![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Yes, I am a religious fanatic
Dec. 6th, 2017 11:54 amI often explain to people that I understand how religious fanatics think because I am one myself. This usually is met with considerable skepticism, particularly by people who know me. After all, i hardly look the part.
What I mean by calling myself a religious fanatic is that I recognize that there are bunch of things on which I will freely admit I am utterly non-rationale and I don't care about any evidence to the contrary. And there are things I am prepared to die for, or fight to defend, that are based on these utterly non-rationale, not subject to proof beliefs. And I'm quite happy with that. I can engage in all kinds of intellectual arguments, but I will freely admit to myself these are but intellectual games that have little relevance to a core religious belief in which I believe with such utter certainty that it supersedes all other principles.
Happily, this doesn't come up much.
But it does today on Jerusalem.
I can, of course, make lots and lots of good, intellectual arguments on why recognizing Jerusalem (specifically, Jerusalem as declared by the State of Israel to be its capital in 1949, which therefore leaves the status of the portions of Jerusalem on the other side of the Green Line more debatable, excluding the Old City, which is utterly not debatable) as the capital of Israel is a reasonable gamble. Much of this depends on who you think is the bottleneck and what you think the end result ought to be. One of the more frustrating elements of this from my perspective, as someone with both a passing knowledge of the history and a modest understanding of how international law actually works, I am deeply frustrated by the way this discussion usually goes. For one thing, you can't tell me quietly that we are going to have a two-state solution base on the Greenline border (with land swaps to adjust) but that you can't recognize WEST JERUSALEM as the capital because -- the Arab world will freak out? The justification frequently given prior to 1967 for refusing to recognize West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was that the cease fire line was temporary, indeterminate, and therefore subject negotiation in accordance with the pre-1967 UN Resolutions. But you cannot claim that the subsequent resolutions by the UN on territory captured by Israel in 1967 establishes the basis of borders for Palestinian statehood as a matter of international law but that somehow the border establishment is a one-way ratchet that establishes certainty for Palestinians but leaves the Israeli border indeterminate and subject to final status negotiations. (Well, you can, but it rather makes a mockery of the whole notion of international law.)
But fascinating as I might find it to spend hours discussing how we ought to treat the Israel/PA border question in light of precedent that includes everything from the way in which we resolved every other border pursuant to the boundaries established by the League of Nations Mandate (which is why Kurds don't get to declare their independence, and why significant Shia minorities are stuck as part of predominantly Sunni Saudi Arabia and Yemen), or pursuant to other border disputes (like, for example, the India/Pakistan partition) or even under the standard principles of "decolonialization" (which would require the new Palestinian State to accept those Israeli settlers who wished to transfer their citizenship to Palestine rather than evacuate, which is why we have white African citizens of Kenya, Uganda, and even Zimbabwe) -- none of that really matters. The blunt fact for me is that from 1949-67 I and my people were utterly cut off and excluded from our most sacred hoy site, that our most ancient cemetery was vandalized and desecrated, that the Jewish houses of worship in East Jerusalem and throughout the West Bank where Jewish habitation had been for millennia were systemically destroyed and erased -- and the rest of the world was not only fine with that, they mostly claim it never happened.
So my irrational response is that this will never, ever EVER happen again as long as there is breath in my body and an ability to die for my irrational belief. Because I am a religious fanatic, and this is not subject to negotiation.
it doesn't mean we should eliminate the non-Jewish presence. It doesn't mean we should deny or vandalize anything. But it means as between me holding it v. you holding it, I'm sticking with me -- because I know what happens when you hold it. And threatening me, thrwoing a temper tantrum, promising to wipe the presence of the foul Jewish pigs from the sacred precincts of Al Quds, and insisting that there wasn't even a Temple in the first place, let alone an active Jewish community until 1948, does not persuade me otherwise.
What I mean by calling myself a religious fanatic is that I recognize that there are bunch of things on which I will freely admit I am utterly non-rationale and I don't care about any evidence to the contrary. And there are things I am prepared to die for, or fight to defend, that are based on these utterly non-rationale, not subject to proof beliefs. And I'm quite happy with that. I can engage in all kinds of intellectual arguments, but I will freely admit to myself these are but intellectual games that have little relevance to a core religious belief in which I believe with such utter certainty that it supersedes all other principles.
Happily, this doesn't come up much.
But it does today on Jerusalem.
I can, of course, make lots and lots of good, intellectual arguments on why recognizing Jerusalem (specifically, Jerusalem as declared by the State of Israel to be its capital in 1949, which therefore leaves the status of the portions of Jerusalem on the other side of the Green Line more debatable, excluding the Old City, which is utterly not debatable) as the capital of Israel is a reasonable gamble. Much of this depends on who you think is the bottleneck and what you think the end result ought to be. One of the more frustrating elements of this from my perspective, as someone with both a passing knowledge of the history and a modest understanding of how international law actually works, I am deeply frustrated by the way this discussion usually goes. For one thing, you can't tell me quietly that we are going to have a two-state solution base on the Greenline border (with land swaps to adjust) but that you can't recognize WEST JERUSALEM as the capital because -- the Arab world will freak out? The justification frequently given prior to 1967 for refusing to recognize West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel was that the cease fire line was temporary, indeterminate, and therefore subject negotiation in accordance with the pre-1967 UN Resolutions. But you cannot claim that the subsequent resolutions by the UN on territory captured by Israel in 1967 establishes the basis of borders for Palestinian statehood as a matter of international law but that somehow the border establishment is a one-way ratchet that establishes certainty for Palestinians but leaves the Israeli border indeterminate and subject to final status negotiations. (Well, you can, but it rather makes a mockery of the whole notion of international law.)
But fascinating as I might find it to spend hours discussing how we ought to treat the Israel/PA border question in light of precedent that includes everything from the way in which we resolved every other border pursuant to the boundaries established by the League of Nations Mandate (which is why Kurds don't get to declare their independence, and why significant Shia minorities are stuck as part of predominantly Sunni Saudi Arabia and Yemen), or pursuant to other border disputes (like, for example, the India/Pakistan partition) or even under the standard principles of "decolonialization" (which would require the new Palestinian State to accept those Israeli settlers who wished to transfer their citizenship to Palestine rather than evacuate, which is why we have white African citizens of Kenya, Uganda, and even Zimbabwe) -- none of that really matters. The blunt fact for me is that from 1949-67 I and my people were utterly cut off and excluded from our most sacred hoy site, that our most ancient cemetery was vandalized and desecrated, that the Jewish houses of worship in East Jerusalem and throughout the West Bank where Jewish habitation had been for millennia were systemically destroyed and erased -- and the rest of the world was not only fine with that, they mostly claim it never happened.
So my irrational response is that this will never, ever EVER happen again as long as there is breath in my body and an ability to die for my irrational belief. Because I am a religious fanatic, and this is not subject to negotiation.
it doesn't mean we should eliminate the non-Jewish presence. It doesn't mean we should deny or vandalize anything. But it means as between me holding it v. you holding it, I'm sticking with me -- because I know what happens when you hold it. And threatening me, thrwoing a temper tantrum, promising to wipe the presence of the foul Jewish pigs from the sacred precincts of Al Quds, and insisting that there wasn't even a Temple in the first place, let alone an active Jewish community until 1948, does not persuade me otherwise.
