Ken Burch
1 min readOct 13, 2024

--

There was always equal violence by Zionist forces against Palestinians- some of whom are descended from the ancient Israelites, btw- and, as you pointed out, the issue was people coming in from outside of the Mandate insisting that the land was theirs and nobody else's- Palestinians- and Arabs or Muslims in countries with significant indigenous Jewish communities- usually treated their Jewish neighbors far better than Christian Europe treated the Jewish communities there- there was never an Arab or Palestinian equivalent of Torquemada, the Tsars or Hitler- there were times of less acceptance and times of greater acceptance, to be sure, but it was never an accurate statement of regional history to pretend that Arabs and Muslims were unrelentingly hostile or murderous towards Jews.

Admitting that this isn't a religious bigotry dispute, but a land dispute, is the key to bringing it to a peaceful end- so is giving up on the insistence that any area should be reserved for one community and one alone.

The third key is admitting that Palestinians and Arabs are not pathologically incapable of running decent societies and comporting themselves as decent human beings- the truth is, most of them do behave decently and no Arab or Muslim country has ever been perpetually barbaric.

--

--

Ken Burch
Ken Burch

Written by Ken Burch

Retired Alaska ferryboat steward, grandparent, sometime poet. Radical yet independent of dogma. Likes nice days, playing banjo and not as yet dying of Covid.

Responses (1)