Sunday, May 15, 2005
Do you know what happened today in history?
I'll tell you. On this day in 1948, three years after the end of the Second World War and with their Empire crumbling, British troops pulled out of Mandate Palestine. The next day, 15 May, 1948, the State of Israel was proclaimed.
They didn't take their time, didn't ask anyone's permission, they just arrived, bedraggled, exhausted and and ready to die, and started a new life. On someone else's land. They fought farmers with fire - as though they were fascists - and won.
What did they lose in those first few weeks of 'independence'? Just a little bit of their humanity, which had remained through the torments of the Holocaust. Has it been recovered? I would say not, from what I have seen in Jerusalem, in Nazareth, in Nablus and Hebron. I would say the Jews of Israel have become a people so afraid of losing what they have acquired that they have already lost it through scarification, and now continue on, oblivious to what has been lost, clutching at shadows that formerly existed as flesh.
I feel that today and tomorrow are sad days for anyone with any connection to the "Holy Land" - those few hundred square kilometres that humanity has not ceased fighting over since Biblical times. It is a sad time for anyone who believes that two peoples should be able to live side by side, and that differences, hostilities and mutual suspicion should not be insurmountable obstacles on the road to reconciliation.
Whether recognised as 'Independence Day' or 'al-Naqba' (the Catastrophe), the emotional gravity of these terms overrides all reason. There is only one way to see the event, and leading from that, there is only one way to view the events that follow, in a dutiful line, all the way up to the present day, 56 years later.
I'll tell you. On this day in 1948, three years after the end of the Second World War and with their Empire crumbling, British troops pulled out of Mandate Palestine. The next day, 15 May, 1948, the State of Israel was proclaimed.
They didn't take their time, didn't ask anyone's permission, they just arrived, bedraggled, exhausted and and ready to die, and started a new life. On someone else's land. They fought farmers with fire - as though they were fascists - and won.
What did they lose in those first few weeks of 'independence'? Just a little bit of their humanity, which had remained through the torments of the Holocaust. Has it been recovered? I would say not, from what I have seen in Jerusalem, in Nazareth, in Nablus and Hebron. I would say the Jews of Israel have become a people so afraid of losing what they have acquired that they have already lost it through scarification, and now continue on, oblivious to what has been lost, clutching at shadows that formerly existed as flesh.
I feel that today and tomorrow are sad days for anyone with any connection to the "Holy Land" - those few hundred square kilometres that humanity has not ceased fighting over since Biblical times. It is a sad time for anyone who believes that two peoples should be able to live side by side, and that differences, hostilities and mutual suspicion should not be insurmountable obstacles on the road to reconciliation.
Whether recognised as 'Independence Day' or 'al-Naqba' (the Catastrophe), the emotional gravity of these terms overrides all reason. There is only one way to see the event, and leading from that, there is only one way to view the events that follow, in a dutiful line, all the way up to the present day, 56 years later.
