Temple Mount/Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem
(credit: Andrew Shiva, via Wikimedia Commons)
Lunacy:
Moon Thinking
I
remember I saw a t.v. program about Yasser Arafat in the 1970s. His
activities for about a month were closely filmed. Night raids on Israeli towns. Meetings with his officers. And so on. I started watching prepared to just loathe the man. His press in the West was, and is, pretty bad.
He
was homely, and he had organized the killing of innocent civilians. But he was an educated man, an engineer, though he had not worked
much in his profession. Too busy organizing Palestinians to fight the occupiers, as he called them. He would not say the name "Israel". There was occupied Palestine, but no Israel.
There
were some interviews during the program. I still hated him, but one thing he
said stayed with me. He said that to Palestinians, the Jews and their allies were
just one more wave of Europeans invading the Palestinian homeland. Crusaders. Most Western scholars admit now that the Crusades were very much a discredit to the West.
But it was what he said next that scared me. He said that
his people might spend two hundred years this time too (the Crusades ran from 1095 to 1295), but in the end, they
would kick the invaders out. They would pass the war from father to son. They
would never relent as long as there was one Palestinian alive.
On
the other hand, I was friends with a man who had worked in the Canadian
diplomatic corps as a mid-level diplomat in several countries. His last posting
had been to Tel Aviv. A nice guy. Stationed there for about ten years. He had
made good friends in Israel, some of whom he still saw in the 1980s. He was absolutely
certain the Jews would never leave Israel. After what happened to them during
the Second World War, their resolve is diamond hard. Masada will not fall again.
The
war between Hamas and Israel is heating up again as I write. Hamas struck first
by surprise on October 6, 2023, a week ago. About 1200 Israelis were killed in
two hours. Israel retaliated quickly in subsequent days, shelling and bombing
the people of Gaza where Hamas leaders hide. Israel quickly evened the score. Israel
has also called up over 300,000 reserves and has told residents of Gaza to get
out of the north half of the region as an Israeli ground offensive is about to
be launched. This is where the situation stands as I write.
The
lands that were supposed, by signed treaties, to belong to the Palestinians have been eroded and
encroached upon for decades. Jewish settlers are taking them over. Short wars
have killed a lot of Palestinians, many more than they have killed of Israelis,
for decades. The Palestinians have no planes, no tanks, no big guns, no
warships. They fight back however they can.
Three
thousand years. But when we go back far enough, that land was occupied by
tribes who weren’t Philistines or Hebrews. Some of those original tribes' cities were wiped out
to the last man, woman, child, pet, and livestock animal. All that breathed.
Those were the orders.
I’m
not either party. I don’t have – as Americans say – a dog in this fight. I
actually hate the images of dog fighting. But the images coming out of Israel/Palestine now are much uglier. Like Eisenhower, I hate the cruelty, waste,
and stupidity of war.
Israel
is the only democracy in that area of the world, though even that status has
looked shaky in the last few months. But it is a democracy. Governments change
there because of elections, not assassinations or hereditary titles.
Back
a few decades ago, the Israelis made a going proposition out of a small piece
of land that was, for the most part, desert or swamp when they started to come
there in big numbers after World War Two. Very hard, but they did it.
That
land, in their national story, was promised to them 3000 years ago by God. It was also
promised to them by the 1917 Balfour Declaration which came out of Britain, the
country with a mandate over that territory. And after losing six million of
their people in Europe during World War Two, the Jews were through with
trusting any other nation to protect them. They were a people without a land,
and they found a land without a people. As their national story goes. 1948. The return.
On
the other hand, the Palestinians had been the big majority on that same land
for nearly two thousand years. And, as we have seen, they have no other home. None
of the other Arab nations really want them or will take them.
The Torah is not a legal document any more than the Bible, the Koran, the Gita,
or any of the other texts of any of the world’s religions. What these texts promise has no secular status. And that land
was not Balfour’s land to give away. And if the Jews are owed a homeland, maybe a
piece of the Europe that, in so many countries, murdered or betrayed them so
shamefully makes more sense. What Palestinians did in WWII is almost nothing. They
were thousands of kilometers away, struggling to get by day to day, as
they had for centuries.
A
mess. Insoluble, many claim.
It’s
why, since I was a boy and a youth in the 1950s and 60s, this one will not
settle, will not resolve. Many other hotspots have worked it out, fought it
out, or both and settled in my lifetime. Not this one.
Which
brings me to a very moral realist bottom line.
This
mess could be worked out over a couple of decades by getting the kids on both
sides to learn in the same classes in the same public schools that
those “Others” are just people. Like they are. The world could gradually come to a time in which we lived together in peace under one set of
laws, democratically created in one giant system, enforced in one set
of courts using one set of rules, governing one pluralistic, tolerant species. Integrate the schools. That's it.
No
one tribe was chosen by God, though in many parts of the world, people still claim
they were. Jews in some parts of the world, Muslims in others, Hindus in
others, Christians in still others. The word "Innu" means “the people”. "Masai" means “the people”. Tribalism goes on in nations everywhere. But we are all His children. He really would like us to live together and get along. In my
view, anyway.
So?
Teach the kids, by precept and example, a few simple clear lessons. The rule of
law, laws democratically created and regularly updated. No autocrats or
theocrats. Just thoughtful, tolerant people, governing themselves, but also free
to worship openly in their own way.
And
yes, I’ve had lots of people tell me that I dream an impossible dream. To that claim,
I reply in two ways.
First,
we have changed some deeply ingrained behaviors before. Gladiators killing each
other for spectators’ entertainment is virtually gone. Slavery. Even whipping kids is on its way
out. We could change this unnecessary military nonsense if the kids just went to secular
schools together for as little as one generation.
And
second, in reply to those who call me a dreamer, I say: look at it. The bodies.
Screaming children. Bombs exploding. Nuclear holocaust lurking just
over the horizon. Look. Do you like this stuff? Then, what do you suggest?
Finally, I will close by asking this: That forest of mushroom clouds that is lurking just over the horizon. After 3000 years, the obfuscation and bafflegab run out. Do you want that scenario or not?
Palestinian boy and Israeli boy (credit: Debbi Cooper)
