ISRAEL AND “PALESTINE: AN ABSURD DRAMA…..LOUIS RENÉ BERES
ISRAEL AND “PALESTINEâ€
NOT TRAGEDY, BUT AN ABSURD DRAMA IN MANY ACTS
24 February 2010
Credo quia absurdum. “I believe because it is absurd.†Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains officially on record in favor of a Palestinian state, but only if the new Arab state is “demilitarized.†Naturally, any such notion of demilitarization will be anathema to the Palestinians and their supporters, and has already been rejected by all of them.
There is still no place on earth called “Palestine.†When a reborn Israel was authoritatively created by international treaties and international law in 1948, it did not replace “Palestine,†nor did it prevent Palestinian statehood. Nonetheless, most of the world, including U.S. President Barack Obama, prefers to think otherwise. Indeed, wherever one looks for informed commentary about the Middle East, a falsely symmetrical condition is usually alleged or implied. To wit, much of this commentary speaks of a protracted conflict between Israel and “Palestine.â€
If this were the “only†pertinent falsehood here, Israel and its few real allies could still deal effectively with the attendant problems. Yet, certain “moderate†Palestinian factions still pretend to favor a “Two State Solution,†and Jerusalem, endlessly pressured by Washington, still goes along with the deception and charade. It follows that an authentic state of Palestine may soon come to fruition. This 23rd Arab country could quickly bring about de jure as well as de facto equivalence.
A Palestinian state should be prevented at all costs. Palestinian statehood would be inherently unstable. Above all, it would lead, in short order, to major new violent assaults upon Israel. Cumulatively, these assaults could have existential outcomes.
Genre counts. Israel, after the creation of “Palestine,†would await a tragic fate. But because the Jewish State will have been more or less actively complicit in such creation all along, a different dramatic image would then more accurately reflect Israel’s geopolitical reality. Like the minimalist poetics of Samuel Beckett, this entire “play,” however seemingly tragic, would also be preposterous. The great Romanian playwright Eugène Ionesco had labeled some of his own work a “tragic farce,†and this particularly odd juxtaposition would likely be the most suitable description of Israel and “Palestine.â€
More about genre. Both Israel and the Palestinians have long been engaged in an elaborate pantomime. Somehow, both have managed, by immense clamor, by vast rhythmic repetition, by ceaseless reliance upon platitudes, to make genuine thinking impossible. Now, there is great danger that a continuously elaborated fiction of Palestinian statehood, a concoction governed by an inscrutably perverse and destructive logic, will soon become historical fact.
Time may be instructive. The early Greeks did not share the monotheistic Jewish understanding of One God. But both the Greeks and the Jews did subscribe to the perfectly reasonable idea that all human beings and societies are obligated to ward off disaster as best they can. Saadia Gaon included freedom of will among the central teachings of Judaism, and Maimonides affirmed that we humans stand alone in the world, “…to know what is good and what is evil, with none to prevent him from either doing good or evil.”
Free will, all Jews understand, must be oriented to life, to the blessing, and never to the curse. For Hellenes and Hebrews alike, the binding charge was to strive in this mandated direction of self-preservation through intelligence, and also through disciplined acts of decision. In circumstances where such striving was consciously rejected, the outcomes, no matter how catastrophic, could never rise to the manifestly dignified level of tragedy.
Genre elucidates. The ancient vision of “High Tragedy,” as it has evolved from fifth century BCE Athens, is always clear on one crucial point: The victim, says Aristotle, is one whom “the gods kill for their sport, as wanton boys do flies.” It is this wantonness, this caprice, that makes tragedy unendurable to human reason and sensibility.
With the creation of “Palestine,†Israel’s unavoidable lamentations would be largely self-inflicted. The preposterous drama, as it is now still unfolding, is at best a disturbing page from Beckett or Ionesco, from the recognizable genre of the absurd. There is certainly no hint of any cathartic element drawn from Aristotle, Aeschylus, Sophocles or Euripides. At worst, Israel’s tragic fate is being torn directly from the pages of irony and farce, a demeaning form of comedy that relies principally on contrivances of plot, and on inherently low levels of credibility.
In a farce, matters often end badly except for a last-minute rescue via so-called deus ex machina. No such rescue could possibly await the increasingly imperiled State of Israel. Understood in explicitly Jewish terms, we should recall here the words of Rabbi Yanai: “A man should never put himself in a place of danger and say that a miracle will save him, lest there be no miracle….” (Talmud) Perhaps Israel’s current prime minister does not expect a miracle, but then upon what precise manner of calculation does he now construct his farcical and U.S. mandated policy of “two states living peacefully side-by-side?
In Judaism, there can be no justification for deliberate self-endangerment, and in classic Greek tragedy, there can be no deus ex machina. In tragedy, the human spirit remains noble in the face of inescapable death, but if there should remain anything genuinely tragic in Israel’s incremental capitulations to “Palestine,†it lies only in the original Greek meaning of the term – “goat song” – from the dithyrambs sung by goatskin-clad worshippers of Dionysus. In every other sense, Netanyahu’s plan exhibits behavior that would, however unwittingly, desecrate Israel’s Jewish heritage and its survival obligations.
Oddly, Prime Minister Netanyahu now proceeds with the acceptance of a “Two State Solution,†but makes this acceptance contingent upon a “demilitarized†Palestinian state – a contingency that is inherently contrary to legal sovereignty. Moreover, his “moderate†Palestinian “partners in peace” are still openly dedicated only to a single Arab state. Israel does not even exist on the “moderate†maps of Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah, an organization now receiving military training from U.S. forces in the region.
Abbas’ (Abu Mazen) intentions for Israel are jurisprudentially identifiable as Crimes Against Humanity. Like Hamas, Fatah has plans for Israel that constitute genocide according to authoritative and unassailable standards of pertinent international norms. Why hasn’t this unhidden fact entered into the declared preferences of President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu?
Mahmoud Abbas’ only solution for the Israel-Palestinian conflict is the all-too-familiar “final” one. Aristotle understood, in his Poetics, that a tragedy must elicit pity and fear, but not pathos. Aristotle identified the tragic with “good” characters who suffer, in part, because they commit some error (hamartia) unknowingly. Prime Minister Netanyahu, on the contrary, has continued his country’s march to disaster not because of any such error, or even because of wantonness or caprice, but because he steadfastly clings to U.S. directed myth and self-delusion.
Israel is in a tragic dilemma, a situation initially created by Rabin/Peres, sustained by Netanyahu in his prior tenure as prime minister, , heightened by Barak and Sharon, and potentially to be “finalized†by Netanyahu in his current term as prime minister.
A Prime Minister of Israel is still complicit in plans to codify jihad-centered rule over essential and core sectors of the Jewish State. Yet, Holocaust denier Mahmoud Abbas was mentored by Yassir Arafat, and Arafat, in the words of Gustav Hendrikssen, professor emeritus of Bible Studies at Sweden’s Uppsala University, “is the heir of Hitler and the Palestinian Covenant is a more disgusting document than the Nuremberg laws.” Significantly, when this self-described “aged and bitter Gentile” recalled his reactions to awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to “one of the most despicable figures in our century,” he saw in that event the drama not of tragedy, but of pathetic farce: “When I saw the Prime Minister of Israel and its Foreign Minister standing next to this murderous clown,” says Prof. Hendrikssen, speaking of Rabin and Peres, “I had to think again about the meaning of the term “friend of Israel.'”
A Christian for whom Israel had always been a “divine message,” Hendrikssen confirmed our sober understanding that Israel’s ongoing surrenders lack even the stuff of tragedy. If, after all, “…the Jewish people digs its grave with its own hand,” it is a coming death without dignity. “Even the devil that dances on its grave is of its own making.”
Soon, if “Palestine†is allowed to go forward, with or without “demilitarization,†each and every soldier of Israel will be asked to fight future battles that are already lost. Fawning upon their own doom, Israel’s leaders might still refuse to recognize that the spheres of reason in this world are terribly limited, or that Barack Obama and the American Jewish Establishment will not save them. For the latter, which is certainly well-intentioned, Israel will remain a quaint diversion, a proper place to send periodic donations, and a fine place to visit with the grandchildren. For the former, the underlying and essential drama of Israel’s redemption, the very raison d’etre of the reborn State of Israel, is pretty much beside the point.
Under Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israel is now entering the final phase of an unwitting self-parody. Fortunately, the last act has not yet been played. Israel can still put an end to the “tragic farce,†but only if its people and government can finally understand why they have been ingathered in the first place.
Citizens of Israel should have no illusions. There is nothing about “Palestine†that will save them from the fury of enemy terrorism or catastrophic war. On the contrary, as should have been learned long ago, the smell of carrion only inflames the vulture. Faced with an Israel already weakened by “Palestine,†Iran could likely calculate that a surprise attack upon Israel, sometime in the nuclear future, would now be cost-effective.
For Israel, interactive effects or synergies between a Palestinian state, and other more immediately existential threats, could bring a genuinely tragic end to the increasingly absurd drama.
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LOUIS RENÉ BERES (Ph.D., Princeton, 1971) is the author of many books and articles dealing with Israeli security issues and international law. Born in Zurich, Switzerland, he was Chair of Project Daniel, and is Strategic and Military Affairs columnist for THE JEWISH PRESS.
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