I'll see your proposed mass genocide (is there such a thing as individual genocide?) and raise you mine. My family are Irish Catholics from Limerick City. The Famine (not initially the fault of the English, although they could have prevented the enormous death toll) completely depopulated the area - a million people died in Ireland, a million and a half left their homeland never to return.
Of course, trading genocide stories is tasteless. All it proves is that no-one has a monopoly on suffering. More to the point, during the period that Ireland was, like the area now occupied by modern Israel, ruled by the British, who from 1610 systematically replaced the indigenous Catholic population with Protestant immigrants.
That didn't work too well either, and I grew up in London at constant risk of being blown up by what was technically 'my own side'. I don't know if that makes it worse or better, but it made it very difficult.
So you see I entirely sympathise with the post war Jews looking for a safe haven, and I don't see the modern state of Israel as "the villain" - even though from my perspective I can't see the previous population as "the villain" either. As with the Protestants and the Catholics in Ireland, a long history has brought them to this point, and the only way forward is to find some way to stop trying to deny each other's existence and find some way to live together.
And that's something I've lived through in my lifetime.
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Date: 2008-07-03 09:40 pm (UTC)I'll see your proposed mass genocide (is there such a thing as individual genocide?) and raise you mine. My family are Irish Catholics from Limerick City. The Famine (not initially the fault of the English, although they could have prevented the enormous death toll) completely depopulated the area - a million people died in Ireland, a million and a half left their homeland never to return.
Of course, trading genocide stories is tasteless. All it proves is that no-one has a monopoly on suffering. More to the point, during the period that Ireland was, like the area now occupied by modern Israel, ruled by the British, who from 1610 systematically replaced the indigenous Catholic population with Protestant immigrants.
That didn't work too well either, and I grew up in London at constant risk of being blown up by what was technically 'my own side'. I don't know if that makes it worse or better, but it made it very difficult.
So you see I entirely sympathise with the post war Jews looking for a safe haven, and I don't see the modern state of Israel as "the villain" - even though from my perspective I can't see the previous population as "the villain" either. As with the Protestants and the Catholics in Ireland, a long history has brought them to this point, and the only way forward is to find some way to stop trying to deny each other's existence and find some way to live together.
And that's something I've lived through in my lifetime.