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“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.  For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.

Galatians 6: 7-9 (KJV)

The Paradox of Israel and the Joshua Syndrome

Some people close to me  are a bit surprised that this Passover, as opposed to other Passovers, I was so out of sorts. Maybe it’s because, recent events make it no longer possible to ignore what I believe to be the paradox of Israel and what I will call the Joshua complex: Blame it on the History Channel.

Having lived long enough to remember the founding of Israel and observed the important events since then, I have my own insights that may to some appear to be at odds with Israeli history as it is now perceived. On of the basic ironies of Israel history is that the impetus towards its founding did not come from observant, ultra-Orthodox Jews but rather secular, even Marxist ones. There were Israeli terrorists groups at its founding, notable the Stern gang, but the face of the Jewish settlers though militant were also benign: David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first President being the most obvious example.

While to some Jews, the claim of Israel to Palestine may have been biblically based, to the world at large, the claim was more direct and even practical. One of the weapons employed by the Nazi’s in rounding-up the Jews for extermination was “statelessness,” that is the Jews of Europe had no state to defend their cause. Of course, it was the Nazi’s who created the statelessness through the draconian Nuremburg laws, among other things.

Recently I had occasion to visit Amsterdam and the Anne Frank Museum. The story told in popular book and Movie, “the Diary of Anne Frank, did not dwell on the what happened after she and her family were finally captured by the Nazi’s. There is revealing vignette by another Jewish woman, who had been a childhood friend of Anne, and met her in the concentration camp – except that she was separated from Anne by a barbed wire fence. Her father, unlike Anne’s father, had made a shrewd move of obtaining citizenship in the Western Hemisphere. Thus when interned by the Nazi’s they had the status of a national status ands were not stateless persons, without protection. The most depressing thing of my visit to the Museum was her description of Anne’s condition in the last few months of her existence in the concentration camp where she eventually died of disease.

Jewish statelessness played an important part in the Nazi’s Holocaust regime and it was the Jewish claim to statehood that in the aftermath of World War II that had the greatest claim to the conscience of the world, not a “promise” in the Old Testament. Because the Zionists had already settled much of Palestine through legitimate land acquisition and were resettling Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in Palestine (against the desires of the British government), an independent Jewish state in Palestine made sense to the world community and ultimately the fledgling United Nations. Because many of the Zionists were Marxist of the Fabian Socialist stripe, even Stalin supported the founding of Israel.

I am sure that historians who have studied this may quarrel with nuances in the above description of events, but I suggest that it’s pretty much in keeping with the events described by Leon Uris in his epochal novel (and later movie adaptation, Exodus). The founding of Israel depicted by Uris included a plea for Arabs and Jews to co-exist. The kibbutzim which played such an important role in Israel’s founding were socialist collectives.

Let’s skip forward to today, and let’s compare American actions in Iraq to Israel’s actions in Gaza and the reason for my despair. I did not support the invasion in Iraq and played a role in marshaling opposition to the invasion in the Sierra Club. I am appalled at the atrocities at Abu Grav and the individual atrocities committed by American troops. But I would suggest that with one notable exception, the American reaction to this atrocities has  been one of America’s finest hours.

What is not America’s finest hour, is the failure, thus far, to follow they trail back to the highest levels of government which through its embracing of torture and other extreme measures created the climate which led to the crimes of the a few soldiers on the ground.

There have been convictions and sentences to imprisonment of American soldiers who committed atrocities. Not every case has resulted in a conviction, but the cases were brought and tried. On one level, it is a tragedy, that we put our GI’s in a position where the stress of combat and the lack of Pentagon leadership led to unspeakable acts. But the fact is that they were prosecuted and convictions have resulted.

Not so with Israel in Gaza and it now appears that one reason why is the coming into power of the Israeli right wing, among which significant factions a appeal not to the conscience of the world but to the claim that God gave this land to us. Thosewho assassinated Rabin have won.

Jews are a tiny fraction of the world population and the “people of the book.” The people of the book ‑ Moslems, Christian and Jews  â€‘ do not constitute a majority of the world’s population. An appeal to Old Testament “rights, may  go-over well with factions of the Israeli population (and some Christian fundamentalists), it will be meaningless to most of the rest of the World and since at least a third of the “People of the Book” are Moslem, to that third, not at all.

There were reports by Israeli soldiers of witnessing atrocities against civilians by some Israeli soldiers. They  have been dismissed by the new Israeli regime as “hearsay.” Some  observers have tied this to the rise in the Israeli Army of more Orthodox Jews who take seriously the biblical gift of all of Palestine to a Jewish nation and seek its implementation. The same divine right continues to power the expansion of Israeli settlements to, and expropriation of, Arab land.

And that brings me to Joshua and the History Channel. In a series of ancient battlers and military commanders, they explored the accomplishments of Joshua, a truly outstanding military commander who was by modern lights, a war criminal of monumental proportions. We sing that “Joshua fit the battle of Jericho.” What happened after Jericho fell was that Joshua ordered the death of all its inhabitants – including women and children. After all, God had given the land to the Israelites. In modern parlance, Joshua’s campaign was "ethnic cleansing."

It may be argued that that was then,  a much more brutal time before the development of the Law of War. But the Israeli cover-up of atrocities in Gaza sows the seeds of ultimate Israeli defeat, as horrible as that prospect is. If the Israeli right wing can squelch dissent in Israeli by more moderate factions and elevate it’s war policy to a divine right from God, Israel is in more dire straits than it can imagine.

What Israel must do is face head-on complaints about its tactics in Gaza and if there were civilian atrocities, find – and prosecute – the perpetrators. If it doesn’t, the last vestige of Holocaust based support for Israel may vanish. The bell is tolling for the civilian dead of Gaza. To paraphrase John Donne, Israel must listen to those bells, because they may be tolling for Israel, as well.

Johnklotz.blogspot.com