Nearly Christmas.
Sitting in the car, listening to yet another apologist for Israel mouth nonsense ..... and it’s all very chummy and well mannered between him and the interviewer, as - away from the studio and not in a manger - the ‘settlers’ of the Chosen people pour bags of excrement upon the heads of the Palestinians below.
My friend gets in the car and listens intently. He shrugs his shoulders and - sort of agrees that Palestine has never really existed as a separate nation. This floors me.
“Hold on a moment, Cliff. The Romans pushed the British around two thousand years ago but they never ‘owned’ Britain. They just pushed us into the West Bank and called us Welsh....... please don’t even mention the English - bloody late comers - interlopers!”
“As much to the point, who could blame the present day Italians for the excesses of the Romans.”
The Palestinians don’t exist within the mind of Newt Somethingorother ......... Newt is yet another clown put forward as a potential leader of the USA and one that I hadn’t noticed.
In response to Newt’s odd claim, Cliff expands on this thought to refine the same wobbly point as Newt....... Palestine and Palestinians never existed as a sovereign country ...... the British took it from the Otterman Empire and gave it to the Jews.
“ But it wasn’t theirs to give away.” say I, as the shaky ground upon which we all stand rumbles.
“Your average person would suggest that the land belongs to the people who have settled it........ and that length of time has some bearing on legitimacy ”
If you’re Aboriginal, you’d see it the other way round. The people belong to the land.... it’s absurd to think otherwise. Who amongst us takes a speck of dust into eternity let alone a quarter acre block.
If all the world’s a stage - which most of us recognise to be ‘true’- we don’t even entertain the thought that we own the stage - we just borrow the space that we stand in until we vacate. That’s it. It’s the nature of acting.
We pretend we own and then go to war endlessly to prove a point which is, itself, a pretence.
The Palestinians exist now. Regardless of who ‘owns’ the land, the Israelis have parcelled out some puddles and told the Palestinians to ‘Get what you’re given and be thankful.’
It’s not good enough.
By their fruits shall you know them. By the misery displayed. By the bleak and poisoned spirit which pervades.
If Israel were a human, what a bully, what a spoilt and mean spirited child.
Whether Jesus died doesn’t matter to me, the Christ spirit lives and manifests in all of us - given half a chance.
“Cooee - my darling.”
Joy to the world.