Lazy Thinking

During the week one of my favourite bloggers referred to one of my posts about the Middle East.

[I have to admit I was quite proud, cos she is quite a sharp writer.]

However another blogger (DVP) having read her post, wrote up a rather biased, partly anti Jewish, partly anti-Israeli / anti-Zionist take on the modern history of Jewish peoples in the Middle East.

In my opinion, it dehumanised Jews and demonised Zionists. As my original post linked to an article which evenly humanised both Jews and Arabs, I thought DVP's work was particularly twisted and conniving.

This caught me off guard and has shown up my hitherto lazy thinking on the conflict. Apart from his simply racist remarks, he quoted histories which blamed Zionists for the repression of Jews that remained in their ancestral homes in the Middle East (i.e. Iraq, Egypt etc.).

My view had been that the creation of Israel was of course a factor of this repression and ensuing violence, that cannot be denied. You cannot displace peoples that lived on land for centuries and expect to live happily ever after. However the key point is, that Arabs had NO moral justification for treating Jewish people that lived in the wider Middle East so badly - no matter what was going on in Palestine.

Similarly, after 9/11 white western bigots have no justification for racist acts and taunts against Muslims in America, Australia and elsewhere.

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Although I am angry at DVP's article, it has cleared my thinking on the issue. For that I am grateful.

It's a platitude, but as the old cliché goes; two wrongs don't make a right.