Tutu And St. Thomas
By James M. Wall
In The Christian Century,
Commentary October 30, 2007
http://www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=3785
The University of St. Thomas is the largest private institution of higher learning in the state of Minnesota, a school "inspired by Catholic intellectual tradition." Recently, the university found itself in the embarrassing position of having failed to do some basic research; it did not check its sources.
The story behind this development began innocently enough in April, when a staff member from St. Thomas's Justice and Peace Studies program informed his colleagues that he had booked South African archbishop Desmond Tutu for a campus appearance.
Tutu's visit to St. Thomas was to be sponsored in partnership with PeaceJam International, a youth-centered project that brings Nobel laureates to campuses to teach about peace and justice (City Pages, St. Paul, October 3).
The campus was excited at the prospect of bringing Tutu to St. Thomas in the spring of 2008, where he would be the fifth Nobel Prize winner to speak in the PeaceJam series. In an unexpected turn of events, however, the university ordered the event's sponsors to withdraw their invitation to the archbishop. Why this sudden withdrawal? According to the City Pages story, the school was afraid Tutu's presence on campus would "offend local Jews."
City Pages traced the withdrawal to a conversation between Julie Swiler, a spokesperson for the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, and Doug Hennes, St. Thomas's vice president for university and government relations. Hennes said, "We had heard some things [Archbishop Tutu] said that some people judged to be anti-Semitic and against Israeli policy."To justify his banning of Tutu, St. Thomas's president, Dennis Dease, cited a "speech" that Tutu gave in 2002. "I spoke with Jews for whom I have a great respect," Dease said. "What stung these individuals was not that Archbishop Tutu criticized Israel, but how he did so, and the moral equivalencies that they felt he drew between Israel's policies and those of Nazi Germany, and between Zionism and racism."
The president failed to check his sources—not a very good way to reach a major decision about intellectual dialogue. Many Jews were outraged. More than 2,700 e-mails were sent to the school in response to an appeal from Jewish Voice for Peace, asking the school to reverse its banning of Tutu. Local and national media picked up the story which pitted a Nobel Peace Prize recipient against a Catholic university.
The pressure had its effect. On October 10, President Dease reversed his decision to ban the archbishop and declared, "I made the wrong decision earlier this year not to invite the archbishop. Although well-intentioned, I did not have all of the facts and points of view, but now I do."
"The facts and points of view" which President Dease lacked were easily available in the sermon which Tutu preached in the historic Old South Church in Boston during a 2002 conference on "Ending the Occupation," sponsored by Friends of Sabeel-North America.
The sermon included these words:My heart aches. I say, Why are our memories so short? Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon? Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble religious traditions? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about the downtrodden? . . . This is God's world. For goodness sake, this is God's world! We live in a moral universe. The [South African] apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosovic and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust. . . . Injustice and oppression will never prevail. Those who are powerful have to remember the litmus test that God gives to the powerful: What is your treatment of the poor, the hungry, the voiceless? And on the basis of that, God passes judgment.
Leave it to Time magazine senior editor Tony Karon, a Jewish journalist originally from South Africa, to focus on the absurdity of the claim that there was any anti-Semitism in Tutu's sermon. Karon wrote in his blog Rootless Cosmopolitan October 3:
The utterly charming thing about the Zionist Thought Police is their apparent inability to restrain themselves, even from the very excesses that will prove to be their own undoing. Having asked sane and rational people to believe that Jimmy Carter is a Holocaust denier, the same crew now want us to believe that Archbishop Desmond Tutu is an anti-Semite. . . . This case underlines precisely how absurd the policing of discussion about Israel in the U.S. has become. . . . There are few, if any, more decent, humane, courageous and morally unimpeachable individuals in the world than Bishop Tutu.
President Dease has done the right thing by acknowledging his mistake in banning the archbishop. He has also invited Tutu to participate in a forum on campus which would be cosponsored by the same Jewish organization that influenced the university to ban Tutu in the first place.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Friday, November 9, 2007
Christian, Muslim and Jewish Religious Leaders Pledge Unity
Co-Presidents Pledge to Advance Peace in the Holy Land
Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land Pledges to Advance Peace and Reconciliation in the Middle East
—Senior Islamic and Christian religious leaders from Palestine to form groundbreaking Inter-Religious Council—
(NEW YORK, 7 November 2007)—The Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land—led by senior-most Jewish, Christian, and Islamic leaders—pledged to advance peace in the Middle East and dedicated itself to protecting sites holy to each faith tradition.
“We, believers from three religions, have been placed in this land—Jews, Christians, and Muslims. It is our responsibility to find the right way to live together in peace rather than to fight and kill one another,” the Council members said in a communiqué.
The Council began meeting on Monday in Washington, D.C. with American religious leaders and representatives of the U.S. government. “Each religious community should treat the Holy Sites of other faiths in a manner that respects their integrity and independence and avoids any act of desecration, aggression, or harm,” the Council members said.
Three Religions for Peace Co-Presidents are founding members of the Council and were part of the 10-member delegation that met with U.S. officials: Chief Rabbi David Rosen, President of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations; His Beatitude Michel Sabbah, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem; and Sheikh Tayser Rajab al-Tamimi, the Supreme Judge of Sharia Courts in Palestine.
“All of our religions must be irrevocably committed to building a just peace together,” Sheikh Tamimi said. Rabbi Rosen said, “Peace will only come in the Holy Land when the legitimate political and religious aspirations of Jews, Christians, and Muslims are reconciled through honest dialogue and cooperation.”
The work of the Council was facilitated by Rev. Dr. Trond Bakkevig, Middle East Envoy for the Commission on International and Ecumenical Affairs of the Church of Norway. Notable among the Council’s financial supporters is the Government of Norway.
In a separate action on Monday, the senior Palestinian religious leaders agreed to break further ground by establishing a Religions for Peace Inter-Religious Council–Palestine composed of the senior-most Palestinian Islamic and Christian leaders. The religious leaders committed to working together to advance peace through multi-religious cooperation both within Palestine and across its borders.
The Religions for Peace Co-Presidents were united in their conviction that there will be no peace in the Holy Land without multi-religious cooperation.
Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land Pledges to Advance Peace and Reconciliation in the Middle East
—Senior Islamic and Christian religious leaders from Palestine to form groundbreaking Inter-Religious Council—
(NEW YORK, 7 November 2007)—The Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land—led by senior-most Jewish, Christian, and Islamic leaders—pledged to advance peace in the Middle East and dedicated itself to protecting sites holy to each faith tradition.
“We, believers from three religions, have been placed in this land—Jews, Christians, and Muslims. It is our responsibility to find the right way to live together in peace rather than to fight and kill one another,” the Council members said in a communiqué.
The Council began meeting on Monday in Washington, D.C. with American religious leaders and representatives of the U.S. government. “Each religious community should treat the Holy Sites of other faiths in a manner that respects their integrity and independence and avoids any act of desecration, aggression, or harm,” the Council members said.
Three Religions for Peace Co-Presidents are founding members of the Council and were part of the 10-member delegation that met with U.S. officials: Chief Rabbi David Rosen, President of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations; His Beatitude Michel Sabbah, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem; and Sheikh Tayser Rajab al-Tamimi, the Supreme Judge of Sharia Courts in Palestine.
“All of our religions must be irrevocably committed to building a just peace together,” Sheikh Tamimi said. Rabbi Rosen said, “Peace will only come in the Holy Land when the legitimate political and religious aspirations of Jews, Christians, and Muslims are reconciled through honest dialogue and cooperation.”
The work of the Council was facilitated by Rev. Dr. Trond Bakkevig, Middle East Envoy for the Commission on International and Ecumenical Affairs of the Church of Norway. Notable among the Council’s financial supporters is the Government of Norway.
In a separate action on Monday, the senior Palestinian religious leaders agreed to break further ground by establishing a Religions for Peace Inter-Religious Council–Palestine composed of the senior-most Palestinian Islamic and Christian leaders. The religious leaders committed to working together to advance peace through multi-religious cooperation both within Palestine and across its borders.
The Religions for Peace Co-Presidents were united in their conviction that there will be no peace in the Holy Land without multi-religious cooperation.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
The (Real) Root of the Conflict!
Israel's Dilemma in Palestine
A Land With People, For a People with a Plan
By LUDWIG WATZAL
Two rabbis, visiting Palestine in 1897, observed that the land was like a bride, "beautiful, but married to another man". By which they meant that, if a place was to be found for a Jewish "homeland" in Palestine, the indigenous inhabitants had to leave.
Where should the people of Palestine go?
Squaring that circle has been the essence of Israel´s dilemma ever since its establishment and the cause of the Palestinian tragedy that it led to. It has remained insoluble.
Ghada Karmi's new book, Married To Another Man, Israel´s Dilemma in Palestine, (published by Pluto Press, London-Ann Arbor) shows that the major reason for this failure was the original and unresolved Zionist quandary of how to create and maintain a Jewish state in a land inhabited by another people. Zionism was never able to resolve the problem of "the other man".
There are only two ways: Either the "other man" had to be eradicated, or the Jewish state project had to be given up. Israel did not do either. It succeeded in 1948 in expelling and keeping out a large number of Palestinians, but Israel was never able to "cleanse" the land of Palestine entirely. The fundamental mistake of the Zionists was their belief that "the entire land of Palestine was Jewish and the Arab presence in it a resented foreign intrusion".
All in all, the Zionists were "relatively" successful, but for the indigenous owners of the land it was a catastrophe which has been going on until today. "If Israel remains a colonialist state in its character, it will not survive. In the end the region will be stronger than Israel, in the end the indigenous people will be stronger than Israel, " as Akiva Eldar quoted the former Mazpen member Haim Hangebi in the Israeli Daily Haaretz on August 8, 2003. The author concludes: "Zionism´s ethos was not about peaceful co-existence but about colonialism and an exclusivist ideology to be imposed and maintained by force."
Ghada Karmi is a renowned commentator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a well-known figure on British radio and TV. She was born in Jerusalem, and forced to leave as a child in 1948. She grew up in Britain where she became a physician, academic and writer. Currently, Karmi is a research fellow and lecturer at the Insitute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. She has written several books, including In Search of Fatima, which was widely praised.
The Zionist dilemma was perfectly and bluntly expressed by the so-called "post-Zionist" representative and professor, Benny Morris, which led not only to an uproar in the scientific community, but also to a deep disappiontment, because Morris was considered to belong to the "new historians". In this interview with the daily Haaretz and in his article in The Guardian he presented himself as an ardent Zionist. He encapsulates all Zionism´s major elements, its inherent implausibility as a practical enterprise, its arrogance, racism and self-righteousness, and the insurmountable obstacle to it of Palestine´s original population, which refuses to go away. For his colonialist and racist view he was severely critiziced by Baruch Kimmerling and many others who could not understand his attitude.
Morris said incredible things: "A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population." According to him the Zionists made a mistake to have allowed any Palestinans to remain. "If the end of the story turns out to be a gloomy one for the Jews, it will because Ben-Gurion did not complete the transfer of 1948. (...) In other circumstances, apocalyptic ones, which are liable to be realized in five or ten years, I can see expulsions. If we find ourselves (...) in a situation of warfare (...) acts of expulsion will be entirely reasonable. They may even be essential (...) If the threat to Israel is existential, expulsion will be justified." Morris concludes, Zionism is faced with two options: perpetual cruelty and repression of others, or the end of the enterprise. These alternatives give the whole enterprise an apocalyptic touch. For the time being, the Israeli security establishment has chosen the "iron wall"-concept which refers to a wall of bayonets.
Ghada Karmi shows in one of her chapters,"The Cost of Israel to the Arabs", that the price they had to pay was horrendous. She holds not only Israel but also the West, especially the United States of America, is responsible for the rejectionist attitude of the Israeli political class. They just did never consider any compromise. In this chapter the author describes the damage that Israel´s creation inflicted on the Arabs, how it has retarded their development and provoked a reactive and dangerous radicalization.
The Arabs are always asked to be realistic and recognise the facts on the ground. "The Arabs were expected to make peace with Israel - and to love it as well." Under the surface Israel has made much progress towards normalisation with the Arab world. The Arab leaders have to conceal that truth from their own populations. Karmi views Western policy in Israel´s case rather strategic than ideological. The installation of the Jewish state as the local agent of Western regional self-interest was an effective way of dividing the Arabs, so as to ensure that they remained dependent and subjugated." Egypt and Jordan are the best examples.
In the Chapter "Why do Jews support Israel?" the author asks "Why did a project, which was, on the face of it, implausible in the first place and inevitably destructive of others, succeed so well? Just as importantly, why did it continue to receive support, despite a clear record of aggression and multiple breaches of international law against its neighbours that ensured its survival - not just as a state but as a disruptive force?" A number of disparate factors account for the unconditional support for Israel: the Holocaust and its associated trauma and guilts, the exigencies of Western regional policy, religious mythology, so-called common values, and Israel as the "only democracy in the Middle East" et cetera.
It is difficult to find a similar phenomenon for a state in the 21st Century that gets away with vast human rights violations, colonial subjugation of another people and a disdain of international law. Not only for the American Jewish community but also for many liberal Jews "Israel had taken on a mythic quality, part-identity, part-religion, and its dissolution, as a Jewish state, became psychologically and emotionally unthinkable. The obverse of this coin was of course a paranoid suspicion and hatred of anyone who threatened Israel in the slightest way." Karmi describes the Zionist desperate attempt to prove an unbroken chain between the Jews of Palestine and those of Europe. "Put like this, the absurditiy of the idea is obvious, but that in fact was the proposition Zionists wanted people to believe in order to justify the Jewish `return` to the ´homeland`." Because the Zionist claim rested on such shaky grounds, Jewish researchers "tried to use genetics as a way of demonstrating a link between European (Ashkenazi) Jews and their supposed Middle Eastern origins by way of finding a common ancestry with Middle Eastern Jews".
The author discusses the relationship between the US and Israel and the dominant influence of the "Israel lobby", especially AIPAC which adopted a right-wing posture, both in its support for the Likud party in Israel and the political right in the US, including the Christian Zionists whose belief system goes like follows: They adhere literally to the Old Testament. Fundamental was the return of the Jews to the land of Israel, which was given them by God through the covenant with Abraham. According to this legacy all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates was granted to the Jews. The Jewish return to Palestine (Israel) was essential as a prelude to Christ´s Second Coming; in that sense, Jews were the instrument by which divine prophecy would be fulfilled. However, they were obliged to convert to Christianity and rebuild the Jewish Temple. Seven years of tribulation would follow, culminating in a holocaust or Armageddon, during which the converted Jews and other godless people would be destroyed. Only then would the Messiah return to redeem mankind and establish the Kingdom of God on earth where he would reign for a thousand years. The converted Jews, restored as God´s Chosen People, would enjoy a privileged status in the world. At the end of all this, they and all the rightous would ascend to heaven in the final `Rapture`. The Jewish role in all this meant: "Jews restored to Israel and converted, leading to the Second Advent, leading to mankind´s redemption."
In chapter four, five and six the author critizices the so-called peace process, Arafat´s destructive final role and Israel´s attempt to revive the Jordanian option. In signing the Oslo agreement, "Arafat legitimized Zionism, the very ideology that had created and still perpetuates the Palestinian tragedy".
The Israeli aim to destroy the Palestinans could not have been better described as in the words of the Israeli sociologist professor Baruch Kimmerling who wrote in his book Politicide that the process of gradual military, political and psychological attrition whose aim was to destroy the Palestinians as an independent people with a coherent political and social existence would make them vanish by their fragmentation and irrelevance. "Forty years of Israeli politicide had done its work on the Palestine question as a national cause. The Palestinians, already in an unenviable position of physical fragmentation after 1948, became politically fragmented with the Israeli occupation."
In her chapter "Solving the Problem", Karmi argues that a two-state solution is out of reach. Consequently, she calls in chapter seven for a one-state solution. "In a single state, no Jewish settler would have to move and no Palestinian would be under occupation." The author thinks that creating a Jewish state was "crazy" at Herzl´s time and even now therefore "creating a unitary state of Israel/Palestine, far less implausible than the Zionist project ever was, should be no less successful".
Refering to Hangebi´s statement that Israel as a "colonial state" cannot survive, Karmi proposes an unthinkable idea: "The best solution to this intractable problem is to turn back the clock before there was any Jewish state and return history as from there." But at the end, she turns back to realism: "The clock will not go back and, although the Jewish state cannot be uncreated, it might be, so to speak, unmade. The reunification of Palestine´s shattered remains in a unitary state for all its inhabitants, old and new, is the only realistic, humane and durable route out of the morass. It is also the only way for the Israeli Jewish community (as opposed to the Israeli state) to survive in the Middle East."
Dr. Ludwig Watzal works as an editor and a journalist in Bonn, Germany. He has written several books on Israel and Palestine. He can be reached at: lwatzal@aol.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/watzal11052007.html
Thoughts from JRK:
Ghada Karmi seems to make a case for the "one state" solution.
I know the one-state solution is politically incorrect right now, as it is completely unacceptable to "the Jews" and many/most Palestinian opinion makers (AFTP for example).
Yet Karmi's argument is compelling, has the ring of truth and shows how the Zionist experiment is doomed to fail (IMO) in the long course of history going forward.
Two states just won't work in the long run, (IMHO). It won't work now, in the short run (no way to carve out a separate Palestinian entity in the light of "facts on the ground") and it surely won't work in the long run (a homogeneous blending of people sharing the same ground is the normal thing; keeping the Palestinians in ghettos, ala blacks in S. Africa and Jews in Poland won't work in the long run).
The Palestinians who persist in living there refuse to be exterminated or ethnically cleansed. Maybe they will become as the Native Americans in the USA in the long run, having to make their peace with an "alien" government authority.
How is it possible for America and Israel to keep the lid of anger in place without a huge explosion?
Maybe surrounding Arab states will become militarily strong enough to expel the Jewish occupiers. (Present and future US pols "won't let that happen", etc., etc)
Is it possible to discuss the underlying issues? Is mutual respect possible? Is resolution/reconciliation possible? Are leaders in place for this? Questions. Answers?
You have your own thoughts after you read this profound piece (with thanks to liaison Doug Dicks, now from Jordan). Thoughts to ponder. Actions to take? JRK
A Land With People, For a People with a Plan
By LUDWIG WATZAL
Two rabbis, visiting Palestine in 1897, observed that the land was like a bride, "beautiful, but married to another man". By which they meant that, if a place was to be found for a Jewish "homeland" in Palestine, the indigenous inhabitants had to leave.
Where should the people of Palestine go?
Squaring that circle has been the essence of Israel´s dilemma ever since its establishment and the cause of the Palestinian tragedy that it led to. It has remained insoluble.
Ghada Karmi's new book, Married To Another Man, Israel´s Dilemma in Palestine, (published by Pluto Press, London-Ann Arbor) shows that the major reason for this failure was the original and unresolved Zionist quandary of how to create and maintain a Jewish state in a land inhabited by another people. Zionism was never able to resolve the problem of "the other man".
There are only two ways: Either the "other man" had to be eradicated, or the Jewish state project had to be given up. Israel did not do either. It succeeded in 1948 in expelling and keeping out a large number of Palestinians, but Israel was never able to "cleanse" the land of Palestine entirely. The fundamental mistake of the Zionists was their belief that "the entire land of Palestine was Jewish and the Arab presence in it a resented foreign intrusion".
All in all, the Zionists were "relatively" successful, but for the indigenous owners of the land it was a catastrophe which has been going on until today. "If Israel remains a colonialist state in its character, it will not survive. In the end the region will be stronger than Israel, in the end the indigenous people will be stronger than Israel, " as Akiva Eldar quoted the former Mazpen member Haim Hangebi in the Israeli Daily Haaretz on August 8, 2003. The author concludes: "Zionism´s ethos was not about peaceful co-existence but about colonialism and an exclusivist ideology to be imposed and maintained by force."
Ghada Karmi is a renowned commentator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a well-known figure on British radio and TV. She was born in Jerusalem, and forced to leave as a child in 1948. She grew up in Britain where she became a physician, academic and writer. Currently, Karmi is a research fellow and lecturer at the Insitute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. She has written several books, including In Search of Fatima, which was widely praised.
The Zionist dilemma was perfectly and bluntly expressed by the so-called "post-Zionist" representative and professor, Benny Morris, which led not only to an uproar in the scientific community, but also to a deep disappiontment, because Morris was considered to belong to the "new historians". In this interview with the daily Haaretz and in his article in The Guardian he presented himself as an ardent Zionist. He encapsulates all Zionism´s major elements, its inherent implausibility as a practical enterprise, its arrogance, racism and self-righteousness, and the insurmountable obstacle to it of Palestine´s original population, which refuses to go away. For his colonialist and racist view he was severely critiziced by Baruch Kimmerling and many others who could not understand his attitude.
Morris said incredible things: "A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population." According to him the Zionists made a mistake to have allowed any Palestinans to remain. "If the end of the story turns out to be a gloomy one for the Jews, it will because Ben-Gurion did not complete the transfer of 1948. (...) In other circumstances, apocalyptic ones, which are liable to be realized in five or ten years, I can see expulsions. If we find ourselves (...) in a situation of warfare (...) acts of expulsion will be entirely reasonable. They may even be essential (...) If the threat to Israel is existential, expulsion will be justified." Morris concludes, Zionism is faced with two options: perpetual cruelty and repression of others, or the end of the enterprise. These alternatives give the whole enterprise an apocalyptic touch. For the time being, the Israeli security establishment has chosen the "iron wall"-concept which refers to a wall of bayonets.
Ghada Karmi shows in one of her chapters,"The Cost of Israel to the Arabs", that the price they had to pay was horrendous. She holds not only Israel but also the West, especially the United States of America, is responsible for the rejectionist attitude of the Israeli political class. They just did never consider any compromise. In this chapter the author describes the damage that Israel´s creation inflicted on the Arabs, how it has retarded their development and provoked a reactive and dangerous radicalization.
The Arabs are always asked to be realistic and recognise the facts on the ground. "The Arabs were expected to make peace with Israel - and to love it as well." Under the surface Israel has made much progress towards normalisation with the Arab world. The Arab leaders have to conceal that truth from their own populations. Karmi views Western policy in Israel´s case rather strategic than ideological. The installation of the Jewish state as the local agent of Western regional self-interest was an effective way of dividing the Arabs, so as to ensure that they remained dependent and subjugated." Egypt and Jordan are the best examples.
In the Chapter "Why do Jews support Israel?" the author asks "Why did a project, which was, on the face of it, implausible in the first place and inevitably destructive of others, succeed so well? Just as importantly, why did it continue to receive support, despite a clear record of aggression and multiple breaches of international law against its neighbours that ensured its survival - not just as a state but as a disruptive force?" A number of disparate factors account for the unconditional support for Israel: the Holocaust and its associated trauma and guilts, the exigencies of Western regional policy, religious mythology, so-called common values, and Israel as the "only democracy in the Middle East" et cetera.
It is difficult to find a similar phenomenon for a state in the 21st Century that gets away with vast human rights violations, colonial subjugation of another people and a disdain of international law. Not only for the American Jewish community but also for many liberal Jews "Israel had taken on a mythic quality, part-identity, part-religion, and its dissolution, as a Jewish state, became psychologically and emotionally unthinkable. The obverse of this coin was of course a paranoid suspicion and hatred of anyone who threatened Israel in the slightest way." Karmi describes the Zionist desperate attempt to prove an unbroken chain between the Jews of Palestine and those of Europe. "Put like this, the absurditiy of the idea is obvious, but that in fact was the proposition Zionists wanted people to believe in order to justify the Jewish `return` to the ´homeland`." Because the Zionist claim rested on such shaky grounds, Jewish researchers "tried to use genetics as a way of demonstrating a link between European (Ashkenazi) Jews and their supposed Middle Eastern origins by way of finding a common ancestry with Middle Eastern Jews".
The author discusses the relationship between the US and Israel and the dominant influence of the "Israel lobby", especially AIPAC which adopted a right-wing posture, both in its support for the Likud party in Israel and the political right in the US, including the Christian Zionists whose belief system goes like follows: They adhere literally to the Old Testament. Fundamental was the return of the Jews to the land of Israel, which was given them by God through the covenant with Abraham. According to this legacy all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates was granted to the Jews. The Jewish return to Palestine (Israel) was essential as a prelude to Christ´s Second Coming; in that sense, Jews were the instrument by which divine prophecy would be fulfilled. However, they were obliged to convert to Christianity and rebuild the Jewish Temple. Seven years of tribulation would follow, culminating in a holocaust or Armageddon, during which the converted Jews and other godless people would be destroyed. Only then would the Messiah return to redeem mankind and establish the Kingdom of God on earth where he would reign for a thousand years. The converted Jews, restored as God´s Chosen People, would enjoy a privileged status in the world. At the end of all this, they and all the rightous would ascend to heaven in the final `Rapture`. The Jewish role in all this meant: "Jews restored to Israel and converted, leading to the Second Advent, leading to mankind´s redemption."
In chapter four, five and six the author critizices the so-called peace process, Arafat´s destructive final role and Israel´s attempt to revive the Jordanian option. In signing the Oslo agreement, "Arafat legitimized Zionism, the very ideology that had created and still perpetuates the Palestinian tragedy".
The Israeli aim to destroy the Palestinans could not have been better described as in the words of the Israeli sociologist professor Baruch Kimmerling who wrote in his book Politicide that the process of gradual military, political and psychological attrition whose aim was to destroy the Palestinians as an independent people with a coherent political and social existence would make them vanish by their fragmentation and irrelevance. "Forty years of Israeli politicide had done its work on the Palestine question as a national cause. The Palestinians, already in an unenviable position of physical fragmentation after 1948, became politically fragmented with the Israeli occupation."
In her chapter "Solving the Problem", Karmi argues that a two-state solution is out of reach. Consequently, she calls in chapter seven for a one-state solution. "In a single state, no Jewish settler would have to move and no Palestinian would be under occupation." The author thinks that creating a Jewish state was "crazy" at Herzl´s time and even now therefore "creating a unitary state of Israel/Palestine, far less implausible than the Zionist project ever was, should be no less successful".
Refering to Hangebi´s statement that Israel as a "colonial state" cannot survive, Karmi proposes an unthinkable idea: "The best solution to this intractable problem is to turn back the clock before there was any Jewish state and return history as from there." But at the end, she turns back to realism: "The clock will not go back and, although the Jewish state cannot be uncreated, it might be, so to speak, unmade. The reunification of Palestine´s shattered remains in a unitary state for all its inhabitants, old and new, is the only realistic, humane and durable route out of the morass. It is also the only way for the Israeli Jewish community (as opposed to the Israeli state) to survive in the Middle East."
Dr. Ludwig Watzal works as an editor and a journalist in Bonn, Germany. He has written several books on Israel and Palestine. He can be reached at: lwatzal@aol.com
http://www.counterpunch.org/watzal11052007.html
Thoughts from JRK:
Ghada Karmi seems to make a case for the "one state" solution.
I know the one-state solution is politically incorrect right now, as it is completely unacceptable to "the Jews" and many/most Palestinian opinion makers (AFTP for example).
Yet Karmi's argument is compelling, has the ring of truth and shows how the Zionist experiment is doomed to fail (IMO) in the long course of history going forward.
Two states just won't work in the long run, (IMHO). It won't work now, in the short run (no way to carve out a separate Palestinian entity in the light of "facts on the ground") and it surely won't work in the long run (a homogeneous blending of people sharing the same ground is the normal thing; keeping the Palestinians in ghettos, ala blacks in S. Africa and Jews in Poland won't work in the long run).
The Palestinians who persist in living there refuse to be exterminated or ethnically cleansed. Maybe they will become as the Native Americans in the USA in the long run, having to make their peace with an "alien" government authority.
How is it possible for America and Israel to keep the lid of anger in place without a huge explosion?
Maybe surrounding Arab states will become militarily strong enough to expel the Jewish occupiers. (Present and future US pols "won't let that happen", etc., etc)
Is it possible to discuss the underlying issues? Is mutual respect possible? Is resolution/reconciliation possible? Are leaders in place for this? Questions. Answers?
You have your own thoughts after you read this profound piece (with thanks to liaison Doug Dicks, now from Jordan). Thoughts to ponder. Actions to take? JRK
Friday, November 2, 2007
Both Sides are Human
In Humanity Lies Hope For Peace
By Hilla Medalia
In The Boston Globe,
Opinion November 1, 2007 http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/11/01/in_humanity_lies_hope_fo
DELEGATES FROM Israel and a consortium of Arab states will meet in the United States this month with the hope of devising an agreement - or at least the DNA of an agreement - that will lead to the formation of a Palestinian state and, theoretically, stability in the Middle East. It is the first such US-led summit in years, and regardless of the outcome, it will be a historic event.
History, unfortunately, has not favored success when it comes to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The road to peace is littered with numerous failed plans that have left in their wake a sea of bitter cynicism, and a resignation that this is a road that will forever stretch beyond the horizon. One can't be blamed for believing this summit will be no different.
The cynicism is understandable, but perhaps this is because, in both the United States and Middle East, much of what we know, or what we think we know, about the conflict is filtered through the lens of politics, which is too often framed by zealots and violence.
This leads both sides to assume that the general population of the other shares these extremist beliefs and desires nothing less than their complete subjugation, if not annihilation. At the very least, the average citizen's voice is overwhelmed by the deafening power of extremism. If you set aside the political rhetoric, however, and listen to what the average Israeli or Palestinian truly wants, you'll find that their desires are not so different. Opportunities for such dialogue, unfortunately, are rare.
I grew up in Ramat Hasharon, Israel, no more than 16 miles from Tulkarm, a Palestinian refugee camp, but until three years ago, I had never set foot in one of the camps that are the crux of the hostilities. The closest most Israelis - other than the army - get to Palestinian life is what they see in the media, which focuses almost exclusively on military activity and civil unrest.
I entered one of these camps, Deheisheh, not with a machine gun, but with a camera, to film a documentary about the mothers of two teenage girls: Rachel Levy, an Israeli, and Ayat al-Akhras, a Palestinian who killed Rachel, herself, and another bystander, and injured dozens of others in a suicide bombing several years ago. A neutral Christian Palestinian peace worker had to negotiate my entrance into the camp.
Simply bearing witness to life inside Deheisheh was a remarkable education. I was able to see Palestinians not as a political or military entity, but as ordinary people going through their daily routine - shopping, going to school, coming home from work - albeit in markedly oppressive conditions. The experience was short lived, however, and the political reality of the conflict brought home when we were detained within an hour by the Palestinian Authority and then released back to Israel."
Several weeks later, we arranged a meeting between Rachel's mother, Avigail, and Ayat's mother, Um Samir. Avigail had sought the meeting in an effort to understand why her daughter had become another of the countless victims of the Palestinian terrorist campaign, and what motivated Ayat to feel justified in killing innocent people. The mothers "met" via a videoconference, since a face-to-face meeting had proved impossible.
Their exchange was tense, and understandably, fraught with grief and an array of complex emotions. Both arrived with agendas to uphold and negative assumptions about the other. They could not agree on the morality or immorality of what Ayat had done. But they did understand each other as mothers who were devastated to have lost their daughters.
Most important, after four hours of often circuitous, heated dialogue, neither of them wanted the conversation to end. They stayed as long as the video conference schedule allowed, and then left reluctantly. Regardless of the hostility, they had seen each other in a way that Israelis and Palestinians rarely do - as human beings - and they did not want to let that go. It was too precious.
Herein lies the seed of hope for peace, or perhaps just a seed of hope for hope. When the US, Arab, and Israeli leaders meet at the upcoming summit, they might bear in mind that they are not representing political or military factions, but mothers, daughters, fathers, and sons who yearn to have their humanity recognized.
By Hilla Medalia
In The Boston Globe,
Opinion November 1, 2007 http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/11/01/in_humanity_lies_hope_fo
DELEGATES FROM Israel and a consortium of Arab states will meet in the United States this month with the hope of devising an agreement - or at least the DNA of an agreement - that will lead to the formation of a Palestinian state and, theoretically, stability in the Middle East. It is the first such US-led summit in years, and regardless of the outcome, it will be a historic event.
History, unfortunately, has not favored success when it comes to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The road to peace is littered with numerous failed plans that have left in their wake a sea of bitter cynicism, and a resignation that this is a road that will forever stretch beyond the horizon. One can't be blamed for believing this summit will be no different.
The cynicism is understandable, but perhaps this is because, in both the United States and Middle East, much of what we know, or what we think we know, about the conflict is filtered through the lens of politics, which is too often framed by zealots and violence.
This leads both sides to assume that the general population of the other shares these extremist beliefs and desires nothing less than their complete subjugation, if not annihilation. At the very least, the average citizen's voice is overwhelmed by the deafening power of extremism. If you set aside the political rhetoric, however, and listen to what the average Israeli or Palestinian truly wants, you'll find that their desires are not so different. Opportunities for such dialogue, unfortunately, are rare.
I grew up in Ramat Hasharon, Israel, no more than 16 miles from Tulkarm, a Palestinian refugee camp, but until three years ago, I had never set foot in one of the camps that are the crux of the hostilities. The closest most Israelis - other than the army - get to Palestinian life is what they see in the media, which focuses almost exclusively on military activity and civil unrest.
I entered one of these camps, Deheisheh, not with a machine gun, but with a camera, to film a documentary about the mothers of two teenage girls: Rachel Levy, an Israeli, and Ayat al-Akhras, a Palestinian who killed Rachel, herself, and another bystander, and injured dozens of others in a suicide bombing several years ago. A neutral Christian Palestinian peace worker had to negotiate my entrance into the camp.
Simply bearing witness to life inside Deheisheh was a remarkable education. I was able to see Palestinians not as a political or military entity, but as ordinary people going through their daily routine - shopping, going to school, coming home from work - albeit in markedly oppressive conditions. The experience was short lived, however, and the political reality of the conflict brought home when we were detained within an hour by the Palestinian Authority and then released back to Israel."
Several weeks later, we arranged a meeting between Rachel's mother, Avigail, and Ayat's mother, Um Samir. Avigail had sought the meeting in an effort to understand why her daughter had become another of the countless victims of the Palestinian terrorist campaign, and what motivated Ayat to feel justified in killing innocent people. The mothers "met" via a videoconference, since a face-to-face meeting had proved impossible.
Their exchange was tense, and understandably, fraught with grief and an array of complex emotions. Both arrived with agendas to uphold and negative assumptions about the other. They could not agree on the morality or immorality of what Ayat had done. But they did understand each other as mothers who were devastated to have lost their daughters.
Most important, after four hours of often circuitous, heated dialogue, neither of them wanted the conversation to end. They stayed as long as the video conference schedule allowed, and then left reluctantly. Regardless of the hostility, they had seen each other in a way that Israelis and Palestinians rarely do - as human beings - and they did not want to let that go. It was too precious.
Herein lies the seed of hope for peace, or perhaps just a seed of hope for hope. When the US, Arab, and Israeli leaders meet at the upcoming summit, they might bear in mind that they are not representing political or military factions, but mothers, daughters, fathers, and sons who yearn to have their humanity recognized.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
American Jews for Peace
Below is an open letter from American Jews for Peace, to the US government (signed by 3,800 American Jews) as published in the New York Times, (get this) on July 17, 2002.
This is sad. It is another example of a simple, rather precise outline of how the conflict can be resolved. And this piece is 5 years old! And its from Amerian Jews!
To whose advantage is this conflict allowed to continue? Where is the Israeli and Palestinian and American leadership to get this done?!
Please copy this letter and send it to President Bush and Secretary Rice, as well as all the Jewish Americans you know, asking them to advocate for this position. It was true in 2002. It is still true in 2007!
Peace in the Middle East:
An Open Letter from American Jews to Our Government
In the wake of the recent bloodshed in the Middle East, many Israelis and Palestinians -- and their supporters in the United States -- have reverted to an us-versus-them thinking in which they see themselves as righteous victims and ignore or minimize the injustices they have done, and continue to do, to the other people.
In fact, both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples have suffered great wrongs at the hands of the other, albeit in different and unequal ways; both have legitimate grievances, legitimate fears, and legitimate distrust of the other people's willingness to compromise for the sake of peace.
Though the signers of this letter have a wide range of views about the blame for the present situation, we have a common view of what a solution will have to consist of.
Incremental attempts at building trust have reached an impasse. The only alternative to endless war is a comprehensive settlement based on simple but radical principles:
Israeli and Palestinian lives are equally precious.
The Israeli and Palestinian peoples have equal rights to national self-determination and to live in peace and security.
The Israeli and Palestinian peoples have equal rights to a fair share of the land and resources of historic Palestine.
Fair-minded people throughout the world have long understood with some precision what a tenable solution, respecting these principles, would entail:
Two national states, Israel and Palestine, with equal sovereignty, equal rights and equal responsibilities.
Partition along the pre-1967 border as modified only by minor mutually agreed territorial swaps.
Israeli evacuation of all settlements in the occupied territories except those within the agreed swapped areas.
Palestinian and Arab recognition of Israel and renunciation of any further territorial claims.
Palestinian acceptance of negotiated limitations on the "right of return" in exchange for financial compensation for refugees.
Several years ago, polls showed that majorities of both Israelis and Palestinians were willing to accept a compromise settlement of this kind. Despite the current carnage, that may still be the case; but compromise is difficult when majorities on both sides support provocative military actions that they view as purely defensive, while powerful minorities pursue maximalist territorial aims.
If Israelis and Palestinians are unwilling or unable to negotiate a workable peace, the international community must take the lead in promoting one. This is in the long-term interest not only of Israelis and Palestinians, but also of Americans: recent events have made painfully clear that our own national security is deeply undermined by instability and injustice in the Middle East.
The U.S. bears a special responsibility for the current tragic impasse, by virtue of our massive economic and military support for the Israeli government: $500 per Israeli citizen per year. Our country has an extraordinary leverage on Israeli policy, if only our government would dare to use it. As American Jews who care deeply about the long-term security of Israel, we call on our government to make continued aid conditional on Israeli acceptance of an internationally agreed two-state settlement.
Rejectionists on both sides will of course attack any such settlement. Foreign troops may well be required to enforce it, and they must be prepared to accept casualties. One may nevertheless hope that majorities of both Israelis and Palestinians will realize that an imperfect peace is preferable to endless war.
There is no guarantee that this approach will work; but it is virtually guaranteed that all alternatives will fail.
This is sad. It is another example of a simple, rather precise outline of how the conflict can be resolved. And this piece is 5 years old! And its from Amerian Jews!
To whose advantage is this conflict allowed to continue? Where is the Israeli and Palestinian and American leadership to get this done?!
Please copy this letter and send it to President Bush and Secretary Rice, as well as all the Jewish Americans you know, asking them to advocate for this position. It was true in 2002. It is still true in 2007!
Peace in the Middle East:
An Open Letter from American Jews to Our Government
In the wake of the recent bloodshed in the Middle East, many Israelis and Palestinians -- and their supporters in the United States -- have reverted to an us-versus-them thinking in which they see themselves as righteous victims and ignore or minimize the injustices they have done, and continue to do, to the other people.
In fact, both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples have suffered great wrongs at the hands of the other, albeit in different and unequal ways; both have legitimate grievances, legitimate fears, and legitimate distrust of the other people's willingness to compromise for the sake of peace.
Though the signers of this letter have a wide range of views about the blame for the present situation, we have a common view of what a solution will have to consist of.
Incremental attempts at building trust have reached an impasse. The only alternative to endless war is a comprehensive settlement based on simple but radical principles:
Israeli and Palestinian lives are equally precious.
The Israeli and Palestinian peoples have equal rights to national self-determination and to live in peace and security.
The Israeli and Palestinian peoples have equal rights to a fair share of the land and resources of historic Palestine.
Fair-minded people throughout the world have long understood with some precision what a tenable solution, respecting these principles, would entail:
Two national states, Israel and Palestine, with equal sovereignty, equal rights and equal responsibilities.
Partition along the pre-1967 border as modified only by minor mutually agreed territorial swaps.
Israeli evacuation of all settlements in the occupied territories except those within the agreed swapped areas.
Palestinian and Arab recognition of Israel and renunciation of any further territorial claims.
Palestinian acceptance of negotiated limitations on the "right of return" in exchange for financial compensation for refugees.
Several years ago, polls showed that majorities of both Israelis and Palestinians were willing to accept a compromise settlement of this kind. Despite the current carnage, that may still be the case; but compromise is difficult when majorities on both sides support provocative military actions that they view as purely defensive, while powerful minorities pursue maximalist territorial aims.
If Israelis and Palestinians are unwilling or unable to negotiate a workable peace, the international community must take the lead in promoting one. This is in the long-term interest not only of Israelis and Palestinians, but also of Americans: recent events have made painfully clear that our own national security is deeply undermined by instability and injustice in the Middle East.
The U.S. bears a special responsibility for the current tragic impasse, by virtue of our massive economic and military support for the Israeli government: $500 per Israeli citizen per year. Our country has an extraordinary leverage on Israeli policy, if only our government would dare to use it. As American Jews who care deeply about the long-term security of Israel, we call on our government to make continued aid conditional on Israeli acceptance of an internationally agreed two-state settlement.
Rejectionists on both sides will of course attack any such settlement. Foreign troops may well be required to enforce it, and they must be prepared to accept casualties. One may nevertheless hope that majorities of both Israelis and Palestinians will realize that an imperfect peace is preferable to endless war.
There is no guarantee that this approach will work; but it is virtually guaranteed that all alternatives will fail.
Monday, October 29, 2007
LA Orthodox Rabbi Breaks Taboo!
Orthodox Rabbi Breaks Taboo With Talk Of Dividing Jerusalem
By Tom Tugend
In Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)
October 29, 2007
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/print/20071028rabitab.html
A prominent Orthodox rabbi has broken a taboo by publicly advocating that his community consider a possible division of Jerusalem to achieve a lasting peace with the Palestinians.
Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky of B’nai David Judea wrote in Friday’s Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles that the “worst-case scenario” of returning the Western Wall and the Temple Mount to Arab control would be horrifying and unfathomable to him.
“At the same time, though, to insist that the [Israeli] government not talk about Jerusalem at all (including, the possibility, for example, of Palestinian sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods) is to insist that Israel come to the negotiating table telling a dishonest story -- a story in which our side has made no mistakes and no miscalculations, a story in which there is no moral ambiguity in the way we have chosen to rule people we conquered, a story in which we don’t owe anything to anyone,” Kanefsky wrote.
The 44-year old rabbi occasionally has startled Orthodox circles with his innovative ideas, but he enjoys wide respect among his peers in other denominations, who elected him to a term as president of the Southern California Board of Rabbis.
Kanefsky predicts that no peace conference will succeed until Israelis and Palestinians accept honest versions of their conflict and admit their mistakes over the past 40 years, including the occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank after the Six-Day War in 1967.
He acknowledges that the slogan “Jerusalem: Israel’s Eternally Undivided Capital” is treated with “biblical reverence by my community," adding that it is "a corollary to the belief in the coming of the Messiah.”
It is because of the unquestioned acceptance of this slogan by the Orthodox, as well as Christian evangelists, that he decided to initiate “a conversation that desperately needs to begin,” Kanefsky wrote.
Within hours of the opinion piece’s publication, reactions began to pour in to the Jewish Journal. Editor-in-Chief Rob Eshman said he received more than 100 letters, e-mails and phone calls about the article, along with a number of op-ed rebuttals.
On Saturday, the Los Angeles Times reported on Kanefsky’s article as the lead story in its California state section, along with local and national reactions.
Predictably, comments in mainstream Orthodox circles were highly critical, while liberal rabbis and peace groups praised Kanefsky’s views and his courage in speaking out.
The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the community’s umbrella organization, is drafting a statement on the article. However, its Web site said “the Orthodox Union is preparing a comprehensive action plan which will call upon members of our community to join on the walls of Jerusalem and become her defenders against those who would divide her.”
Rabbi Pesach Lerner, executive vice president of the National Council of Young Israel, denounced the article, telling the Los Angeles Times that “Rabbi Kanefsky is completely off-base. I think his call for this discussion is ridiculous. It would amount to religious suicide.”
A Conservative Los Angeles rabbi, David Wolpe, also disagreed with Kanefsky’s viewpoint.
“To give up Jerusalem to people who want to destroy your country is an emotional high jump you’d have to be better than an Olympic athlete to vault,” Wolpe said.
However, another prominent Conservative rabbi, Harold Schulweis, applauded Kanefsky’s courage “to touch the third rail, which this is. It is a mark of courage and conscience.”
Reform Rabbi Laura Geller also praised Kanefsky as “a visionary leader” and hoped his article would lead to a thoughtful debate.
By Tom Tugend
In Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA)
October 29, 2007
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/print/20071028rabitab.html
A prominent Orthodox rabbi has broken a taboo by publicly advocating that his community consider a possible division of Jerusalem to achieve a lasting peace with the Palestinians.
Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky of B’nai David Judea wrote in Friday’s Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles that the “worst-case scenario” of returning the Western Wall and the Temple Mount to Arab control would be horrifying and unfathomable to him.
“At the same time, though, to insist that the [Israeli] government not talk about Jerusalem at all (including, the possibility, for example, of Palestinian sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods) is to insist that Israel come to the negotiating table telling a dishonest story -- a story in which our side has made no mistakes and no miscalculations, a story in which there is no moral ambiguity in the way we have chosen to rule people we conquered, a story in which we don’t owe anything to anyone,” Kanefsky wrote.
The 44-year old rabbi occasionally has startled Orthodox circles with his innovative ideas, but he enjoys wide respect among his peers in other denominations, who elected him to a term as president of the Southern California Board of Rabbis.
Kanefsky predicts that no peace conference will succeed until Israelis and Palestinians accept honest versions of their conflict and admit their mistakes over the past 40 years, including the occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank after the Six-Day War in 1967.
He acknowledges that the slogan “Jerusalem: Israel’s Eternally Undivided Capital” is treated with “biblical reverence by my community," adding that it is "a corollary to the belief in the coming of the Messiah.”
It is because of the unquestioned acceptance of this slogan by the Orthodox, as well as Christian evangelists, that he decided to initiate “a conversation that desperately needs to begin,” Kanefsky wrote.
Within hours of the opinion piece’s publication, reactions began to pour in to the Jewish Journal. Editor-in-Chief Rob Eshman said he received more than 100 letters, e-mails and phone calls about the article, along with a number of op-ed rebuttals.
On Saturday, the Los Angeles Times reported on Kanefsky’s article as the lead story in its California state section, along with local and national reactions.
Predictably, comments in mainstream Orthodox circles were highly critical, while liberal rabbis and peace groups praised Kanefsky’s views and his courage in speaking out.
The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the community’s umbrella organization, is drafting a statement on the article. However, its Web site said “the Orthodox Union is preparing a comprehensive action plan which will call upon members of our community to join on the walls of Jerusalem and become her defenders against those who would divide her.”
Rabbi Pesach Lerner, executive vice president of the National Council of Young Israel, denounced the article, telling the Los Angeles Times that “Rabbi Kanefsky is completely off-base. I think his call for this discussion is ridiculous. It would amount to religious suicide.”
A Conservative Los Angeles rabbi, David Wolpe, also disagreed with Kanefsky’s viewpoint.
“To give up Jerusalem to people who want to destroy your country is an emotional high jump you’d have to be better than an Olympic athlete to vault,” Wolpe said.
However, another prominent Conservative rabbi, Harold Schulweis, applauded Kanefsky’s courage “to touch the third rail, which this is. It is a mark of courage and conscience.”
Reform Rabbi Laura Geller also praised Kanefsky as “a visionary leader” and hoped his article would lead to a thoughtful debate.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
God's Dream for Israel/Palestine
By Desmond Tutu
In The Boston Globe , Opinion
October 26, 2007
http://www.boston.com/news
WHENEVER I am asked if I am optimistic about an end to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, I say that I am not. Optimism requires clear signs that things are changing - meaningful words and unambiguous actions that point to real progress. I do not yet hear enough meaningful words, nor do I yet see enough unambiguous deeds to justify optimism.
However, that does not mean I am without hope. I am a Christian. I am constrained by my faith to hope against hope, placing my trust in things as yet unseen. Hope persists in the face of evidence to the contrary, undeterred by setbacks and disappointment. Hoping against hope, then, I do believe that a resolution will be found. It will not be perfect, but it can be just; and if it is just, it will usher in a future of peace.
My hope for peace is not amorphous. It has a shape. It is not the shape of a particular political solution, although there are some political solutions that I believe to be more just than others.
Neither does my hope take the shape of a particular people, although I have pleaded tirelessly for international attention to be paid to the misery of Palestinians, and I have roundly condemned the injustices of certain Israeli policies that compound that misery. Thus I am often accused of siding with Palestinians against Israeli Jews, naively exonerating the one and unfairly demonizing the other.
Nevertheless, I insist that the hope in which I persist is not reducible to politics or identified with a people. It has a more encompassing shape. I like to call it "God's dream."
God has a dream for all his children. It is about a day when all people enjoy fundamental security and live free of fear. It is about a day when all people have a hospitable land in which to establish a future. More than anything else, God's dream is about a day when all people are accorded equal dignity because they are human beings. In God's beautiful dream, no other reason is required.
God's dream begins when we begin to know each other differently, as bearers of a common humanity, not as statistics to be counted, problems to be solved, enemies to be vanquished or animals to be caged. God's dream begins the moment one adversary looks another in the eye and sees himself reflected there.
All things become possible when hearts fixed in mutual contempt begin to grasp a transforming truth; namely, that this person I fear and despise is not an alien, something less than human. This person is very much like me, and enjoys and suffers, loves and fears, wonders, worries, and hopes. Just as I do, this person longs for well-being in a world of peace.
God's dream begins with this mutual recognition - we are not strangers, we are kin. It culminates in the defeat of oppression perpetrated in the name of security, and of violence inflicted in the name of liberation. God's dream routs the cynicism and despair that once cleared the path for hate to have its corrosive way with us, and for ravenous violence to devour everything in sight.
God's dream comes to flower when everyone who claims to be wholly innocent relinquishes that illusion, when everyone who places absolute blame on another renounces that lie, and when differing stories are told at last as one shared story of human aspiration. God's dream ends in healing and reconciliation. Its finest fruit is human wholeness flourishing in a moral universe.
In the meanwhile, between the root of human solidarity and the fruit of human wholeness, there is the hard work of telling the truth.
From my experience in South Africa I know that truth-telling is hard. It has grave consequences for one's life and reputation. It stretches one's faith, tests one's capacity to love, and pushes hope to the limit. At times, the difficulty of this work can make you wonder if people are right about you, that you are a fool.
No one takes up this work on a do-gooder's whim. It is not a choice. One feels compelled into it. Neither is it work for a little while, but rather for a lifetime - and for more than a lifetime. It is a project bigger than any one life. This long view is a source of encouragement and perseverance. The knowledge that the work preceded us and will go on after us is a fountain of deep gladness that no circumstance can alter."
God's dream begins when we begin to know each other differently, as bearers of a common humanity, not as statistics to be counted, problems to be solved, enemies to be vanquished or animals to be caged. God's dream begins the moment one adversary looks another in the eye and sees himself reflected there.
All things become possible when hearts fixed in mutual contempt begin to grasp a transforming truth; namely, that this person I fear and despise is not an alien, something less than human. This person is very much like me, and enjoys and suffers, loves and fears, wonders, worries, and hopes. Just as I do, this person longs for well-being in a world of peace.
God's dream begins with this mutual recognition - we are not strangers, we are kin. It culminates in the defeat of oppression perpetrated in the name of security, and of violence inflicted in the name of liberation. God's dream routs the cynicism and despair that once cleared the path for hate to have its corrosive way with us, and for ravenous violence to devour everything in sight.
God's dream comes to flower when everyone who claims to be wholly innocent relinquishes that illusion, when everyone who places absolute blame on another renounces that lie, and when differing stories are told at last as one shared story of human aspiration. God's dream ends in healing and reconciliation. Its finest fruit is human wholeness flourishing in a moral universe.
In the meanwhile, between the root of human solidarity and the fruit of human wholeness, there is the hard work of telling the truth.
From my experience in South Africa I know that truth-telling is hard. It has grave consequences for one's life and reputation. It stretches one's faith, tests one's capacity to love, and pushes hope to the limit. At times, the difficulty of this work can make you wonder if people are right about you, that you are a fool.
No one takes up this work on a do-gooder's whim. It is not a choice. One feels compelled into it. Neither is it work for a little while, but rather for a lifetime - and for more than a lifetime. It is a project bigger than any one life. This long view is a source of encouragement and perseverance. The knowledge that the work preceded us and will go on after us is a fountain of deep gladness that no circumstance can alter.
\n\u003cp\>Nothing, however, diminishes the fear and trembling that accompany speaking the truth to power in love. An acute awareness of fallibility is a constant companion in this task, but because nothing is more important in the current situation than to speak as truthfully as one can, there can be no shrinking from testifying to what one sees and hears.
What do I see and hear in the Holy Land? Some people cannot move freely from one place to another. A wall separates them from their families and from their incomes. They cannot tend to their gardens at home or to their lessons at school. They are arbitrarily demeaned at checkpoints and unnecessarily beleaguered by capricious applications of bureaucratic red tape. I grieve for the damage being done daily to people's souls and bodies. I have to tell the truth: I am reminded of the yoke of oppression that was once our burden in South Africa.
I see and hear that ancient olive trees are uprooted. Flocks are cut off from their pastures and shepherds. The homes of some people are bulldozed even as new homes for others are illegally constructed on other people's land. I grieve for the land that suffers such violence, the marring of its beauty, the loss of its comforts, the despoiling of its yield. I have to tell the truth: I am reminded of the bitter days of uprooting and despoiling in my own country.
I see and hear that young people believe that it is heroic and pious to kill others by killing themselves. They strap bombs to their torsos to achieve liberation. They do not know that liberation achieved by brutality will defraud in the end. I grieve the waste of their lives and of the lives they take, the loss of personal and communal security they cause, and the lust for revenge that follows their crimes, crowding out all reason and restraint. I have to tell the truth: I am reminded of the explosive anger that inflamed South Africa, too.
Some people are enraged by comparisons between the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and what happened in South Africa. There are differences between the two situations, but a comparison need not be exact in every feature to yield clarity about what is going on. Moreover, for those of us who lived through the dehumanizing horrors of the apartheid era, the comparison seems not only apt, it is also necessary. It is necessary if we are to persevere in our hope that things can change."
Nothing, however, diminishes the fear and trembling that accompany speaking the truth to power in love. An acute awareness of fallibility is a constant companion in this task, but because nothing is more important in the current situation than to speak as truthfully as one can, there can be no shrinking from testifying to what one sees and hears.
What do I see and hear in the Holy Land? Some people cannot move freely from one place to another. A wall separates them from their families and from their incomes. They cannot tend to their gardens at home or to their lessons at school. They are arbitrarily demeaned at checkpoints and unnecessarily beleaguered by capricious applications of bureaucratic red tape. I grieve for the damage being done daily to people's souls and bodies. I have to tell the truth: I am reminded of the yoke of oppression that was once our burden in South Africa.
I see and hear that ancient olive trees are uprooted. Flocks are cut off from their pastures and shepherds. The homes of some people are bulldozed even as new homes for others are illegally constructed on other people's land. I grieve for the land that suffers such violence, the marring of its beauty, the loss of its comforts, the despoiling of its yield. I have to tell the truth: I am reminded of the bitter days of uprooting and despoiling in my own country.
I see and hear that young people believe that it is heroic and pious to kill others by killing themselves. They strap bombs to their torsos to achieve liberation. They do not know that liberation achieved by brutality will defraud in the end. I grieve the waste of their lives and of the lives they take, the loss of personal and communal security they cause, and the lust for revenge that follows their crimes, crowding out all reason and restraint. I have to tell the truth: I am reminded of the explosive anger that inflamed South Africa, too.
Some people are enraged by comparisons between the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and what happened in South Africa. There are differences between the two situations, but a comparison need not be exact in every feature to yield clarity about what is going on. Moreover, for those of us who lived through the dehumanizing horrors of the apartheid era, the comparison seems not only apt, it is also necessary. It is necessary if we are to persevere in our hope that things can change.
Indeed, because of what I experienced in South Africa, I harbor a vast, unreasoning hope for Israel and the Palestinian territories. South Africans, after all, had no reason to suppose that the evil system and the cycles of violence that were sapping the soul of our nation would ever change. There was nothing special or different about South Africans to deserve the appearance of the very thing for which we prayed and worked and suffered so long.
Most South Africans did not believe they would live to see a day of liberation. They did not believe that their children's children would see it. They did not believe that such a day even existed, except in fantasy. But we have seen it. We are living now in the day we longed for.
It is not a cloudless day. The divine arc that bends toward a truly just and whole society has not yet stretched fully across my country's sky like a rainbow of peace. It is not finished, it does not always live up to its promise, it is not perfect - but it is new. A brand new thing, like a dream of God, has come about to replace the old story of mutual hatred and oppression.
I have seen it and heard it, and so to this truth, too, I am compelled to testify - if it can happen in South Africa, it can happen with the Israelis and Palestinians. There is not much reason to be optimistic, but there is every reason to hope.
Indeed, because of what I experienced in South Africa, I harbor a vast, unreasoning hope for Israel and the Palestinian territories. South Africans, after all, had no reason to suppose that the evil system and the cycles of violence that were sapping the soul of our nation would ever change. There was nothing special or different about South Africans to deserve the appearance of the very thing for which we prayed and worked and suffered so long.
Most South Africans did not believe they would live to see a day of liberation. They did not believe that their children's children would see it. They did not believe that such a day even existed, except in fantasy. But we have seen it. We are living now in the day we longed for.
It is not a cloudless day. The divine arc that bends toward a truly just and whole society has not yet stretched fully across my country's sky like a rainbow of peace. It is not finished, it does not always live up to its promise, it is not perfect - but it is new. A brand new thing, like a dream of God, has come about to replace the old story of mutual hatred and oppression.
I have seen it and heard it, and so to this truth, too, I am compelled to testify - if it can happen in South Africa, it can happen with the Israelis and Palestinians. There is not much reason to be optimistic, but there is every reason to hope.
In The Boston Globe , Opinion
October 26, 2007
http://www.boston.com/news
WHENEVER I am asked if I am optimistic about an end to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, I say that I am not. Optimism requires clear signs that things are changing - meaningful words and unambiguous actions that point to real progress. I do not yet hear enough meaningful words, nor do I yet see enough unambiguous deeds to justify optimism.
However, that does not mean I am without hope. I am a Christian. I am constrained by my faith to hope against hope, placing my trust in things as yet unseen. Hope persists in the face of evidence to the contrary, undeterred by setbacks and disappointment. Hoping against hope, then, I do believe that a resolution will be found. It will not be perfect, but it can be just; and if it is just, it will usher in a future of peace.
My hope for peace is not amorphous. It has a shape. It is not the shape of a particular political solution, although there are some political solutions that I believe to be more just than others.
Neither does my hope take the shape of a particular people, although I have pleaded tirelessly for international attention to be paid to the misery of Palestinians, and I have roundly condemned the injustices of certain Israeli policies that compound that misery. Thus I am often accused of siding with Palestinians against Israeli Jews, naively exonerating the one and unfairly demonizing the other.
Nevertheless, I insist that the hope in which I persist is not reducible to politics or identified with a people. It has a more encompassing shape. I like to call it "God's dream."
God has a dream for all his children. It is about a day when all people enjoy fundamental security and live free of fear. It is about a day when all people have a hospitable land in which to establish a future. More than anything else, God's dream is about a day when all people are accorded equal dignity because they are human beings. In God's beautiful dream, no other reason is required.
God's dream begins when we begin to know each other differently, as bearers of a common humanity, not as statistics to be counted, problems to be solved, enemies to be vanquished or animals to be caged. God's dream begins the moment one adversary looks another in the eye and sees himself reflected there.
All things become possible when hearts fixed in mutual contempt begin to grasp a transforming truth; namely, that this person I fear and despise is not an alien, something less than human. This person is very much like me, and enjoys and suffers, loves and fears, wonders, worries, and hopes. Just as I do, this person longs for well-being in a world of peace.
God's dream begins with this mutual recognition - we are not strangers, we are kin. It culminates in the defeat of oppression perpetrated in the name of security, and of violence inflicted in the name of liberation. God's dream routs the cynicism and despair that once cleared the path for hate to have its corrosive way with us, and for ravenous violence to devour everything in sight.
God's dream comes to flower when everyone who claims to be wholly innocent relinquishes that illusion, when everyone who places absolute blame on another renounces that lie, and when differing stories are told at last as one shared story of human aspiration. God's dream ends in healing and reconciliation. Its finest fruit is human wholeness flourishing in a moral universe.
In the meanwhile, between the root of human solidarity and the fruit of human wholeness, there is the hard work of telling the truth.
From my experience in South Africa I know that truth-telling is hard. It has grave consequences for one's life and reputation. It stretches one's faith, tests one's capacity to love, and pushes hope to the limit. At times, the difficulty of this work can make you wonder if people are right about you, that you are a fool.
No one takes up this work on a do-gooder's whim. It is not a choice. One feels compelled into it. Neither is it work for a little while, but rather for a lifetime - and for more than a lifetime. It is a project bigger than any one life. This long view is a source of encouragement and perseverance. The knowledge that the work preceded us and will go on after us is a fountain of deep gladness that no circumstance can alter."
God's dream begins when we begin to know each other differently, as bearers of a common humanity, not as statistics to be counted, problems to be solved, enemies to be vanquished or animals to be caged. God's dream begins the moment one adversary looks another in the eye and sees himself reflected there.
All things become possible when hearts fixed in mutual contempt begin to grasp a transforming truth; namely, that this person I fear and despise is not an alien, something less than human. This person is very much like me, and enjoys and suffers, loves and fears, wonders, worries, and hopes. Just as I do, this person longs for well-being in a world of peace.
God's dream begins with this mutual recognition - we are not strangers, we are kin. It culminates in the defeat of oppression perpetrated in the name of security, and of violence inflicted in the name of liberation. God's dream routs the cynicism and despair that once cleared the path for hate to have its corrosive way with us, and for ravenous violence to devour everything in sight.
God's dream comes to flower when everyone who claims to be wholly innocent relinquishes that illusion, when everyone who places absolute blame on another renounces that lie, and when differing stories are told at last as one shared story of human aspiration. God's dream ends in healing and reconciliation. Its finest fruit is human wholeness flourishing in a moral universe.
In the meanwhile, between the root of human solidarity and the fruit of human wholeness, there is the hard work of telling the truth.
From my experience in South Africa I know that truth-telling is hard. It has grave consequences for one's life and reputation. It stretches one's faith, tests one's capacity to love, and pushes hope to the limit. At times, the difficulty of this work can make you wonder if people are right about you, that you are a fool.
No one takes up this work on a do-gooder's whim. It is not a choice. One feels compelled into it. Neither is it work for a little while, but rather for a lifetime - and for more than a lifetime. It is a project bigger than any one life. This long view is a source of encouragement and perseverance. The knowledge that the work preceded us and will go on after us is a fountain of deep gladness that no circumstance can alter.
\n\u003cp\>Nothing, however, diminishes the fear and trembling that accompany speaking the truth to power in love. An acute awareness of fallibility is a constant companion in this task, but because nothing is more important in the current situation than to speak as truthfully as one can, there can be no shrinking from testifying to what one sees and hears.
What do I see and hear in the Holy Land? Some people cannot move freely from one place to another. A wall separates them from their families and from their incomes. They cannot tend to their gardens at home or to their lessons at school. They are arbitrarily demeaned at checkpoints and unnecessarily beleaguered by capricious applications of bureaucratic red tape. I grieve for the damage being done daily to people's souls and bodies. I have to tell the truth: I am reminded of the yoke of oppression that was once our burden in South Africa.
I see and hear that ancient olive trees are uprooted. Flocks are cut off from their pastures and shepherds. The homes of some people are bulldozed even as new homes for others are illegally constructed on other people's land. I grieve for the land that suffers such violence, the marring of its beauty, the loss of its comforts, the despoiling of its yield. I have to tell the truth: I am reminded of the bitter days of uprooting and despoiling in my own country.
I see and hear that young people believe that it is heroic and pious to kill others by killing themselves. They strap bombs to their torsos to achieve liberation. They do not know that liberation achieved by brutality will defraud in the end. I grieve the waste of their lives and of the lives they take, the loss of personal and communal security they cause, and the lust for revenge that follows their crimes, crowding out all reason and restraint. I have to tell the truth: I am reminded of the explosive anger that inflamed South Africa, too.
Some people are enraged by comparisons between the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and what happened in South Africa. There are differences between the two situations, but a comparison need not be exact in every feature to yield clarity about what is going on. Moreover, for those of us who lived through the dehumanizing horrors of the apartheid era, the comparison seems not only apt, it is also necessary. It is necessary if we are to persevere in our hope that things can change."
Nothing, however, diminishes the fear and trembling that accompany speaking the truth to power in love. An acute awareness of fallibility is a constant companion in this task, but because nothing is more important in the current situation than to speak as truthfully as one can, there can be no shrinking from testifying to what one sees and hears.
What do I see and hear in the Holy Land? Some people cannot move freely from one place to another. A wall separates them from their families and from their incomes. They cannot tend to their gardens at home or to their lessons at school. They are arbitrarily demeaned at checkpoints and unnecessarily beleaguered by capricious applications of bureaucratic red tape. I grieve for the damage being done daily to people's souls and bodies. I have to tell the truth: I am reminded of the yoke of oppression that was once our burden in South Africa.
I see and hear that ancient olive trees are uprooted. Flocks are cut off from their pastures and shepherds. The homes of some people are bulldozed even as new homes for others are illegally constructed on other people's land. I grieve for the land that suffers such violence, the marring of its beauty, the loss of its comforts, the despoiling of its yield. I have to tell the truth: I am reminded of the bitter days of uprooting and despoiling in my own country.
I see and hear that young people believe that it is heroic and pious to kill others by killing themselves. They strap bombs to their torsos to achieve liberation. They do not know that liberation achieved by brutality will defraud in the end. I grieve the waste of their lives and of the lives they take, the loss of personal and communal security they cause, and the lust for revenge that follows their crimes, crowding out all reason and restraint. I have to tell the truth: I am reminded of the explosive anger that inflamed South Africa, too.
Some people are enraged by comparisons between the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and what happened in South Africa. There are differences between the two situations, but a comparison need not be exact in every feature to yield clarity about what is going on. Moreover, for those of us who lived through the dehumanizing horrors of the apartheid era, the comparison seems not only apt, it is also necessary. It is necessary if we are to persevere in our hope that things can change.
Indeed, because of what I experienced in South Africa, I harbor a vast, unreasoning hope for Israel and the Palestinian territories. South Africans, after all, had no reason to suppose that the evil system and the cycles of violence that were sapping the soul of our nation would ever change. There was nothing special or different about South Africans to deserve the appearance of the very thing for which we prayed and worked and suffered so long.
Most South Africans did not believe they would live to see a day of liberation. They did not believe that their children's children would see it. They did not believe that such a day even existed, except in fantasy. But we have seen it. We are living now in the day we longed for.
It is not a cloudless day. The divine arc that bends toward a truly just and whole society has not yet stretched fully across my country's sky like a rainbow of peace. It is not finished, it does not always live up to its promise, it is not perfect - but it is new. A brand new thing, like a dream of God, has come about to replace the old story of mutual hatred and oppression.
I have seen it and heard it, and so to this truth, too, I am compelled to testify - if it can happen in South Africa, it can happen with the Israelis and Palestinians. There is not much reason to be optimistic, but there is every reason to hope.
Indeed, because of what I experienced in South Africa, I harbor a vast, unreasoning hope for Israel and the Palestinian territories. South Africans, after all, had no reason to suppose that the evil system and the cycles of violence that were sapping the soul of our nation would ever change. There was nothing special or different about South Africans to deserve the appearance of the very thing for which we prayed and worked and suffered so long.
Most South Africans did not believe they would live to see a day of liberation. They did not believe that their children's children would see it. They did not believe that such a day even existed, except in fantasy. But we have seen it. We are living now in the day we longed for.
It is not a cloudless day. The divine arc that bends toward a truly just and whole society has not yet stretched fully across my country's sky like a rainbow of peace. It is not finished, it does not always live up to its promise, it is not perfect - but it is new. A brand new thing, like a dream of God, has come about to replace the old story of mutual hatred and oppression.
I have seen it and heard it, and so to this truth, too, I am compelled to testify - if it can happen in South Africa, it can happen with the Israelis and Palestinians. There is not much reason to be optimistic, but there is every reason to hope.
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