Sowing the seeds of a century of hatred and conflict

From a comment on GoComics:

“between them, hamas and the israeli forces have sowed the seeds of another century of hatred and conflict…”

Not sowed the seeds. It is already a well-established and ancient forest of hatred and conflict. It has been fed and watered frequently with bitterness and blood since before records began.

They like it this way. It is embedded into people’s culture and lore, into their tradition and values.

It can be changed, but not until: they want it to change; the rest of the world stops interfering to make it worse; the privatised arms industry is dismantled or otherwise not allowed to profit from provoking war; the women say “enough!” (which is hard when the cultures suppress women’s voices); they recognise that people with different value and beliefs are equal; they accept compromise and forgiveness over vengeance; they accept mistakes and harm are caused on all sides; they convince one another that getting along without bloodshed is what they want; they recognise that everybody has to live somewhere; they accept we are not entitled to anything when we are born other than what we are given by other people and that means someone else has to go without so we must share.

In the above ‘they’ means ‘everyone’ and anyone who says otherwise is part of the problem and not ready for change.

It can be done, and has been done many times around the world. But this one is particularly tricky.

“i’ll stick with what i said, thanks. yes, the conflict has gone on for a long time and both sides have scuppered solutions that have been suggested along the way. but what i said above was that the two sides have given the conflict renewed life with their latest actions…”

Yes, you are right. I did not mean to imply I disagreed.

between them, hamas and the israeli forces have sowed the seeds of another century of hatred and conflict” and “the two sides have given the conflict renewed life with their latest actions

Absolutely.

The ‘leaders’ on both sides with their desires for violence, and those external to the area who provoke and promote it, are terrible people. They are also spineless cowards since they do not take any risks themselves.

There was something more honourable in the days of feudalism and before, when the kings and princes and dukes and chieftains stood amongst their lines. They knew if they were defeated, they would at best be ransomed but as likely killed. And those doing the fighting did it eyeball to eyeball and saw the pain and screaming and blood for themselves. And then came home too ashamed to talk of what they had done.

Politicians now send others to do their dirty work. Safe and rich and powerful and the more people die, the greater they believe their military fantasy. And the more support they get. It is obscene: more sickening than a mass murderer who at least stabs people themselves. Even the sickos who shoot schoolkids in America have the decency to look at their targets and risk being shot themselves. Even they are less contemptible than cowards in tunnels who send suicide bombers to kill women in shopping queues. Or rich men in palaces who send bombers against hospitals and tanks against children.

And the contempt I feel for these ‘people’ will be as nothing compared to the hate and angst and despair felt by orphans, widowers and other relatives of their victims. And we know there can never be justice against the leaders, they always get away with it.

And people – through a lack of empathy and imagination, people with full bellies and nice homes – wonder why other people – starved, widowed, robbed of everything and with no access to justice – resort to terrorism.

Not until the citizens themselves – the women, the widowers, the conscripts, the reserves – refuse to allow it to continue will it stop.

The 1960s line was “Suppose they gave a war and no one came”.

Hopefully, this will be Israel’s Vietnam with the IDF troops going home afterwards traumatised at what they have done, and the atrocities being revealed and realising they were not war heroes after all but victims themselves. Forming an Israeli branch of Veterans For Peace, campaigning for conscientious objection and becoming a generation of pro-peace activists as so many ex-soldiers do after an unfair war.

Hopefully, it will be the Gazan Northern Ireland, where the women find a voice to tell their sons and husbands that this has to stop, that they do not want or need vengeance and just want to live peaceful lives. That there is more honour in working together with one’s enemy for a common good than losing more sons and husbands for a principle. Ultimately forcing the opposing sides to grow up and find a way to tolerate one another.

Hopefully, it will be the Israeli citizens’ Ukraine, realising the world knows their government has done a wrong thing and they have been lied to. That they are considered responsible for what their leaders did by the rest of the world, and not want it to happen that way again.

Hopefully, it will be the businesses’ South Africa, where those who want to make money realise that peace and reconciliation, trading with each other and the world, is better financially for all concerned. On realising the sanctions being imposed by citizens and organisations boycotting Israeli goods and goods from the occupied territories hurts their profits. So they demand a change in government policy, one that supports free trade through peaceful co-existence.

When will Middle East conflict end?

From a social media post:

“Hamas and the Israeli forces have sowed the seeds of another century of hatred and conflict…”

Not sowed the seeds. It is already a well-established and ancient forest of hatred and conflict. It has been fed and watered frequently with bitterness and blood since before records began.

They like it this way. It is embedded into people’s culture and lore, into their tradition and values.

It can be changed, but not until:

  • they want it to change;
  • the rest of the world stops interfering to make it worse;
  • the privatised arms industry is dismantled or otherwise not allowed to profit from provoking war; the women say “enough!” (which is hard when the cultures suppress women’s voices);
  • they recognise that people with different value and beliefs are equal;
  • they accept compromise and forgiveness over vengeance;
  • they accept mistakes and harm are caused on all sides;
  • they convince one another that getting along without bloodshed is what they want;
  • they recognise that everybody has to live somewhere;
  • they accept we are not entitled to anything when we are born other than what we are given by other people and that means someone else has to go without so we must share.
  • In the above ‘they’ means ‘everyone’ and anyone who says otherwise is part of the problem and not ready for change.

It can be done, and has been done many times around the world. But this one is particularly tricky.

It is International Women’s Day today.  I wonder how many will be killed in conflict today.  Probably about 10 to 20 in Gaza, some more in Yemen, some more elsewhere.  Does anyone keep count?  Perhaps someone should.  How’s that for a global metric?

ICJ’s judgement on Israel

The International Court of Justice is an important part of the United Nations.  It adjudicates disputes between nations and provides legal advice on international law.  Its rulings and opinions on a case are binding on the parties involved.

On 26th January 2024 the ICJ ruled that Israel must prevent genocidal acts in Gaza.

On social media, many people are saying this is meaningless as the ICJ has no teeth.

I think it does have some effect.

In the workplace, when someone bullies another, one can either call it out or let it go. When someone objects to poor behaviour, we can support them or just say “toughen up” or “that’s just they way they are”.

Another outcome is to stand up and say “This is wrong. Do not behave that way.” That gives others the confidence to also stand up and say “We agree, that is wrong.”

That makes most other people think twice before also bulling people. They don’t want to be called out and embarrassed. We have said bullying is no longer normal behaviour.

The same thing really does apply on the world stage. When the ICJ says “This is wrong”, it might have little effect on Israel, but it does send out a message to diplomats, politicians and the media round the world that it is not acceptable. They can’t say “But Israel did it, so we can too”. People feel empowered to say to their leaders “I don’t think we should do that”.

Some see it as ironic that it is South Africa calling it out, given their history. It is not ironic, it was inevitable. They have been through the pain of apartheid, terrorism, revolution but then peace and reconciliation process. South Africa today is not the South Africa of 50 years ago. Change can be radical, and a bad example can become an exemplar.

It is one of the ways the world is very slowly becoming more humane.

Why is conflict resolution not as recognised as it should be?

Why do we expect politicians to be all-knowing multidisciplinary people?

This was asked on LinkedIn by one of my fellow students at Lancaster University, someone I was very impressed with, Pilar Perez Brown.  The context was President Macron attempting mediation talks with Putin, despite not having the necessary academic background or training to do so.

Mediators that comprehend the full political and strategic reality of the war are needed, people that know the best ways to guide this conflict and the relations in it. We need economists and strategists that can explain the depth of both sides’ demands, as well as many other specialists who are equally necessary despite not being politicians.

A discussion began.

Conflict analysis and responses have changed enormously this past few decades.  There are far more options and interventions available to prevent conflict, transform conflict and resolve conflict than most people are aware of.  Somehow, we need to get conflict resolution recognised and given a much higher profile in diplomacy and international relations incident management.

Exactly! Thank you for your insight. Indeed the nature of conflict has changed, and so the analysis of it has enhanced, therefore presenting more opportunities to transform and resolve conflicts, as you mention.
Why do you think these processes are not as recognised as they should be?

I think these are some factors:

  1. The nature of the media.  “If it bleeds, it leads“.  War is exciting and attracts readers / viewers so it is the lead story (to help sell advertising and raise revenue for the media).  Peace is not exciting: there is no blood, no blown up cars, no crying children or other images to bring in the readers.  So the media do not cover peace.  Hence people do not know peace-making is happening all the time.  This makes people assume war is the natural outcome of conflict.
  2. The warring leaders do not want to look weakAll conflict ends by talking.  When powerful people who publicly say they hate each other come to meet and compromise, they do not want their supporters to know they are doing so.  They think it makes them look like they are backing down and are weak.  So negotiation talks are kept secret.  Hence people do not get to hear about them.  When the outcome is a peaceful solution, even then the conflict resolution talks are not mentioned.  So people do not get to hear about how conflict resolution was involved and worked.
  3. Sometimes powerful third parties are involved in the conflict who want their involvement kept secret.  When it becomes politically or economically expedient to have this conflict resolved, it is not necessarily desirable to have the rest of the world see into the detail of the conflict.  Revealing their involvement in the peace process could reveal their role in causing or feeding the conflict, or appear hypocritical because of what they are doing somewhere else.  So they do not want any media coverage of the process of resolving the conflict.  It just quietly fizzles out, without the rest of the world noticing a process was followed.
  4. Revealing the presence of peace-making mediators makes them a target and can cause more conflict.  Some people will not want the conflict resolved and may attack the mediators.  Once mediation has been successful, knowing they were involved could make them vulnerable when they get involved in a later conflict.  So their involvement is never revealed.  This can be high profile individuals or specialist mediation agencies.  Again, the conflict resolution process does not get talked about, this time for reasons of mediator personal security.
  5. Historical precedent.  One view of Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler was that it bought the rest of us a year to re-arm and prepare for the inevitable war.  But he has gone down in history as a weak man and a failure.  I suspect politicians are frightened of ending up in the history books for the same reason.  However, if you fight a war and lose, you can still be recorded as the brave hero who refused to give in.  It may seem better politically to go into a war and risk losing, then go into mediation talks that might fail and result in war anyway.  So a guaranteed war is actually more attractive than the risk of one.  Hence getting involved in peace talks risks losing one’s political credibility, so there is no interest, and no desire to have anyone know if they do so.
  6. President Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex and how they have a vested financial interest to influence public policy toward fear of conflict.  Governments and academia get added to this mix, depending on the theory.  I cannot imagine NATO or Lockheed Martin lobbying to have their funds are reduced and diverted to investment into conflict resolution research and promotion.  Mediation specialists have small budgets for advertising and little need to do so to the general public.  The arms industry and the military and their activities get plenty of coverage for free.  That normalises conflict for the public.
  7. The immaturity of International Relations Theory.  It is still based around the Realist / Liberalist / Marxist tripartite.  The Realist theory is simplest, oldest and most embedded in our culture as “might is right” and international relations being anarchic, amoral and all about survival.  Liberal theory has had to be modified many times to try to match current affairs, making it look weak and reactive and so of little use as a theory.  Marxist theory is a political non-starter.  When people have studied international relations theory, it has typically been this academic view, one which is not about conflict resolution.  Instead, it is about studying how war is just and inevitable, based on past experience.  However, that does not cover what actual practitioners have been doing in reality, nor count the times a war was avoided.  Huge progress has been made in understanding how people are motivated and how to achieve change painlessly and so that it sticks.  These practitioner fields and their modern techniques are not taught so much as IR Theory in generalist politics degrees.
  8. But I blame the media foremost.
    Create a cease-fire in a war: it’s an editorial on page 7.
    Slap someone on TV for mocking your partner’s medical complaint: it’s front-page news and it fills social media (about 4,810,000,000 results on a Google search!)
    Violence increases sales and increases advertising revenue, conflict resolution does not.

I struggle to understand how criminal damage and attacking people’s history is peace-making

I struggle to understand how criminal damage and attacking people’s history is peace-making.

I’ve just had a post through on the Networking for Peace mailing list: “Germany : Tear This Down – Eliminate Colonialism Now” which links to a site called TearThisDown.com (active link not provided on purpose). It provides a map of street names, monuments, stations and other public items named after people they disapprove of and demanding ‘TEAR DOWN THIS SHIT‘. They call for such monuments to be damaged, destroyed and have graffiti applied.

They clearly don’t care that people live in the areas where they intend to conduct criminal damage nor about the fear (and additional damage) it will create.

They clearly have not thought about social cohesion and how this kind of hate crime – which is what it is – creates divisions that will last far longer than the short-term fun and publicity they seek. This is not resolving differences, it is creating conflict.

This is a few people wanting to cause social upheaval and using it to raise mobs to go out and cause damage without consideration for knock-on effects and consequences is not making the world a better place. It is teaching people that anti-social behaviour is a good thing and that despising other sections of society and blaming them for acts that happened before they were born is progress.

It is just some people, fuelled by hate, creating power for themselves at the expense of others and getting other people to do their dirty work for them.

It’s just Kristallnacht in reverse.

I fail to see how this is appropriate as a “Networking for Peace” activity.

Lest we forget

An exchange on an Open University forum.

Fast Forward

 ‘Named, unnamed. Remembered, forgotten. They all did that trick the dead do. Whether they died immediately, more or less immediately or later, they all did that trick. From living human being to corpse – the fastest transition in the world.’
(Robert Mc Liam Wilson, Eureka Street)

As I lie here
crimson rivers stream by
painting obscene pictures on my brain.

Beside me
half a young man’s face, open minded, sanguine
looks on. He was smiling

when he ceased to exist.
That girl has something recognisably human about her meat,
others have been blown entirely to bits,

soft unresisting flesh to be scraped up and shovelled
into plastic bags. Cajun dust settles on carnage.
Does a meld of politics ordnance and circumstance

explain all this? In the aeons after the blast
in the ringing piercing silence
in my head, I hear distant white coated voices,

‘Treat only those you think you can save,’
as the last sigh of life escapes my torn lips
unheard; the fastest transition in the world.

Sheena Bradley, 2012

Me: Lest we forget.

Sheena: Do you think there might ever be a time, a decade or a century when there is even a slight chance we could forget? I doubt it.

Me: There’s always hope.

I’m aware “Lest we forget” has different meanings to different people and in different contexts.  With hindsight, it was an inappropriate response to your post, Sheena, and I’m sorry I made it.  I was thinking of the Great War, not the Troubles.

For me, “Lest we forget” means “never forget the suffering we bring upon ourselves by blindly following orders to subject others to violence”.

For others it seems to mean “Never forget what sacrifices others have made for you, so be prepared to make sacrifices for them”.  There “Lest we forget” is used to promote what was Veterans’ Day and is now Armed Forces Day – but why don’t we also celebrate Peace Day with parades and banners?  There’s money and street closures made available to celebrate the military, but why not the Fire Brigade too, for example – they also put their lives on the line for us and they do it more often – what makes the military so different?  I’m coming round to the way of thinking of Forces Watch, that such events are the marketing activities of the arms industry, making killing palatable and something to be proud of.  And that way of thinking leads to “Lest we forget” meaning a demand for patriotism, nationalism and bigotry, where expressing a preference for peaceful solutions gets one called a coward or a “terrorist sympathiser”.

Then there’s the version of “Lest we forget” that seems to me to be the underling problem to finding peace in Northern Ireland, the perpetuation on both sides of “Never forget what those b~~~~~~s did to us”.  The perpetual generation of hatred, especially as indoctrination of the young.  Earlier this year we witnessed in Glasgow an Orange parade – bands and marching and banners and crowds coming out to watch the spectacle.  All I could see were bitter old men and angry middle-aged men wearing orange sashes, and lots of small boys dressed in military uniforms looking all proud to be maintaining the tradition.  The atmosphere was just anger and hate; it was appalling and pathetic to see.  It is nothing like a Scouts’ St George’s Day parade and poles apart from the likes of Warrington’s Walking Day.

As well as talking, listening and reconciling, there’s an awful lot of forgetting needs to be done in and around Northern Ireland: forgetting to maintain the tradition of instilling children and young adults with blind hate.  It makes us sick when Moslem extremists like IS do it, and when Christian extremists like the Lord’s Resistance Army recruit child soldiers in Africa.  So why is it OK for religious extremists in the British Isles to recruit children to propagate and perpetuate their militaristic tradition of violence and hatred against their fellow people?  And it would help if we quietly dropped Armed Forces Day in Northern Ireland too – it is counter-productive having the British Army setting an example of militaristic street marches.

For the love of God, as a society, can we please just stop passing on a tradition of hate and instead learn to forget?

 

PS: Airstrikes kill civilians.

Alternatives to war

In Northern Ireland, communities and individuals have created community projects that bring together people from both sides of the sectarian divide.  And we never hear about the wives and mothers that won’t let their family members take part in marches to help stop the problem at grass-roots level.

As for peace and reconciliation, a Google search will tell you just how much research and work is being done.

Restorative Justice and truth commissions, such as South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, allows those that have suffered to find a way to move on without revenge or escalation of violence.

The foundation of the European Union was forged from France and Germany and others ensuring they could not go to war again through close integration. Western Europe has been at peace with itself for 3 generations – when did it last – if ever – do that?

The presence of so many peace organisations shows there is plenty of desire for peace worldwide. There are more of them than there are those campaigning for war!

Countless research institutes explore possibilities for creating and maintaining peace. (This must be far more rewarding than researching hand grenade fragment blast radius and kill co-efficient.)

Some random links: