Victims or Victimizers: The Greek public and the Palestinians

Sounds like a stretch, doesn't it? Trying to connect the behavior of the Greeks with that of the Palestinians? But think about it.



In the case of Greece, the current situation is very clear. The public feels screwed. They've adapted themselves to a certain way of life and now the carpet is being pulled from under them. They're mad as hell, and "they won't take it any more."



There is only one problem; their dreams have been unsustainable right along. They can't have (for more than the time they've enjoyed it) things that can only be had by endless infusions of cash from countries that are more efficient and work harder; countries whose bankers have been buying their Greek bonds.



Okay, so that's clear, but why is this so difficult for the Greeks to understand? Here are my guesses: Greeks like most folks, including my fellow citizens, haven't taken Economics 101. Instead, they've relied on their wise men; their politicians (allow me to pause while I laugh).

Furthermore, these economic forces don't work themselves out in minutes, days, or weeks. It can take years. (That's why we have "bubbles." If events worked themselves out in a shorter time frame, the bubble would never have time to get really, really big.)



Also, the Greeks might have been able to carry on with their unsustainable wishes a bit longer, if their politicians had given them a more equitable tax system; one where you actually collect the taxes owed by Greece's big earners.



The Palestinians too suffer from a similar short sightedness. And, again they can thank their leaders. I use the term "leader" because I find the term "politician" too enobling. The division of Palestine by the UN was unfair to the Jews. However, the Jews were prepared to accept it. That would have given the "Palestinians" a lot more than they can look forward to today.


At that time, Jewish leaders were mostly socialist (leaning towards communism). No surprise there, since so many had come from lands where hated anti-Semitic czarists were deposed by communists. Then too, they loved communist ideology; namely, we are an international fraternity of workers, and from each, according to his means, to each, according to his needs. What's remarkable is that the early Zionists did not pursue this ideology to the murderous extremes witnessed in the Soviet Union.



But, let's go back to the Palestinians. (Actually, before Israel, everyone sharing that land was a Palestinian.) After the UN division, the Jews named their portion "Israel" and left "Palestine" as a decription of territory rather than as one of nationality. (The Arabs in Palestine gave their allegiance to the Jordanians [those in the West Bank] and to the Egyptians [those in Gaza]. )



What united these entities; namely, Jordan, Egypt and those people living in what remained of Palestine, was their Arab, Islamic culture. It was a culture adamently opposed to any nation arising on what they considered sacred Arab/Islamic land. In this hatred of what they considered a foreign entity, they pledged themselves to continuous warfare against "the Zionist entity." So, in the first instance, you can't blame the Arabs in Palestine, who only later were brought together as a united Palestinian people by Arafat, the Egyptian.



The problem with the Palestinians was that, in the first instance, they couldn't have prevented the Jordanians and the Egyptians from launching a war against the Jewish state. Of course, as fellow Muslims, they had little, or no, interest in doing so. But that is besides the point. Their politics was guided by parties beyond Palestinian land.



But, when Jordan and Egypt lost their war of agression against Israel, Israel had every right, as a nation against whom war had been launched by others, to take whatever lands they had gained through self defense. But Israel saw a problem with this situation. Had they taken all the lands to which they were entitled, they would have had to manage a large population of people with a very different culture. It would also have meant diluting the Jewish population. No, far better to let them govern themselves.

Israel has always wanted to have peace with the Arabs around them. But, peace requires that all parties must want peace. This was not so with Israel's Arab neighbors. The villian here was the Islamic culture. The peace that was forged with Egypt after Egypt's attempt to destroy Israel has proven to be a cold peace despite the fact that it was very generous to Egypt. And the peace with Jordan has run hot and cold depending on Jordan's political needs at any particular point in time.

So, the Arabs hit upon a new strategy. Let's wittle away at Israel. Let's make them more vulnerable. Then, when they've been weakened sufficiently, we go in for the kill. Their strategy has been to delegitimize Israel by painting it as a killer of Palestinians and as a usurper of Palestinian land. Their claims to Jerusalem, a city as central to observant Jews as Mecca is to Muslims, is one that makes sense only if you want to remove all meaning to Jews of the Jewish State for Jews.

Nevertheless, the Palestinians are but dupes in the hands of the Saudis, the original source of radical Islam. The Jordanian king, at this point, just wants to be sure that he, and his family, hold on to their throne. The Iraqi's, apre Saddam Husein, are struggling to create a new system of governance. The Afghan masses are still trying to learn to read. And, the Pakistanis are being diverted from creating mischief for the Indians by American insistance that they help in running down al Qaida and its agents. That leaves the 800-lb guerilla; namely, Iran.

Iran wants to be a player and has enlisted such henchmen as the Syrians, Hizbollah, and Hamas.
Now that I think of it, maybe the Greeks aren't in such bad shape after all.