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LadyEllen -> RE: disproportionate, much? (12/31/2008 6:09:18 AM)
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The representative of Hamas in Lebanon was on the news last night; the most interesting thing to come out of the interview was that “the satellite link is failing” and the interview was cut short when he made a statement that the Israelis had learned well from their former oppression at the hands of the nazis and were now applying such knowledge against the Palestinians.
There are big differences of course. The nazis sought nothing less than the extermination of European Jewry and on the way to that end made their victims slave labourers for as long as they could be useful, working on projects for which ethnic Germans and others were unavailable due to service in the armed forces.
But in many other respects, the man from Hamas draws a useful parallel. The Third Reich shares with the Jewish State a foundation built on religious and political identity which is defined just as strongly by who belongs and who is excluded on the basis of ethnicity.
We may of course make value judgements about the adequacy of the religious and political foundation in each case, but we cannot deny that each has merit to its adherents and each promotes a notion of inherent superiority next to others which are thereby rendered inferior in the minds of those adherents.
And we may of course disagree with the notion that Jewish identity is defined as much ethnically as by any other factor. In doing so though we must remember the frustrations of British Army officers dealing with the aftermath of Bergen-Belsen; survivors having been nursed back to comparative health they were meant to return to their countries of origin, but refused, stating that they were not Polish or French or Dutch or whatever but were Jewish and would only go to their own country in what was then Palestine.
What is difficult to deny however is that this combination of ethnic identity and religious/political identity is a dangerous thing indeed. It is a cause for division – in fact its very purpose is to produce division, and from there it is a short step to it becoming a cause for hostility towards others based on the conviction of its own utter righteousness, and for hostility from others who may react or even be acting on the foundation of their own peculiar version of the same framework of identity.
We see the same mechanism at work all over the world wherever the monotheistic model of the Abrahamic faiths has influenced the people. For ultimately it is this monotheistic model which is the root of such thinking, bringing with it as it must the notion that there is only one valid mode of being, thinking, speaking and doing, and leaving all others as inferior at best, evil at worst. The nazis, with their “ein Reich, ein Volk, ein Fuehrer” fall into this model too.
And so too do the Christians and Islamics, albeit with the distinction that these two having crossed ethnic and even cultural lines over the course of their histories, they are less prone to the influence of the ethnic elements but make up for this in terms of their enhanced religious and political divisiveness. The short lived but incredible success of the nazis in the Third Reich was due to the revolutionary combination of such religious and political identity drawn from Christianity with the notion of Germanic as an ethnic identity. The growth of modern Islamic fundamentalism from primarily Arab origins is also interesting in this regard.
These conclusions however do not bode well for the situation as regards the ongoing conflicts surrounding Israel. For on each side we have factions defined according to religious and political identity, combined with ethnic identity and determined that there is only one valid mode of being, thinking, speaking and acting. On each side we have factions which are utterly convinced of their own inherent superiority and utterly convinced of their righteousness and ultimate victory. On each side we have factions that see their neighbours as inferior, wrong and evil.
It can be held from this that there can be no solution to such antipathy save for either the removal of one faction or the removal of the thought forms which promote and produce the divisions and antipathy between them. The building of high walls and the confinement to opposing camps of each faction only serves to strengthen the divisions and accentuate the confrontation, as indeed would any so called “two state solution”.
There can be only one solution, a single and secular state in which a multi-cultural model obtains as elsewhere in the world, with all citizens being entitled to the same rights and freedoms and subject to the same obligations and responsibilities, regardless of where and whom they worship or don’t and regardless of politics and regardless of ethnicity.
Would this be an easy thing to accomplish? Not at all - there would be resistance from both sides and likely bloodshed once more. However there is bloodshed without end as things are, so the calculation must be as to a comparison rather than an absolute. This way at least, there should be an end in sight.
E
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