Strangechord

Quick post on a heavy subject. Amy posts about a new billboard up in San Francisco from the folks at BlueStarPR, a “Jewish Ink Tank” (essentially, Israel PR). The billboard, Israel Is Just Like You” is drawing quite a bit of of strong debate.

The firm’s site features many posters, and to its credit, allows discussion posting for each one. However, as I commented on Amy’s site, what seems to be unacknowledged by campaigns such as this is that most people like myself are not anti-Israeli people or anti-Semitic, but rather, take strong issue against the tactics of the Israeli state. There’s a big difference - indeed, most Israeli citizens oppose the occupation. This sort of campaign defending the government of Israel is sponsored primarily by Americans.

I support the right of the Jewish people to have a homeland. I also support the right of the Palestinians to have a homeland. *sigh* I have a huge problem with the way in which the Palestinians were pushed off the land they had lived on and farmed for thousands of years by wealthy Zionist land buyers, and that Palestinians now are crowded and brutalized by the Israeli state. I don’t object to the notion of a Jewish homeland, what I object to is the way in which the state of Israel has gone about securing a Jewish homeland. I find it arrogant and cruel.

There’s a fabulous Q&A over at ZNet that provides a lot of insight: “Background to the Israel-Palestine Crisis”. Much of what I learned a year ago in my History of the Middle East class falls in line with the Q&A. What’s so fascinating is that Jews and Muslims lived fairly peacefully together for over a thousand years; relations in these last ~80 years are not the norm. I liked this response:

How can terrorists be given a state?

If people whose independence movements use terrorism are not entitled to a state, then many current-day states would be illegitimate , not the least of them being Israel (ed.- and the U.S.), whose independence struggle involved frequent terrorism against civilians.

That’s all I have time to post for now, and I admit, it’s too brief for such a topic as this.