Quandary

I'm not finished with the presentation I have for tomorrow but I'm stopping for now.
It's amazing how inefficient I have become. I could never have survived highschool if I had let myself be as inefficient as I am now.

Today I played hooky from one of my classes to go to a soccer round robin in Tel Aviv. We tied one game zero zero and lost the other one like 5- 0. It was indoors (I'm saying that to explain how we were able to get scored on so many times.) So anyway, we're not good. But I'm really glad I went to the games instead of class.

It's embarrassing but I was tense all last night, couldn't sleep. Was worried I would oversleep and dissappoint the team. Disappoint the team by not showing up or not playing well. Don't know which I was more worried of. The whole thing was so laid back, I shouldn't have been nervous at all, but I was. That's the way I am.
My point was in the end I had a good time and the endorphins from the games have kept me on a high for the rest of today.

It probably seems strange that I am talking in terms of endorphins, but recently I have felt that if I do not have some kind of stimulation my head and body are so down. Down as in slow and down as in, well, down.

On the walk home from the University tonight I was a little down, but this I did to myself actively. The reason I am interested in studying Israel, the reason I found my history of Israel class more interesting than any of my others last semester, is that I find myself here always at a moral quandary. THIS - Israel - is one big problem for me. And I keep wanting, wishing I could just solve it. Who is right? What is right? So when I was walking home, this is what was on my mind.

Well, no. I was trying to pick a topic for my final paper for my class Milestones in the ARab Zionist Conflict. Adn this is what was bothering me so much. Because this is the conflict, this is it. So with this paper, I wante dto do what I have been waiting to do -- figure this thing out.
But I can't. I can't find a topic that will a) answer the question for me b) make for a doable paper.

Ok, so I know I cannot answer the whole question, Is Israel right to exist? with this one paper. Wait, actually I could. But it would not be a history paper, it would be a philosophical/ moral argument and this is a history class. I need to write a history paper.
Ok, that helps a bit. I have to write about history.

So then the question is what history? Do I do something on the British because their writings are easy to find and because we always seem to focus on the documents they wrote. For example, What did the British mean really mean when they wrote "A Jewish home In Palestine"? Did they mean all of Palestine, or just a small "home" somewhere in Palestine, ie. part?
I do find this stuff interesting, but then I think, what is the point? Zionists love to argue these points in British policy, but ultimately the British are not the arbitrars of right and wrong. Even if one can prove that the British intended for All of Palestine to be a Jewish State (which I don't think you can do) where would that get you? So at one point the British wanted a Jewish State in Palestine. So what? That doesn't make the current state anymore or less legitimate. It is just what the colonizers decided they wanted for a certain number of years. And then later they changed their mind.

But there is a point here. That must be why I am stuck on it. Because many people (Zionist historians) will always tell you that in the Balfour Declaration, the British declared their intent to help create a Jewish State in Palestine. And so even though, the Balfour Declaration is just the British government's declaration of policy, it has taken on a sort of idealogical importance, as if the legitimacy of the state is resting on this document. "THEY said they were going to give us a state. And then they didn't." That is the typical refrain. OR something like it.
I just talked to a girl in my group here who said, "Well, you know the whole document is really ambiguous." Maybe that's the answer, it was ambiguous. The end. They left the document ambiguous. Big Deal over ambiguous document.
But maybe there is something else. Why did they leave it ambiguous, if there were so many people in the British government who seemed ready to support something much less ambiguous?
MAybe that is a paper.


And then I think, I want to waste this whole paper on the Balfour Declaration which everyone has written and knows about, not to mention it is a topic that will probably just put me in circles...

So then I think, I should write about, something Arab, the other side. Like one of the major leaders or something. But there is a lot less information available on them. And just because I'm writing about the Arabs doesn't mean I will necessarily give myself anymore clarity on the subject as a whole......

Maybe I need to just screw my search for clarity right now.
Ok, then what drives me to decide what to write about?

Ani lo yodaat? (I don't know).

I walk around here and look at all the people around me, all the young students, studying everything from chemical engineering to some other form of engineering, because they all seem to be studying engineering, and think, I am contemplating whether they should even be here. That just seems so strange, not to mention.... cruel.
Ok, so usually I'm not walking around debating the legitimacy of Israel, but I am studying the struggle for and against the creation of the State of Israel. And when you study it you begin to see how tenuous it all is, how it came from so little not very long ago. How so many different arguments were made for and against its existence.

But most Zionists didn't concern themselves with justifications, they just concerned themselves with doing what was necessary to create the state of Israel because, put weakly, they wanted the state of Israel to exist.
It was all pragmatism. People pushing forward, doing what they had to, to make their dream come true. This is where Israel gets seductive, because it is literally a dream come true. It is a society living a life that only a couple generations ago people were wishing and hoping could some day possible exist. And so there is a constant feeling of energy, of movement here. Of desire.

So either you get stuck in is it Right? Or just in the dream. OR the fact that there is a lot of fighting here.

Maybe, the point is, it was a dream, and people made the dream come true. They argued that it was Right for them to make the dream come true, but ultimately maybe even they knew that they were not doing something because it was Right, they were doing it because they wanted it.
Zionists wanted a Jewish state in Palestine, and now there is a Jewish State in Palestine.
Whether they had done it by conquering or in however you define the way it actually occured, does not change things much. People would have done what it took to make this state. And it probably all wouldn't have been (was not even) right.

I don't think I made sense there.
It is not the end justifies the means, that is not the argument, if there is an argument, it is that the end overrides the means. This is what you are faced with here, what seems to stare you in the face. The means taken to create the state disappear, become passe, once the state is created. What you are left with is a modern state, a state where Jews and Arabs go to schools together, with hospitals and movie theaters, and with many peace loving liberals (but also lots of fighting and walls around arab towns). The state is point zero, and we move forward from there. That is one way of looking at it.
OR, you can keep looking backward.
1) to find out why everyone is fighting
2) to find out who is right.

Ahh... maybe I should forget this business of who is right, the number 2) , and just try to deal with the why everyone is fighting. As a historian it is my job to figure out what each side Believes is right, what motivates each side.
Here we go, (haha, title of the blog), I am overstepping my bounds right now. Maybe as a human being it is my responsibility to decide which side, which argument(s) are right in all of this, but as a historian, it is my job only to report on the arguments of each side. It is my job to understand the problem, not to solve, or judge the problem. I cannot judge this thing, AND do a history paper. They are two separate jobs.

That is why I have been driving myself crazy. Ok, so now I just need to pick a topic I am interested in.

I did this to help myself think. I know I didn't explain the Balfour Declaration, or even my train of thought. It was a very bad blog post. Sorry!