The War of Narratives - Bringing truth to the Middle East crisis

In an attempt to connect ancient Israel to present-day Jerusalem, Israeli authorities apply spurious labels to Holy Basin landmarks.

• Neither King David's Tower nor King David's Citadel relate to the time of King David.
• Neither the Pools of Solomon nor the Stables of Solomon relate to the time or life of King Solomon.
• Absalom's Tomb is an obvious Greek-sculptured edifice and therefore cannot be the tomb of David's son.

Why should anyone acquiesce to Israel's demand for incorporating all of a Jerusalem that has no ancient religious institution standing? The answer is conditioning -- the constant repetitions of "If I forsake thee Jerusalem," and " Jerusalem is indivisible" -- internalization of a dubious argument and done for covert reasons.

Israel is a physically small and new country with an eager population and big ambitions. It needs more prestige and wants to be viewed as a power broker on the world stage. To gain those perspectives, Israel needs a capital city that commands respect, contains ancient traditions, and is recognized as one of the world's most important and leading municipalities. To assure the objectives, there can be only one Jerusalem and it must be the one that contains the Holy City. A united Jerusalem with a single tourist and business authority is worth a lot of Shekels.

It is distressing to witness "balanced" discussions characterize Jewish identity in Jerusalem as the same, if not of greater intensity, than that of the Palestinians (Muslim and Christian), not have this "balance' politely refuted, and be tacitly approved by audiences.

And not only is Jewish identity in Jerusalem questioned; modern Judaism's roots also deserve to be questioned.

Relation of modern Judaism to the Holy Land 
In a posted interview on Nov 18, 2008, of an American PBS program, Archaeology of the Hebrew Bible, William Dever, Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona, who has investigated the archaeology of the ancient Near East for more than 30 years, said, "This is awkward for some people, the notion that Israelite religion was not exclusively monotheistic. But we know now that it wasn't. Monotheism was a late development. Not until the Babylonian Exile and beyond does Israelite and Judean religion--Judaism--become monotheistic."

The last sentence is significant.   

After the prophets returned from Babylonian exile, possibly influenced by Zoroastrianism, a religion whose God of good and light fought evil and dark, the Hebrews became Jews, instilled with a change in belief from monolatry, exclusive worship of one God without excluding foreigners, to worship other Gods, to monotheism, exclusive worship of one universal God. David Danzig in an article Evidence for Survivals of Mesopotamian Civilization in the Babylonian Talmud clarifies the reason: "The concept of a single God whom all nations would eventually worship evolved among a conquered and exiled people no longer assured of their divinely protected status."

Many Jews remained in the regions of their exile. Later, hundreds of thousands of Jews arrived in Mesopotamia and Persia during the Persian Parthian and Sassasian Empires (248 B.C. to 641 A.D.) In this area, schools of Judaism flourished, eventually codifying the oral and written laws and producing the Babylonian Talmud, which, rather than the Jerusalem Talmud, became the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the basis for all Jewish law. In Iraq and Persia, from 500 B.C. and through the Middle Ages, the Jews from Judah shed themselves from the restraints of arid lands and a controlling priestly class, achieved almost total male literacy, developed intellectual prowess, and by 650 A.D., had changed their occupations from artisans and struggling farmers to agriculturists, merchants, and traders, many becoming wealthy from the silk trade.

The biblical "Exodus" story did not free the Jews. Just the opposite, it has been used to keep Jews in perpetual bondage to a spurious history and to promote an attitude of constant victimhood, while distracting them from realizing they might also play a role in the injustices done to others.

The Jewish exodus from the southern Levant to Babylonia and Persia (and throughout the Roman Empire) during the centuries before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D. and several centuries after its occurrence, freed the Jews from a pastoral life, arid conditions, and restricted economics. The already weakened and dispersed Israelite tribes completely disintegrated, and the Hebrews lost a place in an ongoing history. As in the hypothesis of punctured equilibrium, where new species suddenly arise to replace a dying species, new communities of Mesopotamian Jews, knowledgeable and wo rldly, quickly appeared in the Fertile Crescent . In that region, which soon housed the three great Jewish academies of Surah, Pumbadita and Nehardea, the legacy and heritage of modern Jews and Judaism are best expressed. In  The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492 , winner of the 2012 National Jewish Book Award in Scholarship, by Maristella Botticini, Zvi Eckstein, Princeton University press, 2012, the authors claim that "Judaism reached its Golden Age in 800 -1200 A.D. During that time, Mesopotamia and Persia contained 75% of world Jewry with the rest in North Africa and Western Europe ."

Which brings us to the battle between the dead and the dying.
The World War II Holocaust, which cost the lives of several million Jews, is firmly established in the Israeli conscience and its history is continually circulated throughout the world. The Palestinian catastrophe, Al-Nakba, hides in the shadows of the World War II onslaught. Why is it not more revealed?

Because the Zionist movement to Palestine started decades before World War II and almost all refugees from the conflagration had been relocated before establishment of the state of Israel, the relationship between the creation of the state of Israel and the European Holocaust is tenuous. Nevertheless, Israel makes full use of the Jewish tragedy to secure sympathy, periodically reminding the world of previous era horrors, repeating them daily to its children, as if they are being threatened, and convincing a world they need to define their own security in order to prevent the next genocidal attack against them.

The Palestinians have not been alert in changing the direction of the  dispute, still regarding it as a conflict between them and the Israelis, when it is now only a crisis for them. After the initial arguments between the Zionists and the Palestinians erupted into a conflict, the Israel military victory in 1967 essentially ended the conflict; the Arab allies of the Palestinian allies were defeated and the Palestinians were subjected to Israeli occupation. From then on it has been a growing crisis, which could lead to total destruction of the Palestinian community. This is not semantics; it focuses on the real problem and prevents resources and attention from being diverted to useless activities. As a matter of fact, the attacks on the Palestine community resemble the UN definition of genocide:

Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.  

Israeli forces have been continuously guilty of the first four acts. Without assistance from international organizations, Arab countries, philanthropies, individuals and private fund-raisers, all of whom have supplied the Palestinians with food, energy, training, funds, education, and resources that counter Israeli oppression, the precarious plight of the Palestinians would have reached a critical level a long time ago.

Genocide is not necessarily broadcasted; it can be silent and stealthy -- breaking bones and imprisoning males to deny children of working fathers; preventing expansion of food, water, and housing supplies so a population is economically deprived and exists at a subsistence level; confining families to limited areas to stifle education, knowledge, and community interaction; restricting travel so that people are not able to contact others and learn the new tools and mechanisms for adaptation to a modern world; planting harassment and sowing fear to create psychological disturbances. Recipients of these Israeli government policies in the West Bank and Gaza have no means to cope, except to leave the area or suffer until death.

The World War II Holocaust is over, the dead cannot be reclaimed and yet their lives are continually discussed. In Palestine, the destruction continues, lives can be reclaimed and yet the threat to their existence is insufficiently discussed. The crisis started with Al-Nakba and the Palestinians have not been able to make the world react to the seriousness of the growing catastrophe.

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