by John-Paul Leonard
The crux of the crisis in
Palestine is fear on both sides that the process is not one of peace
and reconciliation, but of continuing a war of total conquest. The
only position clear enough to dispel the doubts is a return to the
pre-1967 borders:
- Stalling and settling on
the West Bank signals the intent to expand and occupy by armed force.
- Borders for Palestine
enclaves like holes in swiss cheese, are a terrific provocation - the
'Holey Palestine' option. No people in history ever stooped to accept
such a deal. It’s less a peace offer than a declaration of war on
the ground - the Israeli settlements are in violation of peace
agreements.
- Israel has an unbroken
record of military victories, an awesome arsenal and the unshaking
backing of the tip-top American war machine. She can easily afford to
play for double-or-nothing and step back with the assurance that if
there is a next time, she could take even more. Since everyone on the
West Bank knows it, this underlines the aggressive nature of the
Israeli occupation. Peace and aggression don’t mix.
So the only Wholly viable
option is to return the whole lot of land booty from 1967. The other
Whole options are, of course, for the two parties to try to push each
other into the sea or the desert. But these are no real options for
the Arabs, nor for the world community.
Then why does Israel feel
so insecure? Maybe partly because there is a catch to the right of
Israel to exist. As with any other people, the right of the Jewish people
to exist is absolute in natural law. After the Nazi Holocaust even
Christendom had to admit to it (as Islam and the Koran always have).
But a right to a Jewish state in Palestine? Call it a privilege, an
agreed status, or an accident of World War power politics, but it is
not an overriding, inalienable right. This itself is reason enough for
Israel to agree on half a loaf.
The Holy problem is that
this land, especially Jerusalem, is holy to three faiths, not only
one, and religious feelings are too strong to let any one of them rule
the city alone. The best solution would be to let the inhabitants of
the Holy City have their own autonomous, neutral entity, free of
influence from turbulent political bodies outside it.
Too many Jews are
intolerant of the later, and larger, faiths in the family of
religions. They cry foul if they are not respected, yet indulge in
inflammatory profanity over Jesus and Mohammed - knowing full well
that Christianity and Islam revere the Hebrew prophets. With such
unecumenical attitudes, Israelis will not succeed as administrators of
interfaith holy places.
What could be the root of
this behavior? 5000 years ago, monotheism was the revolutionary
innovation the Jews gave to religion. Later, though, Judaism remained
essentially a tribal religion. Today, our planet - not to mention
Jerusalem - is too small for bigotry. Sure, tribalistic thought and
talk is the same everywhere the world round: "God is Ours, WE ARE
the human beings, the others are subhumans" - but when it is a
weapon speaking ...
A big part of the Middle
East problem is the West’s own ignorance and contempt of the world
of Islam. Some would try to wipe Palestine off the map by flatly
denying it ever existed - although the Bible faithfully records how
the Hebrews arrived in a Promised Land replete with milk, honey, and -
Philistines, as the people of Palestine still call themselves today.
There was no problem with the tiny Jewish communities that have
been there for ages. But there is one huge hole in the Zionist
argument.
Just think about it for a
second. How likely is it that people who show up 2,000 years after
their ancestors supposedly left a place really have 1. any claim at
all to the land or 2. any significant degree of ancestral descent from
the ancient inhabitants, in this case, the Hebrews? Of course, the
people living there before Zionism - Muslims, Christians, Oriental
Jews - are descended from the Canaanites, Philistines, Hebrews,
Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, and so on who lived here over the millenia.
Likewise, those who landed
from Europe in 1947 - after nearly a hundred generations there
- have got to be descended mainly from Caucasian stock. For one thing,
during the early middle ages, Judaism converted entire new groups in
Central Asia and Europe, to bolster its numbers against competing
religions.
So the Zionist state is a
paradox: European colonialism perpetrated by Caucasian Jews against
the true heirs of the Hebrews!? Stranger things have happened. David’s
descendants once again wielding slingshots at an unbelieving Goliath,
on TV news...
It gets all the more
confusing if you label this idea as anti-Semitic, because the Arabs
are the main Semitic people, while I just said European Jewry look to
be mostly Caucasian...
To perfect the tragic
plot, the Zionists themselves were victims of persecution in Europe,
while the children of ancient Judea pay the price for it!
Be that as it may, we are
all spectators to the playing out of the cruelest of jokes. The
Germans didn’t want Jews, nor did the Slavs, French, English or
Americans. But the Zionists wanted Palestine. It was too tempting, and
so expedient to humor them and Lo, the state of Israel came to be. As
if police threw you out of your family home, and your country, at
gunpoint, gave your house to squatters, and told them it would all be
arranged somehow later. As a sop to their consciences, the great
powers then promised to defend the Zionist Daniel in the Palestinian
den... For sure you’d see red if it happened to you.
IF THE JEWS AND
PALESTINIANS REALIZED THAT TOGETHER THEY SHARE NOT ONLY A STRIP OF
LAND BUT THE BUTT OF ONE OF HISTORY’S CRUEL HOAXES, COULD THAT BE A
START ON THE ROAD TO RECONCILIATION AND PEACE? For two generations
now, they’re trapped like two gladiators tossed in a pit, sparring
to the death in a sadistic Roman circus. Perhaps some are too vain or
fanatical to open their eyes to this mirror view? But they may be
doomed if they don’t - and it could be the dawn of reason if they
would.
Of course, even if
European Jews were of 100% Hebrew extraction, that wouldn’t create a
right to evict a soul - just because your great-great once lived
somewhere, you can’t go knock their door down. But taking it from
the more diluted viewpoint could help to cool some of the fanaticism
about geography. If I were Barak, I might be working on a
hyper-expedient contingency plan to buy a big empty island in the
Bahamas, name it New Zion - and put an end to fights with the
neighbors.
Still, pogrom is not a
Semitic word for terror but a Russian one, because no such thing ever
existed in Arabia, where Muslims and Jews lived together peacefully
for 1400 years. Surely it would have been better if the new Jews had
come not as terrorists, but in peace, humility and neighborliness, as
guests, and not as invaders. The deep-rooted desert tradition of
hospitality always required the Arab to extend protection to refugees
from persecution, long before it was enjoined by the Koran.
It’s too late to prove
this now. But clear it is, that the way out for Israel now is to take
one step down and give back its gains from the last war, if there is
to be a peace.
If Israel can not return
the other guy’s half loaf, then Arabia’s youth will start to hit
the technical universities instead of the streets, and learn the
technologies they need to catch up enough in arms capability to have
at least a credible negotiating position. The options for Arab
governments may be to raise oil prices, or to try the China card in
weapons procurement. The Afghan war showed you don’t need the best
weapons to win, if you have enough heart and cunning. But you do need
more than rocks.
A Muslim has two Jihads.
The Lesser one is fighting for Islam, in self-defense, as the youth
are dying to show at Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Greater Jihad is the struggle
against one’s own prideful self. The name Islam itself means peace
and humility. But at the limit where humility turns to degradation you
must fight back - modern Jews know that as well as anyone! And because
it is way below that limit - too low for any people to go - there has
never been a "Hole-y Land" on this earth. That is wholly
asking for holy war.
Yes, a higher oil price
will hurt my business, too - but then, is blood getting cheaper now?
America, my country! You sold out the Palestinians, sold the red and
the black man. When will you learn that not everything in this world
is for sale?
Or maybe we are still
fighting the last war again? Like the Crusades, maybe? Well, c’mon,
catch up, wake up! It’s high time. It’s OUR money and guns that
have kept two whole generations, 53 years, rotting in refugee camps!
Mr. John-Paul
Leonard is a free-lance writer and a regular contributor to Media Monitors
Network (MMN)
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Source:
by the same author:
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