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

A Modern Missionary...

We all live on this small blue ball floating around the vast emptiness of the universe. We are simply one of millions of integrated other living species that make up the ecological properties of this planet. Although, it is our specie that has been personally responsible for the neglect, control or elimination of more other species combined, we are also the only known entity, to us, that has a conscience. We are also the only known specie to kill simply for sport or business...or religion. I find that a bit interesting.

For a specie that seems to take so much pride in itself as to its personal relation to a god, we seem to neglect and destroy so much. And much of that time it is in the name of that same all loving god to which we take such pride in our relation of for being the prize specie of this god's kingdom. It doesn't make much sense.

Then, in Christian calendar year of 2000, we somehow got a leader in the office of President, who is a 'born again' man of this god. President George Bush has claimed he was told by God to invade Iraq and attack Osama bin Laden's stronghold of Afghanistan as part of a divine mission to bring peace to the Middle East, security for Israel, and a state for the Palestinians.

The former Palestinian foreign minister Nabil Shaath said, as reported in June 2003 after their first meeting with the President that, Mr Bush told him and Mahmoud Abbas, former prime minister and now Palestinian President: "I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan.' And I did, and then God would tell me, 'George go and end the tyranny in Iraq,' and I did."

Bush is quoted as telling the two, "I feel God's words coming to me: 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East.' And by God, I'm gonna do it."

Sorry, dude, it didn't work.

This is the same god that has told people in his famed ten commandments to his followers, that thou shalt NOT kill. Thou shalt honor thy brother, and thou shalt do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Uh......? God told him to do these things?! Perhaps he was told to do so as a test to see if Bush's respect for the supreme being's words were honorable and just. Or perhaps he was listening to the old testament god and not the new testament god?!

But I think that this statement says it best as to the insane rationalizations that people use in our "modern" society. During his interview with Bob Woodward, for his book "Plan of Attack" Bush stated, "I'm surely not going to justify war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case, I pray that I will be as good a messenger of His will as possible. And then of course, I pray for forgiveness." Which will is that, the will of his famed good book, or the will he told you in a dream?

Of course...That is an amazing side. Uh, I will lie, deceive, murder, kill, destroy, and then pray for forgiveness.

It is said in the Christian bible that for those that believe and are baptized will enter the gates of heaven. (I always did find that one interesting, of an all loving god who will only save those that are baptized and believe. Some religions don't have baptism. But, they have god...) One is able to consciously lie, deceive, murder, kill, destroy and then repent. Wow, how cool is that!?

But, then, who am I to judge. I'm only human...oh, wait, so is Bush!

Psychologists might give him an out to his insanity by saying something like, it stems from his childhood. Perhaps from his grandfather, Prescott, who bankrolled the Nazis before the government stepped in and shut him down.

If all of this is the case, then, where was Bush's righteousness for the Darfur genocide? Or any other living being on this planet that his policies ruined do to his neglect of his failed environmental policies? One would think that god would be having discussions with him about this, too.

Now, Bush and his handlers are mapping out the next phase of his life. That of the president's post-White House years. Plans are well under way for a "Freedom Institute" that will aim to promote democracies abroad. I guess it is good that they map out to promote democracy abroad since he has ripped away at the fabric of democracy in his own country. "This is going to be Bush vision," political historian David Brinkley said of the institute. "Bush has never liked the academics, and this is a nonacademic institute aimed at cutting to the core of things: only pro-democracy foot soldiers who are green-lit by George and Laura Bush are in the mix."

For a president to never like the academics, and to stay as far from science as he could, why even attempt to build a library? Isn't that a contradiction of sorts? Then to place the library on a religious college campus, Southern Methodist University, in Dallas. To follow a religion and believe that the world is only about 10,000 years old, regardless of scientific facts, yet, be the president of some failed 'no child left behind' program to make sure that every child receives an education...

But I'm sure he did it all from discussions he had with god.

I really think that god is laughing his holy ass off. He continually tests us, his followers say. God would say, hey you voted for the guy...

It's all good, though. Now, we can all go and repent.


This, the 214th entry in bloggoland! Thanks for reading and coming back. I always enjoy the comments, emails and the banter!!


(c)Copyright 2008 Doug Boggs