I promise you it’s possible to discuss Israel / Palestine without making anyone out to be undeserving of dignified existence on earth. I’m equally sure I can’t solve the problem of how difficult that is with this post, but I’m remembering two recent posts I made on Facebook.
One was a Libra season / Justice post where I spoke about the concept of equity among competing priorities, and the other was about vengeance and rejecting dualism. The thing is, the state requires there to always be an us and a them, for its logic is violence and that always means there must be someone pointing the gun and someone having the gun pointed at them. For this reason it divides us into categories — citizen/immigrant, man/woman, gay/straight, married/single, working/unemployed, etc… and pits those interests against each other to justify its own existence. This is why dualist thinking about god (good/evil, righteous/sinful, etc…) maps so well onto systems of harm. If you can be made to feel connected to an in group, then you can be made to feel threatened by the out group and the rulers can gain your consent to point their guns at the out group to “protect” you.
I know the tension between Israel and Palestine is rooted in deeply held beliefs about national identity, religious conviction, and a long series of harm done in the name of retaliation, liberation, nation building, and…
