MadameBastet-Firing-Neurons

Forty Miles of Hell and No End in Sight

"We will have peace with the Arabs when they love
their children more than they hate us."

- Golda Meir, Founder and Former Prime Minister of Israel


Dear Golda,
Hello from 2006. It has been 28 years since
you left this planet, left your beloved Israel.
Oh don't worry, it's still here...indeed, not much
has changed I'm sorry to report.

I always loved the above quote - you were indeed
a wise, wise leader in many ways. I've always wondered
though...in your heart of hearts...in the deepest, darkest
hours of any doubts you may have had...did you ever
dare harbour the thought that perhaps this idea, this great
sentiment went both ways? That you, Israel, would have
peace with the Arabs when YOU loved your children more than you
hated the Arabs?

I am not a Jew, nor an Arab, so what do I know about
these things. I am a human being though, and what I know
is that in the year of your death, 1978, Lebanon existed in
a state of civil war for 12 years. Since your death there have
been more bombings, more killings, more terrorist acts, and
we are a much sadder world for all of it. What I do know is the history
of your people. Perhaps not as well as you, but I am somewhat
a student of history and I know, I know. Why the Jews? Did you
ever wonder that? Because they are the chosen ones? Why have
the Jews been persecuted since the dawn of time? The place you called
home is still rife with tanks and missiles. It was once a defenceless
desert, a land the Greeks called Mesopotamia, the land between two rivers.
The Cradle of Civilization. The place once thought to be the Garden
of Eden. Oh but if it was ever paradise between the Tigris and
Euphrates, it has become the very antithesis of that now. I know
about the cruelty of Nebuchadnezzar and the destruction of the Temple.
I know about Emperor Titus and the bringing of the spoils of
Jerusalem back to Rome. The Crusades have been burned into
my mind and of course, the story of Moses and Pharaoh. And the one man who
took all of humanity's ills upon himself, a Jew, who died on the cross
for what we did, what we will not do, what we held, what we let go,
what we found, what we've lost.

Your people wandered the vast desert, this I know. Lost, tired and hungry.
And then, the horror of all horrors, the Holocaust. Six million
Jews. We have seen it, we have read of it, we have been taught
to never, ever forget. And yet I know we cannot really know
what the nightmare was really like. I can stare at the gaunt,
haunted faces at Auschwitz, with dead eyes and skeletal frames,
and I know I can never even begin to imagine that kind of Hell.
I do not know what it is like to be persecuted for being who I am.
For my religion, for my ethnicity, for the colour of my skin, for
who I am. I do not know.

I do not know what it is like to not have a country, a home.
For as much as I despise what my government is doing now,
I was born into a country that not only existed, but exists still
as some kind of bizarre superpower. I have always had a home,
a geographical and psychological idenity of sorts. I am an American,
whatever that means, for better or worse. It has little to do with
ethnicity or background or religion. It is more a state of mind, an idea.
But I know who I am, I know where I've come from, where my people came from and I know I have a place called home. I never had to suffer the
wretched indignity of being displaced from my home; I never had to
wear a mark on my clothing identifying myself. I was never torn from
my mother's arms and forced on a sweltering train bound for Hell.
I was never raped, starved, beaten, separated from all whom I loved
dearly. I was never torn asunder from the only home I ever knew.
I was never forced to work in the icy snow until my hands bled, to
sleep on hard, cold wood with lice and vermin and the stench of death
my most familiar companions. I was never forced to stand and fear
for my life on a daily basis; to beg God for mercy, to deny God, to curse
God, to have numbers burned into my skin until the day my earthly
body shut down and my soul crept off this mortal coil.

I know that your people never really did have a home. I don't
pretend to understand why that is. This tragedy in the Middle East has
perplexed me for 39 years; I suppose I could live to be 100
years old and still not understand all of its complexities and
contradictions. It is a battleground that has perhaps seen more
blood than any other place on earth. For I know that once upon
a time, a people called the Sumerians created what we call
civilization between those two rivers. And they created words,
and wheels, and ships and monarchies and societies and cities and
yet they fell to another group of people, the Akkadians. And like
dominoes the land would see the rise and fall of so many peoples;
the Akkadians giving way to the great Babylonian Empire, and
Hammurabi with his ingenius law code. Even Babylon fell to the
cruel and paranoid Assyrians, who lusted for power that took them
so long to obtain. But despite their citadels and defences, the Babylonians
rose again. The Tigris and Euphrates must have run red; rivers
running blood red with the deaths of so many innocents...for what?
Land. Resources. Dominance. Power. Lust. Greed. Religion.
Unable to overcome their lizard brains, they slaughtered each other
and your people too with blades of copper and silver and drank toasts
in cups of repousse gold. They built great cities out of azure blue bricks
and gateways of grandeur; hanging gardens for homesick wives and
towers so high they crumbled under the weight of men's pride.

After the war, the mantra. Never again. Never again.
The work camps, the gas chambers, the destroyed cities
and homes and decimated families...the piles of broken bones
and stench of the crematorium. Never again. The world understood.
It turned away for far too long but in its shame and regret, it
whispered as well, "Never again will these people suffer this
nightmare, this hell."

And three years after the end of the war, Israel was born.
But it was a cruel birth; it was necessary but it was more than the
birth of one nation. It was also the death of another. The story of
Solomon and the two women who both claimed to be the mother
of one baby, had a somewhat happy ending. Threatening to cut
the baby in half, Solomon discovered the real mother, who stepped
forward to save her child. The baby was spared; it wasn't divided in
two. For if it was, what then? Both women would suffer, and moreso
the real mother.

That is how I see the birth of Israel. Israel came about in 1948 by
splitting the land of the Palestinians in two. And death has been the
result of that birth ever since. Death and destruction. The Palestinians
were forced from their homes, stripped of their possessions, or forced
to leave with whatever they could carry with them. These people had
lives, and families, and a history there. And yet one day, it was decided
by other governments, that they should leave. I cannot imagine that
horror. And so the war began. The Palestinians would not give up
their land, their history, their pride easily. Never. Never. Never.
It is a familiar word, no? The Israelis were more powerful. So many
Palestinians reduced to nothing; so many dead, so many ending up
living in refugee camps. Why? What for? A displaced people. This was
their holocaust. Did you ever wonder what that must have felt like?
Does the story sound familiar?

Out of the horror, grief. Unimaginable grief. What are these people
fighting for? Land. Resources. Religion. Pride. Dignity. What is
rightfully theirs. But who is right? And so, some years, a battle of
inches. And some a battle of miles. Some, as in 1967, a battle of days.
And mothers buried their children in graves dug from the same soil.
And children wept over dead parents with the same salty tears.
Out of the bitterness and the rage grew hatred. Hatred so strong, so
unbelievable, so insane it became terrorism. All conscience has been
lost. All reason, disappeared. Now there is nothing left but the fervent
desire of the annihilation of your beloved country.

Do you see it? Do you Golda? Can you see what has happened?
The very thing that happened to the Jews....Israel and the world
was guilty of doing to the Palestinians. There is more than one tragic
story to be told here. Israel's fully justified mantra of "Never again" has
turned however, into a war mentality. The fear has been replaced
by hatred as powerful as that of the Arabs. And now, here we are
in the year 2006, and the hatred continues to grow.

Please, let me update you on the current situation. This week,
Israel has begun what might turn out to be the worst conflict
the Middle East has ever seen. The terrorist group Hezbollah
supposedly kidnapped two Israeli soldiers; a terrible act to be
sure. Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation, I know. I do not
support terrorist organisations. Israel's response was swift
and merciless. Hezebollah, which plays a role in Lebanon's
government, would not get away with this. And so Israel rolled
out the tanks, the war planes, the long-range missiles. Instruments
of death my country no doubt helped to procure for them, if
they were not given to them by America outright.

And war has all but been declared on not only Hezbollah but
on Lebanon, and sadly, its innocent citizens. Airports runways
have been blown up. Naval blockades have formed. Fuel depots
burn in the night. Defence Ministries explode. The Beirut-Damascus
highway burns with hellfire. It's only 40 miles. It's a small
geographical conflict. For now. Israel accused Hezbollah of sending
missiles into its country. Missiles hit Haifa - the farthest missiles
have gone yet. Are you impressed? Missiles are going
places never dreamt of in your lifetime! Suburbs in Lebanon are
being targeted; but to be fair, Israeli planes dropped leaflets and
told people to get out. To leave their homes, their lives behind.
And so we see them. In cars, on foot, carrying children and all
they can in old suitcases. And we see the ambulances. And hear the
sirens. And see rivers of blood running through the streets.

Television pundits are bantering the words World War III
around with nary a care. Because you see, we've got a few other
problems. Iran wants to make nuclear weapons. North Korea is
shooting off missiles into the Sea of Japan. I wouldn't even begin
to know how to explain September 11th to you.

I am not a Jew. I am not an Arab. I am a human being who sees
hatred so fierce that I fear no peace will ever truly exist in your
country, or the countries around Israel. Golda, neither the Jews
nor the Arabs love their children enough. You have all chosen hatred
of each other over love of your children, and of a future for those
children. You have condemned them, and perhaps all of us in the end
to a Hell that mere words cannot describe. Never foret, never forget.
What was it Golda, that we are never to forget? Hatred? For the cycle
has been born and when it dies, I fear we will all die with it.

So the world goes round as it always has and the lesson of the day
seems clear: love is not strong enough; hatred reigns supreme.
This is what is, in 2006. And what will come, remains to be seen.

Photo Credit: CNN - Fuel tanks burn at Beirut International Airport