A Land Without a People for a People Without a Land

I am in pain.  This diary will not be a reasoned presentation of fact.  I do not want to make a reasoned statement of fact, even if I could, which is doubtful.  

The very title of this diary is not a reasonable statement of fact.  

It is the slogan which has been used for well over a century to justify the “supposedly” reasonable Jewish takeover, invasion, acquisition, domination of Palestine.  Palestine is seen as “…a land without a people…”, an empty space which the Jewish people, the “…people without a land…”, can claim as their own and set up the state of Israel.

The FACT that this mode of thinking continues into the 21st century is a profound tragedy and a frightening indication that the human species might become extinct.  This mode of thinking, of seeing others as less than human, less important, non-existent even, is the basis of war and injustice.  

Einstein refered to this mode of thinking when he said that — with the splitting of the atom, everything has changed save man’s [sic] way of thinking and thus we drift toward unimaginable peril —   to a space where we must ask along with the Palestinian poet:  

          Where shall the birds fly after the last sky?

                                                by Mahmoud Darwish

                                                1941– 2008  

Please fly on beneath the fold…                

This mistaken thinking has been the dominant mode of thinking throughout the millenia of our history.  What is the motive?  Underlying the motive is ignorance.  Immediate motives are various.  In the case of the Jewish acquisition of Palestine, the motive is very similar to the motive operative in the Third Reich, lebensraum, living space. Lebensraum was one of the motivations for Hitler’s incursions into states to the east. This is an interesting example of how the sins of the fathers are visited upon the next generation.

Examples of the tendency to consider “the other” as less than human, as insignificant and virtually non-existent, follow us like shadows across the stories and terrain of our history.  The native Americans, the indigenous people, were seen as less than the invading pure white man [sic].  Africans were seen as less than white, colonial Americans.  The Jews were seen as inferior to the Aryans by Hitler.  In any war, the “enemy”, the “other” is always seen as lesser and named as such.  So we have faught wars against barbarians, demons, gooks, geeks, slants, rag heads, naked savages, terrorists, drug dealers, and such on and on.  And the “others” have waged war on us with similar derogatives.  

And so, we drift toward unimaginable peril.  Evolution demands we move past these divisive ways of thinking.  Evolution demands we learn to respect ALL humans as humans, as brothers and sisters in the human family who are mutually engaged in a growing process, in learning to grow to the next stage, just as an individual learns and grows.  The growth process has moved from what has been primarily individual to a collective growth and learning.  And this does not mean the elimintion of the individual, but the creation of a field where the individual can reach its highest, most creative, most unique expression.

Another aspect of the evolutionary process is involved in the understanding of, and ability to break automatic programming.  We all know how patterns of abuse are passed on from one generation to another.  Thus we hear about many “criminals” who were brought up by abusive parents or in abusive situations and, therefore, grew up to continue the abuse.  We’ve usually heard about this in relation to individuals.  But here, in these Israeli actions we are seeing this phenomenon on a collective level.  For at least 60 years, from the 1948 massacres and displacement of Palestinians (who were “not supposed to be people on this land”) to the 1967 wars, to Sabra and Chatilla, to Jenin, to today’s assault on numerous unnamed civilians, we witness what the Nazis did to the Jews being visited upon the Palestinians by the very Jews whose ancestors were so brutally and abused and massacred by the Nazis.  When I think of Jenin, I think of the Warsaw Ghetto.  This is unacceptable.

So I give my praise to the Shministim, the young Israeli citizens who are refusing to be conscripted into the IDF to fight against their fellow humans, and are being jailed in their teens for their resistance.  Their resistance is in line with Einstein’s admonistion that we must change our way of thinking, we must change our way of life.

…du musst dein leben andern…”

                              Rilke          

“You must change your life.”  We must change and learn and grow.  We cannot go on continuing to kill “the other” because this will only lead to the death of us all in the likely extinction of the species

Thanks for reading.  I really needed to rant here; I must speak out against this wrong-headedness.