The Palestinian's Cause

With all this said, there has to be bias. One has to choose whether one is going to be humane. To deny this is to pretend we are not human, to lose the core of ourselves and avoid listening to the prompting of our own hearts. It is with regret that I hereby pronounce that my sympathies must lie with the oppressed people of Palestine. Demonising their resistance to subjugation in no way legitimises their inhumane treatment (or, for that matter makes that resistance a legitimate responce). There is no end that justifies oppressive means. The idea that they don't want peace, as a people, is as false as it is patently absurd.

I have seen the arguments from both sides. The most sensitive and articulate are generally those that sympathise with the Palestinians, the oppressed, in this situation. Even honest-minded Israelis will admit that the balance of power being what it is, a truly neutral or 'impartial' view that seeks to be balanced at any cost is to miss the obvious truth- that if the Palestinians do wrong, it is because of their conditions.

For sure, the Arab governments sustain this state of affairs as it gives them profit and the chance to escape their own population's censure. But the addiction to victim-hood identity is doing Israel no good. Even if peace with the entire Middle-East is yet to be assured, they need to press on with peace with the Palestinians and they do have a say in this. They are not dealing with wholly irrational entities here. Perhaps the sword will make way for peace. Perhaps peace will beget itself from itself. Either way, the Israelis can have it, as with anything else in the universe. To say they want it, without attaining it, will only make people wonder if some kind of expansionist dream lies behind their avowedly defensive measures.

The great expansion will come, but not in terms of national borders. Rather in that most modern of virtues- influence. A spiritual expansion meaning far more than a material one ever could.