US funds Israel

Someone I know (that I shall call Libby), who is highly intelligent and whom I respect greatly, was recently on a trip to Israel to attend a wedding of an old school friend. She had never been to Israel before and, before going, had preconceptions, imagining that she would be entering a war zone - not surprising given that outside of Israel we tend to hear only about the bombings. She was pleasantly surprised to find a country which she described as 'first world', in stark contrast to Jordan, where she had been earlier, which seemed to lack efficiency or motivation (two things that matter greatly to Libby). She continued that Israel had been fought for by the Jews for a long time; that they had been ejected from Israel by the diaspora of the 2nd century AD; and concluded that they deserved the land that is now Israel given that they had made such a success of it and had fought so hard for it, whereas neighbouring states were not so successful and were probably jealous of Israel's success.

On the face of it, this may seem like a decent enough argument; except that it leaves out some crucial facts. Firstly, the human cost of Israel has been left out. Had Libby visited the refugee camps in Palestine to see the conditions that those displaced by Israelis now lived in, she may have had a more balanced opinion. In terms of Israel's success as a first world country, she might have included in her own musings the fact that the USA has funded Israel since 1949 to the tune of about $100bn to date. The influx of Jews into Israel has attracted some highly educated people - people who were initially educated outside Israel in USA, Europe and Russia. Israel was therefore re-created with a highly educated, motivated population - there is no doubting the existence of the hard-working, highly-intelligent and extremely talented Jew. It must be taken into consideration that Israel was constructed using an already-educated population.

The concept that worried me most, however, was the idea that the Jews 'deserved' Israel because they had fought and worked so hard for it. If fighting hard is the greatest reason for occupying a portion of land, presumably the Palestinians simply have to fight harder than the Israelis to deserve it more? That, certainly, is what everyone in the area seems to think.

So, where does that leave the human race? It seems to me that violence is the least reason for owning something, not the greatest. Admittedly, you cannot fight against blind violence with words and logic; but morally speaking, surely it is the basest reason of all?

The greatest problem I see in the world is the arbitrary attributing of loyalty to something we are born into. If you are born Jewish, you think that Jews are the chosen people. If you are born British, you may think that the British Empire was the greatest force for educating the world there has ever been and put the 'Great' into 'Great Britain'. If you are American, you might imagine that the asymmetric foreign policy that the USA has implemented for the last 50 years is right and just for the simple reason that America is the 'leader' of the 'free world' - which is a spin greatly to be wished for by any government. If you are a Muslim, you might think that the Islamic faith is the entire world, and everything else a creation of the devil that must be extinguished.

Where we are born is arbitrary. That my consciousness is in this body was not chosen by me - I had no free will in it. I had no free will in being born Welsh - nor do I think that I am in any way special for being Welsh. I do not believe in Welsh nationalism (although I am always excited when we beat England in the Six Nations). Being British is more important to me than being Welsh - but it comes at the price of a shame of the British Empire and its arrogance - the remnants of which we still see in our foreign policy. Being European is more important to me still, but only because I love European culture and hope that a united Europe will create peace in a continent that only 60 years ago was ravaged with fierce fighting which we do not want to see again. To fight for some arbitrary grouping seems to me pointless - and these are arbitrary groupings even if they seem so important to those who are members of them. Belief is little more than custom - and to put too great a store on it is to misunderstand the nature of belief.

What is my conclusion? That to put any arbitrary grouping (nationality, religion, profession, skin colour) before the fact of a living, breathing, thinking, feeling human being standing in front of you, is the basest, most violent thing of all. Not physically violent, but morally violent. A violence which offends all humanity because it denies a member of that humanity. If you have an arbitrary reason for hating someone (because they are Jewish or Muslim or American or Russian) then they might have an equally arbitrary reason for hating you or your sister or your mother and father. Although there may be much passion - there is no reason in it. Does Israel deserve the land? 'Israel' is a concept created by the arbitrary grouping tendency of the human mind (as is every country); since people are dying for this concept, the answer has to be 'no'.