Ex-MP, TV presenter and newspaper columnist Matthew Parris was on a recent BBC1 Question Time programme when the obvious questions came up about the Israeli boarding of the aid flotilla. Very interestingly, rather than have an arrogant opinion on the matter and the whole conflict, he said he was bored with it all. He said there were plenty of other places in the world with equal or worse atrocities happening and he couldn’t understand why people and the media would barely mention them, yet constantly keep the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the public eye.
In many ways of course he is completely right to be bored with it, and in many ways the whole region and its conflicts should be assigned to the same obscurity as anywhere else as it is no different. For a lot of people who try to objectively analyse the reason why the world’s media gives the conflict so much coverage, there is a fascination with ‘why’ it remains there in front of us every day which they can’t put their finger on.
I believe the main reason is because the area, and indeed the plight of the people there thousands of years ago is the centre of the universe. Well, obviously it isn’t really, but for all those having one of the three main Middle Eastern originating religions banged into them from birth, it is. It is where all the major stories from the Jewish, Christian and Islamic religions took place. Major religious and sacred sites from all three religions are in this area, and consequently taught in school and in religious indoctrination sessions. The area is not allowed out of the thoughts and minds of those suffering from one of those religions that was born in the area, hence it is always in the minds of the news editors and journalists that write about it and report on it half a globe away.
The religions, like any virally transmitted meme are global, and so for any country with a major percentage of the population suffering from the infection of a Middle Eastern originating religion, the tiny land mass where the stories are supposed to have happened is never far from their collective thoughts. It is not allowed to be, even if it’s not in the media. This is true regardless of the ‘side’ the religion is on, which generally seems to be split as Jews/Christians versus Muslims.
If this area of conflict is the centre of a pond where a stone originally dropped, then the anger, polarisation, indignation and sense of injustice is wherever the ripples reach. The ripples reach pretty far out. The centre for all anger and hatred from these ever warring religions is always going to be the Israeli/Palestinian area. It can never not be.
Indeed, if you discuss anything with a Muslim in the UK they will be on the Palestininan side of the conflict even if they’ve never set foot out of the UK, or have their own origins in, say, Pakistan rather than the Middle East. The same is true of having a discussion with a Christian. They will always be on the Israeli side, as, of course, will Jews who have never lived in Israel.
The polarisation is part of how the religions are designed. The religions indoctrinate those infected with a natural distrust through to outright hatred of those from opposing religions. This is how they work and part of the mechanism of self-reinforcement they use to keep a hold of those infected. None of them teach about truly living in harmony, all teach that only their followers are the truly chosen ones and how all the others are lesser beings and will not be chosen by god during some time of judgement. All teach that the opposition religions are works of evil and that the followers have no worth and are lesser than animals.
Solving the conflict in the area is key to calming down the hatred and suspicion that divides so many peoples across the world because of the ripple effect. That is the main reason why this area of the Middle East needs to be kept in the public eye, but with a new approach.
Sadly it will be another thousand years or so before the population of this area are ready to accept that their religions are bogus and that free-thinking is ‘the way’, so until they can get to that level of enlightenment, we have to work with what we’ve got. What we have is inbred hatred.
Replacing the inbred polarised views about which side is good and which is bad, we need a new and secular ‘overview’ approach of trying to find a tolerable peace without either side taking advantage over the other. It’s a near impossible task, but were it to come to pass, the ripple effect would calm down so much suspicion and hatred across the world and allow for so much advancement and growing of humanity.
In many ways it is essential that we do this and keep the area and the conflict in the public eye until we can put a final stop to these warring religions and stop the ripples from their conflict causing complete disaster across our planet.
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