What is peace at all? Do we speak the same language?

[hagg323]

I wonder if we even speak the same language when we call for 'peace'? Right now, in the face of daily barbaric actions and the lack of basic and morale respect to human life (even of their own Palestinian people, even of the Israeli-Arabs that mostly favor their cause)… what value and what point is there in trying to find ways how to co-exist side by side as two peaceful nations? I wonder if the only logical solution isn’t really to transfer all the Palestinians away from the occupied territories and Israel? But Not from religious reasons; not from a need to occupy additional land to the state of Israel; not for racial reasons. For security reasons-only. Isn’t the death toll on both side, say within the coming 25 years, be smaller if we drive them away today rather than fallback now and again to endless clashes and senseless disputes? Have we not grown to be too sensitive to human rights, decency and to morale debates up to a point that it now becomes a barrier to ourselves to see the only true long-lasting solution? Isn’t it what most other countries in territorial disputes throughout history have done everywhere in the world for much larger number of refugees? Up until recently, I wouldn’t have even agreed to listen to such a suggestion. I was thinking with my heart and with the morale values that I was raised on. I think that my education did not prepare me to judge this type of situations. I was using the wrong tools to decide my position on a non-morale situation because of the absence of other tools that do match these circumstances.

[NewsGuy]

Originally posted by hagg323
I wonder if the only logical solution isn’t really to transfer all the Palestinians away from the occupied territories and Israel? But Not from religious reasons; not from a need to occupy additional land to the state of Israel; not for racial reasons. For security reasons-only. Isn’t the death toll on both side, say within the coming 25 years, be smaller if we drive them away today rather than fallback now and again to endless clashes and senseless disputes? Have we not grown to be too sensitive to human rights, decency and to morale debates up to a point that it now becomes a barrier to ourselves to see the only true long-lasting solution?

Very interesting points which I, too, agree with.

I think that we have the obligation to try to find peaceful solutions and give these ideas a fair chance to succeed. But having exhausted all peaceful solutions, including decades of offering land for peace and even Palestinian control over parts of Jerusalem and having these offers rejected by the Arabs, there comes a time to come up with less pleasant solutions.

Transfer of some of the Palestinian population, and transfer of some of the Jewish population is the only way to succeed, IMO. As you said, in the long run it will save the lives of both Palestinians and of Israelis.

[Mediocrates]

Build more suburbs in the disputed lands. When there are 1.5 Million Jews living there instead of 200K the dispute will not be larger it will be different - it will be impossible to wave away with a proclamation here and an embargo there. And the murdering horde will simply have to accept that half of YESHA is inhabited by Jews. If they can't live with those terms they can move somewhere else. Don't even bother formally annexing them - since they are part of Israel anyway. Just move in.

[hagg323]

In a different thread you are discussing ways to accomplish a transfer. In this thread and in order to fork to a separate discussion, I'd rather deal with another fundemental questions:

How to raise positive support to this idea among ourselves and by the non-Jewish world?

How to shift the discussion from talking of two nations to a solution that involves transfer of all Palestinians with global backup (including the other Arab countries)?

Without gaining gloabl agreement, without making the main decision makers to speak about it openly... it will never happen. It may take some time to accomplish. What should be the first steps?

[Mediocrates]

Just move in. The Israeli version of urban renewal. Except in this case good neighborhoods chase out bad ones.

[NewsGuy]

Originally posted by hagg323
How to raise positive support to this idea among ourselves and by the non-Jewish world?

Instead of focusing on the movement of people, the spin needs to be the focus on saving lives and reaching a state of peace and freedom for both sides.

I also find the analogy of the 2 wrestlers that need to be first separated to stop fighting, to be very understandable to most people.

[cerulean]

Most important is to understand the different meanings of the words "peace" and "tolerance" in Islamic vs. Western terms.

Scholar warns West of Muslim goals
By Uwe Siemon-Netto
UPI Religion Correspondent


http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=18062002-044316-3353r
WASHINGTON, June 18 (UPI) -- A leader of the small worldwide Muslim reform movement warned the West Tuesday against wishful thinking as the U.S. government promotes an intensive dialogue with Islam.

"The dialogue is not proceeding well because of the two-facedness of most Muslim interlocutors on the one hand and the gullibility of well-meaning Western idealists on the other," said Bassam Tibi, in an interview with United Press International.

Syrian-born Tibi, who claims to be a direct descendant of the prophet Mohammed and teaches political science at Goettingen University in Germany, appealed for intellectual honesty between both parties in these exchanges.

"First, both sides should acknowledge candidly that although they might use identical terms these mean different things to each of them. The word 'peace,' for example, implies to a Muslim the extension of the Dar al-Islam -- or 'House of Islam' -- to the entire world," explained Tibi, who is also a research scholar at Harvard University.

"This is completely different from the Enlightenment concept of eternal peace that dominates Western thought, a concept developed by (18th-century philosopher) Immanuel Kant."

"Similarly, when Muslims and the Western heirs of the Enlightenment speak of tolerance they have different things in mind. In Islamic terminology, this term implies abiding non-Islamic monotheists, such as Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians, as second-class believers. They are 'dhimmi,' a protected but politically immature minority."

...

[hagg323]

The majority of the people in Israel are against the idea of transfer, among other reasons because it has bad connotations to us; The Arabs are fully against this idea because a) surely, they don’t want to push the Palestinian problem to their doors, and b) they want to see Israel out of here and having the Palestinians to stay here is a perfect way to get to it, eventually, so they think; The Europeans are against the notion of transfer, also for various reasons (too many to list here); The people in the USA, non-Jewish and non-Arab are currently truly occupied with many other disturbing and threatening local affairs than to become a voice that makes a difference.

In trying to spark these people that the idea of transfer is a good solution for everyone, any thoughts about where to begin?

[Jorge]

Originally posted by hagg323
In a different thread you are discussing ways to accomplish a transfer. In this thread and in order to fork to a separate discussion, I'd rather deal with another fundemental questions:

How to raise positive support to this idea among ourselves and by the non-Jewish world?

How to shift the discussion from talking of two nations to a solution that involves transfer of all Palestinians with global backup (including the other Arab countries)?

Without gaining gloabl agreement, without making the main decision makers to speak about it openly... it will never happen. It may take some time to accomplish. What should be the first steps?

Regarding your request about which should be the first steps to be taken to convince people around the world that transfer of the palestinian arabs is not such a bad idea, I'd like to outline my modest contributions:

First, as you rightly guess, a different "marketing approach" is needed to promote the idea among the Jews than among the non-Jewish world.

The Jewish part is easier, because it can be circumscribed just to those living in
Israel, once the israelis are convinced, the majority of the Diaspora Jews will go along with any action our government takes. To promote the idea in Israel you should differentiate bet. religious and secular. The religious population is not problematic: for a number of reasons, the rabbinical leaders that once opposed Zionism as a heresy have become the staunchest supporters of the expansion of the State, so that most of them don't need much convincing. As for the rest it's just a question of reminding them that God made a Covenant with our forefathers
long before any Palestinians were even born; according to the said Covenant we,
as their direct descendants, are the inheritors of the Land of Israel; since we have
a divine right to this Land we are justified in putting out of the way any tribe who is against us, in much the same way as our forefathers dealt with Canaanites and other "ites" which may be taken obviously, to include palestinites as well. (note:
the Covenant actually included obligations for the children of Israel to obey the commandments and other moral trivia; I wouldn't emphasize this aspect too much since it's a bit troublesome)

Regarding the secular israeli population the marketing approach could be along these lines: a) peace with the arabs is unattainable ; b) the way things are going we are bound to injure or kill quite a number of them in the coming years
c) we need more land to expand the existing settlements and create new ones
so that the palestinians will have to live in more overcrowded conditions. Accordingly, considering
a),b) and c) it is far more humane for us to relocate palestinians in other arab countries where there is plenty of space, fresh air and where they will be free from military occupation. In my opinion the logic of the argument
is irresistible and it's bound to convince most of them. ( note: you have to count on the fact that some will remain unconvinced; if they are too many there's
always the option of transferring the most vociferous of them somewhere else; the rest should be kept because, since we are a democratic country, a bit of opposition is salutary.)

Now we come to the real hard bone: the non-Jewish world. You have to take into account the fact that this people are looking at the conflict from outside. They are neither emotionally involved, like Jews or Moslems, nor do they have
something to win or loose with transfer. You may have noticed that when their own interests are not at stake, people resort to moral guidelines and, regarding transfer, the ethical ground is a bit slippery. They are bound
to think like this: "There are two nations claiming the same piece of land, the Jews are relatively newcomers the Palestinians have been living there for countless generations." Why can't they divide the land and live alongside each other? If they cannot co-exist peacefully, why should the Arabs leave?
Why not the Jews?." Simplistic and naïve you might say but, unfortunately, that's the way they might look upon your idea. No point about claiming our divine right to the Land , most of them have not even read the Old Testament
(think of all those billions of Asians and Africans) and the ones that did at Sunday School have by now forgotten it. The UN would be also uncooperative because they gave us right to only half of the land.

The situation however is not entirely hopeless, I have one idea that might work if it is promoted wisely. I don't know if you remember that in the sixties (last century of course)the idea of the "Yellow Menace" started to circulate all
over the world. The idea of the Yellow Menace was that Asians were growing at an alarming speed, acquiring all sort of technologies and, being intrinsically malevolent, would dominate the world in a matter of decades. It was amazing how people of all walks of life swallowed this idea ( I remember how an uncle of mine, a well known surgeon of otherwise balanced mind, used to tell me about his concern about how many Oriental Restaurants and Chinese laundries were opening in town. He suspected them of being the Fifth Column of an approaching Yellow Invasion.
In a moment of inspiration it came to me that we could start spreading the idea of an "Arab Menace" along the same lines of the Yellow one. After all the Arabs are also growing at a tremendous rate, they have acquired dangerous technologies (Iraq, Libya) and, as everyone knows, are intrinsically malevolent. I'm sure that, with adequate promotion, most people will swallow the bate. A number of americans, frenchmen, austrians and others are already prone to the idea; few people around believe in Promises but most believe in Menaces. I'm sure that with some hard work and creative publicity the threat of the Arab Menace will spread very fast. Once the Menace is acknowledged by world public opinion we could start transferring Palestinians around at our will; no one will cry foul play, on the contrary, we may be hailed as the champions of Western civilization.

I'm not saying, mind you, that it's going to be easy; plenty of hard work will be needed and the bulk on it will follow on the TV producers. Once transfer starts you'll have to flood TV stations around the Globe with footage of smiling arabs
climbing happily into the buses and Israeli volunteers distributing sandwiches for the trip. Plenty of footage also about palestinian children playing soccer in overcrowded refugee camps (before) and of the same children playing ball in an sports ground in Kuwait(after). Remember, once it's on the screen it becomes fact.

[hagg323]

Jorge, you have given quite a good material for much deeper thinking and I thank you for that. I definitely agree to some of the early analysis in your response and do forgive me for not replying to the rest, rather trying to push the discussion forward to where I was heading with my question. You have talked about justifications to a transfer by some ‘customer segments’ and partly about some tactics how to go about accomplishing it. I’d like to go back to the strategy and to figure it out fully before going any further with execution.

Look, I believe that a (complete and not partial) transfer is the only logical long-lasting solution and I have lost faith in any other compromise and I position it as a goal. Well, trying to decide where I stand about it. I am less worried about issues such as how to actually perform a transfer, where to transfer all these people, and what should be the key ‘Marketing’ messages for it that would make a ‘campaign’ going. I believe that if the strategy is planned right, the rest will fall into place as the market forces will forge it, although the end result may be far different than the initial pure intention.

So here’s my concern and confusion: I believe in the forces of mindset and trends to swing the pendulum back and forth. In order to meet the goal of transfer, the general mindset must be changed. And we don’t have much time. Currently, everyone speaks about safe borders for two nations (whatever that means) and how to separate between them and us. The mindset is pretty strong about it, in-house and abroad. The trend has started sometime ago. Changing a trend without a significant ‘market event’ is hard to get. I’d hate to see the mindset changed over a catastrophe or a mega-terror act that our politicians and spokesmen are eagerly threatening with. Would rather find a strategy that will set the process started already. I don’t see the extremists from the right-wing in Israel making it happened. I see everyone talking to themselves about the need, agreeing with each other. I am not looking to convince those who are already convinced.

The process may be too expensive time-wise. Perhaps, it’s already too late and we are bound to make the best out of the emerging suggestions by the Israeli government and US officials. But we’ve got to start somewhere. Where? Where is the most effective place to begin?

Decision-makers in Israel? The politicians who are in favor of transfer are trying it for years for no huge success. Maybe they’ll win few more voters this time. Still not good enough.
Decision-makers In the USA? Who? How to do?
Decision-makers in EU?
Others? The general public in the streets who would indirectly serve the cause because they will put a lot of pressure on their own decision-makers in the US or EU or the Arab countries?

Should we use a strategy that leads to scaring the world from the Moslem threat with us being the frontier of the western world? Or do we go with methods of persuasion and logic?
Should we focus on rejecting the Moslems and Palestinians? Or work our way on generating public awareness and acceptance that a transfer is the only best human solution that aims to solve their difficulties no less than ours.
Should we go about it with aggressive and militant strategy that calls for a strong and if needed a violent position? Or should we demonstrate that a transfer is the only non-violent solution that makes sense and possible at this moment in time?
Should we degrade them? Or should we respect them and show that we are nothing but equal to them as human being?

Seems like awfully a lot of questions but it’s really only one innocent question by a very dumb and confused person: where the hell do we start, effectively, in order to ignite a process that would lead to a new public mindset about the concept of transfer and would make it the only political debate?