[Wikipedia-l] NPOV, the israeli-palestinian conflict, and the ANC

[Rosa Williams]

> On Fri, 2002-10-04 at 10:14, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> > On the other hand, stepping a bit more into the controversy than I
> > like, I would say that most Americans are puzzled about the
> > differences between Palestinians and other people with grievances
> > around the world.  Why didn't we see suicide bombings and terror
> > campaigns by the victims of South African apartheid?  Why didn't we
> > see suicide bombing campaigns by Jews in WWII Germany?  Why didn't we
> > see suicide bombings against British rule in India?

>From: "Adam Williamson" <aw280 at cam.ac.uk>
> (To jump into an off-topic debate, sorry...)
>
> Just like to say - at first this seems an interesting point, but I think
> it's a bit misleading. The answer to the question Jimmy asks, in my
> opinion, is Islam ideology, which makes suicide bombing a good deal more
> attractive than most others I can think of right now.
>
> However...the implications of the question he asks are nasty, and to do
> with the incorrect demonisation of suicide bombing. Sure, it's a
> thoroughly nasty thing to do, but in effect it's just one way of
> murdering people, often innocent people, and there's a hell of a lot
> more than one way to do that. And many of the other ways were used in
> all the conflicts Jimmy mentions above. The anti-apartheid campaign was
> frequently murderous and brutal on both sides; South African blacks may
> not have strapped bombs to themselves and blown people up, but they sure
> killed people. As, of course, did South African whites. ... (Truncated for
space.)

As a kid, I idolized the African National Congress.  The ANC seemed to me to
be
heroes, much as the civil rights heroes I grew up celebrating.  They were
engaged
in a fight against a system that was unquestionably wrong; they were
fighting *for*
a system of "blacks and whites together", an unquestionably just goal.  I
was
awestruck when I finally got the chance to meet the members of an ANC
delegation - the more so as the leader of the delegation was willing to sit
and
chat with a 13-year-old kid.

I don't remember most of that conversation. I *do* remember one statement,
very
clearly. Imagine it spoken with a smile and a tone of soft pride:

"... We killed fifty Boers."

I tell you, I grew up rather a lot in the next 60 seconds, in the process of
wrapping
my mind around this concept.  These were my heroes, the side of Good and
Right.
Here was one of them, a woman only ten years or so older than I... Bragging.
About. Killing. Fifty. People.

I was subsequently to learn much more about the ANC. I learned about the
fifty
years of nonviolent resistance, and the massacre at Suweto that proved to be
the
last straw. I couldn't blame anyone, after that, for wanting to fight any
way they
could when the opposition was proven willing to mow down unarmed people in
the streets.

But I couldn't get that statement and that smile out of my mind.  Try to
understand this,
if you will.  The members of the ANC were still, largely, heroic to me. And
I still am,
as I was then, deeply opposed to killing.  In realizing what conditions can
exist to drive
people so far, I was forced to change a lot of my other ideas, however.  I
still don't
approve of killing. But ... I also cannot condemn these people, knowing
their reasons.

Since then, the world has been - forgive the phrase - much less black and
white to me.

And so, yes, I rather can understand what might drive Palestinians to take
actions that
I *still* consider abhorrent.  There are some parallels with the situation
of the
Palestinians that (obviously) make some Israelis deeply uncomfortable.  As
with all
comparisons, this one is not exact - merely analogous.

I can also understand the flip side of this, knowing what I do about the
Holocaust. I can
well understand what would drive people to a deep, driving determination to
create for
themselves at least one safe place in the world. I can believe that the
actions taken toward
that end are not just or justified, and I can argue they may well be
counterproductive, but
I can certainly *understand* what might drive Israelis to take such actions.

Perhaps if more of us took the approach that *both* sides have wronged each
other...
and indeed, both sides have sometimes turned on their own people... that
these come
out of understandable hurts and fears... "With malice toward none, with
charity toward
all..."  at least we'd be taking a first step toward neutrality. We may
still not agree on
specific facts, justifications, or solutions, but at least it'd tone down
the name-calling.

And in conclusion, if we need a good place to discuss "neutralizing" these
pages,
why not use meta? That seems to be one of the things meta is ideally adapted
for,
provided we can get everyone to participate in the same article rather than
in 15+
of them. :)

-- April