This one for those who see a Vast Muslim Conspiracy in the world. Only they usually wrap it even further by calling it “Arab.” They’ll call Iranians (Persians the majority) and Afghans and Egyptians and Somalis and Moors and Turks and really, just everybody who Is Not Arabic “Arabs.” When they’re being P.C. of course. We know the terms for Not P.C.
Thus Religious conflicts are purged of Ethnic overtones. It only works when exploited in certain situations, like the “Clash of Cultures” theories, that also homogenize European culture… But boy, howdy, the issue does get exploited.
Never mind that most of it is made up CRAP. But the clash between Jewish Israeli and Palestinian Israeli is a fratricidal affair. Been documented for thousands of years.
The only documentation on a United Israel is from the reign of Solomon and is sometimes looked on as a “golden age.”
That ended while Solomon was still breathing, according to the book of Kings.The very first mention of Jerusalem (City of God’s Peace) in the Bible was about a War in which Abraham took part. Before there was substantial religious or cultural difference between Arab and Jew, neither tribe had yet been born, Abraham is the father of both. People who put the division between Ishmael and Isaac as the starting point just never read the scriptures.
Which, might I add again, is about the only documentation of what went on there and then.
Saying “Isaac and Ishmael” is as anachronistic as saying “Richard Couer de Leon and Saladin”.
One major reason that the conflict started and escalated over Who Owns Gaza over the millennia is that it sits directly on the overland trade routes between Mesopotamia and Egypt (and Nubia, but that’s yet another story) The money, such as it was, concentrated in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Just visualizing that will give you an obscene vision of century after long, bloody century of back and forth conquests.
Conquests also mean ethnic mixing. And, ethnic resentments.
So now there’s a wall on the east, and a wall on the west, people between the walls… and the Next round of conquests is going to be horrific. Now the overland trades are null anyway, since the “Mare Nostrum” days of Rome and especially now with the Suez canal. That leaves centuries of no particular reason to fight over it. Save one: Hatred. Masked in ethnic terms or in Religious terms or any combination thereof.
And it makes a handy flash point for the Modern Emperors to exploit. Make the passions Burn, baby, Burn!
The rest of the ancient imperial cities, Tarsus, Rhodes, Athens, Ephesus, Nineveh, Teheran, Babylon, Rome, Memphis, Alexandria… harbors made useless by climate variances and by really ill-advised man-made changes to the ports, dredging, sea-walls, temporary fixes that doomed the harbors to being filled with silt and thus, not navigable, useless for the movements of massive amounts of trade goods. Nothing to fight over, anymore. A dwindling supply of Oil. Water, of course, again due to the over-use of the prior the latter is now growing scarce, at least in useable form.
What happens when there’s nothing left worth fighting over? We see it every day.
War has now become the profit unto itself. The cost of arming and deploying Military across the world is the only thing that concentrates wealth anymore.
Never mind that it eats itself, its very nature destroys it. Peaceful reallocation and rebuilding of Real Wealth won’t make quite as much profit in the short term, the span of a human life. The War-Mongers don’t care, they don’t feel a need to leave anything for their own children any more than they do for ours. The only future they see ends with their own worthless mis-spent lives.
But we’re supposed to fight for them. For their wealth but it’s damned hard to sell that as a reason. “Fight for me, so that I, in My Own Majesty, may live in power and die wealthy!” ehhh… Just doesn’t have the same ring to it as “Glory and honor, God and Country!”
Or a promise of Liberty.
Brother Jonah, what in the Hell are you talking about?
‘Never mind that most of it is made up CRAP. But the clash between Jewish Israeli and Palestinian Israeli is a fratricidal affair. Been documented for thousands of years.’
You may just marginally be aware of this, but Israel has less than a century of existence and the Jewish/ Arab divide didn’t really exist until the French and especially the British began to exploit the 2 groups for their own ends. So how do you add this up to get ‘thousands of years’?
I find it really hard to read your material because it borders on total nonsense much of the time. You cannot just entirely create imaginary worlds in your own head and be taken very seriously when you do so. Words have meaning.
I’m sorry to have put it so blunt since I know that you are actually being supportive in your own style of the point I tried to make about Obama receiving any silly peace prize that he doesn’t deserve. It is just plain stupid to declare a war monger the most deserving peace prize candidate around. It makes one want to vomit!
Obama is feeling the heat enough to want to apologize or at least explain away his motives in Afghanistan.There were some activists, one report mentioned in the thousands, protesting the awards ceremony.
The Arab Jewish deal always was a family affair. And, yeah, it got exploited. Mostly by people who are going to make money from other people dying. Now, it’s more like people who don’t really make any money from what’s left of the spoils. There aren’t enough spoils left.
They just make the money from the act of taking it. It’s more expensive every war-cycle to get the Pillage. Now, it’s more expensive to obtain the pillage than the pillage will bring. The Romans ran into that wall. The Mercenary Military gains more than the Emperor.
For what it’s worth, Hal Lindsay predicted this 40 years ago. As I understand, so did Marx. Substantially earlier. Empire is an expensive business proposition and, finally, nobody will make money off it.
Even the hard-core capitalists are realizing it now.
Some people are wishing that Bush were still Commander in Thief. No chance anybody could ever mistake him for a man of peace.
Of course, too, any outline of any historic conflict would be oversimplified. I tried to show how complex the underpinnings of this particular conflict really are. Nope, I didn’t explain the conflict. Just explained how convoluted it gets.
To hear the War-Drum beaters say it, though, they believe they have a quick explanation for it, that satisfies their intended audience long enough to suck them into doing the bidding of the Drum-Beaters. Con artists at their very worst or Best, depending on your perspective.
I can never see the perspective of the “necessity” of war. Not even intellectually, coldly and dispassionately. Something about fellow humans dying in agony presents red hot passion, so “dispassionate” observation becomes impossible.
At least neither of us is just marking time, waiting for an inevitable end.
That would mark the point where we actually lose.
If I have to dig for it, I’ll find whatever is positive in this mess. Doesn’t seem to be much though.
Therapy in 9 hours. I better get some sleep.