no point in talking about that much until I can get the video on here. Rather, I will try to reiterate something, a thing which I've tried to explain in the past.

Clearly the Palestinians feel themselves to be desperate, that is no argument. The argument rather has to be turned and to reflect on the cause(s) of the desperation. Sometimes I think that the term "Arab-Israeli" conflict is more suitable and accurate than the term "Palestinian-Israeli" conflict simply because of the fact that the Palestinians are not a fully independent entity and the Arab governments surrounding them and the Israeli's are behind much of the chaos, almost as if the Palestinians serve as a wing of the conflict, even without knowing it.

I do however feel that they are painfully aware of the role that they play in Arab politics, which is why, if anything, the Palestinians have a more important role to play than any of the other Arabs in bringing peace between themselves and the Israeli's. They understand the full effects on their society of the war with Israel that their terrorist groups and the Arab countries support, effects which are only secondary or tertiary to the surrounding civilian populations and governments but which destroy the quality of life of the Palestinians. Truly the Palestinians are landlocked between Israel's insistence on defense and the Arab states' insistence on destroying Israel, but they don't turn around and curtly tell the Arabs to knock it off, rather they emphasize the need for Israel to give them what they want, and the more they do this the more they serve the Arab purpose of seizing Israel - a purpose which serves the Arabs more than it does the Palestinians, much more. The Palestinians, to use a graphic and adult example, are like a whore and the Arabs are like a pimp and use them for their gains, not their own. The problem is that the Palestinians are people and accordingly will create a method by which to deal with the situation in which they find themselves , a coping mechanism. Islam has been used as a tool of war providing the Palestinians with the ideology needed in order to ennoble them and to give them hope in the face of desperation, to shed some light on their darkness.

It cannot be ignored however that this (Jijad) is not just your average run of the mill Negro Spiritual, it's a call to murder and destroy the perceived source of the chaos - it's truly a wonder how different cultures facing the same or similar circumstances react in starkly different ways. Can we imagine if the enslaved African Americans took the methods that the Palestinians use today; strapping bombs to themselves and detonating them in crowds of white people, both innocent and guilty? There was violent resistance but there was nothing in the African American culture similar to suicide bombing to draw upon. There was also violent resistance among the Jews in ghettos of Europe but that never amounted to Jews escaping the ghetto walls and blowing themselves up in German cafes. On top of the very orchestrated quagmire of the Palestinians by the Arab leaders, their culture, not just their situation, is to blame for the usage of suicide bombing, meaning that it is a conscious tactic, not an act borne out of desperation. We can't forget that Palestinian society has a suicide rate like anyone else's, composed of pill overdoses, carbon monoxide poisioning, and slit wrists - suicide bombing does not fall into this category. The leaders have manipulated Islam to use the worst elements of it, very likely in a fashion not in alignment with the wishes of Islam itself. However, that becomes a moot point when the clear association between suicide bombing in the name of Islam, and Islam, is Islam. For those who care about keeping Islam's good name and separating it from this false perversion and tactical manipulation of their pure faith, a simple declaration that people should not associate the two is a lacking and even irresponsible response for something that is so important to them. It is on the verge of causing people to think that the relative silence is absolute approval.


Consider the Orthodox Jews, some Israeli, Neturei Karta, whom take to the streets with anti-Israel (and pro-Palestinian) slogans and signs and try to chant down the Israeli state based on their own convictions that the State of Israel is an obstruction to Judaism's most cherished religious conceptualization of the Coming of the Messiah; nevermind that the gold-plated dome standing right on top of the Temple Mount and preventing its rebuilding also obstructs Judaism's most cherished religious conceptualization of the Coming of the Messiah. I am in severe disagreement with Neturei Karta and their ideology but that doens't stop them from standing out there in the heat in their black frock coats and shouting the worst half-truths about Israel possible, in the name of Torah. How disturbed they are, but oh, how gallant and noble at least they deserved to be called on the basis that they put themselves at complete odds with the rest of their co-religionists in the name of something they believe to be absolutely true. If the Muslims were the same they would also be producing the Muslim phenomenon of Neturei Karta, Muslims whom find wrong the notion of the Palestinian state based on a specific Qur'anic understanding. Neturei Karta points out that the Talmud, the same book of Jewish Oral that many Muslims say teaches that non-Jews are dogs, says that the State of Israel's establishment is not synonymous with Messianic Redemption, and it is THIS and this alone which is the core reason for Neturei Karta's hatred of the State of Israel, simply that there is a Jewish government that is secular and not religious, as if the Jewish people have not been through some of the toughest travails in the last 2,000 years, subsequently leading them away from religion. An aside, if Neturei Karta truly had the big picture in their mind, they would try to soothe the raging psyche's of their fellow Israeli Jews and try to bring them back to religion - alienation is never a tactic that works. It is so ironic that people lambasted Rabbi Meir Kahane for alienating Jews in the attempt to wake them up to the folly of their ways but Jew-haters exalt Rabbi Dovid Weiss for doing the same thing but in the opposite direction. Even more troublesome is that Israeli Jews were more bothered by Rabbi Kahane's teachings than by Rabbi Dovid Weiss'. It is an accurate enough depiction that Rabbi Dovid Weiss is a left-wing Orthodox Jew and Rabbi Meir Kahane was a right-wing Orthodox Jew. It also should be known that an Arab assassinated Rabbi Kahane while no Arab would ever assassinate a Jew in Neturei Karta (and they shouldn't) because they find their views to be instrumental to the bloody and false Palestinian cause.

A video of Rabbi Dovid Weiss


A video of Rabbi Meir Kahane