Similarities and Differences Between Palestine and Tibet

  Israel Shamir and I, both of us dedicated One Staters, have been privately engaging in a dispute about the Tibetan situation for some time. I have pointed out the similarities between the plight of the Palestinians, with whom he ostensibly sympathizes, and that of the Tibetans, with whom he most emphatically does not. As a result, I was inspired to engage in the following exercise.

Similarities

• An aggressive 20th Century style power colonizes a defenceless indigenous people's land by force
• Both events occur in the mid-20th century, comparable only with fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union
• The action is justified by a dubious mytho-historical claim

1) The Israelis claim that the land was given to them by God and/or that they were reclaiming the land of their forebears. Those making this claim were/are Ashkenazi Jews, whose forebears were the Huns of Central Asia, and are overwhelmingly secular, and emphasize the latter. The new, religious Zionists, represented by the West Bank settlers, gaining influence in Israel rapidly (particularly in the military) and backed by the tens of millions of American Christian Zionists, make the former claim

2) The Han Chinese claim that Tibet was always part of China and/or that it was part of China prior to the invasion. Actually China never exercised control over Tibet. If actual historical precedent were to prevail, the Tibetans have a better claim to China than the opposite, based on their taking of the capitol Xian in 764 CE, even establishing their own Emperor <http://www.worldvisitguide.com/zone/Z0008927.html>

• Both regimes have maintained their control through the use of force.

1) have destroyed many of the existing landmarks, marked in Tibet by the wholesale destruction of monasteries, and in Israel the conversion of mosques to other purposes

2) have imprisoned and tortured numerous members of the indigenous people, particularly their leadership - which Israel continues to do as we speak, while the Chinese have long branded the Dalai Lama a "criminal"

3) have done great harm to the land in the name of the Western notion of "progress," replacing magnificent parts of the landscape with ugly and destructive "development" that has upset the previously prevailing human harmony with the environment. This includes the rapid disappearance of the wildlife, ongoing desertification connected with monocultural agriculture, and great damage to the ecological balance.

• Both settler-colonist invasions resulted in the creation of an active diaspora of refugees, the Palestinian diaspora constituting both the longest enduring and largest refugee diaspora in history, rivaled only by Stalin's displacement of peoples.
• The newly established colonial regimes continue to marginalize and suppress the remaining indigenous people, while reducing them to the status of second-class citizens
• They both continue to pursue a policy of displacing them to this day from areas deemed desirable by the conquerors
• The cultural cost

1) In the case of Tibet, one of the great centers of genuine spirituality in the world has been decimated. (A compensating benefit in this respect has been the spread of Tibetan Buddhism throughout the world through the teaching of Tibetan exiles)

2) Prior to the establishment of Israel, Palestine, along with Lebanon, constituted the Levant, the great cultural entrepot between the West and the "Orient." Palestine was of course "the Holy Land," comprising Muslims, Christians, Jews and the Druze, a sophisticated, traditional, hospitable and welcoming culture relatively free of ethnic, political or religious strife

• Both have policies of encouraging immigration by favored individuals

1)  In the case of Israel, Jews are given not only automatic citizenship, but hefty bribes to "make aliyah' (a "Jew," by Israeli definition when it comes to immigration, is anyone who claims that distinction, as long as they are White European types who are presumed to be sympathetic to the government)

2)  Han Chinese are encouraged and given economic incentives to emigrate to Tibet

• Both governments have long established propaganda departments dedicated to marketing their lies to the rest of the world
• Both governments have proudly emphasized their embodiment of modern Western notions of progress through material development, a la Marxism in the age of Mao Tse-Tung  (and more recently, following Deng Xiaoping, laissez-faire capitalism) in the case of China, and democracy in Israel (well, "Jewish democracy," in their case). 
• The invasion of Tibet occurred in 1950; Israel declared independence in 1948

Differences 

• The obvious and irrelevant, such as local history, ethnicity, geography, and so forth
• The Great Game (The phrase refers to the 19th Century struggle between Great Britain and Russia for dominance in Central Asia, with its focal points in Tibet and Afghanistan)

1)  Whereas the Chinese occupation and absorption of Tibet has incurred vociferous, albeit toothless, disapproval from the West (the geopolitical considerations behind this are obvious enough, although this has recently been changing in concert with China's emergence as a world power, particularly its economic relationship with the Empire);

2) Israel has long enjoyed the wholehearted support of the West, particularly the U.S., upon which Israel's very existence depends. The UN General Assembly, representing the world at large, has consistently sided with the Palestinians, while the Security Council, dominated by the West since the inception of the UN, has always favored Israel (this too is changing as we speak, as little cracks in the Zionist domination of Western governments and media, and therefore the conventional wisdom, have begun to appear)

• Thanks to the Dalai Lama the Tibetans have refrained from violence against their oppressors, if you don't count the resistance fighters trained and equipped by the CIA in the 50's and 60's. But the end result has been the same, as the Chinese have paid no more attention to the Dalai Lama's attempts at conciliation than the Israelis have paid to the outrage of most of the world. However, a non-violent campaign for human and civil rights both within Israel itself and in the OPT could well be effective.
  
• I can't really think of any other significant differences. Can you?

N.B. Tibet in Chinese translates as "Great Treasure House." Palestine, once known as Canaan, was "the land of milk and honey." All this was prior to Sauron's regaining of the ring and establishing the hegemony of Mordor. I'm not simply engaging in sardonic humor; that is poetically true. It is also worth noting that there has been a story that dates to the time of the Buddha that his lifetime (perhaps not coincidentally contemporaneous with Socrates and Confucius) ushered in the current iteration of the repeating 2,500 cycle that is divided into five periods of time called yugas. Each yuga lasts 500 years, and the final one is called the Dark Age. In our era its onset was intriguingly simultaneous with the great voyages and subsequent rapid expansion and hegemony of the Western Imperium . The upside of this is that we are presumably just about due for a spiritual reawakening, in stark contrast to its shadow image, the dangerously popular American mythology of the End Days and the Rapture, the pillar of the Christian Zionist belief system. Fortunately, I'm an inveterate optimist and am biased towards the cyclical view of time and am therefore inclined to think that somehow we'll dodge the bullet and there will be an exception to the law of self-fulfilling prophecies.