JIM REED: As the world shrugs
CBC News Viewpoint July 19, 2006
The world is watching while war takes its toll of innocent lives, as Israel is forced to defend itself by attacking a neighbour. No leader, no statesman has come forward to offer any better alternative.
On one side is a powerless government - Lebanon - held hostage by a band of dedicated proponents of terror as a solution to a political dilemma. And on the other side is a powerful government acting on its own without international help.
The impotence and indeed the indifference of the international community have never been more starkly demonstrated than now, during this crisis in the Middle East.
The outside world stands by, as it has for more than half a century, and watches and waits while hundreds and in the end perhaps thousands of innocent people die as they have been dying for generations.
Most people shrug and say, "Well that's the Middle East for you," and go on about their business.
But with the proliferation of high-tech weapons, the hardening of attitudes on all sides and the widespread suffering of innocent civilian victims, simply standing by and doing nothing seems callous.
There's no shortage of finger pointing, however — and the blame game is being played by all the parties including us bystanders. Israel is blamed for over-reacting - but when your soldiers are captured, rockets are landing on your towns and cities and your people are being killed, who are we to say what reaction is appropriate?
History teaches us that nation states often behave irresponsibly or without sufficient regard to the consequences of certain actions and behaviour, in much the same way individual human beings often do.
Foresaw a multitude of tragedies
Occasionally, however, a national leader shows real insight and courage, as U.S. President Harry S. Truman did in 1948, with regard to the events in Palestine.
Truman and his secretary of state, General George C. Marshall, both foresaw the multitude of tragedies that would follow hot on the heels of an unsupervised partition of Palestine. On March 25, 1948, Truman made a speech in which he outlined what he felt the United Nations ought to do at the time.
He pointed out that the United States vigorously supported the UN partition committee's majority report, which recommended the division of Palestine into three separate provinces.
One was to serve as a homeland for the Jewish people, one was to be a Palestinian Arab state and the third was to be an international zone, which included the city of Jerusalem. That city was slated to be governed by an international council, representing the nations of the world.
However, both Truman and Marshall expressed concern that Great Britain, which was the central authority in Palestine prior to partition, was prepared to abdicate its responsibility for maintaining security and stability in the territory.
In his speech on that warm and sunny Thursday in March, Truman issued a plea that, as we witness events unfolding now, seems prescient indeed.
Truman was well aware of the violence already occurring in the area, well before the target date for dividing it up. The prospect of even more violence genuinely bothered him and he spoke publicly about it and the imminent dangers and consequences of war.
"If we are to avert tragedy in Palestine," he said, "an immediate truce must be reached between the Arabs and the Jews." Truman proposed an international trusteeship for Palestine "to provide a government to keep the peace."
'Violence and bloodshed'
The trusteeship was being proposed, he said, "only after we had exhausted every effort to find a way to carry out partition by peaceful means." He emphasized that the trusteeship was not meant to be a substitute for the plan of partition, but was intended only to be "an effort to fill the vacuum soon to be created by the termination of the British mandate on May 15th."
Truman and Marshall envisioned the chaos that would result if the partition process were not properly policed and Truman put the problem in clear language. Here's the core of what he had to say:
"The United Kingdom has announced its firm intention to abandon its mandate in Palestine on May 15. Unless emergency action is taken, there will be no public authority in Palestine on that date capable of preserving law and order. Violence and bloodshed will descend upon the Holy Land.
"Large-scale fighting among the people of that country will be the inevitable result. Such fighting would infect the entire Middle East and could lead to consequences of the gravest sort involving the peace of this Nation (the United States) and of the world."
It's almost as if old Harry could see into the future and imagine what we've been looking at lately on our TV screens and reading in our newspapers, "...consequences of the gravest sort involving the peace of the Nation (the U.S.) and of the world."
The world didn't listen to Harry Truman in 1948 and today, there's no leader who has either his insight or his courage.
