Saturday 16 April 2011

Israel - Victim of their own victimisation?

In reading about PTSD and the effects of conflict I chanced across an interesting paper (which typically I can't lay my hands on). This paper spoke of the effects of war in socialising those engaged in, surrounded by, or being victims of atrocities. Those affected by it, in some way, become dehumanised and, ironically, behave in the same way as those with whom they contended or (in the case of victims) were abused by.

I first came across this on a first-hand basis when talking to a veteran of the Far East conflict who spoke of the difficulty he found in trying to live 'normally' after the war because the "boundaries has all been moved or even removed."

Watching the final episode of 'The promise' and seeing Israelis move from house to house in the Arab village (9th April 1948) I was stunned by the parallels between that place and many other places where those doing the shooting were Nazis. I saw no difference between this and see none even still in the goings on of today's Israel.

The comment that the army weren't present in the settlements to keep the peace, merely to protect the Jews and that killing, beatings and abuse would draw no attention other than perhaps support for the acts brought me back to the ghettos and the acts within them.

The labelling of the arabs and the dehumanising and parallels with the Jews of 1938 onwards displayed the same dehumanising, gratuitous, senseless, and repeated, acts of atrocity and violence of the 1930's and beyond. The abuse of those who are rendered powerless, homeless and voiceless (other than through the mortars and 'terrorist acts of some' is no different at all from the Nazis.

And so I ask myself, are the Jewish perhaps a dehumanised victim of that which the Jews suffered during the shoah? Is Israel, the nation state, so far from God because it is a nation that has lost its soul to bitterness and wickedness as a response to its modern past?

The terrorist acts that saw many die in the early stages of modern israel's history (including of course the King David Hotel in 1946) were done by the same people who saw power in the government of Israel. Were they terrorists or 'freedom fighters'? Are those who have lost their homeland of Palestine terrorists or freedom fighters now in exactly the same way?

Questions, questions and more questions!

Lies, misrepresentations and deliberate spinning of the truth make this an even more difficult subject as each layer is peeled away. Could this explain how, and why, the nation state is so far from the God who promised the land they occupy and His commandments and a relationship with Him?

Israel dehumanised victims or inhuman territorialists?

You tell me!

Pax

2 comments:

True Believer said...

And here you make the victims guilty of merely defending themselves before they can be acted against again.

You are wrong!

Vic Van Den Bergh said...

Aha TB (cough) - preemptive strikes.

Agression as defence?

Never a good call in my book (should try reading it, well worth the time).

Pax