The recent outbreak of conflicts between Israel and Palestine over President Donald J. Trump’s decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem can escalate and never be resolved, unless both camps recognize their respective histories and learn from the principles of the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 that brought peace to Europe after almost 150 years of overlapping internecine wars.
No PEACE if all want a PIECE. Starting with the Spanish Inquisition by Tomas Torquemada, a Dominican friar, who persecuted Muslims and Jews, expelling them from Spain in 1492, the entire Europe was engulfed in wars.
Moreover, every state taxed each other and wanted a slice of the pie for themselves, without realizing no one can own or control common natural ecosystems like rivers and old trade routes.
As feudal systems then relied on backward extractions from the land, rather than investing back to increase productivity, all taxed each other increasingly, forcing many to go to war and conquer each other’s territories to avoid getting pernalized or pay tributes.
As there were no international rules, there was no force of law, and on the contrary what dominated was the law of force.
This triggered many overlapping wars, particularly the bloody Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) involving the Holy Roman empire, or much of Europe, and the earlier Eighty Years’ War (1568-1648) between Spain and the Dutch, which were mostly religious wars and endless vindictive wars of “Retribution,” reviving the Old Testament’s “eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-tooth” justice system that only escalated conflicts.
“Doing the advantage for others.” It had to take the diplomatic savvy, patience and organizational skills of Cardinal Jules Mazarin, an Italian diplomat, politician in robes and Finance Minister of France acting as de facto ruler, to end these wars with his series of treaties in Westphalia, Germany from May to October 1648, finally bringing peace and development to Europe.
Mazarin gathered 109 delegations and 94 states and kingdoms from all over Europe. His simple formula was to debunk the selfish “this-is-mine attitude” or akin ito in Filipino, the core value of free market capitalism, to a paradigm shift emphasizing the common good or the general welfare or atin ito, which means this is ours together. Private property is respected, but for the contentious “commons,” Mazarin simply revived the “Golden Rule” of “Doing the Advantage for the Others” or “Do unto others what you want others to do unto you.”
Mazarin’s Westphalian principles on state sovereignty, equality of states and nonintervention on each other’s internal affairs, but helping one another, became the precursor principles of what governs the United Nations today.
Squeezing Jews out is no solution. There is no way Palestinians can kick out the Jews from Israel, ever since Israel was created on May 14, 1948, which realized the “Balfour Declaration” of November 2, 1917, a request made by British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour on Jewish Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild to support a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
For 70 years now, Palestinians protest yearly Israel’s May 15 creation, calling it “Nakba” or “Day of Catastrophe,” when 700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes in 1948. History cannot be undone so Palestinians must accept this fact. No one can neither blame the Jews in Israel as they are victims, too, of history.
Roots of historical distortion? It is wise to learn from Jewish scholar Arnold Koestler’s book The Thirteenth Tribe, about the two types of Jews: 1)Shepardic Jews of Hebrew-Semitic stock and direct descendants of Abraham; and 2) Askenazims (Khazar Jews), who compose 99 percent of Jews in Israel, all tracing their roots to Turko-Mongolian stock and to the Huns, Uigurs and the Magyar tribes of Eastern Europe.
Koestler said many Sephardims settled in Spain until expelled by Torquemada’s Inquisition in the 15th century. In the 1960s Sephardims were only about 5,000, while Ashkenazims or Khazarian Jews in Israel numbered about 11 million.
Des Griffin in his book on Anti-Semitism also affirmed that the Khazar Jews were nomadic tribes driven by other tribes and their desire to plunder and take revenge. By the sixth century, they moved to southern Russia and established the Khazar empire (Chazar), hundreds of years before the Russian new Chazar, or Czarist empire was formed in Kiev in 855 AD.
By seventh to eighth century, Khazars increasingly embraced Judaism. By the ninth century, King Obadiah, required all to become Jewish, learn the Hebrew culture and language, thus many generations later, everyone believed they all came from Palestine (now Israel).
From Chazar to new Czar, Russia? After the Khazar empire crumbled with the rise of a new Chazar (Czarist Russia), Khazarian Jews, who were naturally all over Russia and Eastern Europe (Poland, Hungary, Germany, etc.), became minorities, but still believed they all came from Palestine, thus their craving for their Promised Land and the birth of the Zionist movement.
The original Jewish diaspora involved the Shepardims who moved to Europe, and never the Khazars as it was unthinkable for millions of original Hebrews migrating to Eastern Europe and Russia when mass transportation then was still inexistent.
Having no lands or artisan skills, many Jews became traders and the first usurers, or the Shylocks of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.
Stop fueling “Clash of Civilizations.” Both Israelis and Palestinians are victims of history, so to achieve lasting peace, both must accept their respective pasts, adopt Westphalian doctrines, build on commonalities and launch joint-development projects.
Both sides must debunk ideas like Samuel Huntington’s book Clash of Civilizations, which is reviving and only fueling pre-Westphalian flames of hatred between Islam and Christendom or Judaism. Trump should neither give-in to his Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner’s politics. Palestinians must also be aware on the likelihood that their own radical Hamas was a creation of Israel’s Mossad intelligence, to keep animosity and hatred burning that could prevent peaceful coexistence, keep the Palestinians divided, and provide unending arms markets for the industrial-military complex of the industrial countries. Right or wrong, we need to elevate the critical discourse toward peace.
E-mail: mikealunan@yahoo.com