I'm camped in a vast and beutiful field with 3 terrific friends. I have all the comforts of home and most importantly, TIME to think about things. Today I thought of this story:
The space-faring aliens announced their coming in good English: said they come in peace and landed their mile-wide ship in a remote valley of Montana, South of Kalispelll on the Salish Indian reservation in sight of Mt Baldy.
They asked that a clearance zone of 20 miles all around their ship be established. A few hundred Indians and ranchers had to be moved to accomplish this. It was done.
Ambassadors from the US and Canada very quickly engaged the Aliens; learned that they were escaping a dying world and needed a home. They informed that they would be permanently occuping this area and would be compensating the US and the displaced locals by giving new technology and useful information from their advanced civilization. They tactfully informed the ambassadors that they were very powerful, possessing the wherewithal to defeat any earthly resistance. They had no intent to conquer, however, beyond this small territory.
Some of the dispossessed Indians and ranchers tried to reclaim their land and were met with an unpleasant force field. Thereafter, US troops secured the 40 mile diameter circle and the gradual acceptance of the aliens presence went forward steadily and peacefully.
In the months and years to come humanity learned much from the aliens because they were clearly a superior culture. Only afew thousand in number, they settled their land and provided for themselves.
Water rights and other tricky issues were negotiated satisfactorily. The whole world benefitted from the coming of the aliens.
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I tell you this story, sweet people because it is a fair approximation of the Israeli acquisition of the land of Israel.
With reasonable gentleness, they took the land they needed and repelled all resistance. They have the necessary force to defeat any and all the surrounding nations but surprisingly have restrained their capabilities and settled for a relatively small piece of land.
They would like to be good and useful neighbors but surprisingly are resisted with every tactic their neighbors can devise. They defend themselves with moderation, using only enough force to defend their people.
Their enemies, however are implacable, raging at the injustice of having their land taken away. They cannot appreciate the big-picture ethics of a desperate and persecuted people determined to have a homeland.
They cannot accept with any grace the bad luck of being in the way of a determined and powerful people.
Their pride is injured to look across a fence and see a superior culture and superior army.
The smart thing to do is to accept with good grace their bad luck and make the best of a bad situation.
The reasonable thing for the arab world to do is to assimilate their dispossessed and make peace with the powerful "aliens".
Fanatical people, however, will not see the immorality of waging a war that is probably unwinnable and with massive collateral casualties.
The world is littered with dispossessed, defeated and angry people. Whole generations of native Americans seethe with a useless and fruitless hatred of their dispossessers deriving a twisted source of satisfaction from their anger. And it is useless to point this out to them.
All these grieving people would do well to consider Japan who "took a lickin and kept on ticking."
And even made friends with their conquerers.
Some of the dispossessed Indians and ranchers tried to reclaim their land and were met with an unpleasant force field. Thereafter, US troops secured the 40 mile diameter circle and the gradual acceptance of the aliens presence went forward steadily and peacefully.
In the months and years to come humanity learned much from the aliens because they were clearly a superior culture. Only afew thousand in number, they settled their land and provided for themselves.
Water rights and other tricky issues were negotiated satisfactorily. The whole world benefitted from the coming of the aliens.
_________________________________________________________________________________
I tell you this story, sweet people because it is a fair approximation of the Israeli acquisition of the land of Israel.
With reasonable gentleness, they took the land they needed and repelled all resistance. They have the necessary force to defeat any and all the surrounding nations but surprisingly have restrained their capabilities and settled for a relatively small piece of land.
They would like to be good and useful neighbors but surprisingly are resisted with every tactic their neighbors can devise. They defend themselves with moderation, using only enough force to defend their people.
Their enemies, however are implacable, raging at the injustice of having their land taken away. They cannot appreciate the big-picture ethics of a desperate and persecuted people determined to have a homeland.
They cannot accept with any grace the bad luck of being in the way of a determined and powerful people.
Their pride is injured to look across a fence and see a superior culture and superior army.
The smart thing to do is to accept with good grace their bad luck and make the best of a bad situation.
The reasonable thing for the arab world to do is to assimilate their dispossessed and make peace with the powerful "aliens".
Fanatical people, however, will not see the immorality of waging a war that is probably unwinnable and with massive collateral casualties.
The world is littered with dispossessed, defeated and angry people. Whole generations of native Americans seethe with a useless and fruitless hatred of their dispossessers deriving a twisted source of satisfaction from their anger. And it is useless to point this out to them.
All these grieving people would do well to consider Japan who "took a lickin and kept on ticking."
And even made friends with their conquerers.
7 comments:
Does that also mean that the Jews were fools to keep fighting the system in alien lands when they were outnumbered and powerless, for all those years? Why didn't they take your advice and make the best of their situation by assimilating with their host cultures?
Kabloonie: Because they were not peacefully tolerated---they were actively persecuted.
Methinks you suffer from a national bias. I grew up here, a Christian, schooled in all the northern propaganda, served in the MilInd Complex, and lived and worked abroad. But now I think Israel has become a bigoted, murderous, treacherous lot. Not saying the Palestinians don't exude the same traits but people are people the world over, wouldn't you agree? I do not, under any construction, believe they are as you described, today.
Randy completely confused me. Palestininians are actively persecuted, but he says they should give up, because Might makes Right.
A few years ago, the Jews were in the same situation as the Palestinians are now.
And as far as a superior culture is concerned, I assume that, as a Westernized society, Israel has a low birthrate. There is some strength in having a high birthrate, and given time, the Palestinians might prove that.
The Jews' main advantage was that they made a deity out of their tribalism. That is not a monopoly of theirs.
I have a great deal of respect and admiration for the Jewish people. No single other minority group has contributed so much to science and culture. However, those living in Israel are not invincible aliens from outer space and the Palestinians are not outnumbered, weak Native Americans. Yes, the Israelis have the upper hand today but weren't they once a long time ago driven from Palestine? The more time that passes, the more time the enemies of Israel will have to catch up with Israel in the weapons department, the more Israelis will be killed and the closer the Middle East will be brought to a full scale war. A negotiated settlement is in the best interests of all parties. What that may look like, I have no idea. We know the Iranians were working diligently on getting nuclear weapons. We know Al Qaeda was trying to recruit people with nuclear expertise. Can Israel ever guarantee its people 100% security if it stays on its present course? Yes, no country can do that, but few other countries are surrounded by as many hostile nations whose populations outnumber it 100 to one.
Kabloonie: The Jews have a superior culture for a very interesting reason, There's a book written about it. Bottom line: They resolved at the beginning of their diaspora of 86 AD
that every Jew be taught to read (so they could understand their religion) and that simple determination has made all the difference over the next 2000 years.
Good analogy Randy.
At 1920’s human population numbers, the Jews and Palestinians, could have coexisted in that area, and made a go of it. If the powers that be were content to live and let live. But they always have to keep it stirred up to keep themselves in power.
And of course the “500 lb gorilla in the room” that nobody want to talk about, overpopulation, now with the numbers on both sides, totally unsustainable.
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