If we can't look to the future together...?

Question

then what hope is there?

Yesterday I asked a question about what people thought the future of Israel/Palestine would be in 50 years. Some ignoble soul reported my question as insulting to others. So I ask you, is there something insulting about that? Isn't it a concern in all of our minds as to what the future holds? If we cannot dare to look to the future together (or are prevented from doing so), what does that foretell?

Yes, Ultra, I understand. But if we have no hope, we might as well lay down and die. It's not easy getting through this period, but a hope for a change is required if any meaningful difference is to be achieved. Without hope, there is no catalyst for making the moves that will bring about a better future. Without hope, we cannot even begin to imagine a different future.

True, riviva. I know I'm being a bit melodramatic and giving the idea that it is all up to us here in YA! and I do realize it is not representative, but hey, it's the only place I know of where I can talk to people on this issue. If anyone has a more fruitful locale, please hook me up! Besides, you never know, our young friend Ultra may become a minister in the Israeli govt. one day! I want to get my thoughts out there.

Tabitha- The violation notice said I was "insulting to other participants". Perhaps someone couldn't handle my use of the word "Palestine" in the question.

Thanks, riviva, for your suggestions, but I'm afraid I'll have to confine my efforts to the computer, as I am a homeschooling mom with a husband that works all the time, so it's hard for me to get out. So if you know any online forums, let me know. That's for all of you.

You are generalizing, st. That is a radical view.

Diana- I appreciate your politeness, but can you not even ENTERTAIN the idea of a future Palestine in some of the land now controlled by Israel? If you can't, then what do you see as the future of the occupied territories? Surely you don't think the occupation will last forever?

Mama_paj- Another enriching and thoughtful post, thanks! I understand your point about having hope and not much else. I would have welcomed that as well (if you'll remember, I put a side note about including that as well), but I asked people to focus on what they actually thought would happen for a reason. Having been around here for awhile, I realize that many people hope that one side or the other is annihilated or displaced at the very least, and I didn't want to encourage that kind of a rant. Instead, I wanted even the hard-liners on both sides to consider, if only for a brief moment, that what they hope for is not likely to occur and so perhaps they should prepare for and work towards a realistic and sustainable future which meets the needs of both peoples. Hey, you gotta try, right?

Thanks for the pep talk, Hopeless, and for the link. I'll definitely look into that, inshallah.

Stygian- I think your idea about Arab feeling is somewhat exaggerated. I lived in Egypt for 4 1/2 years and I never once heard someone call the Jews monkeys. Dogs maybe, but they use that term for anyone they don't like, including their own. This conflict has drawn on for so long, that the Arabs for the most part just want it solved in a way that gives at least some semblance of justice to the Palestinians in a state of their own. When that happens I think a lot of the anger will subside. If they really wanted more than this they would have tried it before now. I think they mostly just like keeping the issue alive so that they can focus their people's attention on it rather than their own domestic policy concerns. You are very correct though about the indoctrination of the youth and it is a shame because as you said, it doesn't help bring the conflict to an end.

Mama_paj- Wow! That was a lot of effort to write all that! I acknowledge and appreciate your thoughts and I agree with much of what you said. It is alot to digest and some of it different from my own understanding, so I will need to do some research into your points and perhaps refine my understanding in the process. I think it is so important to talk about not only the situation on the ground, but what has led to it, from all points of view. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle, but if we remain on the sides, we're not likely to ever discover the full truth or, more importantly, the common ground and understanding needed to bring about a lasting and just peace.

Two comments/ questions do stand out in my mind presently.

1) What is your source for the greenhouse demolitions by Palestinians in Gaza?

2) The education stats you gave were very interesting, but I would ask you to remember that it's not much use having a degree if there aren't many jobs to be had in Gaza for those degree-holders. Unlike in the US, Gazans cannot very well move to another part of the country with better economic conditions, can they! I would also remind you that they cannot come and go out of the country as they please, so working abroad is not an easy option either. I am personally suffering from this, as my husband's business partner has been stuck in Gaza for many months and that means my husband has to work all the time. Even though the man has a green card and is LEAVING, not coming in, Israel makes it very difficult for him to leave. Every day there are a thousand or more people lined up at the border with Egypt and only 15-20 are allowed to leave.

Answer 1

I didn't answer the other question because 1) I'm not Israeli and 2) You specifically said you didn't want what people HOPED for but what they believed would be the future.

All I can do other than try to support genuine efforts at peace is to hope. To hope and pray that efforts at actual nation building and working to get the refugees out of refugee status will be achieved. To hope and pray that Israel will be allowed to live up to the promises it made in its Constitution to help make the Middle East a place where all people can feel welcomed and safe.

So, I had no applicable answer to it. Hope is all I have left.

Dialog requires that you have two parties willing and capable of seeing the "other" as having a right to exist. There is no point in attempt to engage in dialog with people who do not see you have a right to exist as nothing you say is legitimate to them.

So, those who ARE capable of doing such..and there are many, I believe, are the people to whom this task is important to undertake with as much diligence as possible. Others should be chastized and not given recognition. IMHO.

If I had the solution to the world's problems I wouldn't be sitting here at my computer, I'd be on network television somewhere making headlines.

I came her to try to learn more about Israel from Israelis and I found myself caught up in trying to dispel bigoted propaganda!

I have never even been to Israel, but I have a deep love for the nation. I have never been to Egypt either and I've wanted to visit ancient ruins there as long as I've wanted to go to Israel. I want to float in Kinneret..I want to see all over that part of the world..in peace.

Call me a Pollyanna if you want. I won't give up hope.

Shalom

EDIT..OK..you really want to know what I SEE and THINK about all this. Here it is as straight up as I can give you.
The focus must be on stopping the efforts to eliminate Israel and to support efforts to achieve statehood for Palestine, integrate the refugess into a Palestinian nation, support the nations that now house refugees to help them become self-sufficient and grant them legal status! Going into a third generation as political pawns is ENOUGH! ( Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Egypt are all where the world's focus for the pitiable status of their refugees should have been all along )
I've seen photographs of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon with captions that lay direct blame on their CONDITION to ISRAEL as if Israel could control how they're being abused and used by their Muslim Arab bretheren as propaganda tools and pawns! Where are the many millions of dollars that Arafat confiscated that should have been used for their benefit? Where are the 22 Muslim nations reaching out to their bretheren? Would they rather continue to use them to destroy Israel than build their own Palestinian nation that should have existed already for 60 years? AT least this is the message it gives to the world at large, IF and WHEN that message is not continually drowned out with the cry of "Israeli agression and opression".

One example alone shows how efforts to help Palestinians are overlooked and undermined. This did not even make a byline in my local newspaper when it happened..
U.S. Jews raised 14 million dollars of private money to help the economy in Gaza and what did it get the Palestinians..greenhouses that once had employed several thousand people and were to be the cornerstone of helping the Gaza economy, Gazans trashed within hours of their taking posession. ( was this so Israel could be laid to blame for their unemployment again?).

The future of the next generation depends on education and preparation to become independent and productive citizens. There are 7 institutions of higher learning in Gaza alone that comprises a smaller land mass than my home county. In my home state, an area surrounding me that is three times larger only has 3 such institutions of higher learning and one of those 3 is a two year community college. Yet the Palestinian youth are always presented as having no future. There are a higher percentage of Gazans with at least some university education than of people in my home state with any college education! The attendance in secondary schools in Gaza and the West Bank is over 40 percent. My home state of Arkansas has less than half that percentage and we're not in refugee "camps".
"Arkansas is next to the lowest in the percent of adults with a bachelor’s degree, (17 percent). This compares with 20.3 percent for the south and 25.1 percent for the nation. (Taylor and Franklin, 2003)." from a link I'll give below. (The low rate of a higher education here is directly related to the fact that most simply cannot AFFORD to pay for a university education and despite scholarship and financial aide the costs have made it very difficult to obtain and I think this is shameful)

But here, rather than speak to the abysmal level of higher education at home, I want to focus on the Middle East..both the Palestinian territories, the disputed territories and the state of Israel.

Who is funding their education? Oslo and Wye accords anyone? US tax dollars have spent millions there and continue to fund the eduation of many of those who have strapped bombs to themselves in "despration"

But, what kind of education are they getting there if they're being taught that Israel "took" more than 70 percent of Palestine, when it is in FACT only 23 percent. Some here have said it was 56 percent of Palestine when it was in fact, 56 percent of the area of Palestine that was not made into Jordan in 1946! THAT is a BIG difference and a point often LOST in the West when they read the propaganda that the Arabs were upset that Israel was "given " more" land than they were! it is absurd. Israel was given 23 percent of Palestine and a significant amount of that 23 percent had been purchased over the past hundred years by the combined efforts of Jews all over the world!! They want to claim that Jordan isn't the "land" of Palestine when figuring land mass percentage, yet when figuring the number of people who have the "right" to call themselves Palestinians, they have no qualms of using people who lived in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in British Mandate Palestine to represent the numbers of Palestinains. The designation of Palestinian refugee according to the UN can be conferred on anyone who lived in the disupted territories for only two years! What other refugee group has such designation? Did those living in Gaza when Egypt controlled it cry out that Egypt was an "occupying nation"?

If one wants to focus on false claims or aims of Israel to try to take over the middle east, rather than simply living in peace alongside every other nation as Israel has been trying to do since statehood began, then you are focused on the wrong place and are taking efforts away from solutions.

The Palestinian people have BECOME a unified people and as such DESERVE a homeland, however it cannot displace the state of Israel. I pray for the day when their passion and desire to be a unified people is focused on nation BUILDING rather than neighboring nation destruction.

If the state of Israel were to be abolished related to the pressures and accusations that I read daily, it would be a message to the world that due process of law and the right of any nation to self-governance and self-determination through democratic process has no value to the world. It would be a sad testament to human civilization as we know it.

Right NOW..A very sad testament to humanity is that Israel is being demonized for EXISTING and the Palestinian refugees and their descendents have been used as PAWNS and manipulated in the name of Allah to see Israel as their oppressors rather than see the reality that it is their own surrounding nations that are doing this to them!
This is a quote from the first UN information link below:
"While Jewish refugees from Arab countries received no international assistance, Palestinians received millions of dollars through UNRWA. Initially, the United States contributed $25 million and Israel nearly $3 million. The total Arab pledges amounted to approximately $600,000. For the first 20 years, the United States provided more than two-thirds of the funds, while the Arab states continued to contribute a tiny fraction. Israel donated more funds to UNRWA than most Arab states. The Saudis did not match Israel's contribution until 1973; Kuwait and Libya, not until 1980. As recently as 1994, Israel gave more to UNRWA than all Arab countries except Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Morocco.

The United States is still by far the organization's largest contributor, donating nearly $90 million in 2000, approximately 31 percent of the organization's $293 million in receipts. Meanwhile, for all their rhetorical support for the Palestinians, the Arab states contributed only 2 percent of the UNRWA budget.7"

Yet it is Israel that is supposed to be resposible for their continued status as refugees? That appears absurd to me!

It is so bizarre to read that Israel controls the media when all the media portrays is a bias AGAINST Israel! This is a flip flop from 30 years ago when most media largely IGNORED Israel or tried to present Israel as the democratic allly of the U.S that it is.

I don't know what world the people are living in that claim that the "Palestinian side" isn't portrayed because here in the U.S. that's about all I ever SEE. Our newspapers are full of demonizing Israel as a powerful military aggressor against a desperate, impoverished and helpless people who are kept imprisoned in concentration style camps.
Next to being proselytized to convert to Jesus, Jews being asked " Do you agree with how horrible Israel treats the Palestinians?" WHAT????
What about how Israel has done nothing but try to SURVIVE and protect it's civilian populace for the past 60 years? What about that the Palestinians who are suffering most are doing so at the hands of their Muslim BRETHEREN? Where is the equal accountability here? Where is the logic? Where is the JUSTICE? Where is the mercy for their OWN?

You cannot be a genuine partner in working for peace if you claim the "other" has no right to exist! Where are the voices of the Palestinian leaders who say that Israel should exist in peace alongside their nation?

I don't see them being honored at that site given by another respondent. I see more of the same..demonizing Israel as an agressor against the poor Palestinians with the consensus that ONE state be "carved" out of "Palestine". That is yet another way to invalidate the right of the state of Israel as a Jewish state to exist! So does this mean you're going to negate Jordan their statehood, too? That is a separate state that was carved out of Palestine.

Where are voices of reason?

Why are all efforts of genuine HELP to nation build destroyed? Why is money earmarked to educate to help them build a nation used to teach them to hate and demonize the U.S. and Israel?

I've already been falsely accused of promoting only one " side"..when the ONLY side I want is PEACE for both people!

Yes, that's the ONLY side I will ever promote.
Give me a dozen thumbs down, it won't change my belief that that peace can only be obtained when enough people DEMAND that it happens by and recognizing the humanity of each other. Israel is a legitimate state whose nation and has a legitimate right to exist. The Palestinian people exist and deserve a state, they are a people without a legitimate state right now ONLY because more effort has been spent to demonize Israel than help THEM! Recognizing this reality and having Israeli and Palestinian work side by side to solve this is the only solution I can see.

Fabrications of an agenda that Israel and the Jews are out to conquer the world must stop.

Read the Hamas charter and tell me I'm demonizing the Palestinian with my statements. Read the PLO charter. They're available online in entirety.


Read the Constitution and Declaration of Independence of Israel and tell me who is comitted to promtion of peace in the region with their neighbors. Who is even willing to acknowledge that the right of their neighbors to EXIST! It certainly isn't Hamas and the PLO..until that happens, I don't see peace happening.

I shall not stop praying and hoping for better.
Shalom and Salaam.

Thank you for allowing me to vent on this.

I too, did not want to encourage any kind of rant to negate the right of either nation to exist when I posted the ONLY question I have in Y/A that this section is a reflection of a microcosm of Israel. Not only did I see posts that Israel should not exist, but false personal accusation was hurled directly at me. I hope this will clarify as my previous words must have been ignored.
EDIT: My post is so long it won't let me write much more! This is to answer your questions:
I cannot recall the exact article I first read, but I believe it was one of the online Israeli newspapers, either Jerusalem post or Haaretz. This was from 2005, I think that I've read there have been continued trashings of greehnouses. I did a quick Google of "greenhouses in gaza destroyed" and got many article links. This was the first one that showed up, but not one I had seen before. There appear to be many more, Jerusalem Post and Boston Globe I noticed had some, too. This link, while you may consider "biased" gives the reports as appeared in the Khaleej Times and from Associated Press. http://www.zionism-israel.com/ezine/gaza...
At the bottom I just LEARNED that not ALL the greenhouses were destroyed..many were left usable. HOWEVER, there have been RECENT incidents of vandalism and destruction of many MORE Greenhouses that were JUST reported in the Jerusalem Post that I did NOT know about, until I went to look for this..Sheesh. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?c...

As to the education. Many young people leave Arkansas for the same reason..few jobs.

Shalom, and thank you for being gracious!

Answer 2

It foretells nothing. With a few exceptions, the users of this site are representative only of extreme thought (on both sides). You will see that there are very few Israelis and Palestinians here-- you mostly find Jews and descendants of Palestinians living abroad.

I understand your question, and if this site were representative of both general populations, my hope would be virtually non-existent.

I am not saying that in the real world things are easy, or that it is not hard to be hopeful, or that I am not a realist. Peace obviously comes at a very high price.

However, I really would not use the members of YA Israel as an indicator of future peace efforts. There are a few people here who are great, but most have no agenda but to stir up controversy and hate everyone they deem to be on the "opposite" side. You'll see that moderate views and a middle ground are not only not emphasized, they are not tolerated.

Good luck

Edit: I would like to give you advice about finding other people with whom to discuss these issues. However, there's no one spot-- do you live in an area with lots of diversity? I meet many arabs and muslims, either through work, friends, or social events. You can also go to Arab and Jewish open social events and restaurants, and if you hit it off with the people feel free to start a discussion...

I know I'm lucky because let's be honest, most Jews and Muslims working in my field (intelligence and counterterrorism) are intelligent and open-minded enough to be great discussion partners. But work is certainly not the only place-- I'd just have an open mind, interact with a wide variety of people, and discussion partners will come. I always seem to end up surrounded by Israelis, Palestinians and Lebanese no matter what I do... I don't know why this happens to me :)

Answer 3

I advise don't do it. SOMETIMES this union can work if He has his Virgo in Venus (possible based on his BDAY) or You have your Mars in Leo (Unlikely) or some other favorable aspect. Female Virgos and Male Lions are an OK match, but eventually it will wear thin as a tightrope walker's pants. Leos are just TOO MUCH DRAMA for us Virgos. And female Lions and male Virgos? Forget about it! It's a train wreck waiting to happen- My husband (also a Virgo) had a Lioness Ex and she was a horrible, ungastly BIYOTCH.

Answer 4

If ones relatives have been wiped out by enemies... do you expect that one to be vengeful or slaved?... This is just one of the questions about the events going on.

Looking forward about the subject is really incomprehensible but as looking forward of being alone seems appropriate as I believe, time heals the wounds but could not be forgotten.

So, looking forward of having some security barriers seems more acceptable; and work, live, and have family to raise out of the things on hand with peace initiatives on both Governments are in place.

Answer 5

Hatred cloud the mind and blurs the vision.The future comes, we endure or die. The future cannot be allowed as a subject in this case only by those invested in hatred and determined to continue insanity.
Your question is more than valid it is inevitable reality and the insane,on all sides, misled by the power mad will not address it.
Good luck.

Answer 6

I am sorry, I gave a sarcastic answer to that question. I meant it to be a bot funny. I am just a human and i can't tell what the future will be like but I had some imagination based on some facts we hear and see everyday.
Those who reported you, I am sure are the same ones who reported me. I got a violation notice today. A lot of people here come to spread their hate and all what they do is bash others and report their posts. So many trolls.

Peace

Answer 7

Muslim by choice, plz forgive my abrupt opinion: I only need to say to you that here in YA one must take deleting with a grain of salt. Don't let it hurt you , don't take it so so seriously. Meaning , I don't want you to be hurt. Good questions go , bad racist questions stay and sometimes vice verca. It is a concern to many people that Israel and Palestine make peace, I know that to be true. But in places where people go to make peace, not in YA.
Mimi, months ago searced for that peace and found a wonderful website which is a forum where Jews and Muslims really want .....Peace!

Answer 8

It will never happen.The Arab countries look at the Jews as Monkeys.lower than life etc.They teach their children to hate America and Isreal,indoctrinating them at an early age.How can you look for peace in that kind of a situation.Until the antagonizing stops on both sides and they recognize Isreal,you wont have a future together

Answer 9

Because, we're reaching for the stars to try to make peace w/ the Muslims.

Answer 10

You have a good point.
Only through an open discussion we can reach an understanding.
Let us hope that those of us capable of a mature, intelligent exchange of ideas will continue doing so!

Answer 11

I don't really understand - I gave a view of the future - that certainly wasn't unanimous what you are saying.

Good Luck!!!