OPINION: TERRY TURNER: Life isn't always fair
Nov. 6—When the problem isn't ours, it's easy to shrug and observe, "Life isn't fair." When the problem is our own, that acknowledgement rarely satisfies. It does nothing to resolve our problem and leaves us frustrated at our own inadequacy. Sometimes, the only solution is either to move on or accept a life poisoned by bitterness.
Take the American Indian. He had lived for millennia in his native land when, in 1492, another civilization broke upon him. A strange people brought unheard of wonders, unimagined diseases, and a troublesome greed for land. Eventually, the strangers pushed the Indian away, dispossessing him of almost everything. The Indian today might easily look back and say, "Life isn't fair."
Fair, unfortunately, is not a quality history cares about. The human record has repeated that lesson many times. The Iron Age Assyrians overwhelmed their Bronze age neighbors simply because they could; the ancient Romans pushed aside the more primitive Etruscans; and the more organized French Normans overwhelmed then melded with the British Saxons to begin the formation of an England. In each case, the older, less technologically savvy, and less organized culture was absorbed by a competitor with superior technology and better organization. It is the way of mankind.
The Palestinian Arabs are a current example of history's unfairness. After World War I the trickle of Jews that had been coming to Palestine for centuries became a stream. After World War II the stream became a flood. The mostly educated and often Europeanized Jews were suddenly everywhere acquiring land, developing farms, beginning minor industries, and generally making progress in a land that Ottoman mismanagement and Islamic insularity had left impoverished and somnambulant.
Cultural and religious differences between them irritated Jew and Arab, alike. Sporadic violence broke out and the Jews declared their intent to establish a Jewish state. To the Palestinian Arabs and the surrounding Arab states, this was an outrage unfair to the non-Jewish Palestinians who had been there for centuries.
When Israel declared itself a state in 1948, surrounding Arabic countries declared war. Over seven hundred thousand Arabs left their homes, some because they were expelled by Jewish militias, many more because they were urged to stand aside by Islamic leaders expecting the destruction of the Jews. That destruction did not happen and the Israelis took over the abandoned Palestinian properties.
Since that time the Palestinian Arabs have been confined to the Gaza strip next to Egypt and the West Bank territory next to Jordan. That confinement and their physical and cultural loss has left the Palestinian Arabs frustrated and angry. They chafe under the friction of history, but that irritation is not now and never has been an excuse for terrorism and murder.
Hamas, the Palestinian terror organization that rules de facto in the Gaza Strip, unleashed on October 7th a campaign of intentioned murder and rape of innocent civilians and the slaughter of children. The civilized world soundly rejects such atrocities, and for individual citizens to accept them is to side with all that is dark and destructive in the human mind.
The Israeli response has been draconian; but Hamas had to know that would happen. The Palestinians complain about Israeli attacks in civilian areas, but it was they who allowed or even encouraged Hamas to headquarter, stockpile, and operate in areas that include schools and hospitals. In doing that, they lost any moral ground from which to complain about Israeli strikes against those Hamas targets. The prime cause of the deaths of Palestinian innocents is Hamas, which brought that destruction upon them.
Yes, life isn't fair; but Palestinian resentment of the fact does not justify atrocity. Never has. Never will.
Terry T. Turner, a Colquitt Countian, is professor emeritus of urology at the University of Virginia and author of several books under the pen name David Donovan, including "Once a Warrior King" about his service in Vietnam.
