At the risk of throwing fuel onto what I hope are the dying embers of an
increasingly bitter debate I'd like to just comment on one of Laurent's
statements.
He writes:
>The conflict between Jews and Palestinians is political and territorial, not
>racial nor religious.
Mike writes:
I agree with this, and would only add that it should, IMHO, read 'The conflict
between (some) jews and (some) palestinians is political and territorial, not
racial nor religious.' But why stop with this amended version? Why not replace
'some jews' and 'some palestinians' with catholics and protestants, or
heterosexual and homosexual, or men and women, black and white, rich and poor,
or powerful and weak, or military junta and trade unionist etc.
All 'conflicts' are political and territorial. The other factors usually
mentioned here ('race' 'sexuality', 'land', 'language', 'culture' etc) are
only the smokescreens that mask the fact that all these conflicts can be
reduced to something like "We don't people like you around here because you're
black or queer or jewish or irish or muslim or atheist etc and WE ARE NOT.
Furthermore, we are stronger (or greater in number, or have more powerful
weapons and/or friends) than you and we are going to do something about it."
It's ALL about power and territory: always was, always will be.
One other point about anti-zionists and/or pro-muslims (which are not two
face(t)s of the same person) is that the people who are often accused of being
unable to see anything bad about the palestinians (and muslims in general)
are/were the first to criticise the taliban in Afghanistan. I don't see this
as an inconsistent position. I see it as evidence that people who criticise
the israeli government's aggression and also criticise the aggression of the
taliban forces are neither anti-zionist nor anti-muslim. They are simply
people who are anti-violence and who are unafraid to say so when they see an
intolerable abuse of political and/or military power, regardless of which side
is wielding the weapons.
Mike in Barcelona.
NPIMH: Robert Wyatt - Strange Fruit.
