A recent scandal over the Education Ministry approving a textbook for Israeli Arabs which mentions the War of Independence as a catastrophe, highlights the problem of fairness. The textbook, as the Education Minister claimed correctly, fairly presents both the Jewish and the Arab sides of the event. The leftist minister failed to understand a critical thing: we Jews don’t want fairness. Two friends contesting a beautiful girl both of them love dearly – do they think of fairness? Fairness is a concession. People concede to contenders in some matters, expecting reciprocity in other matters. But sometimes, no reciprocity is in sight. A man won’t step back from contesting his darling’s heart because other contenders lack reciprocal offers for him. Fairness is a statistical matter; unique things are above the concept of fairness.
The United States, the most free country on earth, practices eminent domain. The government evicts owners from their real estate property without sufficient compensation (if it were sufficient, they would sell rather than being evicted). Almost every state was formed by displacing the original inhabitants of the land, often by killing them off or forcibly assimilating them.
The Jews, too, need to carve a state for themselves. Not because it is fair: fairness is inapplicable to statehood. Not because the Jews deserve a state: no one does – ask the Basques. Not because Palestinian Arabs lack tribal characteristics: nation or not, they miss their grandparents’ villages and olive trees. The Jews need a state because they want to live in a state.
Masses of citizens slowly kill their states by disregarding civil responsibilities; most don’t even vote. States are formed not by majorities, but by a relatively few zealots who hold the land, independence, and living without strangers as the ultimate values not subject to concessions. Enough Jews desperately want a state of our own, and the Jews won such a state in six wars and scores of conflicts.
Jewish occupation of the land settled by Muslims is not fair to Muslims. Nor is it green. Fairness has as little to do with statehood as color. For all its political correctness, America retains the common sense to avoid indoctrinating its children with the Red Indian side of the story. People in peacetime, especially children, cannot easily grasp the wartime concepts of genocide, rape, and robbery. It would take years for children to understand – and most will never understand – the subtle philosophical basis of morality as intra-group phenomenon, inapplicable – and never applied – in foreign relations. People abandon morality to further their most cherished aims: Juliet broke her parents’ hearts by faking suicide that would bring her to Romeo. All means are good to further national goals, and statehood is the primary national goal.
How bizarre is it to reject fairness? But where did you see fairness recently? Some people are born rich while others live dirt poor. Some are geniuses while most possess mediocre minds. Some are prom queens while others are ugly sheep. Was life fair to the Red Indians? To the Chechens? The Basques? Jews? Arabs?
The world runs a giant affirmative action program for Palestinian Arabs at the Jews’ expense.
Lost in translation, the words 'fair and 'fairness' don't apply to this action. It is not objectively true that the 1948 war was a catastrophe for Israeli Arabs, and Israel is certainly not at fault for the status of Palestinian Arabs residing in and out of refugee camps outside of the green line.
Printing a lie, a big lie at that, in a school book is not covered by the concept of 'fair'. An appropriate word is subversive.
I agree. Moving 50 miles is not a catastrophe. Insult, inconvenience, yes, - but not catastrophe.
Do the Administrator,
This is not meant to be posted, so please don't post this message.
I could not find a link for “contact”, “moderator”, or “webmaster” so I write it here.
I recall, you requesting corrections, so here is one: Normally in English, “fairytale” is one word, not two words “fairy tale”.
Do I like this argument? No. Do I agree with this argument? Yes. Fairness is a as much a feeble ideology of the weak as relativity. It is used to stroke the conscience of the masses to help them sleep at night. Israel will only see peace when it wipes the 'Palestinians' from the map. There is only one type of violence and it is absolute violence. If the 'Palestinians' propose violence against Israel, it only stands to reason that Israel must eradicate the 'Palestinians' because there is only one outcome of violence and that is destruction.
to call he US the most free country in the world completely undermines the strength of your views.
a country with restricted media expression, rigged eclections, gunatanamo bay and the ultiamte bar to true freedom, the ignorance arising from a sub-standard education and quas-theocracy mean that it lags far behind most of europe in the freedom stakes. it's just that we europeans don't use it as an advetising slogan whenever we ancounter a different culture.
Most european countries are quasi-totalitarian states where government can throw people in jail for what they say and control almost every aspect of their lives.
Although I'm happy since European average birth rate is 1.2, wait another 30 to 40 years, then European economy will collapse, and Europe will be completely Islamatized. I hope the United States do not help Europeans this time.
Whether or not Jews "want fairness", that is not the point, here. The point is that the Education Minister is mistaken in claiming that representing the Palestinian view is fair. It is not.
Fairness always has to be examined with respect to a specific context. To just state that something "is fair" either implies that the context is so obvious as to not merit mention, or that the speaker has no idea what he is saying.
With respect to the Education Minister's comment, the latter pretty clearly applies.
The important point about fairness is that it is a very basic human concept - one of the most basic. It is the sole "natural law". Anyone who does not understand reciprocity is someone who could never be trusted, which is the important point, in the end.
Is it fair to NOT represent the Palestinian fairy tale as fact in Israeli textbooks? Yes, trivially.
The only "free" societies are those whose main power structures are based on the primary concept of "fairness". Of course, fairness always comes secondary to security, which is usually the applicable viewpoint in international relations. But once security is assured, fairness becomes the overriding issue.