An Imperfect Union

Ari Shavit makes clear in My Promised Land that Israel was born with a flaw that it chose to ignore much as our forefathers did while forming our union. The contradiction of Israel is that a people that suffered discrimination, pogroms and the ultimately the holocaust finds itself doing the very same to another, those who inhabited Palestine. It's a contradiction that poisons they very soul of those who can't help but see Gestapo tactics keeping down persons considered inconvenient. If only they would go away and not remind Israelis of their crime against humanity. But no they won't so that a country imperfectly formed of democratic ideals has to fight with it's demons of Hitler Germany. This conflict with principals and actions is not sustainable, just as slavery was not in the United States. But does Israel require a civil war too horrible to think of to resolve this existential flaw?

From Shavit’s book it appears the original Zionist desired a land where Jews were welcome, a homeland for a people who had none. The original Kibbutzes were messianic yet surprising secular in their determination to make a land hospitable and ultimately prosperous. Palestinian neighbors watched in awe at the transformation that these foreigners wrought and a harmony between people developed through commerce. This harmony was tested by those who let jealousy and fear overtake them so that people were murdered and maimed unjustly. These injustices then hardened both sides so that more injustices were committed culminating in the United Nations declaring that Palestine be separate. This decree gave the Jews the opportunity to practice the Pogrom of driving Palestinians out of their homeland to create a Jewish State.

Shavit's describes a summer as a reservist guarding a Palestinian prisoner of war camp. A camp where fellow soldiers would make midnight raids into the ghetto and gather up suspects given up by acquaintances tortured by their comrades the day before. This trauma inflicted on the conscience of good people brutalizes their sacrifice. Who is the enemy? The enemy is us! Yet as sensitive as Shavit is to this debilitating truth he seems as unable as his brethren to see the way out.

An eye for eye is the rough justice of biblical times which is an unfortunate heritage of the middle east. Possibly the Gospel lesson of turning the other cheek would be more helpful. For a people fleeing one horror to create another is a mortal sin because they understand the sin best. The solution is Jesus like as taken from the Lord's (Christian) prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Israel requires a Mandela to convert it to a secular multicultural state. A leader who would compensate every encroaching settlement in Gaza with a re-settlement of Palestinians in the their ancestral villages. The ruins of Hulda, a Palestinian village mentioned in Shavit's book, would be a good start. Along with property a nascent commerce would begin a process of justice based on harmony and not racism but transforming attitudes on both side formed by years of injustice will take time and forgiveness. We in the United States know it better than any other country as we still try to resolve the racism that slavery engendered.

Israel's current two state solution does not alter the antipathy of both sides and the onward march toward Armageddon. Only the formation of successful and prosperous Palestinian re-settlements heals the soul sufficiently for Israel to ask for forgiveness. And it's only with the respect to ask for forgiveness that can throttle back the antipathy of both sides to a point where enemies become friendly, if not friends. A Middle Eastern truism is the friend of my friend is my friend, and the enemy of my friend is my enemy. It's the truism required to diffuse the bomb that is Palestine.