Endless War

By: Lorenzo Dee Belveal

In recent days, this reporter has received a monograph entitled "Palestinian Notes" from his friend, Richard A. James, which carries the following introduction:

Friends:
I have been trying to make some sense out of the Palestinian question, a subject to which I must plead ignorance. So I've been cruising around the internet and came across the following statements. If you know any of them to be untrue or misleading I'd like to know it. Your comments as to their truth or falsehood would be appreciated.

Thanks for your help.

Richard A. James
rajames@lemaco.hn 

(A fairly extensive monograph followed, purporting to "clarify" some of the Israeli-Palestinian issues.)

========================

My reply to Mr. James follows:

Richard and Listizens:

I have not been trying to make sense out of the Isreali/Palestinian question, because I have firmly concluded that it amounts to a religious war, and
religious wars are not predicated on "reasons". They are based on bias, preconception, ignorance and long outdated blood feuds.

During my long and eventful career as a reporter, my editors on at least half a dozen specific and well remembered occasions, sought to sell me on the idea
of going to North Africa (Morrocco and Egypt, in particular) and the Middle East (especially Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.) The incentives were appreciable: fat bonuses, "direct wire" access, t-v exposure, by-lined
dispatches and more insurance coverage. (The enticements a publisher has with which to lure a reporter into harm's way are as many and varied as the
diabolical temptations once offered up by the devil himself.)

Still, I resisted. Preferring, if you please, the questionable mercies of Cambodia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Central and South America. My editors couldn't understand my reticence to install myself in the African - Middle Eastern unpleasantness and seek to make sense out of it for a (supposedly) eager audience of readers who seriously wanted to know just what the hell
was going on out there. But I kept saying no.

It wasn't that I felt any especial partiality to getting myself killed in Phom Phen, Colombo or Santiago, as compared to Tel Aviv, Riyadh or Casa Blanca, if it came down to that. Dead is dead, and as I once wrote to my three sons, prior to departing on yet another assignment, "don't waste a quarter shipping my
body home should I happen to "buy the farm" somewhere 'over there'. In all truth, I would as soon be put into the ground in Poontang, Pakistan, as in a marble crypt next to the duck pond in Forest Lawn Cemetery".

But my resistance to being assigned to North Africa or the Middle East was objectively logical. At least to me: I simply didn't (and don't) think there is any
logic or sense to be made out of blood feuds that have turned into full-fledged wars, and the roots of which are long lost in the folklore of much-distorted history and antiquated - but endlessly repeated lies. As a simple-minded country boy from the feral alps of Idaho, I looked at the situation and decided it far exceeded my limited powers to extract orderly explanations from wall-to-wall chaos, or bright threads of understanding from the tangled skeins of deliberate, arch, intentional mendacity. 

It was/is my settled conclusion that fighting was the only activity for which the Arabs and Israelis showed any particular talent. With centuries of practice in this bloody business, what kind of wishful thinking would it take to conclude that they were now - at this late date - going to abandon the conditioning
of generations, and suddenly become friends? They have no preparation for being friends. They are fighters. Their endless struggle for ascendency dates back to the Old Testament. Why should they decide to get friendly now?

I just couldn't make this recurrent hypothesis compute, like we say.

This is why I try to miss the "middle Eastern" news at every opportunity. I can find little or nothing comprising news in it. Oh, it is replete with terrible events,
carnge, destruction, bloody murder and atrocities galore. But I have seen all of this before. None of this is news. At least not to me. This same pattern of unspeakable events has been going on for as long as I can remember, -- and that covers quite a span of time. Enough time, indeed, to convince me that it is never going to change within my lifetime. This leads me to the hard conclusion that there is nothing I can do about it. Especially since I make no pretense to understanding it. Not any of it!

So I have not read your Palestine Notes, Richard, and have no intention of doing so. I'm sure they would only add to the utter sense of confusion I feel on even the more superficial exposure to that medieval jousting that is now being carried on with corsets fashioned from high-explosives, tanks and gun-ships.

From the little I know - or suspect - about the ancient incitements, I see no end in sight. Perhaps the Arabs and the Israelis will hit on a procedure that will result in their mutual, total, self-destruction. I realize that this is probably altogether too much to hope for. But short of this, I see no prospects for peace...neither immediate nor otherwise. Thousands of years of history
argues eloquently against it.

Quite honestly, I fear for the safety of Secretary Colin Powell. I shall not be surprised if Yasser Arafat greets him in his Ramallah digs with a belt of
high-explosives holding his pants up. Then they shake hands and pass the pro-forma Islamic salaam, whereupon Yasser slaps his corpulent belly a resounding blow and both Messrs. Powell and Arafat go to join their ancestors in the blink of an eye. 

Such martyrdom! Such immortality. Such totally uneven - if poetic - justice!!

I say that I fear for Secretary Powell. He is not a muslim. He won't get the bevy of 73 virgins, and all of the fermented goat's milk he can drink. He will get shortchanged. Yasser hits the BIG KENO, but our guy gets the shaft. Talk about UNFAIR!

I think Secretary Colin Powell has made a huge mistake in failing to emulate my sterling example, in keeping his occidental ass out of the Middle East.

But who listens to me?

Lorenzo Dee Belveal
<ldbelveal.net>

=====================
Copyright © March, 2002                                                                          All rights reserved by the author

=======================