Plato, Aristotle, Socrates: Morons

In the days following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, I was faced with the dubious task of teaching high school British Literature students what was expected of the curriculum ... which I saw as an extremely difficult prospect. I mean, how do you "teach" literature to seniors when the entire world seems to have come to a halt, and all attention was focused on the events in New York City and Washington, DC?

My answer, with an assist to my cooperative teacher form my days at the International Academy in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, was to "flip" the upcoming unit on Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales - that instead of leading off with the prologue, followed by "The Pardoner's Tale," I open with the story and tie it into the events on 9/11.

If you're not familiar, "The Pardoner's Tale" is one of more than 20 stories in The Canterbury Tales. The story is in the form of an exemplum: the Pardoner (who makes a living selling falsified indulgences, besides fake relics and other supposedly magical knick-knacks) first explains the theme he will address to a group of travelers, then tells his story, and finally draws the conclusion he had already mentioned in his introduction. The Pardoner's theme, Radix malorum est cupiditas (Avarice is the root of all evil), applies to himself as well, since he explains in great detail that greed is his prime motive:

Three drunken men set out from a pub to find and kill Death, whom they blame for the passing of their friend, and all other people that previously have died, as a result of The Black Plague. An old man they meet along the way (and whom they treat extremely rudely) tells the trio he has asked Death to take him, but has failed. He then says the men can find Death at the foot of an oak tree. When the men arrive at the tree, they find a large amount of gold coins and forget about their quest to kill Death. They realize walking around during daylight with a large sum of gold would be questionable, so they decide to camp out by the tree until dusk. The three draw straws to see who among them should fetch wine and food from the town while the other two wait under the tree. The youngest of the three men draws the shortest straw. The two plot to overpower and stab the other one when he returns, while the one who leaves for the town plots to lace the wine with rat poison. When he returns with the food and drink, the other two kill him and drink the poisoned wine, dying slow and painful deaths. All three have found Death.

In reading "The Pardoner's Tale," the class discussed and analyzed many factors, notably that when individuals are intoxicated, they tend to become extremely narrow-minded and do things that most rational individuals find ... well, irrational. And that individuals can become intoxicated on things other than alcohol - things like power, drugs, sexual prowess, gambling, and religion. And that the terrorists in Al Qaida had become intoxicated on their interpretation of the Koran, and had narrow-mindedly twisted the words of their religious text to suit their needs.

Sadly, extremists exist in all cultures, and the goings-on in the Middle East continues to be a world where religious extremes exists and take over where rational minds cease to make a prolonged difference.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world's longest standing conflicts, extending back centuries. Many people believe resolving this is the key to resolving the various conflicts throughout the Middle East. Many observers see this conflict creating Arab resentment towards the West (i.e., the United States) and fueling radical Islamic terrorism. Although the conflict generates massive public discussion and debate, there are relatively few (if any) forums that inherently maintain an impartial and non- partisan approach to understanding it. (If you want a full-throttle, detailed history of the conflict, this link, from MidEastWeb, is about as balanced as any I have ever been able to find on the Internet.)

Basically, the Pro-Israel camp bases its arguments on the following principles: Israel is the historical "homeland" of the Jewish peoples who have lived there continuously since biblical times; many Jews believe that they deserve a "Jewish" state because of historical injustices, such as the Holocaust, and because they have international support and recognition through the U.N; the majority of Israelis support a "two-state" solution, creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel in Gaza and the West Bank; and other Israelis support the idea of "one-state", either by annexing all occupied territories into the Jewish state (far right view), or incorporate the occupied territories into one secular democratic state with equal rights for all (far left view).

The Pro-Palestinian camp generally bases its arguments on the following: the Palestinian people have lived in the area of Israel/Palestine since biblical times; they see most Israeli Jews as foreign colonizers who began arriving within the last 100 years; Palestinians consider themselves a national entity, deserving of the rights of all nations, including a Palestinian state; many Muslim Palestinians and their supporters see the land as Islamic holy land, and are strictly opposed to non-Muslims owning and establishing a state on Muslim land; and Palestinians vary widely in what they see as a just solution to the conflict. They include: the total destruction of Israel; a "bi-national" or "one-state" solution; and a "two-state" solution.

Personally, I have no hatred toward any Palestinian who is not a member of Hamas, Hezbollah, or any of the other splinter factions whose goal is to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. I've had the wonderful opportunity as a high school educator to work with students and parents from all walks of life and all religious and political philosophies and backgrounds. I believe the large majority of individuals on this planet believe in the things I hold dear: a life free of turmoil, free of hatred, of physical or verbal assault, free of the threat of war.

But ... when you dance with the devil, you are guilty by association. And this applies to men, women and children. Fact: Hamas is defined as a terrorist group by the USA, the European Union, Canada, Australia, Israel, Japan, and others.

[Click this link for an in-depth presentation of Hamas, in its own words, over the past few decades.]

Fact: Hamas uses civilians as human shields.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir put it as eloquently as anyone in a statement to the National Press Club in Washington, D. C. in 1957: "Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us."

Sadly, there are people in the world who are determined to kill anyone who doesn't agree with what they believe, and are so set in their ways that nothing will ever change their minds. They are as intoxicated on hatred and a twisted view of religious philosophy as the trio in "The Pardoner's Tale" who were intent on killing Death personified as a way of avenging the loss of their friends; so intoxicated on anger and lies that logic and rational discourse are beyond their grasp. In part this is due to the brainwashing by their society to believe that there is no option other than to destroy what they have been fed day after day as an enemy of the people; in part because they have been a people without a home for so long, their anger knows no boundaries; and in part it is because their own brothers - the neighboring Arab states - have refused to accept them into their world, instead leaving them to fend for themselves.

It's a no-win situation multiplied by infinity.

So ... now what? Are we, as the Dread Pirate Roberts stated in The Princess Bride, "at am impasse"? Or is there room for cooler heads from multiple sides to sit down, discuss the differences, and bring about changes to conflicts decades and centuries old?

Maybe. The topic has been broached multiple times by individuals and think-tanks much wiser than individuals such as myself. One of the best proposed options comes from The Millennium Project, founded in 1996 after a three-year feasibility study with the United Nations University, Smithsonian Institution, Futures Group International, and the American Council for the UNU. It is now an independent non-profit global participatory futures research think tank of futurists, scholars, business planners, and policy makers who work for international organizations, governments, corporations, NGOs, and universities. And in 2009, it produced three scenarios that, if agreed to by all participants in the region, could feasibly work.

Who knows? Maybe this whole "Peace in the Middle East" thing could be worked out. I guess time will tell ...