Neighbourly Proximity
There's nothing that confers a sense of community quite like friendly relations with one's neighbours. Most particularly those neighbours who live close to you. What could be more miserable than to have strained relations - worse, downright nasty relations, as can and occasionally does happen to people - with one's neighbours? It's a great boost to comfort levels, to trust in one's community, to satisfaction with one's place in the community when serene relations are the norm.So that, when you walk down the street and pass your neighbours, you also stop, however briefly, to pass the time of day, to cement a sense of camaraderie. If you've not much else in common, you have the commonality of living in close proximity in a certain area, and of wanting peace and security for your family. You know that if something goes awry, your neighbour will be concerned and keep an eye out for you and your children's welfare.
The opposite is hell on earth. Neighbours at odds with one another have been known to surreptitiously toss trash into one another's backyards. They continually eye one another with suspicion and ill feeling, certain that the 'other' is up to no good, to engineer problems for them. If the next-door neighbour has loud parties deep into the night, sleep is lost. If the neighbour's visiting friends look as though they'd fit right in with a raucously violent bar room crowd, you're nervous.
If there's a break-in, you look with suspicion at your neighbour, or his teen-age sons; up to no good, coveting your property. It's no way to live, and all the more so when complaints are frequently laid with the local authorities about the infringements on one's property from the other, or nasty incidents when there are face-offs and one slanders the other, loudly, for the entire street to hear, then tops it off with serious threats of violence.
There's a solution, as awkward and miserable as it might seem. You can always sell your house and move elsewhere, hoping somewhere else to have more luck. If you're an individual you can do that. If you're a country, you haven't that option. You don't exactly grin and bear it, but you do bear the consequences of living alongside a neighbour whose many parts appear to bear a deadly grudge so serious that they are collectively committed to your country's demise.
Figures released by a recent Palestinian Authority poll indicate that fully 84% of Arabs feel the recent killing of 8 Yeshiva students in Jerusalem to have been fully justified. The pollster, based in Ramallah, interviewed almost thirteen-hundred PA Arabs, of whom 64% approve the rocket attacks by Hamas-controlled Gaza on Israeli cities and towns. A slender majority would give their vote to Hamas's chief Ismail Haniyeh, openly dedicated to Israel's destruction, over Fatah's "moderate" Mahmoud Abbas. An earlier poll found 75% of PA Arabs convinced Israel has no right of existence.
Little wonder that Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah chairman and head of the Palestinian Authority expounds a message of eventual take-over of the entire geography, expunging Israel from the map, spreading the incipient state of Palestine to encompass the whole area. Little wonder that PA maps of the area show "Palestine" writ large over the territories and where the State of Israel would normally be, included. This is the message that PA Arabs are accustomed to, belying the message disseminated internationally of the imminence of a peace accord achieved through sincere negotiations, and the succeeding establishment of a two-state solution.
From the time they are children in primary school to the time they're in high school and old enough to take part in the intifadas, or in stealth attacks on Jewish property and civilians, Palestinian Arabs have been fed a steady diet of victimhood and revenge. A new twist has been added, with PA children living in Gaza being exposed to an ancient East-Europe-derived blood libel hauled out every Easter that it is Jewish custom to take the blood of Christian children to make matzah.
Only in this new, grotesque version, warping history in a macabre fantasy to frighten children and fan the flames of their adult hatred, children from Gaza are exposed to an exhibit depicting Israelis burning Palestinian children in a crematorium. The words, "Stop the Israel's Holocaust" reinforces the horrifying message laid on for impressionable children, marking them for life as enemies of their neighbours.
They will never be taught the truth, that one and a half million Jewish children perished in the Holocaust, and what they're being taught is a dreadful slander.
They're ripe and ready to receive the support promised them by Syria, Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah terror group that the entire land belongs to them, and them only. They are dedicated not to a peace settlement and an agreement that would see two sovereign nations living side by side in peace and co-operation, but the eventual victory of conquering the enemy interloper-occupier who has made a misery of their lives through the constant back-and-forth hostilities, because Palestinian Arabs will not submit to a truncation of their expectations.
And with the latest declaration by Osama bin-Laden assuring the Palestinian Arabs that al-Qaeda remains committed to freeing them from the clutches of the infidels and the Zionists, they see their path clear to the triumph of the creation of their State of Palestine, and the disappearance of the detested State of Israel.
The quality of one's neighbours directly speaks to the broader quality of life in any community.
Labels: Israel, Justice, Troublespots
posted by Pieface @ Friday, March 21, 2008
<< Home