I was working today in North Leeds that has a big Jewish community. Loads of kids of multiple ethnicities were heading home from school and there was no aggro. Everyone just getting on. If people aren't taught hatred they get on. Unfortunately, the hatred in the Middle East will last a lot longer.
I’m trying to articulate or put into words one of the problems I have always had with the Israeli state and it’s governance or treatment through the decades of the Palestinian state.
I think responding to your post is as good a way to try and do this as any.
You see I don’t see why Jewish people in Leeds or anywhere else, be it England, Ireland, America or Europe should have aggro from Islamic or Christian or any other religious ethnicities from the same country, because of the actions of Israel if Israel is truly a multicultural society.
That is what we are told it is, usually from Jewish people.
If religion and state are truly separate then we outside of Israel should look upon the actions of Israel as an Israeli response and not a Jewish one.
Now I fully accept that this is simplistic and perhaps naive, given the situation in states all around them(Israel), but if we accept that the aggression against Israel is an act of terrorism by Hamas, then I cannot see how people in England no matter what religion, can view a measured response any different to what they would accept or what would have been accepted internationally after the Birmingham bombings or any other atrocities by the IRA.
Bare with me. I am truly not trying to be incendiary about this.
I truly am trying to get my head around the history and the problem and where a solution can be found.
I really think it next to impossible because the solution doesn’t merely lie in the hands of Israel alone. They seem to think they can solve it militarily but really religion has to be taken out of the equation. You need to look for what unites people of the area not what divided them and you need secular thinking leaders from all sides. Like I said, currently, next to impossible.
A lot went on before it and a lot went on since but in 1948 Ben Gurion declared Israel a Jewish State.
I was brought up Catholic and realise that in the Northern Ireland conflict Nationalism and Unionism have been divided mainly along the traditional lines of Catholic and Protestant since partition but personally I’m a non believer and happily so. I describe the divide as Nationalist and Unionist. I don’t think one’s religion in this day and age should have any baring on democracy in any state.
So should Britain have bombarded the Republic in retaliation for Birmingham. Believe me, there are plenty of people who believe your government had a hand in the likes of the Dublin bombings of the seventies.
But I’m talking about invasion and bombardment like Israel are doing and considering doing while the world watches on.
And go back to the start of the troubles in the late sixties with the civil rights marches in Derry culminating with Bloody Sunday in 1972. Let’s not go over old wounds, I hear you say, but the point I’m going to make is there were people in the Irish government putting Jack Lynch under pressure to send the Irish army over the border into Derry to protect the nationalist community.
I can hear the laughter from British people from here at that suggestion but the point of it wasn’t that Ireland could match Britain militarily. The intention would have been for the resolution to involve a UN peace keeping force to go in replacing the British troops who were there initially to protect the Catholic community from the RUC and B Specials who were in charge of law enforcement.
So….,
What would have happened if we went down that route. Who knows?
I don’t claim to know.
But the similarities in history and actions stick out alarmingly to me.
Why do American Jews have an interest in Israel? I ask naively again.
Why did American Catholics support the IRA?
Two totally different things? Yes I can see they are different but at the end of the day why did Americans have the interest in other countries affairs and I say take the religion out of it and they wouldn’t.
I’m very sorry if any of this offends any Jewish people, not my intention. At the end of the day I think all religion is bullshit.
