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HISTORY REPEATS - One must question the intelligence and ultimate viability of the human race, since it doesn't seem to learn from past history, but rather keeps making the same mistakes over and over again in complete derogation of the lessons that could have been learned from that past history.
One of several examples on this point can be found in Europe, where one tribe- or later on one country or another- went to war against another country in the 16th, 17th, and beginning of the 18th century over either territorial claims or who was a better Christian- a Catholic or a Protestant. What some how was never considered, even though it was at the root of both Catholic and Protestant religions was the proscription in the Ten Commandments of “Thou shall not kill.
After centuries of killing each other Europeans pretty much solved the war problem by creating a European Common Market, where the citizens of all member European states carry a European passport with a denomination on this passport,which country member are they citizens of. In my own family, my ex-wife's family came from Germany and moved to Italy, so they could have either an Italian of German European Common Market passport. But this is only the beginning, since my son was born in France and became a naturalized American citizen, so he can have a German, Italian, French or American passport.
In applying this concept of multiple nationalities being governed by one multinational set of laws in addition to their own national laws, Professor Noam Chomsky said such a legal system could be applied in the Ukrainian- Russia conflict, where they would create an Eastern European Common Market, where all previous Soviet Socialist Republics would be bound by two sets of laws. One as members of an Eastern European Common Market and the other local set of laws addressing and maintaining some degree of national sovereignty. In the final analysis, such a system is far less expensive than the wars of the past or present.
Now let's apply this model to the Middle East. But first we must look at a little history to understand the present. While Jews have an ancient connection to the Middle East from before the diaspora, which scattered them out of Israel. The present day situation can only be adequately understood by considering a more recent history. In 1917, England was at war with the Axis, one of whose members was the Ottoman Turks, who controlled present day Palestine, Israel, and other areas of he Middle East.
To collaterally attack the Turks in 1917, during WW1, the British, while occupying areas of the Middle East that up until then had been part of the Turkish empire, the British created the Balfour Declaration, which recognized the Jewish claim to Israel as their homeland and supported the Jewish notion of Zionism. To put this in context, the British had no love for the Jews, but only did the Balfour for their own economic self interest. In fact, the English were the only country to ever expel all Jews living in England in the year 1290.
In conclusion, and in hope of learning from the past, I would propose a Three State Solution: one for crazy Jews, one for crazy Palestinians and the third far larger and majority state where Jews, Palestinians and any one else, lived together in peace, while no longer needing to waste the heaven on earth that the Middle East could be for all.
(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He was a second-generation teacher at LAUSD.)
