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As for anti-semitism (that inaccurate phrase--there a Semites who are not Jews), I'm wondering if it was wise to create a country based on race and religion. Hitler tried to base a country on the white race, and look what that resulted in. And every country that has been based on one religion has oppressed members of other religions, and often made war on religious grounds. Preference for one race or religions ALWAYS stirs up trouble because warmongers cannot resist it as a way of gaining power. A secular state seems to be the only path to tolerance, justice and peace. If Israel had been set up as a mutlicultural experiment, like the U.S., with strong lines drawn between religion and the state, I wonder if it would be in a different and better position today. It would have a different and possibly much better history vis a vis Islam and Islamic peoples, and would be an attractive model today for Islamic countries that were trying to modernise.
I'm also thinking of ancient Alexandria (Roman empire era) which was run by the very secular and pro-learning Ptolemaic kings (Alexander the Great's generals), who laid down a policy of complete tolerance of all religions and fostering of education. Jews prospered in Alexandria. They had special protection there, and were important scholars in the Alexandria Library (the center of all learning in the ancient world). It was only when the Roman Empire started crumbling (4th-5th centuries AD) and the 'Christian' patriarchalists and powermongers were on the rise that the long tradition of an open, secular city devoted to learning was finally destroyed. And the Jews were the first to suffer--with pogroms in which their property was stolen and they were driven out of the city. The Roman Prefect tried to stop it (early 400s AD), but he was powerless to protect Jews or Pagans, by then, and Christian dissenters against intolerant 'Christian' patriarchal rule were also targeted. (This is when the Gnostic gospels were burnt--the oldest gospels that reveal a more open-minded, egalitarian religion--when the Alexandria Library was destroyed, and when its wonderful philosopher Hypatia, who was a bridge between the Pagan and Christian religions, was skinned alive by 'Christian' monks, on order of the bishop of Alexandria.) (415 AD.)
Jews and tolerance (and a good life for everyone) have always gone together historically. Yet Israel was set up as a Jewish state with preference for one racial group of Semites, and has seemed to act in promotion of that one religion and that particular race. I know Israel is a democracy with civil rights, but I'm talking about the general trend, what it is known for, and what its policies tend toward. It is undeniably a Jewish state, and a militant one. It's no wonder that the Arab/Islamic peoples within it and surrounding it are so hostile. They feel a cultural affront. They feel despised. And this may be at the heart of hostilities that have grown so big and ugly now, they are nearly impossible to sort out--it is like a squabbling family with injuries that go back many generations, that just keeps yelling at each other about past injuries and cannot reconcile.
Post-Holocaust, it's understandable that Jews would want a safe place, and they have every right to be where they are (as much right as Arabs and Islamics do--it's the birthplace of the entire race of Semites, and of both religions). And Jewish militancy is also understandable. Why wouldn't they feel beset and in danger? They were, in 1948, emerging from a history of one thousand years of oppression--the worst oppression that any group has ever suffered, all at the hands of 'Christians' in Europe (the early Islamic empires were much more tolerant toward the Jews). I just wonder why they didn't remember Alexandria, and the values not just of mutual tolerance, but of positive celebration of cultural differences, under a benign secular authority.
I rather think it was mostly the western powers who were motivated by greed for oil and by war profiteers, and who were already, even then, in the post WW II world, plotting the end of their own democracies and the rise of the Corporate State. They encouraged rightwing militancy in Israel, and funded it. It's true, there were problems in founding Israel--the Arab sheiks opposed it, and moved against it, militarily. THEY didn't want a democracy established in their midst! But there were also democratic desires among Islamic peoples. For instance, Iranians took the opportunity of the post WW II world, to establish a real democracy in Iran. But instead of fostering that democracy--and creating an ally for Israel--the U.S. and Israel smashed it to pieces, deliberately, and installed the horrible Shah of Iran, in 1954, who inflicted 25 years of torture and terror on the Iranian people. How much better off Israel would be now, if it had split from the west on that matter, and supported Iranian democracy! Just imagine the sort of Alexandria these two powers--Israel and Iran--COULD HAVE created, if they had joined forces?
I also think that the attitude of Jewish militancy, funded by western war profiteers, has to some extent created Islamic fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is the last refuge of frightened, bullied people, and it is easily used by powermongers to manipulate them. So we now have the 'patriarchalists' in Islam--the mullahs, the sheiks, the arms traders--manipulating young men whose only sense of dignity comes from being superior to their wives, and from taking up arms against the "west," all calling the shots in Mideastern Islamic societies, with their ire focused on Israel. And we have an openly belligerent western power--with the most devious, bloody-minded, greedy leaders imaginable, not even tempered by sincere democrats and peacekeepers--pushing for Armageddon in the Middle East, for their own greedy ends.
I wish Israel could turn back the clock and start over.
I heard three young Israelis interviewed on the radio yesterday (young tech workers), and every one of them both supported the current bombing of Beirut and invasion of Lebanon, AND expressed real despair that Israel would survive. They sounded in many ways BEATEN. I tend to think it was their native good sense--not stated, but felt deep down--that the only ally they have left in the world is the rickety, ill-motived, fascist Bushites in the U.S.--a regime that is loathed by 70% of the American people. Further, a recent poll of Americans showed EIGHTY-FOUR PERCENT opposed to U.S. participation in a widened Mideast war. The young Israelis' position on the current assault on Lebanon is understandable, given their current circumstances. (They feel they are dependent on militarism for their survival--they are very afraid.) But their despair that their democracy and their country will survive militarism is their deeper wisdom. The Bushites do NOT believe in democracy. (They hang out with Saudi sultans and bin Ladens!) Israel--which could have been the modern Alexandria, the center of the rebirth of learning in the Middle East, the place of tolerance and cultural diversity--chose the wrong path, egged on by war profiteers, and is now allied with fascists, who use bigotry and hatred to maintain their power and to write phony narratives of their "electoral" triumphs. It is a tragedy.
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