Jim and the Bell-Ringer

Mark – 12/04/02

"The condition of man …is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.” Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651) pt. I, ch. 4.S; Two factions of the ironically-named “Alliance” party verbally brawl in public, escalating the fighting – even though it means the death of the party, and a scorched earth of public opinion where both sides can have no hope of ever raising votes again. Their argument is now totally irrelevant… whatever the merits of one side or the other, there cannot, now, be a future where either of their entrenched views has any relevance. As the usual roundup of quotable people talk of the nature of the combatants or the way such a fight was inevitable, most people simply hope the two will annihilate each other for the sake of peace and quiet. Yes, to most people their fight didn’t matter – other than to confirm prejudices about them or politicians in general. For the few that did take an interest, there is the obvious answer – one side is perfectly correct and the other deserves what it got, and the fight was a moral duty, of earth-shaking importance. Meanwhile, the birthplace of Jesus is surrounded by Israeli tanks and Palestinian snipers; the priest begs for international help to avoid the massacre of 200 Palestinians seeking sanctuary in the Church of the Nativity, and Samir Ibrahim Salman, its Christian Palestinian bell-ringer is shot moments after he left his home, dying after bleeding for hours unattended on the ground. It makes our local story of stupid politicians very petty and not worth our attention. But maybe not. Perhaps there is a lesson here, linking Jim Anderton and the “war on peace” that took the life of that bell-ringer – and thousands like him. Israelis and Palestinians are killing themselves at an ever-increasing rate. For what? Is their land any better to live in? No. It is heading for a truly “earth-shaking” climax that could literally be a scorched earth, unfit for human life. Rather more serious than minor political spats in New Zealand! But the stupidity is the same. They both look for one winner. They think the battle, the principle, is worth the self-destruction. They cannot imagine a world where both coexist let alone cooperate. They both claim to be working for the same higher purpose – in the Middle East that means doing the will of the same Almighty God, yet the fruit of their trees stems from somewhere else. And we are all to blame, on-lookers and participants the same. The world needs maturity. It is not an optional extra. Not an afterthought, once you clobber your enemies. We have had plenty of years, and far too many mistakes to learn from, to remain stupid. If we cannot solve a problem as small and simple as Anderton vs McCarten, how can we expect great world conflicts to fare any better? Now I don’t claim to understand the Alliance tiff; I do know that the climate that surrounded it, including the political attack on the mediation efforts of Gregory Fortuin, says nothing good for our level of maturity. It is just one of many examples of civilization refining fighting to an art form. In the case of Israel, the problem is more than a mass of black ink in newspapers each week, or a reason for television news becoming PG-rated. The potential for fallout from this conflict is enormous. The prophesies for this place and, some would say, this time are cause for concern – even for those that don’t believe them there is the fear that plenty of people do, and with their state of mind that is enough to make them self-fulfilling. And I don’t claim to understand all facets of the Middle East conflict, but I do know many things that are wrong, and what has to happen before a good solution can be found. One of the great things about the Internet is the ability now to read comments from around the world – not just seeing the same news stories with a different slant in their on-line newspapers, but learning what people there feel, how they react to those stories thousands of miles away from us. One thing is clear: hatred breeds fear, which breeds more hatred. More and more moderate people living in fear turn to hard-line leaders as violence explodes around them, and that leads to more violence. High-level peace negotiators are either not relevant to their mind-set, or fuel the suspicion that soft leaders – more hated than the enemy – will sell them out. The world’s idea of peace has not developed; if we put as little thought into understanding war we wouldn’t have the long-bow yet! For a land full of those claiming to follow God, there is little appreciation of the documented tricks of The Tempter. But we, so far away, are also part of the problem. We fall for the claims that one side is entirely to blame; that the problems would disappear if only one side could be pushed off the face of the earth. Of course there is plenty to reinforce this view – depending on which side you support: the Israeli tanks against stone-throwing children, or the suicide bombers, are all you need. From a historical point of view you can try to say who the real owner of the land is and who are the invaders. But anyone looking honestly at the violence or the history will have to say no side can justify expelling the other, keeping a racially “pure” land. Nor can we say that all people on one side or another are the same – we may have heard of the PLO still having as its official policy the aim of driving Israel into the sea, yet we also have to appreciate the wonderful work of the “Hope Flowers” school for instance. Yet the world either takes no interest, or takes sides. I might not have sent money to arm one side or the other, but have I done all I can to encourage a climate where peace might prevail?