In Spirals Goes An Eraser Of Stories

 

            As you have noticed, I’ve been thinking a lot about Israel. There are a lot of things about her that are so different from everything else I saw. I mean, you have a tribe of people that have been exiled for twenty centuries, and they found their way back to the place they’ve left so long ago. They went for centuries without a Country of their own, and they’ve finally built a Country in the exact place of their old Country, that an ancient giant empire, Rome, have destroyed.

            Their tie to the land is Biblical. But here we have to stop and think. You can’t impose the theological content of the Bible to others, of course. So how would we explain the legitimacy of Israel to an atheist? I have to say I have nothing against atheists, as long as they’re decent.

            Here is what I think: a real humanist, even if atheist, knows he can’t just throw away the narratives of the past, as if they were only just “silly fantasies”. Otherwise you are being nihilistic, that is, only seeing the negative in everything. Like when we find Science, which is fantastic, we don’t have to say “mankind has been ridiculously stupid so far”. We would be ungrateful to the men and women who carried the burden of humanity for centuries until we arrived at this better place, where we have democracy and other things.

            I really like the word “humanism”, to me it means being in love with the human being, having compassion for our imperfection and joy for our achievements. Valuing our collective narratives but never forgetting mankind is made of individuals.

Speaking of that, let me digress just for a moment. In the first chapter of the first volume of this book I said some things about education. It was before the attacks and this wasn’t supposed to be a book about war. So I think it is right that I say I do not consider all modern pedagogy as an enemy like Hamas, or they supporters. God, no. It was a totally different trip. I just worried that some theorists may be too romantically in love with the “collective” and I worry that the individual loses space. Imagine if someday someone says it is not desirable that kids produce any texts individually. Some things to think about. We can work it out.

            So, getting back to looking at Zionism by a humanist point of view, imagine that your ancestors, for several generations, dreamed with a country, that they never had in any other place. In every exile in the Old Testament, the prophets told people how beautiful Israel would be one day, after the tribulations. And after Rome destroyed the Temple and scattered the people, generation after generation was persecuted and held to the belief that they would come back home one day.

            And, less than one hundred years ago, people died in gas chambers during World War II, a lot of them hoping that some survivors could live free in a promised Israel that they believed would be established soon. And it was established, and survivors from various persecutions went to live there, and they truly built a thriving country. So the dream of the prophets, the faith of the people, the hope of individuals, was not “silly”, and was not in vain. It worked.

Seeing from this perspective, we see that, just like any atheist can obviously understand and agree with the phrase “everybody should hold childhood sacred”, we can understand why Israel is sacred to every Zionist – a word that simply means someone who believes that Israel must exist right where it is – no matter what he makes of theology.

            But then, of course, there is a counter narrative, that uses the ongoing conflict to tell a different story. The conflict, of course, is real. The pain of the Palestinians is real. But here is how I think the algorithm goes: you see only the pain in one of the sides, not the pain in the other. Then it is easier to make people believe that Israel is with intention of doing harm, and then it is easier to make people buy a false narrative about the past. And you establish the vicious circle.

            Because if we start by acknowledging that there is pain on both sides, not using mathematics to erase the pain in one of the sides, but seeing human pain in both sides, we will see the need to think straight about this long conflict that started as soon as the dream of a sovereign Jewish Country started to become real. We will see that the problem is “coexistence”. If coexistence had worked, there would be no conflict, but coexistence turned out to be an extremely problematic thing to achieve.

            We can see that Israel, from the start, officially accepted the Arab people and their right to live in the land. And they officially took more steps towards peace, made peace offerings when the other side didn’t make or accept any peace offering.

            Now this is where someone says, “the official position is one thing, the real attitudes are another thing.” But if you don’t take in account what people are officially saying, you get into a very nihilistic – and obscure – vision of the World. Even if we are suspicious of politicians, they need support. So if the official position of Israel is of searching a form of coexistence, it means this idea has support and acceptance there.

            Of course an official position that sounds good doesn’t mean that a Country is perfect or has zero people doing wrong, but it tells us something. Take for instance Hamas or any other extremist Islamic terrorist political and military group. They don’t say in their pronouncements that they want to coexist with Jews. In the world they live in, this would be a sign of weakness. So they say openly that the existence of Israel is unacceptable.

            But if we don’t even listen to what leaders of democracies and of dictatorships say throughout History, then History itself starts disappearing into a haze. You only have some pictures and numbers from last week, that may have been carefully chosen by the algorithms of whoever gets to you first, to establish the idea that Israel has bad intentions.

            And as I said, it all works in circles. People talk about the “disproportion” of Israel’s actions because of the number of civil casualties. Nobody is denying the civil casualties or saying they don’t matter. Wars are not good.

            But the leaders of Hamas embed themselves and their military infrastructure among civilians, thus the cost of going after Hamas will be high. Israel knows that, and that’s why, even knowing Hamas’ intentions, Israel wasn’t in open war with them at October 6^th.

            Then twelve hundred innocent Israeli civilians were hideously massacred – is this number too low? – and over two hundred kidnapped. And the only choices Israel had were to go after Hamas or not. And they went. And as modern people calculate their “proportion” idea with second grade math, instead of “necessity” and “two different methods of making war”, people start hating Israel. And – the circle – even not believing when the Israeli Army shows undeniable evidence of the way Hamas uses their people, playing a deadly game with their lives. After a while, even the Press feels free to ignore any suffering on the Israeli side.

            And then, with the climate against Israel, you can start rewriting all History, so that the Antizionist view that has been so popular among intellectuals for decades starts gaining the streets and conquering the “normal” people.

            The idea is that Israel is a powerful colonizer that’s been oppressing Palestine for decades. You can start selling this idea by showing people of Palestinian people being displaced. There were people displaced.

            Well, in the midst of the powder keg that was the World in the first decades of the 20^th century, a Civil War broke in the British Mandate of Palestine between parts of two populations, namely the Jews who wanted to establish a Jewish State there and the Arabs who didn’t want this to happen.

            In 1948 that land was legally divided in two for Arabs and Jews, and a seven nation army tried to destroy Israel, who succeeded in defending herself. As a result of that war, people were displaced. Then, the new Israeli authority dismantled the Israeli paramilitary groups, and was ready to begin a new story. But the people on the other side of the division did not start a new story. They said the displaced people needed to return home.

            Well, the distance between Tel Aviv and Gaza is of 70 kilometers, same distance between Tel Aviv and Ramallah, in the West Bank – or between New York and New Jersey. Well, an equally big or bigger number of Jews had to flee from much much furthermost Arab Countries, and it seems they would gladly accept peace with these countries with it is for real.

            So what’s in New Jersey? What’s in your old home, 70 kilometers from your new one, that you need to stop History and set the World on fire for? College people use fancy language to describe a poor people who needs to “return” to their “old land” – or die, but I don’t think they really answer this simple question. What is it they are looking for as they dream of a land free of Jews?

            A chance of happiness and prosperity that could have been? Well, they have space, and they have money coming from the Arab Countries, Europe and US, and even a lot of aid from Israel. So they could be prosperous if their leaders had ever tried to create something, instead of only attacking.

            Or is it something in that land that is sacred to Muslims? Well, as far as everybody knows, the sacred city for the Muslims is Mecca. Peaceful Muslims can still pray in their Mosques in Israel, but we all know that the land to which they must turn to is Mecca, which remains untouched.

            As for Israel being a powerful colonizer, it’s size is irrisory compared to the huge Arab World. And it’s Gpd, although impressive for their size and natural resources, is half the Saudi Arabia Gpd. So, I would like a college guy to really demonstrate that the ties between Iran and Hezbollah and Hamas are not worthy of consideration, and also to show us all how the incorrigibly evil West have been stealing poor Iran and Qatar for the last century.

              And at the end of the day, if everybody dislikes this War – of course nobody should “like” wars – why wouldn’t we be able to say “Hamas is terrorist and should not exist”?

            And why is the World trying to erase a very simple story: the story of more than a hundred people who were kidnapped 9 months ago, and the whole world knows they are still kidnapped, and a deal for their immediate release should be the single first step in any plan of future peace.

            What could be wrong in returning innocent kidnapped people, that includes babies and young womae, to their increasingly desperate parents and loved ones? If there is any “point of view” that sees a “bad side” in their immediate release, is this the point of view, is this the kind of thinking that will save the world?