SOME TRUTH ABOUT THE MIDDLE EAST

Nations and Empires that are artificial constructs born of conquest and dictates by greater military powers are mostly doomed to endless violence and ultimate failure. 

This may very well be the greatest and most obvious lesson of history that virtually no one heeds.

On paper we understand this and speak nobly of self-determination.  In reality history suggests that self-determination generally occurs when all else is lost and there is nothing left but ruin.

Greater nations and unions of diverse peoples are often formed when sufficient numbers of people within a specific geographic area find a common and overwhelming interest--usually self-defense or religious zealotry.

Genocide and exile are other useful tools for nation building--without them great Jewish cities would be thriving throughout Europe and Asia.  The Aztecs and Inca would be modern states ruling vast territories throughout North, Central and South America.  Germany and France would be Celtic nations.

But ultimately imposed rule and imposed borders fail.  The Romans, Bourbons, Hapsburgs, Turks, British, French and Soviets eventually learned this.  Eventually, so will the Chinese.

European borders are just barely settling down after thousands of years of violent attempts to impose artificial borders.

Large parts of Africa remain in chaos and poverty as a result of this great unlearned lesson.

Southeast Asia's wounds are just beginning to heal.

And then there is the Middle East, a mess of artificial constructs based on Biblical claptrap, Western oil interests, post World War II Holocaust guilt and Anti-Semitism and a European and American racist notion that all Arabs are the same--even when they're not Arabs--and that all Muslims are the same.

Am I an anti-Israeli Jew?  Certainly not.  But I do wonder how many European Jews would have abandoned their traditional ancestral homelands throughout Europe if the Allies had returned their real estate, savings and investments that had been illegally "transferred" to European Christians during the Reich. (Those are 13th Century French Rabbis pictured at left.)

In fact, many Jewish-Europeans have through today, 2006, continued to battle for the return of their real estate, bank accounts, art collections and gold--and with some success.

And I thoroughly reject the Holocaust--driven notion that as a Jew I live in "exile."  This is no more or less valid that claining that descendents of the Puritans, Hugeunots and Irish farmers live in exile.

So am I an anti-Israeli Jew?  Certainly not.  Do I feel the romantic tug of the ancient ruins and sites of my lancient ancestors?  Absolutely, but no more and no less than a Christian is drawn to Bethlehem, an Italian-American to the Roman Forum or an African-American to the ruins of the great Ghana Empire, Wagadou.  But at the end of the day, I'm a proud and patriotic American, fifth generation on my paternal side.  And the America I love is not some parcel of ancestral land defined by superstitions, graveyards, tears of sorrow, bigotry and violence, it's a set of principles and ideals and I will fight for it until the day I die.

But the reality, the harsh reality, is that the Middle East is a nightmarish mess of fake borders, old resentments, bigotry, economic and Imperialistic interests and most of all self-serving lies.

Israel is condemned for being an imposed and artificial construct and a vestige of Western Imperialism, under siege by the patriotic heroes of Arab lands. Of course, most of us, our heads firmly buried in the sand, refuse to consider fact and history and make emotional decisions based on Biblical "prophecies" or prejudice.

• Iraq is an artificial 20th Century construct cobbled together by the League of Nations and Britain from several distinct provinces and religious and ethnic groups including Arabs, Kurds, Christians, Shiite Muslims, Sunni Muslims, Assyrians, Turkomans, Armenians and even Persians.
• Lebanon is an artificial nation that was created by the French to create a Christian nation within Muslim Syria.  After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Christian domination of Lebanon collapsed and this former Syrian province has been a place of religious and ethnic rivalry ever since.
• Jordan was created by the British when they initiated their plan to split their colony of Palestine between Jews and Muslims. In fact, Jordan is as real or as artificial as Israel.  In a very broad sense, the British gave Palestinian Jews the land west of the Jordan River, to be called Israel and Palestinian Arabs were given the land east of the Jordon River, to be called Jordan.  The indigenous Jewish population and the more recent Jewish emigres accepted this compromise. The Muslim population did not.  And it is worth noting that there was an "indigenous" Jewish population, including many families tracing their roots back to Roman times.  Israel was partly created because the British could not convince the Palestinian leadership to give the Jewish minority a role in government, so the British created a Palestinian state and called it Jordan, much in the same way the French created Lebanon to provide a safe haven for the Arab Christian minority--something that Syria still wars against.

Historically, the Middle Eastern Muslim world is not friendly to the principles of democracy and does not tolerate minorities.  Sunnis persecute Shiites.  Shiites persecute Sunnis. Sunnis and Shiites persecute Jews and Christians.  And so on and so forth.

George W. Bush thinks he can fix that in Iraq at gunpoint.  The Romans failed.  The Turks failed.  The French failed.  The British failed.

Bush believes with Jesus and John Wayne at his side, he can succeed.  The photograph below from yesterday's New York Times of a typical street scene in contemporary Baghdad demonstrates the extraordinary disconnect between Bush's brain and reality.  I think it also clearly symbolizes the inevitable and relentless product of more than 2,000 years of Imperialism and Colonialism that has and continues to plague the Middle East.

And I include the Iranians in that history.  Iran's current vision is that it can become the new super power to dominate and dictate to the peoples of the Middle East.  I think one Persian Empire was enough. But the promise of imagined Persian wealth is likely quite attractive to impoverished Shiite masses.

Do I see any solution to this mess?  In fact, we may have no other choice than to stand on the sidelines and let the forces of history play out, a bloody and miserable prospect, but likely inevitable.

But if there is a solution, Hezbollah may have provided a primitive model as they handed out cash to ordinary citizens in the days following the recent ceasefire.

Over lunch earlier this week, my Bulgarian friend, Vladi, compared the Middle East problem to the Balkan problem.  The solution to the Middle East crisis, he suggests, is an improved quality of life and a war against poverty rather than a war against someone else's religion or politics.

Rather than send troops, Vladi suggests that perhaps the United Nations and the rich nations of the world, including and in particular the rich Muslim nations, need to send engineers, architects, teachers, agricultural experts, scientists and physicians into the impoverished and besieged areas of the Middle East.  Suicide bombers aren't born into good lives and happy families.  And democracy does not thrive among the hungry and frightened.

We watch millions of Arabs living in primitive mud dwellings, sleeping on dirt floors and begging for food while they watch us on television living as we do.  And then we are shocked to learn that they hate us.  Shiite masses who can barely afford to feed their children then watch Sunni Royals build artificial snow covered ski resorts in the desert and we wonder why they can't get  along.

And Bush would remedy this problem by sending in troops and ballot boxes.

Sometimes I think that Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There are among the most sensible books ever written on the subject of human civilization.

Comments

[Jack]

You say that suicide bombers didn't grow up in happy families but what about the 7/7 bombers. They grew up in ordinary British families. There were even some middle class anglos arrested in Britain and Australia for terrorism related offences.

[Bourgeois Nerd]

Just a nitpick: there were actually several Persian Empires (Achaemaid, Parthian, Sassanian, Safavid, and a couple of others I'm probably forgetting).