|
|
|
5763: Articles posted from September 2002-September 2003 Get the real situation in Israel every day.
The New YearBy Robert Rosenberg
September 6, 2002
From the bloody lands series by Silvia Rosenberg Jewish tradition says that a new year begins with 10 days of soul searching, climaxing on Yom Kippur with a day of atonement. Cleverly (or wisely), the tradition says that those 10 days are to be spent apologizing to all those you slighted over the past year, and forgiving all those who apologize to you. That's clever, because when Yom Kippur rolls around, and it's time to speak directly to God about your sins, seeking forgiveness, there's no point in wasting his time with your problems if you haven't done anything to solve them yourself. The tradition is also clever about what actually transpires between you and God on Yom Kippur -- you don't get handed down forgiveness, but by admitting to all the sins, and atoning for them, you're cleansed and you can start the new year with a clean slate. As far as I can tell, it's pragmatism, more than morality, that guides this tradition, which requires a decidedly un-Enron balancing of the books for the year so there's some measure of reality to how the next one begins. Maybe that's why it's called in Hebrew, heshbon nefesh, which literally means an "arithmetic of the soul," a phrase I used once as the title of a collection of articles written between the outbreak of the first intifada and the first Independence Day in Israel with an intifada raging. I'm not religious. On the contrary, and for all the usual reasons -- disgust with the self-righteous taking of what purports to be God's name for the vanity of strident politics aimed against the "other"; horror at the vast wealth accumulated by religious establishments when poverty (of the body as well as the soul), reigns around them; and a personal discomfort with the idea of belonging to any organization that claims the moral high ground but like any bureaucracy must spend most of its efforts on internal power struggles. But there are traditions that are appealing -- and I don't mean having gefilte fish on the holiday feats dinner table. And this tradition of apology and forgiveness is one of those in Judaism that is appealing, because it prescribes a relatively simple rule for being a decent human being, and instead of saying that it's the moral thing to do, it says that it's the pragmatic thing to do to make the coming year better than the outgoing one. It would be easy to now launch into a rant about how the Israelis have a lot of apologizing to do to the Palestinians, as well as a lot of forgiveness -- and vice versa. It would be easy because it is so obvious. Instead, the question becomes why they aren't doing so. Presumably, it's because both sides are now so entrenched. The Israeli chief of staff, Moshe Ya'alon, foolishly speaks of "victory" over the Palestinians, as if it is possible to vanquish a people's aspiration for independence, and on the Palestinian side, the foolhardy confidence of true believers among the Islamic fundamentalists make a mockery of the vast majority of Palestinians' desire to get on with the business of settling he conflict so they can have normal lives. But I think it runs deeper than that. The mistakes made by Israel and the Palestinians are not simply from the past year. They are mistakes that if acknowledged would undermine so much of what both societies have claimed to stand for over the past 30 to 50 years, that asking them to stand up and say, sorry, forgive me, I forgive you would be like asking them to cut off their hands, or worse, their heads. There's no need to delve now into a list of the mistakes. Suffice to say that Israel's, at least since 1967, has been to believe that it could sustain the occupation of Judea and Samaria forever, and the Palestinian mistake was not understand that terror only can work against non-democratic societies where rumor, instead of information, is the currency of knowledge in the street. If the Palestinians had chosen Gandhian or Martin Luther King Jr. nonviolence, they would have had a state years ago. But at the start of this new year, 5763, believe it or not, there's some room for hope, even though it won't come from Sharon or Yasser Arafat. It comes from the growing recognition on both sides that the status quo cannot last much longer. On the Israeli side, the hawks are hoping for an American assault on Iraq, like some kind of deus ex machina that will change everything in the Middle East -- though nobody can predict what will happen on the day after Saddam Hussein disappears, most likely like Osama bin Laden. A year from now, I personally fear if the U.S. undertakes its anti-Iraq mission, people will be asking if Saddam is alive or dead, just as now they ask that about bin Laden. On the dovish side, even if Amram Mitzna does not win the Labor Party primaries, by merely showing up he's forced that party's current leadership to recognize that it must come up with an alternative to what it has been doing, if not saying, for the past two years. On the Palestinian side, the grass roots leadership of Fatah is talking openly of a new leadership, more pragmatic, modern, and most of all, connected to the feelings of the people on the street and in their curfewed homes. Those people want to know their kids can go to school. They want to be able to go back to work. And on the sidelines, most recently in Istanbul, establishment figures who are not in power, but have reach into the corridors of power on both sides, have been meeting, talking, hammering out plans not only for a peace deal, but for what will happen afterward, after the apologies, the forgiveness, the cleansing atonement for the past, to be able to move into the future. One significant result of some of these contacts is the draft agreement formulated by ex-Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon and Sari Nusseibeh, the president of Al Quds University. They are confident, rightfully, I believe, that it is something the people on both sides can live with. Maybe that's why they call it The People Vote.
|
!!! News Now !!!  Peace 
Pleasure  Bookstore Contact About Archive Donate or use Paypal  Peace Buttons The Middle East at Amazon 
|
Buying at Amazon through Ariga helps keep this site going. Since January 2001, Ariga visitors have bought more than 1,000 books and other items from Amazon. Books were bought in the following subject areas:
Yiddish ||
Middle East Affairs ||
Military Affairs ||
Religion ||
Hippotherapy ||
Women's Issues ||
Pop Culture ||
Cooking ||
American Issues || Click over to Amazon's Top 100 Best Sellers
© Ariga 1995-2003. For republishing rights please contact the author of the specific article on this page. Permission is granted to link to this page.
© Ariga 1995-2003. For republishing rights please contact the author of the specific article on this page. Permission is granted to link to this page.