COLUMN By DOUG THOMAS
For HumanistNetworkNews.org
July 19, 2006
The basics of humanism do not leave much room for waging war. If we are supposed to work with the three tenets of knowledge, love and action, we are not going to be comfortable with killing people in the name of whatever cause we believe in.
In a simple, perfect world we would be pacifists, pure and simple. Of course, what makes the rest of this article possible is that we live in a complex, imperfect world. In this world we have to figure out how to hang onto our tenets in the face of challenges.
The dilemma of Afghanistan that I spoke of last week is certainly one of those challenges. So, too, is the horrific situation in the Middle East. All too often, we are confronted with these situations and we must deal with them as well as we can.
Eva Olsen, a holocaust survivor who addressed one of our school assemblies last year, pointed out that when a bully is operating, there are no innocent bystanders. In other words, the inaction of standing by while someone is being abused by another is not acceptable.
Surely the same is true at the national level. That is reason enough for us to pick up arms and tackle the Taliban in Afghanistan and it must be a major factor in our consideration of events in the Middle East. The fact that no one except Israel has stood up to the "bullies" in that area is a major cause in the sudden escalation of violence.
For years, Hezbollah terrorists have been lobbing rockets at civilians in northern Israel while the world has been doing very little to stop them.No nation, nor group of nations, has stepped forward to assist Lebanon’s fledgling government take on the Hezbollah. Of course, it is not as simple as one might think, since the latter has considerable support within Lebanon. In addition, the United Nations has proven itself to be totally ineffective. Its 2,000 peacekeepers have done nothing to stop Hezbollah. Now they are reduced to offering their fleet of vehicles to help transport injured civilians to hospitals.
This is not to say that Israel is completely innocent. There are extremists in Israel who would like to extend its borders and make no bones about their desire to have all Muslims out of Israel.
While Haifa appears to be a city with an integrated Jewish and Muslim population, Jerusalem, with about the same mix of population, is a tinderbox. The difference? Holy sites. Everyone there claims first rights to every square meter of land. One wishes they could get back to the declaration of the Macabees after the Syrians were driven out, an event celebrated by Chanukah. The Macabees made it clear that all religious groups were free to open their holy religious sites in Jerusalem. Oh for such "simpler" times.
Of the three humanist philosophical components, knowledge is certainly the first challenge in regards to the Middle East. Keeping track of the actions of the countries in the area is not enough; one must take into account the different factions in each.
It is difficult to know to what degree the Lebanese government sanctions rockets launched from its territory. Indeed, the rockets seem to be made in Syria from an Iranian design. On the Palestinian side, Hamas and Fatah certainly do not agree with each other. Israeli Jews range from cosmopolitan to extreme orthodox. Getting accurate information about the political will of any group is difficult from here.
Love should not be a problem. These are all fellow human beings and the suffering of Palestinians who have lived in refugee camps for generations is fairly obvious and so is that of Israelis who have lost so many to suicide bombers.
The strange actions of the surrounding Muslim countries confuse me. What efforts have they made to help the Palestinians? Someone once said that Saudi Arabia could solve most of the problems of the Palestinians by sharing some of its wealth with them. A little cynicism goes a long way to setting love out in bas relief. The Palestinians seem to have been rejected by all the Arab nations. Jordan didn’t want them, nor did Syria.
It seems very few have been welcomed into any of the surrounding countries except –- surprisingly -- Israel. Now, those Palestinians who are accepted are not necessarily there out of love. They are either cheap labor or cheap cannon fodder for Israelis or Arabs respectively.
Action is the most difficult of the three tenets. More turbidity is created any time someone sticks a well-meaning oar into the troubled waters of the Middle East. And there are plenty of oars in the water. Television images of Israeli troops could be mistaken for American troops in Iraq, unless one pays close attention to the color of the Humvees, the Patriot missile launchers and the insignia on the F-16s. Hezbollah uses the aforementioned Syrian-Iranian rockets and their personal weapons are usually the ever-popular Kalashnikovs.
To get a real sense of how all this happened, one must read Paris, 1919 (subtitled Six Months that Changed the World, Margaret Owen Macmillan, Random House Inc.), a book that does an excellent job of describing the greedy actions of the victorious allied powers following World War I. The negotiations leading to the most infamous of the Treaties of Versailles reveal a great deal of the groundwork for current problems.
The allies created a place called Iraq for the British to milk for its oil and a place called Palestine that no one wanted because there was no oil there. Everything since then has been a matter of European types from both sides of the pond sticking our oars in whenever we figured that it would save our reputations or our supply of oil.
What action should we take now? At the moment, none. We have let the situation deteriorate to the point that Israel has had to defend itself and anyone who thinks its actions have much to do with rescuing three Israeli soldiers should go ahead and watch Coronation Street rather than the news. Whether we are pro-Israeli or not, we have to acknowledge that Israel must be able to defend itself. For now, we must stop searching for the right-sized band aid to slap on top of the ones that are peeling off and start working on the root causes.
Yes, groups like Hezbollah and the countries that support them subversively must be reined in. We’ll get a shot at that after the Israelis have driven past all the UN people in Lebanon on their way to hammering the Hezbollah installations. By the time Israel is prepared to accept a ceasefire, Hezbollah will be reduced in power enough, temporarily, that a good sharp rap on Syrian knuckles and some serious UN presence to help Lebanon build a multi-faith army that has some hope of controlling the area will go a long way to settling things down. A similar approach must be taken with Hamas.
Even these actions are just band-aids. Systemic solutions must be provided to make long-term differences. Serious economic programs designed to boost the living standards of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza must be undertaken. Countries like Jordan and Saudi Arabia must be convinced to invest in the Palestinian economy and to reduce the appeal of such groups as Hamas and Hezbollah; young people with hope are less likely to strap explosives around their waists.
At the same time, we must make sure that the Israelis take a more laissez-faire attitude toward the Palestinians and, as trust grows, take down their version of the Berlin wall. These solutions will likely take full effect in our grandchildren’s time. Undoing the actions of the superpowers of 1919 will take some time.Unfortunately, a bloody nose is often all that stops a bully. However, it usually only works temporarily and as long as the person tough enough to create the bloody nose is watching. Bullies are usually insecure and socially powerless people. They require support and a chance to compete on a level playing field with the rest of us. This philosophy does not always work with hardcore bullies, but it usually works on the gangs of weak people who follow them out of desperation.
Unfortunately, we have an abundant supply of both types and world economic conditions to keep the supply coming. There is no quick fix for the Middle East any more than for any other hotspot in the world. There is, however, plenty of room to apply the poultice of humanist principles as long as we have the dedication to hold it in place long enough, because band-aids will just peel off.
Doug Thomas is an English teacher and novelist, an agnostic member of the Society of Ontario Freethinkers (SOFREE), and a Canadian nationalist fanatic who has written a Humanist version of O Canada. His novel, The Bloody Boy, is available through Keltoi Publishing.
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