Israel-Palestine: Statement by UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Tor Wennesland, on the situation in the occupied West Bank, Jerusalem, 8 March 2023 (08.03.2023)

Palestine: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates – Press Statement (27.02.2023)

A spiteful chant: Where did humanity go?

Where did humanity go in our time? When did we cease to care about other people’s struggle and their causes? When did that cease to matter? Because in our time, the rich and wealthy are securing more and more resources, while the poor is having no ways to get out of it. The states are closing their borders, stricter rules for refugees and asylum-seekers. While in dictatorships, the harassments and the internally displaced numbers are rising. The rich countries are investing in warfare, but not taking charge for the fleeing refugees from the crisis. They are trying to pay the states in regions and close the borders in migration routes. There is no heart, just cash-money. The heart has left, and the ignorance is rising.

The deaths of civil wars, the displacements of draconian laws and of dictators doesn’t matter. The lack of dialogue and of political freedoms, that doesn’t matter either. The lack of compassion and of political will change is also okay. As long as the troubles from afar doesn’t touch us. However, we will seal of the borders and make sure the innocent victims of internal disputes and skirmishes hopefully can cross the border to the closest country and not seek refugees in Europe or in the United States. Because, we cannot mange to show some humanity and heart.

The blood in your veins should boil, but for most. We don’t give a damn, they don’t give a fig. If their villages are burned to the ground by the military. If the Police is detaining people without any justification. If the state is securing the demise and death on fake imports. All of that doesn’t matter, as long as it doesn’t happen where we are.

This is the despicable. This is the reality. Our time, our reality, what our representatives put forward and make sure to build big invisible walls and mechanisms to close borders. To make it less achievable and costly to cross. Even more dangerous, as the perils of death and destruction at home isn’t better. But to leave can also cost your life, either by crook or by the book. Secondly, there will be nobody to even care to look.

This should be disgusting. Knowing that people are dying fleeing civil-wars and dictatorship, than when they are entering our safe havens; there is no one caring for their ills and troubles. They will just shrug it off like dirt on their shoulders and move on. There is lack of solidarity and heart. I hope in my time, that the Republic’s and Nation’s that close their borders never start warfare with themselves. As the ones who saw what we did. Might also give us no helping hand. They might say, we saw what your parents did to us. Why should we save the kids to such despicable people? Why do you deserve safe haven, when you couldn’t help our kind in need?

That is what I worry about, because we never know when the tide change, when society start to deteriorate or self-destruct. That is within us and we never know. We could be next, right now it is our brothers from afar, next time it could our closest neighbor or even ourselves. Than, they will remember our cold hearts and lack of compassion in the times of need. Peace.

Press release: The United Nations Arms Trade Treaty will “enter-into-force” and become international law on December 24, 2014.

Discussion: There is two sides to every story (both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinians – their stories are biased just as this one)

This had to be done, especially because of the race between the pro-Israel and pro-Palestinians and how they try to rule the media and also the public opinion. I have not intended to bend you into either direction. Who? Where? What? Nah, I won’t answer that. The thing I will do is instead look into how biased we can be, and also little insight we sometimes have. In the end I will just ask a simple question.  Does that sounds feasible in our day and age? If not, well, still have a blessed journey through my very simple piece.

We live in a time and day where wars are happening. There are certain rules to the proceedings right? Still, when we discuss them we still take sides. Hiram Johnson senator in US from 1917-1945, he said: “Truth,’ it has been said, ‘is the first casualty of war” (…) “Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages” (WikiQuote, 2014).

Even Protagoras said: “there two sides to every story, and one truth. Tell the story, and get out of the way; let the reader figure it out” (Cousineau, 2010).

Now I won’t go to ethical or historical down. Because then my thoughts we’ll be gone in the wind. Like tiny little leafs that being caught with the rush of the wind.

I am writing this because in my own country there is hard headed discussion about the innocence and righteous war for either Israel or the Palestinians on the Gaza stip. They are both going at it like every drunken uncle at the barbeque. Both blaming each other just like they are doing on the stip. Sending grenades from neighbor to neighbor and it never ends.

Why I am saying this like that, because the bickering and discussing over the matter, like you doesn’t give the cause anything, neither to you nor the other guy who disagree. We know that both side of the story. It’s hard from a far even in our day and age to know who is actually accurate. We trust in this media, sometimes government controlled as such. Which even has some reporters that can be biased. Let me get serious! We are all a bit biased. Like I am biased on the matter of which leader in Uganda I respect the most – not Yoweri K. Museveni but Dr. Kizza Besigye. So when people are saying directly all the time and addressing each other, they seem like their forgetting this.

Especially when we know that the truths are the first to die in a war. Therefore the story that is going to be told shouldn’t have the issues of falsehood in them, but still they might not be the whole picture. The whole picture isn’t clear until the weapons have been put into a storage unit and the sad loss on each side is counted. Like Protagoras said: there are two sides to every story. That is because there is to side’s view to what they saw and felt occurred during the events.

Zdenek Urbánek said in the 1970s Checkoslovakia: “In one respect, we are more fortunate than you in the west. We believe nothing of what we read in the newspapers and watch on television, nothing of the official truth. Unlike you, we have learned to read between the lines, because real truth is always subversive” (Pilger, 2006). This was in the 1970s Iron Curtain and when the Soviet was under the rule of Stalin and staying strong. We can just live into the words that he is saying. Can we imagine it or will it all ends into an Orwellian nightmare?

What I am not saying is that we should be bleak about the factors and the injustice that is happening worldwide. It’s natural to react to people losing their lives and people living under circumstances way beyond what we should wish for our worst enemy. More of what I am asking for both parties in a discussion, as viral as the discussions between pro-Israel or pro-Palestine. Act real please! You both can’t have all the information and the whole facts on the situation on the ground. The last piece of the history we got is from the last strongest part, which took the core measurement and got on top.

The, Who? Where? What? We all live in different places all around the world. We have had different teachers, different parents, different childhoods, eaten all kind of foods, drinking local kind of drinks, being a part of some faith, political views, this all will be a part of margins of error in our judgment on recent events. Wouldn’t we hear a different view on Russian annexation from a Slovakian then a brother from Greece? Wouldn’t the thoughts on Ukraine be different seen by a brother in Sierra Leone versus Chinese? It might be the same even, but if the context and our luggage in our mind and our conscious should have any indication, then it should at least differ a bit.

The stories from direct line might be tainted as much as the outsiders discussing it. They have deal with losses, with victories and also being in the fire day after day. We from afar can never feel that pain or loss. That’s another reason why we should be a bit careful to discuss the matter at hand.

Especially we all should know that when we pick and make cases, articles, blogs, we’re all usually picking certain links and quotes. Or copy/pasting certain sources and making a case on the matter. To put our view into the world and develop a understanding on the matter from the different places and writers, journalist and commentators, as I do often, I hope they have caught and asked the right questions to the ones close to the matter at hand. So the story will not only be shallow piece. But actually something that shade a little bit of light on the matter at hand. I know in my pieces that I am biased. If a writer says that they are neutral. Then their lying to you and most importantly; nobody can be non-biased. You can work towards that goal. It’s a nice mission, but kind of impossible. More impossible then a mix of Matrix, Mission Impossible and Crank movies into wild goose chase where none of the actors can’t see the forest for the trees.

So please when we discuss matter that are deep, conflicted and sometimes out of reach where our knowledge doesn’t stand to deep. Could we please take a few sips of brew, before we throw stones, then since we’re sitting and drinking the brew (we might start to actually have a conversation…).

Links:

Cousineau, Phil – ‘The Oldest Story In the World’ (Utgiver: 2010) Phil Cousineau.

 

Pilger, John – ‘The real first casualty of war’ (24.04.2006) Link: http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-real-first-casualty-of-war

 

Wikiquote – ‘Hiram Johnson’ (13.04.2014) Link: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hiram_Johnson