God's
chosen people
Jostein
Gaarder, Aftenposten 05.08.06
From the Norwegian by Sirocco
There is
no turning back. It is time to learn a new lesson: We do no longer recognize
the state of Israel.
We could not recognize the South African apartheid regime, nor did we recognize
the Afghan Taliban regime. Then there were many who did not recognize Saddam
Hussein's Iraq
or the Serbs' ethnic cleansing. We must now get used to the idea: The state of Israel in its
current form is history.
We do not
believe in the notion of God's chosen people. We laugh at this people's fancies
and weep over its misdeeds. To act as God's chosen people is not only stupid
and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call it racism.
Limits to tolerance
There are
limits to our patience, and there are limits to our tolerance. We do not
believe in divine promises as justification for occupation and apartheid. We
have left the Middle Ages behind. We laugh uneasily at
those who still believe that the God of flora, fauna, and galaxies has selected
one people in particular as his favorite and given it funny stone tablets,
burning bushes, and a license to kill.
We call
child murderers 'child murderers' and will never accept that such have a divine
or historic mandate excusing their outrages. We say but this: Shame on all
apartheid, shame on ethnic cleansing, shame on every terrorist strike against
civilians, be it carried out by Hamas, Hizballah, or
the state of Israel!
Unscrupulous art of war
We
acknowledge and pay heed to Europe's deep
responsibility for the plight of the Jews, for the disgraceful harassment, the
pogroms, and the Holocaust. It was historically and morally necessary for Jews
to get their own home. However, the state of Israel, with its unscrupulous art
of war and its disgusting weapons, has massacred its own legitimacy. It has
systematically flouted International Law, international conventions, and
countless UN resolutions, and it can no longer expect protection from same. It
has carpet bombed the recognition of the world. But fear not! The time of
trouble shall soon be over. The state of Israel
has seen its Soweto.
We are now
at the watershed. There is no turning back. The state of Israel has
raped the recognition of the world and shall have no peace until it lays down
its arms.
Without defense, without skin
May spirit
and word sweep away the apartheid walls of Israel. The state of Israel does not exist. It is now
without defense, without skin. May the world therefore have mercy on the
civilian population. For it is not
civilian individuals at whom our doomsaying is directed.
We wish
the people of Israel well,
nothing but well, but we reserve the right not to eat Jaffa oranges as long as they taste foul and
are poisonous. It was endurable to live some years without the blue grapes of
apartheid.
They celebrate their triumphs
We do not
believe that Israel
mourns forty killed Lebanese children more than it for over three thousand
years has lamented forty years in the desert. We note that many Israelis
celebrate such triumphs like they once cheered the scourges of the Lord as
"fitting punishment" for the people of Egypt. (In that tale, the Lord, God
of Israel, appears as an insatiable sadist.) We query whether most Israelis
think that one Israeli life is worth more than forty Palestinian or Lebanese
lives.
For we
have seen pictures of little Israeli girls writing hateful greetings on the
bombs to be dropped on the civilian population of Lebanon
and Palestine.
Little Israeli girls are not cute when they strut with glee at death and
torment across the fronts.
The retribution of blood vengeance
We do not
recognize the rhetoric of the state of Israel. We do not recognize the
spiral of retribution of the blood vengeance with "an eye for an eye and a
tooth for a tooth." We do not recognize the principle of one or a thousand
Arab eyes for one Israeli eye. We do not recognize collective punishment or
population-wide diets as political weapons. Two thousand years have passed
since a Jewish rabbi criticized the ancient doctrine of "an eye for an eye
and a tooth for a tooth."
He said:
"Do to others as you would have them do to you." We do not recognize
a state founded on antihumanistic principles and on the ruins of an archaic
national and war religion. Or as Albert Schweitzer expressed it:
"Humanitarianism consists in never sacrificing a human being to a
purpose."
Compassion and forgiveness
We do not
recognize the old Kingdom of David as a model for the 21st century map of the Middle East. The Jewish rabbi claimed two thousand years
ago that the Kingdom of God is not a martial restoration of the Kingdom of David,
but that the Kingdom
of God is within us and
among us. The Kingdom
of God is compassion and
forgiveness.
Two
thousand years have passed since the Jewish rabbi disarmed and humanized the
old rhetoric of war. Even in his time, the first Zionist terrorists were
operating.
Israel does not listen
For two
thousand years, we have rehearsed the syllabus of humanism, but Israel does not
listen. It was not the Pharisee that helped the man who lay by the wayside,
having fallen prey to robbers. It was a Samaritan; today we would say, a
Palestinian. For we are human first of all -- then Christian,
Muslim, or Jewish. Or as the Jewish rabbi said: "And if you greet
your brethren only, what do you do more than others?" We do not accept the
abduction of soldiers. But nor do we accept the deportation of whole
populations or the abduction of legally elected parliamentarians and government
ministers.
We
recognize the state of Israel
of 1948, but not the one of 1967. It is the state of Israel that fails to recognize,
respect, or defer to the internationally lawful Israeli state of 1948. Israel wants
more; more water and more villages. To obtain this, there are those who want,
with God's assistance, a final solution to the Palestinian problem. The
Palestinians have so many other countries, certain Israeli politicians have
argued; we have only one.
The USA or the world?
Or as the
highest protector of the state of Israel
puts it: "May God continue to bless America." A little child took
note of that. She turned to her mother, saying: "Why does the President
always end his speeches with 'God bless America'? Why not, 'God bless the
world'?"
Then there
was a Norwegian poet who let out this childlike sigh of the heart: "Why
doth Humanity so slowly progress?" It was he that wrote so beautifully of
the Jew and the Jewess. But he rejected the notion of God's chosen people. He
personally liked to call himself a Muhammedan.
Calm and mercy
We do not
recognize the state of Israel.
Not today, not as of this writing, not in the hour of grief and wrath. If the
entire Israeli nation should fall to its own devices and parts of the
population have to flee the occupied areas into another diaspora, then we say:
May the surroundings stay calm and show them mercy. It is forever a crime
without mitigation to lay hand on refugees and stateless people.
Peace and
free passage for the evacuating civilian population no longer protected by a
state. Fire not at the fugitives! Take not aim at them! They are vulnerable now
like snails without shells, vulnerable like slow caravans of Palestinian and
Lebanese refugees, defenseless like women and children and the old in Qana, Gaza, Sabra, and
Chatilla. Give the Israeli refugees shelter, give them milk and honey!
Let not
one Israeli child be deprived of life. Far too many children and civilians have
already been murdered.
Quelle: www.boomantribune.com (Übersetzung des
"Aftenposten"-Artikels in die englische Sprache)