Atheists and Israel

It is interesting that how an individual like Sam Harris and several of his fellow atheists "justify" Israel crimes, by referring to the conflict as if it represents a war with Islam, and because even after accomplishing peace process, we still have problem with Islamic world, therefore we need to support Israel. I am not sure if Sam Harris understands how unethical and dishonest a thinker he is that while Palestine is under an unjust occupation that virtually no people in the world can tolerate for even one year, he appeals to problem with Islam to justify Israel's action. It is really painful to see such opportunistic and unethical stance from an atheist. It is in stark contrast with stances of  some of the greatest thinkers of our time like Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein who were fierce critics of religion but wholeheartedly and bravely stood against occupation and denounced it. What in my opinion is the problem with some of the so-called new atheists is that reasoning does not lead their conclusion, but their conclusion (that Islam is bad) leads their reasoning.  So what we constantly read in Sam Harris regarding Israel - along with many reality distortions, lies, and ignorance of facts- is that what "the developed West  vs undeveloped seven-century theocracy of Palestine" achieve here, not what is just. Whenever you question this selfish self-centered stance, you are considered morally illusive. Occupation is not important at all. Creating hundreds of thousands of refugees should not be given a damn. All that is important is this fetish of destroying Islam. 

Now let's see how a man of reason -Bertrand Russell- analyze the situation:

This statement on the Middle East was dated 31st January, 1970, and was read on 3rd February, the day after Bertrand Russell’s death, to an International Conference of Parliamentarians meeting in Cairo (from Professor Finkelstein's website): Russel wrote:

"The latest phase of the undeclared war in the Middle East is based upon a profound miscalculation. The bombing raids deep into Egyptian territory will not persuade the civilian population to surrender, but will stiffen their resolve to resist. This is the lesson of all aerial bombardment.

The Vietnamese who have endured years of American heavy bombing have responded not by capitulation but by shooting down more enemy aircraft. In 1940 my own fellow countrymen resisted Hitler’s bombing raids with unprecedented unity and determination. For this reason, the present Israeli attacks will fail in their essential purpose, but at the same time they must be condemned vigorously throughout the world.

The development of the crisis in the Middle East is both dangerous and instructive. For over 20 years Israel has expanded by force of arms. After every stage in this expansion Israel has appealed to “reason” and has suggested “negotiations”. This is the traditional role of the imperial power, because it wishes to consolidate with the least difficulty what it has already taken by violence. Every new conquest becomes the new basis of the proposed negotiation from strength, which ignores the injustice of the previous aggression. The aggression committed by Israel must be condemned, not only because no state has the right to annexe foreign territory, but because every expansion is an experiment to discover how much more aggression the world will tolerate.

The refugees who surround Palestine in their hundreds of thousands were described recently by the Washington journalist I.F. Stone as “the moral millstone around the neck of world Jewry.” Many of the refugees are now well into the third decade of their precarious existence in temporary settlements. The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was “given” by a foreign Power to another people for the creation of a new State. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their number have increased. How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty? It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict. No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate? A permanent just settlement of the refugees in their homeland is an essential ingredient of any genuine settlement in the Middle East.

We are frequently told that we must sympathize with Israel because of the suffering of the Jews in Europe at the hands of the Nazis. I see in this suggestion no reason to perpetuate any suffering. What Israel is doing today cannot be condoned, and to invoke the horrors of the past to justify those of the present is gross hypocrisy. Not only does Israel condemn a vast number. of refugees to misery; not only are many Arabs under occupation condemned to military rule; but also Israel condemns the Arab nations only recently emerging from colonial status, to continued impoverishment as military demands take precedence over national development.

All who want to see an end to bloodshed in the Middle East must ensure that any settlement does not contain the seeds of future conflict. Justice requires that the first step towards a settlement must be an Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied in June, 1967. A new world campaign is needed to help bring justice to the long-suffering people of the Middle East."

Now compare those statements with these statements from Sam Harris:

 "They [Israeli army] have been brutalized by this process—that is, made brutal by it. But that is largely the due to the character of their enemies ."

"What would the Jews do to the Palestinians if they could do anything they wanted? Well, we know the answer to that question, because they can do more or less anything they want. The Israeli army could kill everyone in Gaza tomorrow. So what does that mean? Well, it means that, when they drop a bomb on a beach and kill four Palestinian children, as happened last week, this is almost certainly an accident . They’re not targeting children. They could target as many children as they want. Every time a Palestinian child dies, Israel edges ever closer to becoming an international pariah. So the Israelis take great pains not to kill children and other noncombatants.  "

"So, it seems to me, that you have to side with Israel here. You have one side which if it really could accomplish its aims would simply live peacefully with its neighbors, and you have another side which is seeking to implement a seventh century theocracy in the Holy Land. There’s no peace to be found between those incompatible ideas.  That doesn’t mean you can’t condemn specific actions on the part of the Israelis. And, of course, acknowledging the moral disparity between Israel and her enemies doesn’t give us any solution to the problem of Israel’s existence in the Middle East. [Note: I was not suggesting that Israel’s actions are above criticism or that their recent incursion into Gaza was necessarily justified. Nor was I saying that the status quo, wherein the Palestinians remain stateless, should be maintained. And I certainly wasn’t expressing support for the building of settlements on contested land (as I made clear below). By “siding with Israel,” I am simply recognizing that they are not the primary aggressors in this conflict. They are, rather, responding to aggression—and at a terrible cost.]  "

See the difference? I discussed the Harris piece in details here

My Goal

Hi everyone

To start I should say that I have never been an outspoken person, but I have always had some critical point of view about my surroundings. You might say, well every human being probably have some view about his/her world. Do not get me wrong, my view is different from the view of many others in the sense that it hurts me. It hurts me to see the pain of the people to an extent that it paralyzes me from living my everyday life. It hurts me to see how hypocrite we become to grieve one death and celebrate the other. It hurts me that our politicians's appetite for profit is endless to the extent that it "justifies" killing thousands of innocents everyday.It hurts me that many of our celebrities and intellectuals are far from caring for human beings. And this is why I just sensed the need for writing and sharing my views of key issues in our world.

I think We -sometimes unconsciously and sometimes deliberately- do little to use our reasoning abilities while interpreting the outside realities. This "we" does not include only the ordinary individuals devoid of higher education but encompasses a range of academics, politicians, intellectuals, etc. We do little to battle the prejudice and bias. We even sometimes kill the reality to conform it to our moral standards. Yes; we are far from perfect, but we can still handle the facts if we want to and if we have the necessary tools. By the facts I do not mean whatever we hear or see from other sources, but I mean a critically appraised objective reality that has been assessed with little bias. And yes we all have negative and positive emotions, but when assessing something, we must learn the ability to minimize the effect of emotion on our judgement.

But you may ask why it is necessary for an ordinary person (or even a university professor who is focused on his research) to care about these every day political and sociocultural issues? For several reasons:

1. It affects our life in some way. Consider this remote example: When a Chinese worker working in an Apple assembly factory die of suicide due to hard work, I as an Iranian student who bought the iPhone am not responsible for his death, but somehow related to it. My appetite for buying a new technology is an incentive for the corporation to put higher pressure on its workers to meet a deadline. This is not an issue that can be solved right away, but it is a real issue that exists, whether you like it or not.
Another example: when US government invades Iraq for some reason, it definitely will affect many people. Some Americans will have a soldier there. Some others are affected by their tax being diverted to use for military reasons. A surge of hatred is created in those people who are being invaded. It will destabilize the whole region....
2. It leads to mutual understanding between the people. Actions of the "other" might not be acceptable, but they are sometimes understandable if you have enough access to the objective facts. Consider this: When in 1979 revolution Iranians took American embassy employees as hostages this was repeatedly showed on several American channels as an example of Iranian "savageness". But how many Americans know that US together with UK backed Shah and Muslim clergies to overthrow the only Iranian democratic government ever existed. Now compare the pong-standing consequences of this blow to a country with attacking the embassy of another country.  How many Americans know for example that Shah backed by CIA, jailed, tortured and killed many Iranian political activists? . Now It is still not acceptable to attack an embassy, but it is understandable that it was a response to massive suffering caused by direct intervention of US in Iran.
3. It becomes a way of life. When we become involved in sociopolitical issues constantly,  and begin to critically assess the evidence, it can be of use in other areas of life as well. It can help us become  better parents who teach their children how to think not what to think. It helps us make better decision that affect others in a positive way, keeping in mind that others decision also affect us. Last but not least, it lead to some form of thought independence when you do not accept -even- what an intellectual says unless you critically think about it.
4. It leads to a better world: when we become mutually understanding, when we care about the way we affect the other, when we throw away our prejudices, the world will become a more pleasant space to stay.

What is my contribution to this intricate complex society? I am not going to depoliticize myself. I am not a person who is concerned only by himself, only does his job, and accept whatever media tells him. I am not going to believe whatever I see or hear. I am not going to accept everything everyone says be it in the name of religion, reason, democracy, freedom,... I am going to critically appraise it with critical thinking.

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