Not Just What You Hate, Please

 

There are some traps in this life, And I think one of them Is to define everything only negatively. Like, sometimes we spend too much time thinking only on what something is not, and not what it is. Like thinking about what is not cool, and never about what is cool.

As an example of defining things negatively, let’s think of how we define “play”, in the sense of children playing. It seems easier to say what it is not: we tend to say “just playing”, like, as if play is something that is “not working”, “not studying”, “not quite real”, “not immediately useful” and etc. But children understand what “play” means before they understand concepts like working, studying, useful, real, etc.

If we avoid this “not this”, “not that” and then try to define “play” for what it “is”, we go to a much more interesting line of thought, don’t we? If we only think of negatve, we may end up living our life with the sole intent of “not being like those losers” and end up not really adding nothing to nobody.

Of course it influences our vision of the world at large. Think about those American students who are defending Hamas and Hezbollah, and totally overlooking the power and influence of Iran. They shouldn’t be marching for homophobic misogynist criminals.

When you really want something, the first natural thing to do is to find the best place to start it. If people care for woman rights, gay rights, workers rights, the best place to start building this new world is where in fact it already started: in the western culture, in countries like America and Israel. These seeds will not grow in fundamentalist extremist Islamic authoritarian regimes.

But as I say, people a lot of times think too little about what they really want, and too much about what they hate, so they can’t accept that a better world starts in western countries, because these Western countries have some sins in their back, are “Imperialist” countries.

Not being able to see that both good and bad things happened in the “West” leads only to hate and to some blind allegiance to any form of “negation of Western culture”, even when they have nothing positive to bring. The state of mind of the people who brought Africans as slaves to America and the state of mind of the people who fought against slavery were not the same state of mind, were not branches of the same tree.

And these stereotypes, against the West as a whole, against Israel, that make some people so complacent with extremists, turn these people against themselves. In the end, these students are defending the opposite of what they claim to defend.

The way these students see Israel as a “colonial” state comes from a stereotype: People going from Europe – although they didn’t come all from Europe – to a third World place, well, it has to be “colonialism”. But this was a very different story, of a people who once had a home land and were exiled for almost two thousand years – and it was not their first exile – and lived as second class people, to say the least, in a lot of places, until they got their right to go back to the only real home they ever called their own.

You may say now that this story does not satisfy you, but it is wrong to stimulate terror because of this vision of yours. You have to remember that this is a country founded almost 80 years ago, after the slaughter of 6 million Jews, in a moment when all the countries in the UN agreed that this centuries old claim for the land was valid. You can’t go back in time. The land was divided in two, for two people, and the Jews built a country and now have millions of people living there. If you care for peace at all you have to accept that. It’s History.

            Now, it seems that even the people who don’t say they want to destroy Israel, don’t say they like terrorist groups, just say they want an immediate end of the War, “just stop right now”, not seeing difference between both sides, or evevn blaming Israel, maybe they too are thinking too much of what they hate, and too little about what they love.

            Of course everybody hates war, but to see if somebody is right or wrong, we must also think about our definition of peace. The definition of peace for Israel is people living their lives, being productive and happy, free of terrorism. The definition of peace for the extremists, doesn’t go much beyond this: a land, and someday a World, free of Jews.

            Yes, people are dying, and it is a tragedy. Because I care for life, I’ve been thinking about the meaning of the word “kill”. Put in a simplistic way, it must be “to cause the death of someone”. Well, I’ve been thinking about the factors that are involved in the death of Gazan civilians.

            Missiles have been fired against the North of Israel for months, and people had to evacuate from there. If they didn’t abandoned their homes – and they are tens of thousands –  so many of them would have died. Israel warns the people in around their enemies before striking against terrorists, but these people are encouraged by their “leaders” to stay home, not leave.

            So, when there is more than one actor involved in something that is causing death, we could say kill is “taking part in an action that causes death”. This action is War. Now, Why and with what intention is each side taking part on this action?

One side takes part because it wants a country to cease to exist, the other because it’s being attacked and suffered the worst and most heinous attack in its History by people who really want to destroy it. The stated goal of one of the sides is “end Israel”, killing most Jews as possible, no matter how many Palestinians die in the process. The other side’s stated goal is to destroy a terrorist organization doing their best to have less civilians killed. It’s easy, when we look from a world where war doesn’t exist, to judge a people for whom war is, unfortunately, something real

Imagine there is something coming in your direction, a giant missile loaded of pure hatred, with the intention of destroying you and everything that you love. The World could have stopped this missile, but the World didn’t. For instance, the terror organizations have their money in Qatari banks, is the world pressing Qatar to freeze this money?

A lot of people say we must “dissociate” the people of these places from the terror organizations. And I agree: Let’s dissociate them from the terrorists, but since the terrorist’s weapons are not abstract and the blood and bones of the Israelis are real too, I believe that it won’t be enough to just make this “dissociation” in our little hearts then go to sleep in peace.

 What the World does to save these people from brainwashing tyrants who do all they can to turn people into hate machines? The World War II, the 20^th century should have taught us about the danger of totalitarian regimes. We’re too complacent with bloodthirsty dictators as they take total control of the lives of their people, and one day they start attacking someone else.

I hope a third World War never happens, but these dictators are not our friends, they are not our partners. They are not just people who have a different culture and live “a little differently from us”. They will not be changed with handshakes. The World don’t seem to care that the people of certain countries are turned into thought slaves, only remembers them as they die in a war that their leaders provoked.

            Then we go march together with people who are using them to accuse  someone in a political game, using the death of people in a war to defend the groups who are oppressing this people. This only makes things worst and the situation harder to solve.

            To deal with situations, we must be honest about values, what is the society that each side is defending. We look at World War II and see clearly that the values the nazis defended make them the wrong side. Unfortunately, Germans died in the War, but we know who’s fault it is.     They killed 6 millions Jews, but would have it been wrong if the allies were able to step there earlier than they did, and defeated German before they killed 6 millions?

            Hezbollah had a plan called “Conquer the Galilee”, and a lot of things, weapons and gear and structure, were ready for them to invade Israel by the North and make a lot of October 7ths at once. The Idf is now dismantling this structure. Why does a country have an army, after all? To defend it from real threats, not just when total annihilation is too close.

            There is the dilemma of this people who live under extremist organizations – Hamas rules Gaza, like Hezbollah the South of Lebanon. If we keep distant, just talking about death, we can’t do much for them. To defend them from the consequences of the evil actions of their leaders we have to think about life, the life we want for the human being. I don’t ask people to change religion, but I feel free to say that nobody should live ruled by those extremist monsters.

            What is Israel defending? Life. The life of Israelis, while doing their best to act ethically. Ideally, yes, we should care for all human life. But then we would have to have the courage to advocate for the basic freedoms we want for people. Just saying we don’t like the result of wars won’t be enough.

            I hope life is protected the best way possible, and the responsibilities fall where it’s due.