My language and my favourite movies are a hodgepodge of other people's work. If I go into a food court, I might like to have both a bagel and a falafel on my tray with no dirty looks from opposing restaurants. When Muslim extremists crashed planes on 9/11 2001 the first response from North America was to fill the rest of our buildings with Muslim security guards; that way any further attack would be against their own.
Lately we all confront those big Facebook battlefield choices: to join the board that on friend has joined supporting Israel or to join the one from another who is critical of it. So do I invest hours reading 14-page documents so I know which group to click? Do I then consider myself informed? Or do I take the "love your enemy" Christian position and support nothing? A pattern of clear black and clear white up close becomes grey from a distance, and I have preferred to keep it that way.
So far the most inflammatory post I've seen, on a "no politics or religion allowed" screenplay discussion board, says outright that the ultimate goal of Jews is to become the equivalent of Nazis but substituting Arabs and Muslims for themselves. Without knowing anything about any specific facts and not knowing what is a reliable source, I'd rather look at the principle. It sounds terrible. Not something anyone I know accepts. Not a plan.
So we're in agreement then? No extermination of all Palestinians. But my first gut reaction to that was that psychologically it seems plausible. Chillingly so. Any reasonable person can agree that the Holocaust or Shoah was a terrible event in human history, even if we have only experienced it safely through Schindler's List or Sophie's Choice and hundreds of other books, movies or testimonials. But was it a one-time-only event? Try comparing anything to it - even to extract a principle from an anthropological stand point - and the person suggesting it will be asked to apologize from someone official. Burma, Darfur, Tibet, Rwanda and the list goes on with abusive authority, propaganda, ethnic cleansing, and a message of "mind your own business, rest of the world" sound like at least mini variations on the same humanitarian catastrophe that we would like to think happens only once and then we are all too civilized to let happen again.
Spielberg had some project giving Israel and Palestinian children video cameras to do their own home movies and then trade the tapes with each other to show similarities. I haven't heard how that turned out, but it was after Munich was done. People have an impulse to fall in love with one horrible event (holocaust, 9/11) and there is no other crime that can compare and it is offensive to suggest similar patterns.
That's because being vigilant is work. It's easier to care a lot about ONE thing that we had no responsibility for than to maintain awareness of the changing and unchanging world around us. I can't comment on Gaza because I haven't taken the time to read the facts. I have Jewish friends, a few of my favourite filmmakers and comics are obviously Jewish, and most of the security guards I interact with on a regular basis are Arab or Muslim and some are also my friends. Here's what I know without knowing anything:
The LEADERS of both camps must be held accountable. The average Joe Palestinian or Joe Israeli only cares about the big picture to the extent that they are told to care about it. It's always about someone else "winning." And it is not for the glory of any God worth worshipping let alone being inspired by. It is a bunch of bean counters and sociopaths. That's my judgement without looking up the details. Some people say killing your personal enemy is wrong but going off to fight a war because the machine says so is right. A personal enemy threatens your specific life and survival. The official "enemy" is arbitrary, in this case dictated by real estate claims. That said, some might say it is morally wrong or mad to condone sending "Rambo" into Burma and having him kill off their military and leadership one by one, but that is an idea that I endorse unofficially but it would have to be covert.
There is supposedly a rule about not kidnapping or killing the leader of the enemy force, which to me is nonsense. That is precisely the core problem. Leaders on both sides of the Gaza conflict should be replaced by Scott Bacula's character from Quantum Leap until the situation is cooled down. But then who backs down first? Who gets to seem weak? Which leader do you puppet first into saying just the right peaceful thing?
It's difficult to say I want to impost my food court philosophy on the world. I can only selfishly say I'd like to be able to have Chinese food today and Japanese food tomorrow without having to agitate or endorse anybody's long-standing homeland hatreds. I don't have to respect those hatreds. Even when they come to us in viral form over the inter-net, I'm not sure there is an action to take. If Canada, the U.S., or the World Food Court actually function it's because something has to be left behind. There isn't much of a mental border patrol and we don't put our personal and psychological baggage through a mental detector, but I don't have to know any details to know that I don't want either Jewish or Muslim kids and bystanders endangered - especially by crap their parents feel some obligation to perpetuate. Put Moses, Mohammad and Jesus in a room and don't let them come out until they have a solution. Everybody else can crank up the a/c and watch the Simpsons.
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