Exodus

MITHRIDATES
Tell me if any of this sounds familiar:

• Palestinians desperate to get back the homeland that was taken from them despite being overwhelmingly out-armed by their enemies;
• Arms smuggled in to Palestine with humanitarian aid and the help and support of the bulk of the people, making it impossible for the occupier to stop the flow without choking off the population — and the Palestinians openly exploiting the humanity of the occupier;
• Palestinians bitterly split between one group that wants restraint and negotiation and another that favors terror and no compromise;
• Palestinians willing to sacrifice children for their cause;
• Europeans taking to the streets to protest the treatment of Palestinians;
• Palestinians unfairly comparing their adversaries to Hitler;
• Children growing up in refugee camps, hardened to the outside world;
• The Western power with the most influence in Palestine accused of favoring the wealthy and powerful over the oppressed;
• Palestinian terrorists bombing hotels and killing innocents;
• The occupier believing they are held to the strictest rules of engagement while the Palestinians obey no rules at all;
• Attacks by the occupier backfiring and uniting the various Palestinian groups;
• A proposed homeland comprised of just a couple of strips connected by narrow corridors.

More...

In Leon Uris' Exodus, however, "Palestinian" refers to the Jews in Palestine struggling to create a homeland. Yes, it's 50 years old, and yes, I was inspired to read it by a TV show on a network I should be boycotting. Yes, the characters are inevitably overly courageous, overly good, overly evil, overly something. No, Leon Uris is never going to top any list of great literature. But who says we have to spend every minute reading great literature when we can just read great stories, instead?

The fact that the book is 50 years old can shed some light. With all the revisionist history out there, it's almost impossible to get a present-day account of the creation of Israel that's worth the protest page it's spouted on.

Exodus is good stuff and still pretty damn relevant. It's certainly written from one side's perspective, but find me an Israel-hater who can still say with certainty, after reading this book, that these people have no right to their homeland; find me an Israel-supporter who, after reading this book, doesn't sympathize a bit with Palestinians growing up in refugee camps and acknowledge this people's right to a homeland.

It's hard to believe some of it, considering all the acrimony out there, but the story from the early part of the twentieth century is of Jews and Arabs living in the same or neighboring villages in relative peace. (Well, except for the occasional riot and rampage.)

And then there's this probably true, but morally horrifying justification for the actions of the Palestinian terrorists:

Nothing we do, right or wrong, can ever compare to what has been done to the Jewish people. Nothing the Maccabes do can even be considered an injustice in comparison to two thousand years of murder.

It gets right to the heart of the matter, doesn't it? Hardened refugees with a history of victimization believing that any action is therefore justified. There's no way to do justice to the Arab-Israeli conflict in a novel (let alone a single blog post), but the exercise of going back in time half a century is good for some perspective. It's great drama, anyway. And the "Palestinians" get their homeland!

Screw You, Israel and Palestine

PHUTATORIUS
Brothers and Sisters, please excuse me for a moment, as in the next several paragraphs I will eschew rational argument and analysis in favor of something more visceral. It's something I've had churning in my gut for a couple days now, and it's time to get it out:

Israel and Palestine can go fuck themselves. Both of 'em. I've had it.

Oh, sure — solving the Israel-Palestine problem is "the key to peace in the Middle East." Oh, sure — the West has a duty to roll up its sleeves and vigorously mediate this intractable problem to resolution, given the role it played in causing it. I've heard the arguments, and I've bought into them. This is something that needs fixed, and we need to do what we can to fix it.

But fuck all that. Israel and Palestine have to want peace. Until they want it, anything anyone else does — anything we do — is a waste of energy and resources. If I were Barack Obama, I'd personally call representatives from Hamas, Fatah, and the Israeli government to Camp David on January 21, just so I could tell them, in no uncertain terms, that my Administration would have no further dealings with them. Ever. My prepared remarks:

"Glad you all could make it here. Hooray for you. Now I'm going to cut to the chase. Do any of you watch The Office? Did you see last month's Moroccan Christmas episode? Toward the end of the show, Michael Scott makes a pretty pithy observation — one that I think holds true here:

As it turns out, you can't just check someone into rehab against their will. They have to do it voluntarily. They have to hit rock bottom.

"Now all of you SAY you want peace. Oh, you can't stop talking about it. You writhe around in agony over the violence. You summon the news crews, and they descend on the bombsites in hordes. You cry out for justice. You command more headlines than all the other conflicts raging in the world — wars that kill and displace millions, while your measly rockets, bombs, and air raids have killed fewer than 1500 in four years — put together. Kings, lawyers, diplomats, and academics fall all over themselves to resolve your problems.

"How many years has it been now? How much ink has been spilled on this conflict? How much time, money, and effort has the international community expended trying to get your idiotic constituencies to come together? And what have we got for all our trouble? More rockets, more air strikes, more pointed fingers, more bullshit. You SAY you want peace, but you don't. You never have. You've just been wasting OUR time, OUR effort, OUR sanity. For years now you've been diverting our precious resources away from problems we might be able to fix, if anyone attended to them — from people we CAN save.

"But not anymore. I'm the 44th fucking President of the United fucking States. I've got four, hopefully eight years ahead of me in this job, and I have a chance to do some good in this world before I'm done. And I'll be GODDAMNED if I waste a minute of that time on you people, when I might be focusing on folks who really want our help. You're all a bunch of narcissistic fuck-ups, and the best thing we can do for you is let you go on killing one another until you get tired of the drama. So from now on and henceforward on our part: no more mediation, no more diplomatic initiatives, no convivial dinners and hospitality, no weekend invites to resorts like this one. No more back-channel message-routing, no more humanitarian aid. The only thing you'll get from us is weapons. And for a price.

"Once you all have hit rock bottom, and you want to talk, let me know. In the meantime, go fuck yourselves. Your cars are waiting. Get out of here now."

MITHRIDATES
To be fair, I don't think Hamas claims to want peace.