|
Edited on Wed Jul-26-06 04:26 AM by Peace Patriot
among them) are nervous enough about Israel's vulnerability, to pose this existential question once again. Nor should we question the Palestinians right to statehood (they clearly want one), nor the Iraqis' sovereignty (Iraq being a relatively recently created state), nor Lebanon's right to security from attack. All questions of sovereignty should be up to the PEOPLE who live there NOW. Let the past bury the past!
However, Einstein's quote is useful for analyzing the problems that Israel has encountered in BEING a state, especially in that particular location, the ancestral home of the Jews, but also the ancestral home of other racial/religious groups, mostly Arabs and Islamics. These problems have not gone away, and have in fact gotten worse. Can they be solved? I was thinking about this the other day--the matter of basing a state on religion and race, as opposed to a NEUTRAL secular state, which favors no particular race or religion--and what came to mind was the model of ancient Alexandria. A city of learning. A city of tolerance. A city founded on the principles of openness, widespread education and multi-culturalism. One might call it the first secular state--created by the high-minded Ptolemaic kings (Alexander the Great's former generals). Alexandria was indeed famous for its tolerance. Jews were entirely safe there--and were among the famous scholars and "book gatherers" at the Alexandria Library. When the Roman Empire's legal structure (and protection of Alexandria) crumbled, in the early 5th century AD, and a narrow group of "patriarchal" powermongers took over the Christian religion, the very first people to suffer were the Jews, whose property was confiscated in pogroms, and who were driven out of the city. Pagans were next; then all the great variety of Christian sects (many of which were based on the earliest traditions of egalitarianism.) Several hundred years of scholarship and a long tradition of tolerance were destroyed. (You want to know where Christianity went wrong? Look up the history of Alexandria from about 480 to 550 AD. What a miserable tale!) Anyway, although Israel is a democracy with civil rights, it is a Jewish state, and a militant one, which gives preference to one race and religion. And that AUTOMATICALLY creates a sense of injury in those who are excluded.
I'm thinking of what Israel has become, in contrast to what it MIGHT HAVE become--and possibly this criticism could contain a clue to or hint of a solution. Israel has been beset by Arab/Islamic resentment from the beginning, which has taken militant form. And Israel itself has gone down a very militaristic road, PARTLY in response to Arab/Islamic reaction, but also from within Israel and the Jewish community, the result not just of the Holocaust but of a thousand years of brutal oppression mostly by European Christians. This double-whammy of resentment, fear, and militarism, and a constantly aggravated sense of injury on BOTH sides, has resulted, today, in several extremely unfortunate developments, one of them being Israel's alliance with the fascist Bush junta. Israel could not have a more unreliable and untrustworthy ally--nor one that is more despised throughout the world, including by Americans themselves*. And this attack on Lebanon is the worst thing that Israel could have done--going along with Plan B of the Bushite/NeoCon "Project for a New American Century" (get Israel to do it). Israel's rightwing leadership of course has fostered this plan, and is being used willingly by the Bushites. But the plan is insane on its face. There is simply no way that the US/Israel can "occupy" the entire Middle East. (I mean, LOOK at Iraq!). This is a Hundred Years War all over again, but this time--THIS TIME--it's at the risk of nuclear warfare, with only one limited nuclear exchange capable of destroying the planet's atmosphere once and for all. (Carl Sagan writes about what even a limited nuclear exchange will do to our atmosphere in his book, "The Cold and the Dark.")
The Bush junta is behind all this. It holds the purse strings. And Israelis' fears, and Jewish fears, and the rightwing penchant for solving all things with violence, have all been played upon, with war profiteers also playing a big role.
But this is not what Jews should be doing. Killing people. Living in a state of war for another hundred years (if humanity and the planet survive it). There is something so wrong about this. And I could hear it in the voices of three young Israelis (young tech workers) who were interviewed on the radio the other day. They were in despair about Israel's survival--this, after a half century of constant strife. They supported the attack on Lebanon, but they sounded...I don't know...trapped? Like all people whose leaders have taken them to war--especially people in a tiny, vulnerable country like Israel--they sounded like they HAD to support this. Support this or die, seemed to be their attitude. And they thought it would go on for a hundred years. That's what they said. They would never know peace in their lifetimes, nor would their children.
How to back out of here--endless war, or FINAL war--and go down a better road? Is it possible? And could Alexandria be the model? A secular state that severs itself from the Jewish religion and Jews as a race--in a First Amendment sort of way--and re-forms itself into a place of tolerance and learning, and multiculturalism? John Lennon urged us to "Imagine." So I'm imagining. He said, "Dream." So I'm dreaming. Could people DO this--abandon fear? Could Jews give up Israel as a military stronghold against adversity, and, like the Ptolemaic kings, consciously design something better--and could that be the miracle that transforms the Middle East into the most attractive place on earth, instead of the most dangerous?
Back in 1954, the US and Israel made a horrible mistake in destroying Iran's new democracy--and installing the Shah of Iran, who inflicted the Iranian people with 25 years of torture and oppression. How different things would be now, for Israel, if it had broken with that vile western policy and had instead fostered Iranian democracy! Now Iran is so paranoid that its mullahs are likely to lead it right into a war with Israel and the US. Iran will lose, but Israel and the US won't win. It will be continual "asymmetric war," as they say. A la Vietnam. Is this to be the fate of the great Persian culture--vicious religious/racial warfare, ad infinitum, until death do us all part? Why not, instead, apologize to the Iranian people for destroying their democracy, ask for a clean slate--amnesty, forgiveness--and propose a New Alexandria, where Israeli and Persian traditions can meet and mingle?
The world would fall on its knees for joy! And Israel would suddenly have hundreds of new allies, all around the world, every one of them a better friend to Israel than the Bush Cartel.
Well, here I am, reconstructing Israel--in my imagination--when I can't even get my own government to count my vote. I'm not Jewish, but I do have chutzpah!
My thoughts, for what they are worth. Dreaming the dream.
----------
*(65% to 70% of Americans have opposed the Bush junta and all of its policies, foreign and domestic, for more than two years now. Bush began his precipitous fall probably a year before the 2004 election, but certainly on the day of his second inauguration, when his approval stood at 49%! --the lowest ever for a supposedly re-elected second term president. And it has never recovered, and has only sunk further down. It's been in the mid-30s for over a year. He has no mandate, and yet acts like a dictator. And clearly, without the Supreme Court in '00, and Diebold and ES&S in '04, he would not be president. He and his regime cannot win legitimate, transparent, verifiable elections. (That's why they put an illegitimate, non-transparent, unverifiable, corporate-controlled electronic voting system in place.) And this is Israel's only ally in the world--a corrupt fascist regime, whose crimes are not the result of fear--as Israel's are--but are instead cold-blooded, greedy, calculations of profit. Israel's rightwing leadership has made a bad bargain with these unworthy and treacherous people, and Israel needs to extricate itself from their clutches, and make a bold, dramatic, creative initiative toward a Middle East transformed by learning, generosity and compassion, not by more bloodshed.)
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
