Israel/Palestine
In reply to the discussion: Israel, the un-apartheid state – a comparison with Australia [View all]FarrenH
(768 posts)Last edited Sun Aug 25, 2013, 05:22 AM - Edit history (1)
Although its funny you mention that, because SA was in a state of war with Angola for something like 15 years and every young man of a certain age was forced to do two years military service, either on the border or quelling protest in black townships. Thankfully, I was conscripted near the end of Apartheid, when the military was especially sensitive to both local and international perception, and got away with declaring openly that the Apartheid government was my enemy and I would give my weapon to the "enemy" (instead of military detention, they took away my weapon and made me do makework administration for most of the next two years)
Another plank in the narrative of existential threat. We really were told we were under constant existential threat from our neighbours up North. And they certainly were outraged at the system of Apartheid we were practicing and provided aid and support for then-banned organisations like the ANC, Azapo, the PAC and so on that were conducting bombing and other sabotage campaigns in South Africa. In consequence, he SADF was running covert operations in other neighbouring states that were seen as hostile and a threat, not just the country we were nominally at war with. White high school children periodically attended "veld school" camps where they were filled with tales of terrorism and instilled with a great fear of the enemy within and without. It was from that time I learned how countries can create and nurture their own monsters, then justify their actions based on the havoc those "monsters" wreak, just as the IDF materially helped Hamas achieve the power it has today, in an effort to divide and rule. A militaristic nationalism is often built on the foundations of an eternal threat, and it serves militant nationalists well to not only exaggerate that threat, but constantly inflame it.
But having read about Israel's many wars, I cannot find justification for its treatment of the Palestinians or continual enroachment on their land. Firstly because the current occupants of the West Bank and Gaza weren't the primary aggressors in most of them, secondly because overt and covert support for the settlement project brazenly contradicts the "security only" narrative, thirdly because aquifer use and control casts further doubt on the "security only" narrative, fourth because some historical documents suggest a growing and quite deliberate intent to use defensive war as a cover to secure more land, rather than simply being a reluctant necessity... I mean, the border with Jordan? The country hasn't even been vaguely threatening to Israel in recent memory. I could go on and on. Suffice to say, listening to the most fervent defenders of the things I find reprehensible about Israel today, there is an enormous sense of familiarity.