Pragmatism and coexistence vs. xenophobic racial hatred: Human nature vs. human potential

Practicing racial and ethnic hatred is the norm for our hairless-ape mammalian species. This is a fact; we don’t have to like it we just need to deal with it without too much indignation. Any community of humans on the face of the planet has at one time practiced or still does openly or secretly practice some form of racial and ethnic hatred/profiling, especially those communities that today preach against such an ugly facet of human nature, often with a profoundly patronising tone. The US, its xenophobic whites, and its overtly aggressive and well-armed police, are a case in point.

We are tribal and xenophobic; it’s a basic trait and defense mechanism of human kind, which has evolved to allow us to protect the territory of our tribe against incursions from other tribes who we basically distinguish by minor or major differences in physical appearance. In short, we are not a loving angelic species that loves to share and give until it hurts, that is a Christian-propagated myth that has done more harm than good over the years.

When European settlers were expanding on the North and South American continents, there were no camera phones, and whatever literate scholar or chronicler accompanied the conquerors on their expansionist rape of native ethnic communities in the Americas often shared their missionary zeal and messianic fervour. The result was the biggest continental-scale rape, murder and dispossession campaign in recorded human history that has been justified by feats of acrobatic semantics, which served to twist and contort facts by which the unjustifiable was and continues to be justified.

The outrage felt on social media these days is laudable, but a bit useless. Twitter has not spawned more racism and stupidity in the world it just uncovered it. If anything, social media was a badly needed bucket of cold water in the face, it has made us all more aware of the ugliness and practically homicidal nature of the world we live in where we all struggle to varying degrees to hoard and retain access to precious, rare and vital resources. Anyone not belonging to our tribe in terms of skin color, faith system, or allegiance to a particular political economic system, will be mowed down! That is the human credo, its human nature.

In Palestine, the tools of social media have helped to clarify and defend the position of a dispossessed nation. It helped garner support and helped explain the difference between European anti-Semitism and the Palestinian people’s political, military and national struggle to liberate lands for the most part stolen from them by Zionists. No, Jews who are critical of Israel and denounce its existence as blasphemy are not ‘self hating’ or ‘anti-Semitic’ Jews, they are simply moral Jews, people who can’t accept what is being done in their name in terms of military occupation, murder, and long term mass internment of human beings in the world’s largest open air prison, as Israel has done and continues to do in Gaza.

I have said it before and will say it again: I am not looking for a certificate of good conduct from the “naming and shaming of anti-Semites brigade”. I am far more concerned with the future happiness and peace of this violently contested piece of Middle East real estate and that of all the people who reside on its blood soaked soil, more so than most ignorant, self appointed social media windbags who just want to show the world how PC they all are! I am a pragmatist and pragmatically speaking, Israel’s future and a Jewish State is in serious doubt. On the other hand, the future of the entire territory of historical Palestine as a secular State for all its people, those who have lived there for hundreds of years and those newly settled there, seems more promising. But, such a future vision is at the present far-fetched and near impossible to achieve, at least for the foreseeable future, I would be the first to admit that.  And yet, this is the only vision for the future that should make any sense.

Humans are nothing if not flexible and open to seeing possibilities beyond the immediate future, it’s what distinguishes a mere hairless ape from an immensely intelligent, problem-solving, evolved human being. I want to believe that such a solution, a one-State solution, can be achieved, I want to believe that the selfish interests of the national entities: Israel and the PA, do not stand in the way of a solution that will see both of them ultimately dissolved in favor of a super-national, multi-ethnic, multi-religious State in which humans go about their day to day business, getting in each other’s way, as they do everywhere, but accept one another as equals. Until then, resistance of occupation remains a sacred right for the Palestinian people.