Thinking Citizen Blog — Israel-Palestine — Historical Context Matters — Three Indispensable Charts — In Order
Thinking Citizen Blog — Monday is Foreign Policy Day
Today’s Topic: Israel-Palestine — Historical Context Matters — Three Indispensable Charts — in order
In these posts, I try my best to balance the aim of thematic continuity in order to get depth of thought and the goal of global breadth of coverage to put details into perspective. There is so much to learn, there is so little time.
Last time, Afghanistan. Two weeks ago, Ireland and Cuba.
In early April, Gambia, Sudan, and Senegal. In March, Haiti, Iran, and Turkey. In February Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Alexei Navalny. In January, India, Nayandra Modi, Gabriel Attal (the new, 34 year old Prime Minister of France), and the 25th post on Israel Palestine making the connection between the Simchat Torah massacre of October 7, 2023 with the Kristallnacht (“Night of the Broken Glass”) pogrom of November 9–10, 1938.
Today, we return to Israel-Palestine with my new answer to the challenge: what three charts tell the story best?
Remember: a picture is worth a thousand words — on average. But pictures are distributed in a bell curve and the really good ones are worth, millions, billions, or trillions.
These three charts are (as of today) my choices for the three charts at the very end of the right tail of the bell curve of images related to Israel-Palestine.
I reserve the right to change my mind as I have many times in the past. What are your picks? How would you sequence them in order of importance?
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
DO THE MATH !!!!! HOW MANY MUSLIM COUNTRIES? HOW MANY CHRISTIAN COUNTRIES? HOW MANY COMMUNIST COUNTRIES?
1. And would Christianity even exist without Judaism? No.
2. And would Islam exist without Judaism? No.
3. Where is the gratitude?
NB: Jerusalem is to Jews as Mecca is to Muslims. The Wailing Wall is to the Jews as the Kaaba is to Muslims.
ZOOMING IN ON 1948 — the Jews came not as an invading army, but as refugees from the Holocaust, remember the bombing of the King David hotel by the Irgun? There are Muslim members of the Israeli Knesset. Are there Jewish members of the Iranian, Egyptian, Iranian, Saudi, Pakistani equivalent?
1. Jewish communities lived in Morocco and Algeria for more than a 1000 years!
2. Jewish communities lived in Egypt and Lebanon for more than a 1000 years!
3. Jewish communities lived in Iraq and Iran for more than a 1000 years!
THE CONTEXT OF EUROPEAN EXPULSIONS OVER A MILLENNIUM — culminating in Auschwitz. Are the Nazi death camps and the Allied bombing of Dresden moral equivalents? Is this the right historical analogue to apply to the Simchat Torah massacre of October 7, 2023 and the Israeli response?
1. The Romans expelled the Jews from their home first in 139 BC, then in 19 BC, and finally in 70 AD the Second Temple was destroyed.
2. The First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC.
3. King Cyrus of Persia allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem although exactly when is a subject to debate.
NB: King Cyrus’s successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, is hell bent on expelling the Jews by any means necessary. Will he succeed?
QUOTE OF THE MONTH — Have you made your own Bible yet?
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
Here is a link to the last four years of posts organized by theme: (including the book on foreign policy)
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest or most important thing you learned in the last week, month, or year related to foreign policy.
Or, even better, the coolest or most important thing you learned in our life related to foreign policy.
This is your chance to make someone else’s day. And to consolidate in your memory something important you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something dear to your heart. Continuity is the key to depth of thought.
The prospect of imminent publication, like hanging and final exams, concentrates the mind. A useful life long habit.
