Another Descent Into Hell

[marmar]

Another Descent Into Hell

Tuesday, 05 August 2014 09:47
By Richard Lichtman, Truthout | Op-Ed


I sometimes think I can remember exactly how I came to my present estimate of Israel, but of course it was prepared very slowly, laboriously and largely unformulated over time. The fact that my current understanding has very deep roots does not mean that its growth was simply an extension of earliest held beliefs, nor rather a reversal, instead. It was neither of these. Not all developments proceed by enlargement of a previous moment, or a strict negation of what has gone before.

My current recollection begins with my sense of my mother, father and the extended family made up of many uncles, aunts and grandparents. I was born in 1931, and so I reached what I can regard as my developing political sensibility at roughly the time Israel created itself as an independent state. But long before that historically articulated event of such enormous importance in my nuclear family, I had the growing sense of what is was to be Jewish, achieved not through intellectual accomplishment, but through the sense of family relations in which the fact of Judaism was of paramount importance.

Of course, being Jewish meant not being gentile, so my identity, as perhaps all identities, was formed by negation, by coming to understand what I was not, and this sense is most acute when one cannot help but realize that one is weaker, subordinate and dependent upon another segment of the population. Those who are dominant in any society rarely reflect on their own identity unless it is challenged by a group that expresses dissatisfaction with their hierarchical arrangement. And this experience was paramount to me as a child and even long into by developing adulthood.

Now, in the midst of the chaos and terror that Israel is unleashing upon Palestine, I tend to think of myself neither as Jewish nor gentile, but as one horrified by what is occurring there as viewed not through the lens of any particular religion, but rather through an identity composed of a commitment to justice and mercy that continues to be eviscerated. This may seem pompous and grandiose, but it is my sense, and I bear it with very great sorrow. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/25313-another-descent-into-hell