Jew see? (wutio Iron Maiden)

So just what the hell is going on in Jericho today? first the US & UK personnel responsible for over seeing security arrangements at Palestinian prisons sneak off without telling anyone. Then, literally minutes later, the Israelis are 'forced' to mount an armed assault on a prison compound in order to snatch one particular guy.

Palestinians throughout the occupied territories were outraged by the situation and the sickeningly familiar spiral of protest, violence and kidnappings ensued. They are a hot headed lot aren't they? Well no, actually, no more than the rest of us.

Let's just think this through for a second. Imagine the UK decided it wasn't happy about the penal situation of a US citizen in a US jail and hence decided to snatch them back. Then the Canadian border patrols unexpectedly take the day off, without telling their US counterparts. UK forces launch an armed incursion on US soil, knocking down walls, stripping and killing US citizens.

So how long before the bombs start falling on London? Yes the Palestinians are fucked off, and so they should be. The only Palestinian people we see expressing their anger, however, are those that choose to do it in the most dramatic ways. We associate bloodthirsty overreaction with Palestinians, and Arab peoples generally, because that's all we see on TV.

Now this is no great revelation, the issue of demonising Islam and Arabic people has received a lot of attention over the last few years. What's worth remembering however, is that this phenomenon is not restricted to these particular groups.

My first reaction to the unfolding situation was disappointment and irritation towards Israel but I don't assume to be an expert on the daily problems they face. With this in mind I listened carefully to the responses I heard from Israeli government representatives on BBCN24 today but found nothing above the usual domestic standard of irrelevant political bullshit.

Now tensions in this part of the world only seem to be mounting and the recent diplomatic ruck with Iran has brought some pretty old school anti-semitism(1) back into the mainstream spotlight. With such dark vibes floating about more and more people are finding they have to walk on eggshells for fear of being branded a racist or a fascist.

Ken Livingston is a recent case in point, while in Austria they're locking up people for the thought crime of holocaust denial. I remember hearing the longer excerpt of the Livingston recording when the story first broke. The guy made a perfectly valid point, and one which I certainly agree with.

Now being a seemingly nice bloke I think he would have probably chosen a different metaphor had he known the reporter was Jewish, (but the fact that he didn't just showed that he had no intention of causing offence.) The point he was making, which the media conveniently didn't mention, was that some reporters behave in an unnecessarily anti-social way and then hide behind their 'bosses orders' to justify it.

Anyway I'd better get to the point before the less patient among you brand me a closet nazi and start organising a lynch mob. There is a lot of hatred in the world and it causes a lot of pain. There are, undeniably, people who would claim to hate 'Jews' for example, but who exactly is it that these people despise?

I once saw documentary made by a young Jewish guy who was trying to get himself added to an internet list of 'the Jews who run Hollywood' or something similar. It was a really well put together piece consisting mainly of interviews with a wide array of Jewish people.

One of those interviews that really stuck in my mind was with a group of people in a New York deli. Another young Jewish guy pointed that the world only sees two kinds of Jews: 'dead Jews and killer Jews.' They're either children being slaughtered in the holocaust or out slaughtering Palestinian children in tanks.

If I were the kind of person who didn't read and took what I saw on TV at face value this is all I would have left from which to form an opinion of 'Jews':

your basic potted history of the holocaust, I've been to Anne Frank's house but I've never seen Schindler's List,

seeing representatives of Jewish people, the Israeli army or some community group, fighting petty, dirty battles that cause a great deal of unnecessary suffering for everyone, including other Jews,
Now as it is I only have to think of the suited twats who represent me to the rest of the world to know that you simply can't judge a whole group of people by their leaders. This last influence is a key problem however, in that there are a lot of people causing a lot of pain under the flag of Judaism.

If I were Jewish I would be fucking livid with Israel, not simply for their military actions but more for doing them in the name of my religion. Let's not forget, Israel doesn't claim to be a Jewish country in the same way that Iran is an Islamic country, they're the Jewish state.

Defining themselves in this way ties the actions of a democratic government, as vulnerable to failure as any other, to every single member of a global religion. This is, it seems to me, the fundamental flaw in having church, state and race so inherently intertwined.

The anger we so often see aimed at Jews, or Muslims and Arabs, is actually directed at the commonly held images of these peoples. The fact is that whether you're Christian, Jewish, Muslim or sane, and no matter where you live, we're the victims of our own elites.

There are small, loud and aggressive facets of reach of our cultures and so often, because the rest of us let them by the way, they end up running the show and speaking for all of us. If we're to have any hope at all of resolving some of these conflicts we simply cannot afford to lose sight of the most basic truth:

Forget the flags and the speeches and the bloodstains for a second, the average person in the street, anywhere on the planet, wants to be safe, healthy and free. Strangers across the globe or the enemy next door, they're going to get angry and scared at just the same things as you because, get this, THEY ARE YOU!

Despite a truly monumental effort throughout the history of mankind to convince us otherwise, we are all still boringly similar. So next you think, 'god damn they piss me off', just take a moment to think about who they really are, picture them in your mind's eye. Who d'you see?

footnote

(1) I used to work with a Jordanian who got really pissed off with the phrase anti-semitism, Semites are people from a particular region, she told me, and technically includes people besides Jews,