Where the Victims Become Perpetrators

We live in times of horrific contradictions.

Holocaust Memorial Day starts from sundown May 5th to sundown May 6th. We should all be contemplating the horrors of the Shoah and still, be shocked at how one group of humans can be so intensely cruel to another. Yet, there is “shock and anger” at people who demonstrated at Auschwitz in favor of the ceasefire in Gaza; The Gaza invasion that has claimed over 34,000 lives and maimed over 100,000 Palestinians AND continues without let.

Jews, the one people who should be foremost in standing against genocide. Yet, Israeli Jews and their Blind supporters, the very descendants of the Shoah, are glorying in the Gaza genocide being committed in their name.

Germany, the one nation that committed the genocide of the Jews in the name of Germans, is one of the largest providers of the tools of genocide against Palestinians today.

USA, the nation that beats every other nation on the head with its pronouncements of “Human Rights”, “Freedom” and “Democracy”, is the single largest provider of the tools of the genocide in Gaza.

News media that tout their staunch support for “Truth”, “Accuracy” and “objectivity”, are so biased against the Palestinians that they barely pay any attention to news that may show Palestinians in sympathetic light and DEFINITELY, no attention to the evils being committed by Israelis.

The term, “Anti-Semitism” should be taken to mean hate or bias against Jews, but it has been weaponized to stop ANY criticism of anything Jewish; criticism of Israel, of what Israeli Jews are doing to Palestinians; even the term “Genocide” has become Verboten and calling for a ceasefire is taboo; BOTH are termed as “Anti-Semitism”.
“Anti-Semitism” has been so consumed by emotional inflation that it has become meaningless even as it is being used to mean everything.

The October 7 attack on Israeli Jews by Palestinian resistance groups in which 1,200 people (not counting Palestinians of course) were killed and over 200 taken captives is still mourned and vilified. Yet, the same mourners don’t have a word of sympathy or pity for the Warsaw-like razing of all of Gaza in which over 34,000 Palestinians (70% children and women) were killed and continue to be killed; not a word about the deliberate creation of Misery, the likes of which the world has never seen before.

Like the Jews, Palestinians are doomed to be mourned after the fact, not a word of support DURING the genocide.

Is there a Path to Peace in Israel/Palestine?

How can a One State of Israel/Palestine work?

Why not a Two-State or a Confederation?

There is no “solution” to work on until there are leadership changes on both sides and new leaders come in who are more interested in seeing the “Other” as humans rather than as people with whom the choice is to kill or be killed; leaders who are more interested in a greater nation than they are in their own greatness and ability to be seen as leaders. Leaders who are willing to see the pain the “Other” feels and are willing to work to heal the pain, not just in their own people, but among the other people as well.

Each “side”; Jews and Christian/Muslim Palestinians have experienced great pain and remains deeply suspicious of the other side, knowing full well that if given half a chance “They” will slaughter “us”. We must realize that the pain is measured, not in piles of bodies, but in the depths of the minds; that it is the Mind that maintains the fear, the suspicion and the hate, it is the Mind that makes coexistence impossible. We may not agree with how a side refers to its foundation of Fear, whether it is the endless string of Pogroms leading to the Shoah of the Jews, or the endless attacks and dispossessions leading to the current Shoah of the Palestinians, but what we must agree on is that a lasting Peace can only come from a change in the perception of the “Other”.

This is where leadership comes in because when leaders decide to change the perception, people feel safe in going with the change no matter how horrible the past may have been. The leaderships have to show that identities are not based on religion but on the humanity of each other because only after the divisiveness of religious identities are set aside, can the people see each other as equal humans and fellow brethren.

Foreign interference also needs to change. Currently Israel is being plied with unquestioned and endless money and war material by Western countries. All this does is feed the Jewish existential fear of annihilation; in effect, feeding the very fears that make peace impossible. The money and the weapons may make Israelis feel “safe” (how safe is a nation whose people constantly carry guns and has to occupy and kill people?), but it also creates an incentive to keep the minds shut and not look for peace. Peace, in a situation where one has taken over the lands and properties of the “Other”, means that the injustices have to be accounted for and that in turn, means “giving up” what one has. Peace means that absolute power and absolute impunity can no longer exist, that power and rights must be shared equally. Difficult as it may appear, Western nations must make their support and aid conditional to to definite, measurable, changes in attitudes of Israeli leadership. At the same time, similar pressure must be applied to Palestinian leadership that currently exists to maintain itself in utter disregard for the Palestinian people.

It is a most difficult but not an impossible obstacle to overcome but it must be overcome if people and their children in Israel/Palestine are to live as the brothers and sisters that they really are.

But Peace is not a shadow that cannot be caught. History has proven again and again, that yes, Fear and Hate are easy to ignite and can be maintained very easily with catastrophic results, but Peace can also be achieved if a leadership is willing.

For hundreds of years, Britain, France, Netherlands, Spain and Portugal have been at each other’s throats, waging wars that cost millions of lives and uncountable amounts of money, yet today, they are allies and neighbors so friendly that they barely recognize each other as different nations.

Germany fought two major wars with European countries that devastated Europe, yet today, they are all part of a single unit (except for Britain which marches to a different beat altogether). The Germans committed genocide of the Jews, slaughtering millions of them as if they were less than insects. Yet today, Germany is the staunchest supporter of Jews.

The United States fought genocidal war in South East Asia in which millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians were butchered, yet today, the US has a close relationship with all those countries.

Japan carried out genocide in China and Korea and was responsible for millions of lives lost during WWII but today, Japan has good relations with all of its former adversaries.

Pakistan fought a brutal, genocidal civil war which resulted in the independence of Bangladesh (East Pakistan), yet today, the peoples of the two countries are close in their mutual relationships.

Being from Pakistan myself, I remember when Bangladesh was liberated, the leaders of West Pakistan declared the Bangladeshis to be traitors, deserving death and that Pakistan would never recognize them. Then there was a terrible hurricane and massive flooding that took thousands of lives in Bangladesh. Bhutto, Pakistan’s leader at the time, declared that he had already sent some ships loaded with food and supplies to aid the devastated people of Bangladesh and that the Bengalis were our brothers and it was Pakistan’s duty to help. Almost immediately, people in Pakistan started to agree that they were indeed our brothers (and sisters) and the hostility disappeared. The people of Bangladesh opened their hearts to the people of Pakistan in spite of the devastating genocide.

One major objection raised by many Jews in Israel as well as outside is that Israel must remain a Jewish nation with its Jewish character and that a nation with equality for Palestinians and Jews would destroy its Jewish character; it would be tantamount to the annihilation of the Jewish state.

Setting aside the fact that the very premise of such an objection is racist, one has to deal with the genuine fears it raises. Perhaps the best way is to illiterate again, examples from history.

The American civil war was a war for the way of life for the Southern states…a way of life that included the slavery of an entire people based on their race. After the war, slavery was abolished and today, the South still exists, the evil “way of life” is no longer and people of all races live well together.

South Africa was based on White supremacy and here too, the African people were suppressed and exploited and the country had a “White Character” for several hundred years. After the overthrow of the White rule, Blacks got parity with the Whites, there was no “annihilation” of the Whites. Today, South Africa is a much admired leader of African states.

Yes, there are still some animosities among people from the different countries but they have been relegated more to family “traditional” rather than communal or national frictions.

In spite of the disparate positions of Israeli Jews and Israeli Palestinians, they do work together and cooperate with each other. About a quarter of all the doctors and healthcare workers in Israeli hospitals are Palestinians. They and their Jewish colleagues routinely work together to care for Patients who may be Jews, Christians or Muslim. This is a situation of major trust, literally a matter of life and death and their cooperation shows how a path to peace is within reach.

Leadership can be achieved because there are plenty of people on both sides who want peace and who wish to live together as equal brothers and sisters; people who desperately want their future generations to experience what it is like to live in an environment of friendship and love, rather than in the climate of hate and slaughter. Such people will rise to lead as soon as the foreign support for the hate-mongers is replaced by support for the peaceniks.

Utopian? Unrealistic? Perhaps, but so far the “realistic” and the “pragmatic” paths have shown nothing but misery, insecurity and death, what is there to lose?

Sultan Saladin; Christians, Zionists and the Middle East

I just finished reading a 400-page book given to me by a friend, “The Life and Legends of Sultan Saladin” by Jonathan Phillips. It is an excellently written book that I strongly recommend to anyone curious about the period of the Crusades; the depredation by the invading Christian armies and their conquest of parts of what are now Lebanon, Syria and Israel, including the conquest Jerusalem and slaughters of the residents, by the invaders.

This entire history is written around the life of Saladin or, Salah Al-Din Ayubi the Kurd, as he was properly called. The author shares his deep knowledge of Saladin and the Crusades, with the reader in a very entertaining manner, making it difficult to put the book down.

After finishing the book and thinking about it, I came to understand the latent hostility of European nations, against Arabs in Particular and Muslims in general. The book also presents insights as to why the Middle East is highly suspicious of Westerners and how the antagonism against the Jews of Israel may have started.

Christian Europe wanted to slow down Muslim conquests of Europe and alo to capture the Holy City, Jerusalem. Popes offered dispensation and promised expiation of all sins for those who joined the Crusader armies or gave of their wealth to the cause. In order to work up support against the Infidel Muslims, Muslims were portrayed as evil, deceitful, rapacious butchers who would cheerfully take all the Christian women, enslave the children and slaughter the men in the name of Islam. They were characterized as Satan’s workers who would erase Christians from the world.

The Christians eventually captured Jerusalem and held it from 1099 to 1187 A.D. when Saladin managed to expel the Christian armies and retake Jerusalem “for Islam”.

The paths of the Christian conquests were brutal; thousands of Muslim and Jewish and many Christian men, women and children were slaughtered after Christian conquests of cities, the few who may have survived, were either taken as slaves or fled ahead of the armies.

Saladin emerged first as the Sultan of wealthy Egypt, his popularity grew because of his promised the free Jerusalem from the Christians and allow Muslims to enter and pray there. May Muslim princes and kings agreed to join him. Those who did not, were generally paid massive sums to join into the fold; Saladin believed that Muslims fighting Muslims did not show well towards the goal of freeing Jerusalem for Islam.

Saladin’s generosity towards his fellow Muslims and other minorities who joined his courts was legendary, he built a great reputation for bringing justice and peace and got sharing wealth with the people. Even on the battlefield, he showed great courtesies and chivalry towards his enemies. Even the Christian prisoners were treated very well… on their way into slavery or ransom as was the tradition of the times.

King Richard led the Third Crusade but failed to take Jerusalem and had to return to England. Although he never met Saladin face to face, he had many diplomatic exchanges with him and developed great respect for the man who was so badly portrayed in Europe. The impressions and experiences of King Richard and his entourage, with Sultan Saladin were the foundation of the complete change of how Europe looked upon Saladin and his respect and legends multiplied.

The upshot of all the Christian invasions of the Middle East was that psyche of people there formed a permanent image of Christians of Europe; that they wanted to take their lands and slaughter the people. On the other hand the psyche of Christian Europe developed a disdain for the Muslims; that they did not deserve the lands they lived in because those lands belonged to the Christians by virtue of Jesus being born there.

These images still thrive.
It does not help that during the 19^th and 20^th centuries, the European colonial period, events took placed the sealed the image of the conquering Christians, into the minds of the people of the Middle East. The British General Allenby marched into and took Jerusalem, in 1917, in 1920 French General Gouraud marched into Damascus a reportedly kicked Saladin’s grave and said, “Nous revenons Saladin” (“Saladin, we have returned”). The Russian-French-British division of the Levant resulted in the Sykes-Picot agreement cemented the impression that the Christians were in complete agreement to take Arab lands for themselves and dispossess the inhabitants.

The final blow came with the Balfour declaration in which the British gave Palestine to the Zionist Jews under a secret document the exploded on the scene later. The fact that Lord Belfour also said that the rights of the locals were to be preserved, did nothing to mollify the Palestinians or the neighboring Arabs; Jews were now seen as the front edge of a Conquering Christian plan to take control of the entire Middle East. The brutality and the dispossession the Zionists exhibited only proved that they were in reality, the face of the rapacious Christian Europe.

I have tried to represent 400 pages of excellent writing into under 1000 words, I am certain I am not doing justice to the clarity and detail and certainly not to the captivating words of the book. I highly recommend people with any interest in the back history and its connections to today, should read this book.

Bombs, Hate, Jews and Muslims

Jewish organizations are still reeling from a round of bomb threats against their schools and centers this is the fifth round of threats just this year. Over a hundred Jewish gravestones were vandalized in Philadelphia, not even a week after a similar event on Missouri. This is of course most seriously viewed by Jews in the US and around the world and it should also be viewed seriously by any sensible person because Hate is now on a speedy path upwards.

The Trump administration has made it better for people to hate openly, the Bush administration started it after 9-11 and the Obama administration did nothing to slow it down, in spite of their wonderful words against discrimination and persecution, especially against Muslims.

Jewish organizations have a job to do in order to help stem the rise in hate-fueled violence; they need to stop fueling the hate themselves.