Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Obama and Netanyahu Battle Like Prophets
Oratory is a subtle art. In Judeo-Christian tradition it is widely associated with the prophets Ezekiel, Amos and Joshua, and lest we forget Jesus. These men stood in turbulent times, faced their people and spoke with conviction, eloquence and a determination to change the wrongs of their society.
It would perhaps be interesting to note the similarity in the content of their speeches. All of the aforementioned prophets lectured on morality and religion. Standing at the city's gate, they reproached sinners for their religious hypocrisy and for using their temples as refuge while committing immoral acts against their fellow human beings. They contended that human solidarity and social justice are of greater importance than religious fervor.
"Away with the noise of your songs (of praise)! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!"
Amos 5:23
Here we are in turbulent times once again, glued to our TV screens and listening to the new leaders of men, political leaders. Obama and Netanyahu disagree on many issues, however, the Israel-USA alliance stays strong because of the core values they share. The belief in certain unalienable rights that amongst them are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness is key to democracy. As the USA looks for Middle Eastern countries to adopt these values Israel still stands alone as the only democratic state in the region.
"Israel is not what is wrong with the Middle East, Israel is what is right about the middle east"
Benjamin Netanyahu
"Palestinians leaders will not achieve peace or prosperity if Hamas insists on a path of terror and rejection"
Barrack Obama
Netanyahu and Obama reproached the Palestinian authority for its reconciliation with the religiously violent Hamas organization. They both share the fear that religious fervor would undermine the advances towards democracy in the Middle East.
Many more eloquent speeches would undoubtedly be sounded on Palestinian statehood, but the prayer for democracy and peace in the Middle East will go unanswered until Arab leaders speak of human decency and generosity before prayer and martyrdom. Then the Palestinians and all of the Middle East might enjoy Justice and righteousness like a "never-failing stream".
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Unmasking the World
This week, as the Muslim world trembles and regimes fall one after the other like flies the Jewish citizens of Israel celebrated Purim. Huge festive parades marched through the streets. From school children to working adults from kindergartens to offices through every street in the city, it seemed that everywhere everybody was dressed in customs and masks.
This age old tradition began long ago in Persia, as recorded in the Esther Scroll After Jews got the upper hand and escaped persecution, winning the favor of king Xerxos. it was hip to be a Jew. Many of the local non-Jews dressed up as Jews in the hope of escaping punishment.
Esther 8:17:
And in every province, and in every city, wherever the king's commandment and his decree came, the Jews had joy and gladness, a feast and a good day. And many of the people of the land behaved as Jews; for the fear of the Jews fell upon them.
This ancient tale is a wonderful example of the fickleness of public opinion and its hypocrisy and is a stark reminder that things are not always as they seem.
Nobody knows today what the shift in the Arab world will bring but there is no doubt that many of our past conceptions about the Arab world and about western foreign policy have been debunked. Perhaps the Arab world and western policy never changed but their true nature was unmasked for all to see.
The recent events have managed to unmask the poverty, lack of rights and despotism, so wide spread in Arab countries. The western world's dependency on oil and its effect on foreign policy have been unmasked by the unbalanced stances regarding the Egyptian, Libyan, Tunisian and Baharanian civil unrests.
The Arab League's unity was unmasked as nothing but empty rhetoric. Iran's invisible hand in Middle Eastern politics became very apparent. But most importantly Arab governments around the world have been unmasked for what they are, terror-based dictatorships, travesties of human rights, corrupt and unjust.
Unmasking the villain has allowed Arab citizens to fight for their rights for the first time, to fight for democracy. Their success will depend largely on their ability to spot hypocritical villains and unmask them, to see thing for what they are, Then they too will be able to parade proudly and unafraid in the streets of their cities.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
War of Words, War of Worlds
Saturday's gruesome murder in Itamar, an Israeli West Bank settlement, horrified Israelis. A Palestinian perpetrated a violent murder killing a mother, a father and three children, the youngest of whom was a three-month-old infant.
As opposed to other terrorist attacks this attack did not yet instigate a war of weapons but rather a War of Words.
Israel is demanding an apology from CNN over its coverage of Saturday's terrorist attack in Itamar claiming it was "tendentious and deceptive."
The CNN report stated: "Five members of an Israeli family were killed in the West Bank early Saturday morning in what the Israeli military is calling a 'terror attack.'" Israeli officials contested the quotation marks around the term terror attack stating that there should be no argument on the fact that this is a terrorist attack.
The report went on to say: "According to a military spokeswoman, an intruder entered the Israeli settlement of Itamar near the northern West Bank city of Nablus around 1 am, made his way into a family home and killed two parents and their three children."
The report rephrased the IDF's official statement that noted forces were searching for a "terrorist" using instead the words "intruder" and "assailant". I myself remember many articles that called a suicide bomber, a freedom fighter.
Why is terminology such a controversial issue? Or as Shakespeare put it "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
To answer this question we should consider another article that hit the wires recently.
In Rome Pope Benedict XVI has made a sweeping exoneration of the Jewish people for the death of Jesus Christ. He deconstructs one particular Biblical account which has the crowd saying, "His blood be on us and on our children" — a phrase frequently cited as evidence of the collective guilt Jews bore and the curse that they carried as a result.
The phrase, from the Gospel of Matthew, has been so inflammatory that director Mel Gibson was reportedly forced to drop it from the subtitles of his 2004 film "The Passion of the Christ," although it remained in the spoken Aramaic.
The reason for Pope Benedict's interest in this debate could be traced to his childhood, when he was forced to join the Hitler Youth. As an adult he has made improving relations with Jews a mission and has visited the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland and Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.
Years of blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus along with newer anti-Semitic propaganda may have led to the extermination of Jews in World War II.
Words and terminology motivate people to action. Language has cultural and practical consequences. The Pope understood this. Israel has become aware of this and is now asking the world media as well as global leaders to unequivocally denounce these most recent attack.
One of the workshops we run on our tours is an exercise in the vocabulary of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What is the language used in your local media to describe the conflict? How do you reconcile between terms such as apartheid wall and separation fence, terrorist and freedom fighter, targeted killing and assassination?
At the end of the workshop we show a clip and deconstruct the phrasing of each sentence. By choosing our words we choose our moral ground, our social values and our identity – In effect our world is made up of words.
How were the Itamar "killings" reported in your part of the world?
As opposed to other terrorist attacks this attack did not yet instigate a war of weapons but rather a War of Words.
Israel is demanding an apology from CNN over its coverage of Saturday's terrorist attack in Itamar claiming it was "tendentious and deceptive."
The CNN report stated: "Five members of an Israeli family were killed in the West Bank early Saturday morning in what the Israeli military is calling a 'terror attack.'" Israeli officials contested the quotation marks around the term terror attack stating that there should be no argument on the fact that this is a terrorist attack.
The report went on to say: "According to a military spokeswoman, an intruder entered the Israeli settlement of Itamar near the northern West Bank city of Nablus around 1 am, made his way into a family home and killed two parents and their three children."
The report rephrased the IDF's official statement that noted forces were searching for a "terrorist" using instead the words "intruder" and "assailant". I myself remember many articles that called a suicide bomber, a freedom fighter.
Why is terminology such a controversial issue? Or as Shakespeare put it "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet."
To answer this question we should consider another article that hit the wires recently.
In Rome Pope Benedict XVI has made a sweeping exoneration of the Jewish people for the death of Jesus Christ. He deconstructs one particular Biblical account which has the crowd saying, "His blood be on us and on our children" — a phrase frequently cited as evidence of the collective guilt Jews bore and the curse that they carried as a result.
The phrase, from the Gospel of Matthew, has been so inflammatory that director Mel Gibson was reportedly forced to drop it from the subtitles of his 2004 film "The Passion of the Christ," although it remained in the spoken Aramaic.
The reason for Pope Benedict's interest in this debate could be traced to his childhood, when he was forced to join the Hitler Youth. As an adult he has made improving relations with Jews a mission and has visited the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland and Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.
Years of blaming the Jews for the death of Jesus along with newer anti-Semitic propaganda may have led to the extermination of Jews in World War II.
Words and terminology motivate people to action. Language has cultural and practical consequences. The Pope understood this. Israel has become aware of this and is now asking the world media as well as global leaders to unequivocally denounce these most recent attack.
One of the workshops we run on our tours is an exercise in the vocabulary of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What is the language used in your local media to describe the conflict? How do you reconcile between terms such as apartheid wall and separation fence, terrorist and freedom fighter, targeted killing and assassination?
At the end of the workshop we show a clip and deconstruct the phrasing of each sentence. By choosing our words we choose our moral ground, our social values and our identity – In effect our world is made up of words.
How were the Itamar "killings" reported in your part of the world?
Thursday, February 10, 2011
An Earthquake in Egypt.
Egypt is in turmoil. The people are revolting against their oppressor. They chant as so many before them "Give me liberty or give me death!"
This chant echoes in my mind as I travel to Beit She'an excavations. Beit She'an Hill, houses some of this region's most important archaeological finds, including artifacts from Egyptian, Roman, Byzantine and Muslim eras. These same rulers ruled Egypt for millenniums and I have to wonder what influence they must have had on the Egyptian people and their ideas of liberty, faith and government.
I walk into the ruins of an Egyptian Royal administration center and travel back in time to the age of the Pharaohs. These kings were believed to be deities, their reign divine. The reign of the Pharaohs did not bring with it much liberty, in the Jewish bible the escape from Egypt is also the attainment of liberty and is a cornerstone to millenniums of Jewish philosophies on personal and national freedoms. From the corner of my eye I spot the ruins of an ancient synagogue and think how relevant the story of Exodus must have been as the Greeks took over this town and brought with them the first raw form of democracy.
From the Roman amphitheater in Beit She'an, I walk through a Byzantine street fully equipped with period columns, and into a Byzantine basilica. In Egypt The Byzantine Era brought with it rulers believed to be the messengers of god on earth and their colonial rule enslaved the Egyptians until the decline of the empire.
I continue my time travel experience in Beit She'an to the 7th century when the Muslim conquerors took over. Here as in Egypt the local population could choose to convert to Islam or be considered second class citizens. When Umar conquered Egypt from the Byzantine Empire, Islam offered them the same deal. To the local inhabitants this meant that by becoming Muslims they would gain many more freedoms. They would subscribe not only to a faith but to a nation, a class and an ideology.
Back to modern Egypt, although it is ruled by a strong tyrant the power on the ground is divided. The government and military on one side and the Islamic clergy on the other.
The most apt manifestation of this is the rise of The Muslim Brotherhood, a fundamental Islamic movement established in the 1920's. During Mubarak era they have become the only well organized opposition.
Disenfranchised and poverty stricken the Egyptian people are rebelling; they chant words like freedom, and change.
But the Egyptian people have never really experienced freedom in the way that western countries have, and that makes the west very worrisome of the type of change they plead for.
If democratic elections were held today the Muslim Brotherhood are likely to take over and bring with them a religious government based on Shariah (Islamic) Law. What that would mean is a loss of that all-important separation of church and state, and with it the loss of many of the essential personal liberties enjoyed by the average Egyptian.
In Beit She'an the story ends with an earthquake which shattered the city's neglected Greek-Roman foundations. The marble floor and Greek columns, so associated with democracy today have mostly collapsed or disappeared. The city perished and was never rebuilt.
In Egypt the country's foundations are shaking, will the ruins provide a breeding ground for democratic ideas and government or for a faith based dictatorship?
Will it be liberty or death?
Thursday, December 30, 2010
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