When history is being made

WHEN HISTORY is being made, it can rush past and forget you or it can sweep you up, make you want to grab hold of its wings and rush ahead into the future.

That doesn't mean you stop thinking. It's just that suddenly, assumptions that existed even an hour before, or a day before, or even a week before, are gone.

Sometimes there can be fear in these last days of Pompeii, that Samson's of this country will win, that they might decide to say "if I have to live with Plishtim, let my sould die with Plishtim." That, of course, is part of the problem. The religions of our conflict interfere with the ideas of our liberation.

The Moslems' religious problem, in large part is that the People of the Book also became people of the sword, disrupting the natural order of things, becoming demons.

The Jews' problems are well-known, but they, too have their demons, from four millenia of history.

It's hard to give up a demon, and when you have one, you need a divinity. But then history happens, and the future comes.

That's the way it is with new inventions -- the thoughtless think it's trickery, just as new ideas threaten most the people with the most invested in the old ideas.

Arafat was as tricked by the intifada as we were. But history has a way of happening, and you can't turn it backwards. Some will say America is being tricked. Many will think that we're only fooling ourselves, and will accuse others of turning tricks.

Many more will gaze in bewilderment, not knowing what to believe anymore, for when history happens it's like both black and white magic. Like art, it requires the willing suspension of disbelief.

Sadat showed up here, more than once. And Gorbachev -- with the help of some disasters (Chernobyl first, now Armenia; names that mean much to many people here) -- has proven to Ronald Ray-Guns, which is what Reagan was called by the left when he was governor of California, that the Soviet Union is no longer an Evil Empire. Even Begin is remembered fondly. He is the man whose men proudly invented the letter bomb, and used to get them addressed to him as Maestro Begin, who once gave a chance to an Arab to prove he could fulfill his promise.

Perhaps now is the opportunity of the original idea, that this state in its real glory would be a true bridge between the west and the east. This state's existence, on the edge of two civilizations that meet in Jerusalem, with the most ancient history of belief in the equality of mankind before one greater presence, would somehow say to the rest of the world, "national liberation for all, but as Jews we know well how fragile is the human condition."

AN INTIFADA that continues is a protest by the disenfranchised in their own land. But their enfranchisement doesn't mean that we must give up ourown. That's where thoughtfulness comes into bravery.

Others preach preach bravado against the world, national unity for example, as if as long as we are divided between those who see the future in the past and those who see it happening right now, we'll be able to have national unity.

But at the end of this history -- as certain as Sadat must have been that he would one day be assassinated -- is the idea that peace is possible, if we are ready to believe in our strengths. If Arafat proves that he can do what he seems to be saying he can do -- control 90 per cent of the intifada -- we can help him control the other 10 per cent.

In other words: We can grab ahold of the events, and propel them forward or we can fall back, arms folded tight across the chest, letting the river sweep us along rudderless.

Worrisome is the idea that having already learned that war now divides us, there are thjose eager amongst us to prove that peace, too, divides us.

Meanwhile, for much of the world -- at least those parts of the world that is paid attention to by people who still care what the world thinks of us -- this is the Christmas season, which demands goodwill.

That's what the rest of the world is waiting for, a sign of goodwill from Israel. It's already received Arafat's. We have the right to think about our gift. But this is the season to give it.

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