THE TEMPORAL SALVATION OF THE JEWS
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, was invited to speak at Columbia University in September, 2007. In his comments, Ahmadinejad posed the question to his American audience of why the Palestinians, a people of the Mideast, should be punished for the Holocaust that was perpetrated in Europe.
While the local media commented on the event, an answer was not offered to Ahmadinejad’s question. Nor have I read a reply to the question elsewhere in America. There has been no reply because to do so would reveal the raison d’être of Israel, which everyone would rather ignore and simply hate the Palestinians and by implication all Muslims. I have the intellectual independence and temerity with which to explicate the question.
(With the recent re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran, however accomplished, the answer to his question becomes more urgent.)
After World War II, there were millions of persons in Europe displaced by the Nazi beast. Among them were hundreds of thousands of Jews. The problem thus presented to the victorious Allied Powers was how to resettle these persons, especially the Jews.
While the Allied Powers did not want the Jews to be slaughtered, neither did they want masses of them to be resettled in their countries. Anti-Semitism was rife in the U.S. (as in all of Europe) until sometime following the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. (I know this from personal experience, as an undergraduate at that time. Some persons disliked the fact that I had a Jewish roommate for my second semester in the dorms. A date who was Catholic objected to my taking her to a party at a Jewish fraternity. There were other incidents.) Some Jews were allowed into western nations, a few scientists, the well-connected and the lucky.
At the same time, Zionism, which had been developing since the 19th century, was clamoring for a traditional homeland for the Jewish people, as an immediate result of the Holocaust and the melancholy history of the Jews of the Diaspora following their expulsion from Judea in 70 CE by the Roman Emperor Titus.
At the same time, the Arab Muslim peoples were disorganized and powerless. The Ottoman Empire, known as the “sick man of Europe,” the last political structure of the Muslim world, had collapsed as a result of WWI and its alliance with the Germans. The Caliphate was abolished by the Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk in 1924.
The resettlement of Christian persons displaced in Europe was a quantitative problem. The resettlement of the Jews was a qualitative one. Since the western nations did not want masses of Jews resettled in their countries, since the Zionists thought the time had arrived for a homeland in Judea, and since the Arab Muslims were disorganized and weak, the Jews were allowed to settle in Palestine under the British mandate. (Some options were presented for having the Jews migrate to another part of the world, but were rejected.) The Allies had other concerns, anyway, namely containing the Soviet Union and its communist ideology.
Therefore, we have seen what has happened, ---all the bloodthirsty mess in the Middle East, as the Palestinians objected to being forced from their land because of the failures of Europe, and took up arms to reclaim it. I understand that hindsight is perfect, but foresight on the part of the leaders of the western world in this issue was absolutely zero. They were stupid. They allowed it to happen because of their ignorance of and contempt for the Muslim peoples, to say nothing of their willful ignorance of basic human psychology. (I would suppose that a mathematician, with a general knowledge of history, psychology and of comparative culture, could have demonstrated with a formula the course of events in the Middle East.)
The tragic mischief caused by allowing the Jews to reestablish a revanchist state in Palestine was foreseen, and prophetically. H.G. Wells, in his work The Outline of History, said that the return of the Jews to Judea from the Babylonian Captivity was an error; that the Jews had returned to live on a highway and then complained that there was no peace.
I know that Wells was a notorious anti-Semite, but his words should be examined for their veracity. (Wells’ anti-Semitism was not unusual for his time and place.) The edition of his book that I have is the January, 1930 reprint of the original copyrighted in 1920. Wells made the statement in his very popular book before WW II and the Holocaust had occurred!
Wells was also an atheist and was unimpressed by claims of mythological irredentism, as am I. A fatal example of irredentism emotionally charged with mythology was the Lebensraum of Nazi Germany. Or, we could term it reactionary nationalism, as it affected the pathetic attempt of the fascism of Mussolini to recapture the glory of the Roman Empire. (There are other examples of reactionary nationalism in history, murderous and misguided, near in time and remote.)
Thus how much more of an error was the return to Judea of the Jews after the Diaspora and Holocaust? How much less peace could be expected on the same highway?
Therefore, the reason for what the Muslim world considers the punishment of the Palestinians for an event in which they did not participate is explicated.
The question thus answered demands a resolution.
The prospects for Israel are perilous in the extreme, despite its superficial military superiority. First of all, the country receives an annual $3.5 billion dollar subsidy from the U.S. Without the subsidy, Israel’s continued existence would be problematic. Israel is a revanchist state founded on revenge and represents a misinterpretation of history. The development of revanchist states is wretched, at best. I will mention the Third Republic and the Second Empire in France, the Weimar Republic and, most recently, Kosovo. (“Revanchism” is both a descriptive and a moral term.) It is against the interests of the U.S. to support Israel in opposition to the native Muslim peoples of the region, Arab, Iranian and Turkish. (The Iranians are the ancient Persians, you should recall, and a people to be reckoned with, ---and who, incidentally, allowed the first return of the Jews from exile in Babylonia.) Such support cannot and will not last indefinitely. It is as if, in the Mideast, the Israeli tail is wagging the American dog. The enemies of Israel and of the Jews have gotten stronger because of the foundation of a Zionist state, as Hezbollah, Hamas and Iran attest. The existence of Israel, in fact, has provided the impetus for a resurgence of the Muslim peoples. That giant is awakening and thundering on the earth. The Israelis, because of laws regarding the destruction of property of the families of terrorists, are committing slow ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. This is becoming true to such an extent that some are calling it a “Palestinian Holocaust.” There could never be a two-state solution because the Israelis would not trust the Arab Muslims and would demand that Palestinians become governmental or statist eunuchs, caged in Bantustans. The Israelis, out of fear, want the Palestinians to become castrated, voiceless and tailless like what is done to irascible dogs. That will not happen. The Palestinians will never cooperate in their own emasculation, never become whipped dogs. Some of their politicians may weaken and accept an inferior status, and if so the people will rebel and form other groups in opposition. This is the reason for Hamas. The problem of the rapidly increasing population of Arab Israelis is enough to stagger the imagination. The Israelis may have to carve out a “rump-Israel” from within their territory to manage them, and the temptation to kick it would be irresistible.
Israel does not have a future. Or, a future for Israel would force the Israelis to commit an endless series of atrocities upon the Palestinians. The bloodshed in the Middle East cannot continue indefinitely without an occurrence of an enormity. (I am not the first to suggest it.) The conflict, further, to my personal understanding, has become less of a politico-territorial one and more one of the bloodthirstiness of the human psyche, displayed in both the Palestinian and Jewish peoples. They may both enjoy the bloodshed they inflict, in despicable compensation for past indignities. An enormity that immediately comes to mind would be for the Palestinians to set off an atomic bomb in Jerusalem. As horrible as that would be in all its ramifications, if the Israelis would explode nuclear devices to secure themselves from the Palestinians, or from their brother Muslims the Iranians, ----but the mind stops at such a prospect. It would mean the end of the Jews as a people, because of universal loathing.
There must be a resolution to such a bitter and bloody contretemps.
I have always had a Jewish friend. When I was growing up in a small town in Northern New York, the family doctor was Jacob Grumbaum. I got my polio shot from him. Dr. Grumbaum was a refugee from the Nazis. He was Austrian, “mit der jowls,” as is said jocularly of such persons. The good doctor did not have children. (His wife was rarely seen in public, as she was emotionally impaired by the events in Nazi Germany.) My father had died when I was eleven years old, and there was a question about my future. After I had completed a year of college, Dr. Grumbaum offered to send me to medical school because the town needed an ophthalmologist. He had more confidence in my intelligence than I did for myself, at that time. (I did not take that offer, unfortunately so I had occasionally concluded, as my interests were different.) He has been dead for a long time, and his wife, too. I thank him publicly, after all these years, for his concern for my welfare and for his humanity. I wish we could have discussed psychiatry together, which was of special interest to him, but my young life after university was chaotic. I did not often visit my hometown.
There was a family named Levine in my town who owned a clothing store. During the Great Depression and into the post-World War II era, anyone could get what they needed on credit whatever their circumstances or creditworthiness. I went there with mother, and delighted to see my feet in the fluorescent machine used to display shoe size. The members of the family died and slowly moved away, and the store became derelict and debris-strewn, and was eventually razed.
I bought my first suit from Stan N. at his men’s store, just before entering college.
At university, as I mentioned, I had a Jewish roommate, Mike S. my second semester, as my original roommate had burned out with course overload. The brothers of the Jewish fraternity on campus used to hold their meetings in our room while I studied and minded my own business. And so, if they were planning to take over the world, as an anti-Semitic saying claimed at the time, they did it right under my nose. That is an old attitude, though, as Jews are no longer thought of as being strangers plotting against Christians.
Before the above occurred, there was Ira G., from Long Island. Ira wanted to be a dentist, but was insecure in his ability to do the course work. His dorm room was a few doors down from mine. Ira discovered a card table I had set up in my room for extra books, and would study there. (I was a few years older than most of the freshman students because I had worked for two years on the St. Lawrence Seaway to earn money for college. I was viewed as a sympathetic older brother.) I could not dislodge Ira from my little card table. It was his lucky study site. He would burn the midnight oil long after my first roommate and I had gone to sleep. Ira became a fixture at my corner card table, and occasionally would burst out in Hebrew chant after bouts of study to relieve his stress, as he had been a cantor in his synagogue. The most difficult course in the curriculum when I was an undergraduate was Biology 101. Passing it was necessary for Ira G. He studied ferociously for it. As a result, he got a 97 on the first test. It was a considerable achievement, as the rest of the marks in my biology section started in the low 80s. (I got an 84, which I believe I remember was the second highest mark.)
Ira’s success on his first biology exam did not bolster his confidence. For the semester final, Ira studied even harder and longer. As a result, on the day of the second exam he could barely focus his mind for lack of sleep or even see to read the questions. He was “strung out,” as was said in those days. He got a 45 on that exam, and was devastated. Ira decided to return to New York City and be with his parents for their emotional support, and later entered Long Island University. I do not know his subsequent life. Young people rarely hang onto relationships of that sort and barrel full blast through their lives.
At the beginning of my sophomore year, I met a couple, two young sociologists. He was a Rumanian Jew, Martin N., and was a graduate student a few years older than me. His wife was a few years younger, and they had gotten married in a rush of having found each other as intellectuals at the University of Texas, in Austin. We had many discussions of topics of the day, and as a result I knew what to expect from the Vietnam War when I was drafted after graduation in 1961. They were good friends, and we became a threesome from political, cultural and personality rapport. I saw them in New York City where I moved after my military tour of duty was finished. I loved my friend’s wife, Carolyn, from an intellectual family and not Jewish, ---but that was a long time ago.
I met Tema S. at university. Tema was tall and had thick, black, curly hair, was shapely with a fair complexion, and had a narrow Semitic nose. She was extremely intelligent, and wanted to get a Ph.D. in philosophy. The guys used to tease me about how it felt being with a woman who had an IQ of 150. One night at a party in an apartment in a separate bedroom, Tema stood up on the bed, took off all her clothes, and asked me if she was beautiful. Of course she was, and I told her so with ardor. We had plans, with some others, to go to Israel and live in a kibbutz. Tema got her Ph.D. in philosophy, but then did not stay in the field. She died in 2001.
At that Jewish fraternity party I took a date to, along with her girlfriend whom she was visiting and another woman and a couple of guys I knew from classes, that I mentioned above: She was blonde and was a nursing student at a Catholic college nearby, and would not stay at the party. I had to take her home. She was a very attractive blonde woman, a “real head,” as was said then, and someone I had thought I could be serious about. As a result of her behavior, though, ---I regret that I did not fuck her!
At that party, as I was leaving, I got a nice smile from a Jewish coed who was short and curvy, had dark tawny hair, and luscious lips. I should have returned later on my own, but a car was unavailable and I lost that opportunity.
There were many other coeds I knew at the time, including Jewish girls, and all so smart and attractive and intellectual, as I had never met afterwards. I should have married one of them, and my family told me they had expected that I would bring home a Jewish girl.
As a result of these experiences, I got an invitation to join the Jewish fraternity on campus. I did not follow through with it, and I know that I would have done much better in life if I had. I was not a fraternity person, in any case.
In my senior year in undergraduate school, I took a course in American Intellectual History. The professor was Dr. Selig Adler who was an expert in American Isolationism. While lecturing, the good professor was in the habit, at a recitation of one scandal or another in American history, of exclaiming: “And the country is going to hell on a handcar!” He was right, and we are going there even faster these days. I have remembered Dr. Adler’s imprecation about America for all these years.
I went to New York City, after my military tour of duty, and stayed with a friend from university who had moved there not long before, David L. Dave was a character. He had joined the Marines, but had an attitude, and they let him go. He had books piled up next to his bed by subject matter, novels, philosophy, political science, and so on through the literate spectrum, and when he finished one book he would flip through his piles for the next one to read by subject order. He read the eleventh book in each pile, but it was really the fourteenth, since he counted the syllables of the numbers: one, two, three, four, five, six, sev-en, eight, nine, ten, e-lev-en. (Do not ask me why.) One night we had supper at Rappoport’s in Lower Manhattan, and I was terrified to eat the sour cream at the bottom of the bowl of borscht, and stirred the soup in trepidation. We were good enough friends, but the stress of army life was still with me, and soon I got an apartment of my own.
I did not keep up with friends from my undergraduate years because I was emotionally distraught and did not feel confident enough to do so.
I found myself, after further disorganization in my life, working for the Department of Human Services of the state of Rhode Island. My long time supervisor at that position was Eli K., a man of considerable cultural sensitivity, gone now. He was like many Jews I had met in my life, the only person around with any sensitivity to ideas and art.
My best friend over the years of my sojourn at the state of RI Department of Human Services was a man who was indeterminately Jewish, but nevertheless so. His mother was Polish-Catholic and his father was a French Jew. We were great friends, and he did me some favors, as disorder continued to plague my life. Dave S. had been a great gambler. He played the horses, often getting tips from a small time hood he knew from Woonsocket. Many times in the 1970s and early 1980s, he would show up for work on a Monday morning with a wad of many thousands of dollars in his pocket. I was impressed. But Dave lost his nerve, and stopped gambling. We were office buddies, coffee buddies, mostly, but after we both had retired from state service, we got closer socially. We would have dinner on our birthdays. We would still be friends, but Dave smoked, and it killed him only a few months after he had started collecting Social Security.
Of course I had enemies at the RI Department of Human Services who were Jewish, but that is life and is not significant.
I have a friend who is Jewish now, though I do not see much of him at this time. I met him at the Sherwood Ultra-Sport fitness club. Dave G. is about 5’ 5” with what used to be red hair, but has a seriously receding hairline. For Halloween parties that were held at the fitness club, Dave would stick two tiny plastic horns on his forehead, and with his blue eyes and red goatee, it made him look like the very devil to the amusement of all. I went to the funeral of David’s father, and at his invitation to all the mourners shoveled dirt on his coffin. Dave G. is a businessman, and after adopting a child spends his time with his family and business, and does not go to exercise. I shall have to call him.
I will not forget my nephew by marriage, Stephen Miller. He is a dentist, and a caring professional. He treats welfare recipients, and is one of the few dentists who treat such persons, to my knowledge. I normally see him a few times a year with his wife, my niece, in visits to Northern New York. Dr. Miller has become a mainstay of our family. Steve and Ellen have a family day every year on the patriotic holiday of the 4th of July at their camp on the St. Lawrence River. Dr. Miller has promised to attend my son’s wedding set for the spring of 2010.
My son, too, had a Jewish friend with the same first name, from grade school. He remains friends with a college classmate who is Jewish.
I had a Palestinian Arab friend, too. I met him on visits to Puerto Rico with my wife, in maritally happier times. He had rented a room from my mother-in-law, and would visit her now and then. His father had immigrated to Venezuela after the Palestinian-Israel war in 1948 and from there got to Puerto Rico. Luis Saleh was a generous man, and in this trait of personality was like many Arabs. He was not religious. When I visited, usually at Christmas time, he would never allow me, my wife and son to pay for anything. His relatives, who sometimes visited my mother-in-law as a group, were interested in knowing if I was Jewish. They said that there was a Semitic cast to my face. They were consumed with the status of their land in Israel. Luis and I were special friends, and should still be, as he had plans to establish a business in the U.S., in Cleveland where many Puerto Ricans had settled. He offered me the most one man can offer another: to become part of his successful business, his life. But Luis died young in his forties, in the 1980s.
I have expressed salient experiences I have had with persons who are of Jewish background because I wish to establish that I am a friend of the Jewish people. I must establish my sincerity because of what I will suggest as a resolution of the horror that Palestine-Israel has become.
I am a friend of the Jewish people.
There cannot be a conventional peace in the Mideast. If either side had wanted peace, it would have happened by now. Zionism is a bad idea. It assumes a purity of mind and culture that is false and dangerously so. Zionism is a dream and a fantasy and a profound error. It is proved so by its blood-drenched fruits. The Israelis seem bound to prove on the scale of nations the principle of enantiodromia first stated by the Ionian philosopher Heraclitus, ---who flourished in ancient times exactly in the Levant. The principle is that all things over time become their opposite. It is a devastating commentary on Israel. Such a catastrophic scenario cannot be allowed to develop. If the Israelis unleash their might against their Muslim enemies, they will lose their souls as a people.
The Jews say that since they have been forcibly disposed by other peoples for so long, that now they have the right to use force to dispossess others to maintain their nation. Such a moral people know it to be wrong, and a statement of despair. It is simple revenge, a tragedy of the psyche. Jews of all levels, and in both Israel and the U.S., understand the injustices they have done to the Palestinians, and the further injustices they will have to accomplish to secure their survival in that part of the world.
The political grotesquerie in the Mideast cannot continue. We cannot ignore the issue. It will end badly, and everyone feels it. Everyone knows what will happen in the Mideast, which will be slaughter rising to ferocity. The Jews do not want to massacre the Palestinians indefinitely. They are fervid in their resolve never to experience another Shoah, but it cannot be so to the point of enacting a vengeance on the world. Everything they have done has increased the power of their enemies.
Therefore, I offer a solution and the only one possible. The Jews of Israel must relocate. As I mentioned, other places in the world were considered for the settlement of the Jews of Europe after WWII, but that course was rejected. It must be reconsidered. The Hebrews must take up another of those great transformational sojourns that their history is replete with, the Exodus, the Babylonian Exile, the Diaspora, and Return. If they do not relocate, the ensuing chaos in the Mideast will destabilize the planet.
I have concluded that the optimal place for the Jews to relocate is Western Australia because of its depopulation, its isolation and because they have fared best in all their history in Anglo culture. They could have a piece of land about the same size as they have now, and bordering the sea, ---north of Perth. The climate is arid and barely habitable, not unlike that of the Eastern Mediterranean. The Jews are an intelligent and an industrious people, and would soon prosper in that inhospitable territory. The Australians might welcome the Jews to be a state in their continent, and thereby contribute to a noble cause. The Aussies might do it. (I have relatives who live in a suburb of Perth.) The Australians should be appealed to. They have the space to allow it. The Hebrews need a home, and Australia represents an opportunity. They could live in peace separate from cataclysmic eschatology, ---if they so desired. A United Nations mandate could allow it with the cooperation of the Australians. I do not care who is right or wrong in the Mideast, but only to stop the killing, stop the rotting cadavers that I can smell from North America.
Am I putting the entire burden on the Jews? Ok, then, --move the Palestinians to Australia. But then you will have to relocate all the Arabs followed by all the Muslims.
Of course you think my plan is ridiculous. You will say that it could not work out that way, and that these are not primitive times. Such a horrendous uprooting could not work out. I will reply that the human species is nothing except primitive, ---and the conflict in the Mideast proves it. You will claim that I am a stupid man, and badly educated, and to be dismissed out of hand. My response is for you to face the alternative. Further, however much others might know about the conflict in the Mideast than me, no one has made the peace. No! One! Has! Made! The! Peace! There is no other solution, and the dreadful future in Judea is inevitable. It is time to do it, as we face the abyss.
The Israelis may take whatever they want with them, all their holy sites, the Wailing Wall, and everything. In toto, this would be impractical. Rather, an international armed force could ensure the safety of the sacred sites in Jerusalem for all the Abrahamic religions. Mark out what can be taken, pack it all up and transport it. I will pay for it all that I can afford, and the world would support it. The temporal salvation of the Jews is a project for the world.
If the Abrahamic God does exist, His land is the entire earth, and Western Australia thus is as sacred as anyplace else, ---and not drenched in blood. (Babylonia was once considered to be Zion.) The Hebrews can create Zion anew in Western Australia.
(TRC 09-20-09)
