Dialectics of History: Germany-Israel
EDITORIAL, 31 May 2009
#64 | Johan Galtung
“I feel uneasy. I love him, but how do I know how he is?” The councilor said, “Watch how his father treats his mother. This is his key model. Unless challenged to the contrary this is what he takes for normal, natural. If you have problems with that as his model, rather challenge it now. When you are bound by the marital contract it may be too late”. Wise words.
Individuals are more imprinted by their family of origin, negatively and positively, than they care to know. There is a transfer of individual behavior from one generation to the next, like there is a transfer in national behavior from one dominant nation to the next. What else should we learn from, if not from our experiences, individually or collectively?
Except, unless we are able spiritually to transcend model experiences badly in need of improvement; aiming at a better marriage than our parents ever achieved, at better inter-nation relations than the horrors history had in store for us.
Israel, inhabited by a nation seeing itself as much above average in human intelligence, has fallen head first into this trap. The Gaza massacre some months ago was a true copy of the Nazi German attack on the Warsaw ghetto (click to watch) –immortalized the postmodern way through a movie, The Pianist (Palestinians, for heavens sake, make as many superb movies as possible, the language of our time). A basically defenseless people, encased in a ghetto, makes some symbolic defense–and brings down the hell administered by the master. Beyond a military operation to close tunnels or exits, collective punishment for “insurrection”–the Anglo-American term for opposition to their god-given right to divide and rule, conquer and possess. And sheer extermination: the fewer of them, the better.
What is now being prepared by the Netanyahu-Lieberman regime (and Russian Israelis in general) is another true copy of Nazi Germany. The oath of loyalty to the State of Israel “with a Jewish character” at the threat of loss of citizenship gives the fifth of the population of Arab-Muslim background emigration as the only alternative. The 1948 Naqba pushed out by various means, including killing 711,000 Palestinians, 85% of those residing in the territories of the self-declared Israeli War of Independence (copying the USA, against the UK). A continuation of Naqba by legal means if this becomes the law of the “land of the Jews” who actually lived all over the Middle East, only a small part of them in the Holy Land.
Naqba. The Horror. Nobody except clowns like David Irving (who got a good laugh turning little stupid Norway upside-down by his mere presence last week) denies the shoa, but questions numbers and ways of killing. But Netanyahu-Lieberman now want to rule out references to Naqba making them punishable by law.
They want to deprive the Palestinians of their trauma while clinging to their own shoa to the point of forcing some countries–by the threat of sanctions–to make a “denial” (read “doubt”, questioning) punishable (like by that other country, Austria, putting the clown in prison).
Few are so conscious of traumas, glories, myths, as the Jews, evidenced by a calendar filled with collective memory, mostly trauma. Elevating their own, even to White House celebration, under the present White House Chief of Staff, this past Easter. Depriving Palestinians of the Naqba is like depriving Jews of Babylon and Egyptian captivity: spiritual, collective murder. Spiritual fascism, by legal means. And a desperate absurdity, paving the way for the decline of Israel.
Try to deprive a nation of its identity and you reap confusion, unbelief in the first run. And then comes a hatred finding its violent outlets, not in needlepricks like small suicide bombs and some rockets from North and South–the most cumbersome and unlikely method being nuclear-tipped missiles from Iran, but the real thing. The Israeli response will be massive “transfer”, using the myth of Jordan as Palestine– like Germany first pushed the Jews out, to Poland, Warsaw– fulfilling the program of the unmentionable Naqba.
Careful, Israel. You are very close to overstepping the borders where even the status quo West has some stoplights. Nobody believes you as a beacon of human rights and democracy in the problematic Middle East when you break all human rights and laws of war, in bello and ad bellum, and your democracy is a meager electoral choice between generals as if democracy is a military staff meeting. Gradually trade will wither away. Diplomatic relations may go from empty to zero to negative. And sooner or later more and more countries will recognize diplomatically a Palestine with no known borders, like once they did with Israel. Measures such as those contemplated will make Palestinians transcend their bitter quarrels. With 15,000 Jews leaving Jerusalem annually, maybe 80% secular, we are heading for even more polarization. Admittedly, dreams of a Middle East Community recede below the horizon.
How do they dare? One reason: because Jews for Obama launched the Illinois state senator in 2004, and won, financed by Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Excelon (Zeit-Fragen, 18/05/09), committing him to Israel and Wall street, one might assume. As long as it lasts. A world-empire and a regional-empire in tight embrace, on the way down. Playing cards with a fragile world.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 31 May 2009.
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