The eye patch of Moshe Dayan, Israel, Palestine, and the United States...

I wonder how any President's of the United States, since Harry Truman, can honestly enter the Oval Office and tell the people of the world that they will mend the means of politics and humanity between Israel and Palestine. The battles with Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and warring tribal factions, have been going on for millennia.

I don't understand how a politician could even find it possible to say they can make a truce between the two parties, and mean it, all the while the politician touts their undying gratitude and solidarity to the Israeli state and its bond to the United States. There is no room left for properly mediating any necessary political or humanitarian discussions between the two states when our leaders so adamantly side with the Israel state.

I must claim that I am no expert on this issue whatsoever. I only know what I read, and am able to discern as truth, through the mostly biased global media. Now, though, through the advent of the internet and emerging bloggoshpere, the international community is able to come together more fairly and become more humanized through a grass roots communication process. Hereby, giving people who usually have no voice a global audience with which to voice a silenced plea for help or attention.

Much of the Palestinian plight, as I understand it, resembles that of the American Indian. It was back in 1948 when Israel did not give the Palestinian people their own land, but decided to create a "settlement" much likened to that of the American Indian and the Reservations that the United States government "gave" them. The Palestinian people in the occupied regions are under the authority of Israel. Although, they have no right to vote in Israeli elections, and have no voice in the political processes that affect and subsequently control their lives. A state much like that of slavery.

We've heard the stories of sanctioned Israeli government destruction of water supplies, power, food supplies, health care opportunities for the Palestinian people. In other words, the absolute power over a group of people that have no say in how they are to be treated. Much like that of the early American slave, the Israeli state has the ability to create a starved and cheap labor force for Israeli owned corporations. There are stories of the murder and exile of those who do not "play the game."

This history and policy is documented from leaders beginning, ironically enough, from Israeli leaders such as Moshe Dayan, to the present. I didn't know who Moshe Dayan was until I began to do some reading on this topic. And, I say ironically enough because Moshe Dayan was born on a Kibbutz, near the shores of the Sea of Galilee, in what is pre-Mandate Palestine. Born a Palestinian, of Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine. In 1938, he joined the Palestinian Supernumerary Police and became a company commander.

On June 8th 1947, he lost his left eye in a gun skirmish while he was working with the British during the Allied invasion of Syria and Lebanon. Another irony is that the Palestinian Jew, from this point forward, wore a signature eye patch and could no longer see the world through both eyes. He now saw the world through the tunnel vision of one eye. Despite this handicap, again ironically, his opinions were never strictly black and white. Ariel Sharon noted about Dayan:

He would wake up with a hundred ideas. Of them ninety-five were dangerous; three more were bad; the remaining two, however, were brilliant.

But, to get back on topic a bit, in today's environment, due to the nature and structure of Gaza, to which for the past two years has been under a blockade that includes food, medicine, and gasoline, the only means of survival for the Palestinians were the tunnels to Egypt that have now been blasted. The major sources of electricity were destroyed nearly a year ago, meaning no incubators for premature babies or pumps for water and sewage. And that was just to soften them up for what they're getting now.

From the onset of leadership that stems from pre-Mandated Palestine, to today's mixed up ethnic and religious factions and regions, we have a political gameboard that is very difficult to find a common ground for any leader to latch on to in order to help mediate anything.

It seems that as long as Hamas and Fatah, the two political factions of Palestine are at odds as to the legitimacy of each others claims to the leadership of the region, and the industrialized world recognizing Hamas as a terrorist organization it seems we will be having these battles going on for quite some time.

As long as the United States sides adamantly with Israel and sees Hamas as a terrorist organization, despite the fact that Hamas has elected officials in the Parliament, I cannot see how the United States can rationally proclaim that we will work for, and mediate peace for a free Palestine.

It is as if the United States has taken on the eye patch that Moshe Dayan has left behind.





This, the 247th entry in bloggoland! Thanks for reading and coming back. I always enjoy the comments, emails and the banter!!


(c)Copyright 2009 Doug Boggs