Exile and the Prophetic: The next four years

I can see that the David Gregory Seder story has legs.  Good ones.  You see Gregory struck me as a thoroughly decent guy.  Intelligent as well.  I found his intelligence, though, to be thoroughly conventional – and American.  Despite his French language ability, which he displayed at a Bush news conference in Paris, Gregory’s intellectual ranges is curious and strategic rather than deep.  Though he’s not one to go deep on you, if you initiate the journey, he’ll follow. 

Without questioning his Jewishness or his intellectual ability, his manner and presentation seemed much more in search of Jewishness than at home there.  Perhaps this is generational, a product of intermarriage or even his California upbringing.  Whatever the reasons, I found this striking.  Felt like I was entering another world of Jewishness.

During the evening at my home, he was open and accommodating.  We used a delightful child’s Haggadah and Gregory was quite keen on participating.  I can’t say whether his promotion has changed.  I did notice the upscale grooming for his elevation to host of Meet the Press.  Strange that the question of his final promotion is linked in my mind to how he appears on television.  Does Gregory project the “presence” that NBC wants when Brian Williams retires? 

When I went to the Bush press conference the next day, he was again quite gracious.  The press conference was disturbing to me and from a distance of some years, even more so.  I know that by their nature press conferences are staged.  Still the stakes are so high, what with America’s global role.  To see Bush and members of his Cabinet close-up reminded me that they were human beings like all of us.  However, the contrast between our shared humanity and the power they wielded, strikes me.  To see that cast of characters is even worse.

I am not sure which is worse.  The idea that Ronald Reagan used to read off note cards when he interacted with foreign dignitaries or the possibility that Bush didn’t think he needed note cards.

This brings me to the present cast of characters and the next four years.

In little more than a year we’ve gone from Occupy’s 99% to Mitt Romney’s 47%.  I wonder what depressing figures will come next.

When we couple Mitt’s “Dependent 47” with his recorded comments about the chimera of the two-state solution and how Palestinians don’t want peace or a state side-by side with Israel, I think the Presidential choice is clear.  Of course, I know Obama’s limitations.  Nonetheless.

On the other hand, there is more and more reporting on the imminent collapse of the Palestinian Authority and our sure knowledge that a second term Obama won’t do much on the Israel/Palestine front.  We know that the party platforms regarding Jerusalem, like their statements on God, are similar – and meaningless.

We’re already working on the next four years in Middle East politics American-style. Just yesterday I was contacted for a New England speaking tour in February.  Naturally, the organizers want a topical title.  Off the top of my head I suggested, “The Next Four Years:  Getting Ready for More of the Same?” I doubt that’s a sexy enough title to attract those still left of the once growing, now declining, Israel/Palestine activist community.

I rather have a minyan than lie about the future.  On the minyan front, we need to think about the dwindling numbers and, without being ageist, the gray haired nature of those who show up at movement events.  Sure there’s a new generation their numbers won’t replace the old activists.  This includes the church groups that have been incredibly active on the Israel/Palestine issue.  Mainstream denominations which have carried the activist ball have been in a steep decline for years.  There are few signs of reversing this decline.

All of this raises the issue of dissent and an institutional framework to sustain it.  If dissent should have such a framework and how is always debated.  Without some institutional framework dissent can’t go anywhere.  With institutionalization we have the proverbial NGO question of becoming enablers of what we ostensibly want to end.

I doubt that these trends will be reversed in next four years.  If we’re honest, activist and interested partisans have been dwindling since the early 1990s.  Part of this is history – everything has been working against positive movement in Israel/Palestine.  Part of it has to do with what has been offered as possible ways forward.  On the Jewish side,the real issues have been deflected for decades by Jews who are naïve about Jewish power and those who actively seek to limit the discussion.  On the Palestinian side, argumentation has been undermined by timidity, infighting and grandstanding.  But, then, since Jews grandstand. Why shouldn’t Palestinians?

Yes, there has been positive movement as well, especially the deepening ties of Jews and Palestinians of Conscience.  The One-State conferences may or may not represent an advance.  The same is true of the growing specifically named anti-Zionists networks.  I’m not at all sure what this can possibly mean now since we’re dealing with entrenched Israeli state power and other state powers as well. I am concerned with the lack of deep thought surrounding Jewish and Palestinian history and culture.  I believe that particularity is important.  It is the primary way of opening an engaged universality.

In any case, the most frustrating aspects of the contemporary Israel/Palestine discussion is that deep and superficial argumentation from all sides has failed to move the situation on the ground in a positive direction.  History and contemporary politics seem to be operating under impossible historical conditions or, depending on your mindset, ominous astrological signs. 

Whether the reasons for the constantly devolving situation in Israel/Palestine are political or astrological misalignments, the “Next Four Years” theme is hold on for dear life.  What’s come around so many times is coming around again.

Is this assessment defeatist, as is often charged, or realistic? Either way, the world is always changing.  Therefore our primary challenge is to remain engaged.  Being engaged, we learn.  We change.  We prepare to offer our commitment when the time is ripe.  If it isn’t ripe in our lifetime, there is little we can do about it.  Israel/Palestine is larger than any one of us.  Despite our flaws and the vagaries of history, we struggle to be faithful.   That is what we can control.

For now, though, I pick up where I left off, with the Flying Abrahams, our prelates from different faiths parasailing the Jerusalem skies.  Think of their view of the next four years.

What do they see?

On the contemporary scene, theysee how (un)unified the (exceedingly temporary) eternal capital of Israel (Palestine) really is.

Looking out across Jerusalem, they’re able to see Dimona, Israel’s nuclear arms facility. 

Since I haven’t parasailed Jerusalem, I’m not sure if they can see Iran from there.  Netanyahu has colored Iran red, however, so they might at least see the Iranian red sky in contrast with Jerusalem’s blue sky.  Or should Jerusalem also be painted red, since the countries our Flying Abrahams’ view are fearful of what Israel might do with its nuclear might?

If our prelates could visualize the history of Jerusalem from the air, they might abandon their religious outfits and flee to the hills. Jerusalem’s history, like the woman who fell from her parasailing harness in Florida, is a tragic story to behold.  Experiencing the city’s history together, our prelates might undergo a conversion.  They may well become the Mahatmas of the (un)Abrahamic faiths.

Perhaps the Flying Abrahams have read the Crusader accounts of their ascent to Jerusalem.  They’re a must read. As you might expect, the Crusader accounts are vivid. They traveled a long way to reach the Holy Land, at tale by itself.  En route, the Crusaders expropriated everything they could lay their hands on and, of course, slaughtered Jews.  So when they reached Jerusalem and capturedthe religious shrines, the slaughter of the infidel commenced. 

My favorite Crusader accounts have them standing knee deep in the blood of their religious adversaries.  Truth be known, they enjoyed every minute of it.  Unfortunately for them, we know what they didn’t know; it would soon be their turn.   The Crusader’s revelry was soon repaid in spades. 

One Crusader lesson takeaway for the next four years is that we shouldn’t worry overly much about victory or defeat in the immediate frame.  In Jerusalem’s history the roles are soon reversed.  Our second Crusader lesson takeaway is for the long haul and equally sobering.The avenged take equal pleasure in the slaughter of the former victors. 

Like the Crusaders, Israel thinks itself immune from the predictable reversal.  Now our parasailing prelates know that the victors are like that throughout Jerusalem’s history.  They never think the blood they’re standing in will soon be their own.

There are differences, of course.  History isn’t just one giant repetition.  The hills surrounding Jerusalem now are Israeli settlement/cities.  Fleeing modern injustice is mostly urban.  Urban, even in Jerusalem, is a different kind of wilderness.

This raises the always vexing issue of when settlements become cities.  Answer:  When settlers are there long enough, the military is strong enough and the state is determined enough to outlast and outwit the forces that oppose it.  That is, until the reversal occurs

If you’re not depressed by the next four years of Israel/Palestine, file the following under “The Next Hundred Years.” I just finished reading George Dyson’sTurings Cathedral:  The Origins of the Digital Universe. Dyson narrates the origins of the digital universe which occurred within two history changing developments:  the decoding of self-replicating sequences in biology and the invention of the hydrogen bomb.  In other words, the computer/internet was born with the discovery of DNA and atomic weaponry. 

For Dyson it isn’t a “coincidence that the most destructive and the most constructive of human inventions appeared at exactly the same time.”  He postulates that “only the collective intelligence of computers could save us from the destructive powers of the weapons they allowed us to invent.”  The kicker is that the machines that developed the codes necessary for the creation of the digital universe were available only in the evenings and weekends.  During the weekdays the computers were otherwise occupied with the development of atomic weaponry.

Lesson for “The Next Hundred Years”:  When you think iPhone, think nuclear weaponry. 

Life lesson:  What we prize is often our demise.

Dyson adds another cautionary note.  The computer/internet/nuclear weapon developments occurred in of all places, Princeton, New Jersey, at the Institute for Advanced Study.  This was an auxiliary University in Exile that gathered the best – mostly Jewish – minds fleeing Nazified Europe.  The result was a two-sided ledger of progress and destruction.  The doomsday or paradise race was on.  It’s still on.  Which side will win the day remains unclear.

So Israel/Palestine has to be seen in a global panoramic view.  Thus the Flying Abrahams. To be deployed elsewhere as well?