Just as I Thought I’ve Seen It & Heard It All!
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- Published on Tuesday, 07 August 2012 08:51
By: Mitri I. Musleh
I have devoted my entire academic life to the study of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. By doing so, I tried to understand both sides of the conflict starting with the history that shaped up years of wars and devastation between the two foes, the current and unjustifiable Israeli occupation of Palestine and the international dynamics that feed into sustaining and reaffirming the capitalist country's commitment to valuing profit accumulation over human happiness.
Throughout the years, I wrote and spoke about this conflict. As recent as November 2011, I published a book, entitled The Ambiguous Triangle. The book explores the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from the unique perspective of Maslow's hierarchy of needs and the application of other principles of behavioural psychology. Its objective is to show that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is the major obstacle to peace and in the book, I introduced the use of psychological theories as a way to present a workable solution to solve the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
Throughout the book, I emphasized that the absence of peace is directly related to the conspicuous presence of occupation. I further explored Israel's total control of occurring events and their outcomes as these events unfold.
To my biggest surprise and perhaps disappointment, a political rising star in the west disregarded my long time analysis of the conflict and with a stroke of a pen explained that the situation between Israel and the Palestinian is influenced and directly related to Israel's cultural superiority over that of the Palestinian culture.
Yes, the US Republican presidential hopeful Romney, single handily and in an unfounded and extremely simplistic statement, disregarded all the facts of Israel's oppressive occupation of Palestine and the Palestinians for over six decades, the existence of Israel's apartheid separation wall, Israel's ongoing build-up of illegal settlements on Palestinian lands and Israel's unjustifiable exploitation of Palestine's human and natural resources and the US unquestionable moral, financial and military support to Israel as the reasons for Israel's superiority and rather, he emphasized that Israel's superiority is directly related to its culture.
Thus far, academics and intellectuals from around the world are taking pokes of fun at Romney's lack of knowledge in world affairs, his lack of understanding of the socio-economic theories that has governed our behaviours for thousands of years and his total disregard to human intelligence . Furthermore, those same people are showing concern and fear that in spite of his simplistic ways, Romney may actually one day, become the leader of the strongest country of the world.
