Freedom and law became, because of a wanti8ng to learn. To develop the thinking, the ideas of law limiting behavior without limiting freedom, and of law within a society that values freedom.
Law also has a relationship with religion. They reinforce and support their existence. To believe in, be a member of a religion, is also to learn of, and follow the law.
I was raised Christian. My parents insured we attended church as a family. It was a development of good values and social experiences.
At seventeen I left home, joined the navy and began a learning of the world. This created a change in my thinking and learning. My thoughts became more active and my own. Among these thoughts was an idea. God created, to help man become free. I didn’t understand this at all. Freedom and religion held a curiosity to learn.
My work became as an Engineer aboard military and commercial vessels. This enabled opportunities to travel and learn. In a bar outside of Muscat, Oman, I was sitting with some local people, drinking beer and talking. This fellow came and sat with us. He wasn’t happy. He looked at me and angrily asked, “What religion are you?”
Having learned a reason Muslims touch their forehead to the ground while praying is that their heart is above their mind and they offer their heart to Allah, I said, “What is more important, a person’s religion, or that which is in their heart?”
He stared hard at me, then turned away, and left the table and the bar. The Arabs I was sitting with were pleased. They congratulated me. I raised my glass and said, “More beer.” We laughed.
We talked. They said, “We have freedom.” I said, “When half of your population has little or no freedom, you don’t realize how that affects your freedom. Limiting another’s freedom limits your own.”
They gave me an Arabic name. They wrote it phonically. Sah-la-ha-deen.
The experience happened in 1981. Yet ideas of freedom and control have existed and been discussed for a much longer time.
Consider that over three thousand years ago, a new perspective began of thinking and learning. A perspective of law limiting behavior without limiting freedom. The perspective created a thinking and learning of freedom, that also created fear. That the idea would affect, limit the control, the ruling of people by absolute leadership. This limited the development of freedom.
In August of 1990, I was in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, involved in the military buildup before the liberation of Kuwait. Our presence was as allies. We worked together. We were successful to a limit. We liberated Kuwait yet affected multiple failures in Iraq.
Our effectiveness in the Middle East, as a country and individually, certainly has had limits. Failures have always meant the need to learn. To look, listen, and think of what’s missing.
An effort of my thinking began after learning family members repressed our Jewish heritage. They feared the antisemitism existing in society. I chose instead to learn. This learning began at a Synagogue and included law. I began to realize; law can help man become free.
The learning of law was similar as in our country, The United States of America. The learning of law, of, by, and for, the freedom of the people. Other countries laws can often seem of the state controlling the people. This basic difference exists because our learning begins with the freedom to think.
Certainly, laws can limit a peoples need, of being free, especially when they are told their correct thinking.
Being told what to think is a lot easier than thinking and learning. Just the idea of the responsibility of self, that each person is responsible for what they become, limits the developmental outcome of many.
Consider the name Palestine. This was used by the Romans as a name change for the state of Israel. The Romans had conquered Israel. The Israelis were rebelling against the control of Roman law. The name change was a punishment.
To the Israelis, their name, land, and Temple, were all part of being their own and free. To the Romans, they had enough, rebellion. They decided to bring about change, to end the rebellion and disperse the people. They did.
This started for many Jewish people a traveling of the world, a looking for a place of safety to live. From the experience the Jews learned, became more, especially in being their own. This development frightened absolute rulers. People in becoming their own had a freedom. They were difficult to rule. The Jews learned to limit themselves to survive.
In 1917, The Balfour Declaration, a British public statement supported the rebirth of the national homeland of the Jewish people. This began an immigration, a return of the Jewish people to their homeland. The Jewish people brought with them their freedom and prosperity. Many Arabic people also began to immigrate, looking to share in this development of being free. Most people like freedom and prosperity. An exception was among Arab leaders, including those of the Arabic, Palestinian people. Their interest, the thinking of their objective, was control.
The Balfour Declaration was also the beginning of the end of British colonial rule in the Middle East. As this end became reality the Arabic states had an opportunity to begin learning law and freedom, of law limiting behavior without limiting freedom.
Instead, they began a war between freedom, the Israelites, and control, the Arabs.
These battles became a series of conflicts that the Arabs usually wanted and started, to limit the Israelis freedom and prosperity. Then as the Arabs would unexpectedly begin to lose battles they thought they would win; they would seek to end each battle. Seek assistance for their mistake. Help. They are beating us. This occurred multiple times. With the end of every battle, peace talks would begin.
Yet with every opportunity for peace, to talk and resolve the conflict, the Arabs would ultimately say no. They wanted the destruction of The State of Israel. The hostility limited everyone’s freedom and prosperity.
A reason for saying no began after the first war in 1948. Jews were expelled from Arab lands. They were welcomed in Israel. The Arabs living in Israel then, were told and paid money to leave, by the Arab states.
The Arabs leaving were settled in and formed what came to be called, the Palestinian refugee camps, under the control, laws of the Arabic Palestinian government. They became the Palestinian Arabs. They were told, indoctrinated that their existence is oppressed, limited because of the State of Israel. They can be free to return when the Arab states defeated Israel.
The Arab Palestinians then are a people controlled, and the Israelis, a people of their own and free.
Eventually, some Arab countries became tired of an effort that created only an insanity of failure. They began to make peace with Israel. This changed the conflict.
The various Arabic countries and people, the radicals of religious and philosophical thought that hated the Israelis freedom and prosperity, the freedom of thinking of a people they can’t control, formed groups and associated with, got money from the countries still wanting to destroy Israel. Their objective became, to create conflicts. Then create propaganda to blame the conflicts on the Israelis treatment of Palestinians. Conflicts like the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel.
To a radical, law is domination and control. They tell the Palestinians what to think and do. The existing refugee problem, what to do with them, became a source to use, and blame Israel.
In the firing of rockets, the radicals use Palestinians as human shields. Their objective is that the Israelis, in returning fire to destroy the launch sites, will injure or kill Palestinians. Then, these Palestinians can be used as propaganda; “Look at what the Israelis did.” The Israeli Defense Force, in their efforts of defending all the people, try not to harm any civilians, as the explosive rockets are fired into the land of the people that brought for all the freedom of law, the learning to think.
To the Israeli Defense Force, the Israeli people, law is freedom. Law that limits behavior without limiting freedom and the development of freedom. Laws, as when they began, initiated the thinking and learning from living within their limits, needed to create the freedom that begins from within, the individual development of becoming one’s own, and free.
This thinking of becoming one’s own is probably one of the most satisfying accomplishments a person can achieve. Being one’s own creates the freedom of thinking. A situation where a person can choose the purpose of thinking, the satisfaction of problems learned and resolved by effective thinking.
On October 7th, 2023, a surprise attack was initiated by Palestinians on an Israeli celebration of music. The attack became a barbarous butchery of the Israeli people. Then the propaganda began. The Israelis are responsible. In the radical Palestinian propaganda there is neither personal responsibility nor freedom, only blame. The Israelis retaliated.
The difference between the thinking of radical Palestinian Arabs, and the thinking of the Israelis, is learning. Learning that begins with the freedom of thinking, of a purpose driven person.
©Ernest G. Jackson 2024 All Rights reserved. | 1548 words.
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