My view on this is hopelessly simplistic, but until one side (or both) takes the moral high ground, the cycle will continue. Both sides have legitimate grievances and have been wronged for generations, but at sometime a line has to be drawn in the sand. Sometimes the bravest thing to do is not to retaliate and hold out an olive branch. "Before setting out on a journey of revenge you must first dig two graves".
First a niggle: "Taking the moral high ground" is often taken to mean doing so inappropriately or hypocritically. I know that isn't what Alex means here. Alex is right: Until both sides start to see this from the other side's perspective there will be no end. The majority on both sides would prefer peace, the leadership both sides do not. Right and wrong, good and evil, morality: Both sides needs to embrace this.
Second is where my disagreement is substantial: There is not equality of culpability here. This goes back to the Palestinians being expelled forcibly from their land 1948. This was justified and is still justified by this argument: Hans was unbearable cruel to Hymie. So Hymie is unbearably cruel to Ali. And Hans applauds. The Palestinians had nothing to do with the Holocaust but they are *today's* victims of it. Just as Europeans and especially the Germans ought to be viscerally ashamed of what happened WW2 and before to the Jews in Europe, so too we ought to hang our heads in shame at what is happening to the Palestinians. It's happening with our material and financial support. We are not just bystanders telling the Israelis and the Palestinians how to behave.
The Two State Solution is the only way out of this mess. Well, there are two other unacceptable ways, the elimination of Israel and the one that's currently happening, right now, but ever since 1948, and that's the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Israel's position is that they have to choose between the elimination of Israel and the decades old and continuing ethnic cleansing and now slaughter of the Palestinians. That is a false dichotomy: Israel rejects the Two State Solution.
Israel rejected the Two State Solution before the rise of Hamas.
My view on this is hopelessly simplistic, but until one side (or both) takes the moral high ground, the cycle will continue. Both sides have legitimate grievances and have been wronged for generations, but at sometime a line has to be drawn in the sand. Sometimes the bravest thing to do is not to retaliate and hold out an olive branch. "Before setting out on a journey of revenge you must first dig two graves".
I agree, but only partially.
First a niggle: "Taking the moral high ground" is often taken to mean doing so inappropriately or hypocritically. I know that isn't what Alex means here. Alex is right: Until both sides start to see this from the other side's perspective there will be no end. The majority on both sides would prefer peace, the leadership both sides do not. Right and wrong, good and evil, morality: Both sides needs to embrace this.
Second is where my disagreement is substantial: There is not equality of culpability here. This goes back to the Palestinians being expelled forcibly from their land 1948. This was justified and is still justified by this argument: Hans was unbearable cruel to Hymie. So Hymie is unbearably cruel to Ali. And Hans applauds. The Palestinians had nothing to do with the Holocaust but they are *today's* victims of it. Just as Europeans and especially the Germans ought to be viscerally ashamed of what happened WW2 and before to the Jews in Europe, so too we ought to hang our heads in shame at what is happening to the Palestinians. It's happening with our material and financial support. We are not just bystanders telling the Israelis and the Palestinians how to behave.
The Two State Solution is the only way out of this mess. Well, there are two other unacceptable ways, the elimination of Israel and the one that's currently happening, right now, but ever since 1948, and that's the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Israel's position is that they have to choose between the elimination of Israel and the decades old and continuing ethnic cleansing and now slaughter of the Palestinians. That is a false dichotomy: Israel rejects the Two State Solution.
Israel rejected the Two State Solution before the rise of Hamas.