Israel/Palestine

This might be an incendiary topic. I don't want to hear it. I'm not here for that.

I'm writing a fiction that is a bit of an allegory; it plagiarizes/draws inspiration from real life history. I want to tell stories that are important or obscure. It surprises me how many people don't know that the current nation of Israel was only recently created forcibly. However, do I need to tell this story? Or is this a minor detail, just the latest in the back and forth conflict for Jerusalem? Because I'm already telling the bigger picture: that there will never be peace in the region because of the all the promises that have been made about the land. So does the bit about the recent making of Israel seem redundant and minor? Is the creation of the State of Israel an important part of the story of humanity?

 

Yes, it is.

 

Depends what sort of audience you are wanting to read your book. You cannot do true neutral as it would alienate both opinions and usually this topic is so divisive that people usually fall into 1 camp or the other.

But you can try to be factual first and foremost so no one can reasonably say you are taking sides. Just letting the chips fall as they may.

 

I think a bit more detail on your plot and what you're trying to do with the story might help out. Not sure that there's enough information to give any real advice.

If you think your readers will need to know about Israel's founding to get the point of your story, then I think you answered your own question here:

 

My thoughts.
"Because I'm already telling the bigger picture: that there will never be peace in the region because of the all the promises that have been made about the land"
Unfortunately, the conflict there is not because of the land ... The conflict is there because of the ideals and worldview (Religion).

Once I saw a broadcast from there where the owner of a diner on wheels was telling a story.
He left his son behind the counter while he walked away for five minutes. He returned and his son was not there. He started asking people what happened. They told him ... That there were beggars asking for food. The son replied that even if Muhammad (the Prophet) came, he would not give him without money. Isis stood nearby, without hesitation they pulled the boy out, dragged him into the alley and shot him.

Another time, a European teacher who taught English to children decided to use the toy as an example of communication. She brought a teddy bear and named it Mohamed after one of the disciples.
The next day, there was a crowd of protesters in the street demanding the death penalty for her. The government had to expel her from the country at an extreme pace.

Another time ISIS cut off the heads of the players of the national football team, they were suspected of treason.

There are countless stories like this. When people were killed because of religion. I haven't even started about gays yet ...

You can also see how countries change with and without Islam.

I am not saying that Islam is bad. But it did not undergo any changes for a very long period of time. This, in turn, led to the emergence of a fairly large layer of religious fanatics.

The problem is not so much in Israel as in the fact that it is not a Muslim country in the heart of Muslim countries. Whether there were Buddhists, Christians or Scientologists, they would have received the same welcome.

So the question is whether Islam will change to get rid of the radicals, or will continue to promise forty virgins for death in battle with the infidels.

According to statistics, from one third to half of Muslims in different countries justify and support terrorist attacks.

Israel has a very interesting history of creation. It is interesting to observe the chain events that ultimately led to the emergence of the country.

 

Thank you for your input, but I'm not here to debate the politics of the region. As it happens, I am neither a supporter or opponent of the existence of Israel.

I have a feeling people are going to be mad at me for writing my story. I'm doing my best to capture humanity's essence without bias. I could simply state the fact that Israel was forcibly created by Western powers and people would say that I was implying that Israel shouldn't exist. I could then say that this was right after the holocaust, so people were feeling sympathetic, and then they'd get mad at me supporting the crimes against the Palestinians, and I've got the rest of humanity to comment on, so I'd better build a storm shelter for all the racism accusations that are coming my way.

Someone gave me an interesting reply, and I will now share its insight with all of you.

>Is the creation of the State of Israel an important part of the story of humanity?
according to many Jews and some Christians, it's maybe the most important part of the story

On a secular level it's a significant part of the shifting political and strategic conditions of the ME region, for whatever that's worth in the biggest of big pictures. It just so happens that there's an important religious context to most of the major developments in the region. The fall of the Ottoman Empire (a seeming deathknell to Muslim world power), and by extension the secular reforms of Ataturk, later the Islamic revolution in Iran...these things probably more significant to the secular world than the establishment of Israel. But Israel poses a particular drama that appeals to Westerners not only because of its tragic origins, its religious context, but because it is seen as a Western outpost in a barbarian region and therefore worthy of empathy and interest.

Maybe its value as story is not so much its importance, but the symbology attached to it -- and Western conceits

 

It's just my opinion that here it is necessary to concentrate on the worldview and the clash of the principles of people as well as the religion of people. Confrontation between different views on morality and immorality.

I also do not consider any of the sides to be right or wrong. Morality is very subactive and it is impossible to know what is good or evil, since I also judge subactively.

 

I see. I will make sure to highlight the severity of the situation, the differing opinions.

 

Just write the story and quit agonizing over whether or not it might anger people. People have been royally pissed about Israel/Palestine for generations so it's not like you're going to start a brand-new conflagration.

 

Not so, it is absolutely about land. To equate the Palestinian struggle with Isis and Islamic fundamentalism is hideous. To conceptualise it as a "conflict" is, in itself, a distortion. Palestine belongs to the Palestinians. They were forcibly removed from their land by an occupying force and are consistently oppressed and brutalised by forces who are overwhelmingly more powerful. The idea that you can talk about the what is, and what has, happened in Palestine without being political is absurd. If you do not oppose oppression, apartheid and injustice, you support it by default.

 

How do you define "recent," and what's your frame of reference? Israel was created in 1948 and was admitted to the U.N. in 1949. So Israel is 73 years old. That's "recent" in relation to the formation of the earth, but the founding was also before a majority of people alive today were born. To most people, I submit, anything that happened before they were born is ancient history, not "recent."

That, I think, depends on whom you ask. If you ask me (a 77-year old Protestant Christian minister), my answer is "No."

IMHO, the important story isn't Israel, but the fact that arbitrarily-created states rarely succeed or survive. What happens when you take two (or more) groups of people who are hereditary enemies, both ethnic and religious, draw a line around them and tell them that they are now citizens of the same country? Answer: Cyrus. Bosnia. Various countries in Africa. ___

The story is that political meddling cannot erase generations of ethnic and religious enmity.

 

I agree. That is the position I'd like to take, the story I'd like to tell: that this is a squabble and it means nothing in the greater picture.

What I'm doing
The situation in my story is that I have a central continent of people, and this central continent will be the site of a religious conflict. I could have both parties already living there or I could have have an Israel style migration/invasion. If I skip over it, it tells audiences that I think it's unimportant, just the latest in the cycle, like the crusades (I'm not worried about people getting mad at me). However, as other people have told me, the conflict means a lot to many other people, and it does rather cast a colored light on center of the stage: prophecy and all that. If I have the Israel style thing, then I'd honestly have to come up with a holocaust too and a portrait of the Jews to give an honest reflection of what really happened, and there's be so many complications that I'd have to translate to my fantasy fiction that I'd just be plagiarizing history more and more. Again.

Fictional World War
If I don't! I'll tell you what I was considering doing. I need an excuse for my fictional world's world war. Now, I know World War I wasn't religious. There was some dogma involved in fascist ideologies, but from my understanding, Gavrilo Princip assassinated the archduke because he believed his land should be ruled by someone else. It was a territorial dispute. So.... could I use my central continent where my representative Israel/Palestine conflict is taking place as the spark for my world war? I have mixed feelings about this. Yes the world is in flames and humanity has always been at war for stupid reasons, but my audience might misunderstand and think that I'm trying to blame World War I on religion.

I mean, it'd be nice to simplify human history so that I don't have to plagiarize it so much, just capture the essence of it, but unfortunately, some details can't be left out, like the distinction between WWI conflict and Israel/Palestine Conflict.

 

For context, my story ends with a bang. A second world war occurs when all the nations race to excavate ancient elvish weapons of mass destruction. One is found in the central continent, where the fictional religions have been battling for land.

Yes, my story is a criticism of religion. It would be in keeping with the theme to include the "recent" formation of my fictional Israel, but it may also be unnecessary, since elsewhere I'm already getting my point across, that there will never be peace because of the promises about the land. Instead, it'd be awfully convenient if I could just skip over the Israel thing and say that they've always had a portion of the land. Either way, I'd use the central continent as the spark for the first World War.

But, people really like prophecies, and I forget to look at Israel from a religious point of view; it mean a lot to them. Israel may not mean a lot to me historically or politically, but it means a lot to others culturally.

And at the end, my main character meets God.

 

I think if you want your story to be an allegory for Israel / Palestine specifically you would need to include its formation. There are so many conflicts worldwide, especially if we're looking over a couple of centuries, based on land and religion disputes I'm not sure it would be clear which countries you were alluding to otherwise. Even with the division of land, this dispute is not unique - for example British colonial rule made a habit of 'divide and rule' techniques which made it easier for them to keep control and left a lot of mess. So I think you have to decide how clearly you want this to be an allegory about Israel / Palestine specifically versus conflict over land and religion in general.

If you want to include the backstory of formation, you wouldn't necessarily have to include it as a main part of the story. You could have a prologue (I know not everyone likes prologues) which just lays it out as lore, kind of like at the start of Watership Down where it explains the creation story (only making it more history than religion based). If you do this in third person it quickly sets the scene, and would also let you talk about both sides of the story and remain more neutral.

 

I think with this I'm struggling to understand why it needs to be an allegory for Israel/ Palestine at all? As you pointed out with the Crusades, religious wars have been fought for thousands of years. People understand religious conflict, and it sounds like for your story it would be easier to just use in-story religions. You mention elves so are you going to be making up religions or using real ones?

I think from where you want your story to go and your uncertainty with what you want the history to be it makes more sense to not try to shoe-horn in Israel and Palestine specifically when you can write a story critical of religion without it. It seems to be overcomplicating things, and if you don't want to comment on the political / religious arguments for that specific conflict I don't think your story needs to be tied to it.

 

I'll be using made up religions.

At this point, I'm leaning towards not utilizing the creation of Israel, or if I do, I'd reduce it to a little footnote. The full story would make for too many complications and my story would work fine without it otherwise. I'd include it only because of the cultural significance to people, their desire to fulfill prophecies rather than prophecies coming true naturally. So I could say, faction A and B have both lived on on the central continent for centuries and the squabble is over a tiny sacred mountain/valley that each faction believes they should own thanks to their respective prophecies. And faction A "recently" took control of the mountain.

 

To explain what I said about fulfilling prophecies naturally, if someone prophesizes that a man called Jesus will take a poop on a mountain, there is a difference between someone who had heard that prophecy enacting it to make sure it comes true and someone named Jesus who had never heard the prophecy taking a poop on the mountain because he had no choice.

Prophecies can do a lot to a story. Unfortunately, all we ever see is dumb Chosen One stuff.