Dulce et decorum est?

Is it just me, or has there been more than usual of the "why bother with rememberance day" conversation around this year?  People asking why it matters, when they and indeed their parents weren't born until long after 1918 and 1945, and when no one they know has been killed in war.  Perhaps it's because we're a country that's been at war for a decade or so against an invisible enemy, where the conflict takes place in a distant country, and the only effects most of us see are stories about arms traders enriching themselves at public expense and the occassional repatriation parade at Wootton Bassett.

In our world of globalisation and international economies old fashioned values like patriorism seem out of date, smacking of racism.  For those of us who deplore BNP/ EDL style demonstrations of hate and fear of difference, it can be hard to reconcile a desire to welcome people of different races and faiths, and yet to appreciate the sacrifiice of so many young men and women who died because they thought they were fighting for the right side. 

But I do think there's still a place for remembrance.  Perhaps it's because I'm a historian by nature; perhaps it's because I've been to Ypres and Thiepval and heard the Last Post at the Menin Gate.  I've seen the remains of the trenches, seen the cemeteries, the gravestones stretching out all around you, seen the memorials to the missing and even found the name of a relative on one.  I've read the poetry, seen the photos and the films.  I've studied the history of the first and second world wars, as well as many others before that, and I've seen news coverage of quite a few in the last couple of decades.  I wouldn't regard myself as an expert on any, but I hope I know what I'm talking about.  Once you've seen the cemetaries, the memorials, you don't forget easily.

When I visited Flanders and northern France I was about fourteen.  It was a school trip.  We weren't naturally the best behaved bunch of teenagers, this was an ordinary small town comprehensive with no selection, and the people on the trip were of varied academic abilities.  But no one played up when we were visiting the memorials.  There was something about those hundreds and thousands of names engraved on the stone that impressed us all.  Of course, not everyone was so impressed- a coachful of French teenagers was visiting at the same time as us, and we were shocked to see their attitudes- climbing all over the memorials and shouting without seeming to care where they were.

But I can understand that the wars of nearly a century ago, of even seventy, can seem distant if you have no personal connection.  Perhaps that's why we need a day like Remembrance day to remember.  Because there was nothing new about people dying in war, but what the first and second world wars brought- and to a lesser extent the Boer war- brought the industrialisation of war, brought the business of killing into a modern era where it was possible to kill hundreds of men without ever seeing them.  Ever since that disconnect has only increased with the development of guided missiles and drones that can kill from hundreds of miles away.  Perhaps, in an era where for us in the west war is something that takes place a long way from where we live, and are for causes less straightforward than opposing the Nazi tyrrany, we- or at least our leaders and policy makers- need a day where the true cost of war in human life is brought home.

PS: if you don't understand the title, I suggest you see Wilfred Owen's poem of the same name, available here: http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/owen1.html 

Weeping for Jerusalem

The Palestine/ Israeli conflict is in the headlines again. How anybody on either side can look at it and not be moved I don't know. How Israel thinks attacking targets where there's a high risk of killing or wounding civillians is going to stop Palestinian rocket attacks is also beyond me. But I don't think they do, really. A friend writes here about how the conflict serves to distract the Israeli public and politicians from internal problems. Forget the original cause, a dispute over land ownership, now it seems just an excuse to hate each other. The hate won't stop unless the land issues are sorted, in some measure, but with neither side willing to give ground (literally) it seems the violence will just go on and on. Neither side's international friends will let them be totally destroyed by the other.

Are the measures each side has taken justified? They say they are, of course. But I find Israel's treatment of the Palestinians- hemming them in with walls and checkpoints, cutting families and friends off from one another, preventing people going to work or basic humanitarian supplies from reaching Hamas-held territory pretty hard to defend, even before the latest round of violence. Of course, firing rockets that hit civillians isn't justified either. But to retaliate, as Israel has done, by targeting schools and refugee camps where they know there will be a high chance of hitting civillians...I find it hard to see how it's justifiable.

I don't know the solution. I don't even know if there is one. It would be a good start if those on both sides could stop seeing each other as "the enemy" and treat each other as human beings, it would be good if both sides realised the other does have a claim to the land as well as they do, and that a two-state solution is actually possible, it would be good if certain elements didn't try to blame everything on anti-semitism and the holocaust. Is the irrational hatred of and discrimination against Jews is any worse than the irrational hatred of and discrimination against Arabs Israelis or Palestinians?

When Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem to be crucified he stopped and looked at the city, saying "If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you." (Luke 19 v41).

The reference is usually interpreted as referring to the destruction caused by the Romans in about 70AD, but you can sense Jesus' frustration- the Jews would not see what they were doing, how they were storing up trouble for themselves. Jesus wept over the city then. I imagine he still weeps over what the Israelis and Palestinians are doing to each other. Perhaps if only the leaders of the two groups would see, and weep too, there might be some hope of an end to all this.