I can’t sleep. So I feel called to take a second look, really the 102nd look, at this Israeli/Palestinian situation this time by putting myself in the skin of a Jewish person. Not the superhuman “above-the-fray” person that exists mostly in the realm of spiritual idealism, but the human one, the feeling one, the one that’s about like me.
Okay, so now I am of a race, a culture that only 60 years ago was subject to the worst atrocity imaginable. Solely because of a trait over which I have no control—my blood, my ancestry—I was sought out for extermination. I was helpless, powerless, feebly and futilely consumed by the hate-filled bestiality of perverted humanity.
For centuries prior at different times and places, my forbears were similarly despised, falsely blamed, chased, burned at the stake or otherwise degraded on account of this same ethnicity.
But the holocaust made manifest the millennia of abuse known only through the history books. There are survivors, there are pictures and there are indescribable shudders of horror that anything like this could ever possibly happen again. God forbid we, me, my people—or any other strain of humanity—be so defenseless, so vulnerable to this treatment. By GOD’S will, by all that is true and just this should not, WILL NOT, happen again.
I begin to see that strength and self-reliance are crucial to preventing even the possibility of this occurring again. A safe land is the first step, a bastion of freedom for all—yes, especially of my race—who wish to come, or if the situation ever demanded—must come. And to insure protection against this past suffering I, we, will do anything. Hopefully, we can do it all with consistent justice and in accord to our highest nature, but when necessary we will do anything—ANYTHING—to insure our safety.
Yes, my people may have committed some acts against our highest nature that in other eras we would have decried, and yes, we may be doing them now. But the sin of these actions PALE in comparison to the sin done to us and to what we will prevent from ever occurring again. If we ever go down again it will never be from being weak, unprepared or unguarded. And who could blame us.
So in Israel, with help from others sure, but by OUR hands, by OUR will, have we forged this new land, this new security. Others in the region still seek our destruction; try as we might to get along. Why can’t they see, why can’t they feel, why can’t they empathize? Regardless, if they can’t and won’t refrain from harming us, we must stand ready to insure our safety. For this we have armed, we have trained, we have girded ourselves--boys, girls, men, women. Ourselves alone, for who stood up for us before, and on whom can we depend again? No one but ourselves, alone.
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When I step back into my own skin I see it and understand it, and by damn, before I let anything like what happened before I’ll commit--or allow others in my behalf to commit--about ANY lesser atrocities.
And that is part of the tragedy, for if I can’t see more perspective—in this case that I/we are not endangered as we were for centuries before--then our actions that we think so essential to our preservation will on the contrary build resentment to our people and possibly, ironically, lead to a renewal of contempt against us—based only on blood and ancestry, yet again.
As I’ve long said—the situation is one where everybody is right. But the blood won’t dry till we (both sides) say we’re wrong.
Respectfully, Rfd 7/25/06
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