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How Not to Talk About Israel / Palestine

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Clarissa

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I hate almost all discussions about Israel / Palestine because most people don’t care two straws about Israel / Palestine and just use the conflict for completely unrelated ideological purposes. I believe that it’s perfectly fine not to care. It is impossible to interiorize every conflict in the world and have an intellectual and emotional response to it. But I also believe that it would make sense for people who don’t care just to go talk about something else.

Here is an example of the kind of discussion about Israel / Palestine that I absolutely detest. It is wrong on every level to use the real suffering of real people to make some stupid “but if” point. And this is done by the supporters of both sides with equal intensity.

This is why I never talk about Israel / Palestine with anybody in RL. I always fear discovering some psychological problems I’m not equipped to address.

7 responses to “How Not to Talk About Israel / Palestine”

  1. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    I stopped caring about Israel and the Palestinians many years ago, once I realized that neither side had enough people that genuinely wanted peace and that neither side could actually deliver on the unpopular realties that any kind of lasting peace would require.

    I honestly think the best thing that could happen would be for the rest of the world to butt out and let whatever would happen in such circumstances go ahead and happen (ie one side will completely drive the other from the land).

    Failing that the best that can happen is a holding pattern while politicians politic and people pretend to care and wait for something to happen (a la eastern europe in the 1980s).

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      “I stopped caring about Israel and the Palestinians many years ago, once I realized that neither side had enough people that genuinely wanted peace and that neither side could actually deliver on the unpopular realties that any kind of lasting peace would require.”

      – Same here.

      “I honestly think the best thing that could happen would be for the rest of the world to butt out and let whatever would happen in such circumstances go ahead and happen”

      – As harsh as this sounds, in this kind of conflict people just need to play out their nation-building thing and it is, indeed, best to just leave them to it. Butting in just protracts the conflict.

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  2. el Avatar
    el

    Why do you think “playing out their nation-building thing” will involve only Palestinians, and not f.e. Iran? Because I can’t imagine you writing then ” best to just leave them to it.” Or am I mistaken?

    // the best thing that could happen would be … let whatever would happen in such circumstances go ahead and happen (ie one side will completely drive the other from the land).

    OK, where will those driven out Palestinians go then? I think this approach has at its basis the idea “no matter what happens, we’ll stand aside because otherwise it may cost us something.” Accidentally, the same thing Jewish refugees suffered from pre and after WW2.

    As an Israeli Jew, I obviously care the most about my country and honestly don’t see Israel as being “The Guilty Side”. However, “whatever would happen”? Even genocide? I am sure genocide of Palestinians won’t happen, but just suppose.

    You could, for instance, pressure Arab countries to treat Palestinians better than now, let them live as normal citizens / permanent residents.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      “Why do you think “playing out their nation-building thing” will involve only Palestinians, and not f.e. Iran?”

      – Because Iran already is a nation-state.

      “OK, where will those driven out Palestinians go then?”

      – So you already know who will lose then, eh? 🙂

      ” I think this approach has at its basis the idea “no matter what happens, we’ll stand aside because otherwise it may cost us something.”

      – No. The conflict is already costing us all a lot. But the problem is that there isn’t anything anybody can do here. There are laws governing the nation-building process. You cannot subvert them. They just exist. Drawing borders is always a painful and bloody process. It’s just that everybody else has done it earlier and now chooses not to remember. Let’s look at how the borders of the US were drawn. That was not in any way better. Also, everybody else didn’t have nuclear weapons involved in the process, so it was more local.

      “You could, for instance, pressure Arab countries to treat Palestinians better than now, let them live as normal citizens / permanent residents.”

      – What, under the logic of “all those semitic people are the same?” It makes more sense to accept Palestinain refugees into Western countries because that’s less hypocritical.

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      1. el Avatar
        el

        // – Because Iran already is a nation-state.

        It has another problem of a potentially (in a long term view) unstable and extreme regime.

        Also, last I checked, USA attacked some nation states in what (as I understand) you would call nation-building. 🙂 Israel “playing out” anything could involve Iran, already involves Iran, with the latter doing everything to attract attention too.

        // – So you already know who will lose then, eh?

        Of course. You don’t? I am serious here.
        (I don’t want anybody being driven out, but if somebody is, I know who it will be.)

        \\ – What, under the logic of “all those semitic people are the same?”

        Under the logic that many Palestinians initially arived to today’s Israeli land from those countries. They share language, culture, etc. much more than with the West. And Palestinians have already been there for generations, without getting permission to exit those camps.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          I don’t think anybody here wants to go down the road of “go back to where you came from.” 🙂

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  3. el Avatar
    el

    // I don’t think anybody here wants to go down the road of “go back to where you came from.”

    Palestinians are *already* there. Only in refugee camps, instead of normal conditions.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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