Today we welcome back Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
I’ve spent the last months traveling the diaspora – Jewish and otherwise. Did anyone think that only Jews experienced exile and exercised the prophetic? Not me. Jews are only one among the nations – now.
This doesn’t mean that Jews are without a destiny. However, our destiny is bound up with the destiny of others. Obviously.
In Puerto Rico – I experienced a riot of goodwill and commitment. In Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, the Jewish Voice for Peace and other groups are alive and well. In Tallahassee my presentations were received with deep thought and considered response.
I toured during President Obama’s travel to Israel and the Passover holidays. I wondered out loud if the angel of death had passed over the White House and veiled Obama with a new ignorance of the plight of the Palestinian people. After all, when he visited Jerusalem and the West Bank, he visited Palestine. He was even visiting Palestine when he traveled to Israel. So why didn’t his spokespeople and schedulers use that magic word – Palestine?
How did President Obama do when he visited Israel – and Palestine? Even before he left Washington his grade was dipping. By the time he spoke to Israeli youth he passed ‘F’ heading for ‘P.’ Pathetic.
What kind of President declares himself a lame-duck in his first year of his second term in office? At least on Israel-Palestine, Obama declared himself as such. Since Obama knows the Israel-Palestine score – what President hasn’t? – it is beyond the pale that, in reality, he offered Palestinians a truncated autonomy as their only future. But then, since in Obama’s rendering Jews have a history and destiny and Palestinians only have a need, why bother to announce that Palestinians have a right to be free, really free, in their own homeland?
Fascinating it was to find Obama citing Passover as an anchor in his life. It was in my life, too. The Jewish Voice for Peace 2012 Haggadah says it all when it transforms the Biblical Ten Plagues into the Plagues of Occupation. Obama should try their Haggadah out in the White House Seder in 2014. Invite the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbis for that one. See where it goes.
Old news, Obama’s visit? Think about it. With the Congressional election cycle about to begin, the Presidential sweepstakes kicking in soon after, then the election of the new President and his or her first years in office – Obama essentially declared another decade of inaction on the Israel/Palestine front. If we take the ‘disappearing Palestine’ postcard maps seriously think what Palestine will look like in 2023. The logic of Israeli occupation and expansion is predictable. As it has been.
If you think it can’t get worse get ready. It already is.
If you now think there won’t be two states. You’re behind the curve.
The two-state solution was finished by the 1970s. If you haven’t heard that alarm ringing, see your political doctor now.
The good thing, reinforced during my tours, is that more and more people see the hopelessness of the present course. This doesn’t mean that there is a consensus on what to do during the next decade. And just because every avenue of compromise has been tried and failed doesn’t mean that the need for new departure will surface in public policy. Don’t waste your time surfing the web for that change. It isn’t happening.
Like the President’s trip, Passover is old news. An empty suit waiting to be refilled.
And now Amira Hass is kicking up a storm with her outlandish assertion that Palestinians have a right to throw stones resisting occupation!
What a Jewish world we live in. Soon we will celebrate the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising – it was during Passover no less – and the debate is about the right of Palestinians to resist Israeli occupation – with stones?
As history records, the Nazis were ambushed by Jewish ghetto fighters tossing Molotov cocktails and hand grenades from alleyways, sewers, and windows.
No, I am not going to cross that (comparison) red line. The green line – wherever it is now and will be in a decade – well, that’s a different story.
I think what shapes your views on Israel isn’t the occupation, obviously, as you believe-has it become a religion to you?-that Israel is Palestine, period. But what about the Jews? No parallels between the Exodus from Egypt, so long ago, to the entry of the survivors into mandated Palestine (Jews in Europe were long told they belonged in Palestine, not Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, etc.) before 1948, or Israel proper in 48? Does our old religion and its liturgies, the Passover Hagadah being only one, trouble you so much, the four sons need to be changed, and the ten plagues, or “makkos” transliterated from Hebrew, reinvented as the evils of occupation? Do you believe, as some reformed rabbis, that the Bible is an embarrassment, portraying an “angry” g-d (not my view of the real Maker of the Universe) who has the ancient Israelites commit no less than genocide on the nations living in Canaan? As a theologian, “Jewish”, Christian, or even Moslem, how do you explain G-d, or why you believe in Him, if this is who He is? Can you separate the “old”, “Jewish” One (indeed, does G-d profess a faith, too?) from the more “compassionate” One (let’s forget the trinity thing for now) portrayed in the New Testament (the hype against Jews is a different, uncompassionate issue)? Does your understanding of G-d include His “transformation” yet again as Allah, One who rejects the Jews, chooses a different messenger, a different people, espousing yet a third religion? Does this Allah “replace” the “Jewish” One? How can someone, anyone, who professes any belief in the Higher, Ageless Being delude themselves into thinking there’s a g-d for this group, a g-d for that group, and only “our g-d is the true One? Can you, furthermore, dissect out parts of the Torah you dislike, reinvent our “Jewish” G-d into something of your creation, your imagination, without asking yourself-hey, wait a minute, am I G-d’s creation, a mere human being, or did I, along with others, invent Him, for my convenience?
Mr. Ellis, to reject most of the Torah, with its clear directive as Zion, Jerusalem, the third temple belonging to the Jewish people (you probably promote the nonsense of us being descended only from the Khazars), in the future (though that cannot negate the presence of 5 million Jews already residing in the Holy Land, and nowhere a prediction of yet another exile) is placing you into a radically different, totally removed from Judaism, new religion. Have fun labeling your newfound prophesy (need I mention modern day prophets are considered fools by the Talmud?), and defending it as a replacement for Judaism, but we aren’t buying it. If your defense of the Palestinians is predicated on this, only Heaven can help them.
welcome back, Marc!
pretentious poppycock!
Thank you for this wonderful piece, Marc.
Unfortunately, it is a very Jewish world we live in when it comes to Israel-Palestine. Israel, and Jews worldwide decided what we can and can’t do. Why Jewish resistance is celebrated, but Palestinian resistance is debated. Obama paying more homage to the Israelis.
And indeed, Jews are no longer “a nation” but one of many.
Hopefully, we’ll being seeing some kind of change soon.
Don’t cross comparison line – take it down a notch.
Cannot compare Holodomor with Mao revolution because the the quality of soil is not just so. Cannot compare European treatment of australian Aboriginies to american Indians because one have red skin and the other black (?dark brown) skin.
If this is the case, why bother with history at all? Why not have different nationalistic / political myths instead and be done with it.
We cannot learn from the history if we insist that the outcomes of historical events must match before the unfolding of historical events can be compared.
I see that logic of not comparing Nazis and Israelis to the logic of Popper who rolls the billard ball off the table, shelf, stairs, chair seat and is astonished, nay, flabbergasted! that the billard ball falls onto floor each time. He then sets out to proof that that unless you see the billard ball hit the floor you cannot possibly assume that it will – as crossing the comparison line is not something that he could possibly do.
Or something like that.
The day that final solution for Palestinians will come (and believe me, it will) the excuses of those who chose to not see the tragedy unfolding right in front of their eye will be whimpering and pathetic, and excuses of those who saw the tragedy unfolding but did not manage to stop it will not be much better.
How did it go in Saint Matthew 13?
41 The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity;
42 And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
43 Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear
The problem is, it will be too late for Palestinians by then.