Hunger and anxiety at the Damascus gate. The Jerusalem Grabathon?…
Of course, its all about what the future has in store. The fear of Israel is falling into a cycle of concession, sapping its vitality to endure challenges until the Arabs will have established themselves confidently enough to wage war. Is Israel condemned to perpetual war? “Reality,” as its defined, makes peace a more practical option. When the Arabs grasp that israel is not willing to concede, and that she will not fight with hands tied, they may begin to genuinely understand, the rhetoric flourishes of religious and holy and sanctimonious bloodshed notwithstanding, that the option of war is a serious matter which with the realization could hopefully lead to peace, a coming to terms with the situation and make practical decisions. The socio-economics of a world economy pressing toward the ideal of a global village will eventually force the Arabs to consider peace as an option. Today, all the world’s leading countries are turning toward peace, not because they have become more refined and pacifist, but simply because it is in their self-interest.
—However, we ask, with the UN recognition formalising East Jerusalem as an occupied territory according to the 1967 line, would it possible to change the point of view?
Possibly, yes. The turn to the right we observe has to do with old fears, ghosts, panic and terror, and manipulation of fear. The Holocaust was in 1945. The State of Israel was created in 1948. You can not normalize this traumatic experience so fast, it is still acting in the country, Ahmadinejad works as a reminder. The solutions sought are violent, ‘the Holocaust happened because we did not have s a strong country and a great army to defend us.” When you have a hammer in your hand all the problems look like nails. Developing a liking for might is like a swamp. The question is how to present to people a humanist and non-militaristic alternative. It also needs the help of our enemies; Hamas‘ discourse is full of venom, ‘not negotiable’. But such speeches do not come out of nowhere.—http://www.pressenza.com/2012/12/meir-margalit-in-jerusalem-palestinians-could-prevent-settlements/
(see link at end)In arguably the most candid and forthright interview he has given since winning office in 2008, Barkat suggested that if the Palestinians wanted a capital in Jerusalem they could rename Ramallah “Jerusalem” or “northern Jerusalem.”…
…It was in Jerusalem’s DNA to be a united city, under sole Jewish rule, he said. “By definition, that DNA cannot be divided.” Palestinian demands for some degree of sovereignty in the city, largely endorsed by the international community as integral to an Israeli-Palestinian accommodation, were unacceptable and unworkable, he said. “That kind of thinking will get us nowhere. It will get us to a dead end, to a bad deal… The answer is no separation of the city… If the world pushes us there, it’s just a matter of time before things will fall apart. It will not bring closer a resolution or a better relationship with our neighbors….
—Daniel Ridgway Knight (American-born French genre painter, 1839-1924) Washing Clothes by a Stream—Meir Margalit:The city’s unification is one of the biggest state-sponsored lies. The gaps between east and west cannot be hidden, and it’s enough to walk east Jerusalem’s streets to grasp how great the deprivation is there. And it’s enough to see the suspicious gazes of Jews and Arabs coming face to face to realize how deep the reciprocal alienation is.
It isn’t a question of a physical division, but more mental, cultural and emotional division.
It intensifies whenever an Arab crosses the line between the city’s two parts, and Border Police or women soldiers brusquely demand his ID, ask where he’s from and where he’s going, demands constantly repeated until he reaches his destination…click image for source…
…When it was put to him that his views ran against the current of international thinking, including that espoused by US President Barack Obama, Barkat said, “Unfortunately, they’re wrong. You want to hear the truth. You want to understand what will work, not what our allies are telling you. And if anything, I would recommend to our allies to ask us and to better understand the big writing on the wall. For every complex problem, there is one simple, wrong answer. What they’re seeking is the simple, wrong answer for this region, for Jerusalem, for the Middle East and for the relationship between us and our neighbors.”…
—Charles Frederic Ulrich (American painter, 1858-1908) Washerwomen—Meir Margalit:Discrimination isn’t created by the municipality, but at far higher levels. Back in 1967, the government decided that east Jerusalem’s Palestinians would have a lesser legal status than their Jewish counterparts in the west. They were classed as “residents,” while Jewish Israelis are “citizens.” This bizarre phenomenon has escaped the Israeli awareness since it’s hard to explain how – living in the capital city of a nation purporting to be “the only democracy in the Middle East” – is an entire ethnic group whose legal status is inferior to that of the dominant group….
Asked for his vision of an accommodation with the Palestinians, Barkat said “it would probably be in line with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s understanding of the two-state solution. But not dividing Jerusalem.” With no Palestinian sovereign role? “No, no, there’s no such thing,” he said. “No such thing in the world.”…
…Addressing a hot-button religious issue in the city, Barkat indicated opposition to the campaign by the Women of the Wall for the right to hold services, complete with tallitot and Torah scrolls, at the Western Wall, noting that “they can go to the [adjacent] Davidson Center… I have been to ceremonies held by Evangelical Christians, and Reform Jews, or Conservatives, at the Davidson Center, with no restrictions. Much easier. Not in the Orthodox way of Judaism,” he said.
John French Sloan painting…Meir Margalit:The first side of that triangle is built on dismantling community institutions and getting rid of any local national leaders. The second is fed by depen
The third side is built on never-ending fear. Maybe tomorrow bulldozers will demolish your house, or settlers will seize your land. …
“My feeling is, you know, to respect the ultra-Orthodox because of the importance of the Western Wall to all people, and enable a solution [for other streams of Judaism] side-by-side to the ultra-Orthodox way. Legally, if the courts define that [the Women of the Wall] can do that, well, they can. But the challenge is: What’s the right thing to do?”…Read More:http://www.timesofisrael.com/barkat-let-the-palestinians-rename-ramallah-as-jerusalem/
Psychologically speaking, and Jerusalem is as much a state of mind as a physical presence, (disorders like the Jerusalem syndrome attest to that)there is the metaphysical aspect of simply being unable to internalize a subject like Jerusalem that has been over-mediated; to reduce it to the commonplace by widespread analysis and discussion, a form of technological reproduction as a symbolic object of reverence somehow tarnished and dusted by religious feuding and secular desire for a simple and quick separation of the forces of evil cut and dried without the messy antics of spiritual attachment devoid of emotional fuel and intellectual refreshment. Without this internalization, no-one as Christopher Hitchens wrote, is going to blow themselves up for a half-a-loaf compromise solution. The leave or risk to be killed option, the flip side of the coin of hope is that of despair, not always a direct route to its sublimation into political and ideological identity as Hitchens pointed out. Violence as a derealization and depersonalization in a psychotic sense where Jerusalem is center stage in our post-modern society of the Spectacle in which this entire conflict of the West is part of a spectacle and makes a spectacle of itself. A true psychosis where all perception is both alien and unreal with some very strange actors in the lead roles…( to be continued)…
ADDENDUM:
From Rudyard Kipling, The Burden of Jerusalem:
…We do not know
what God attends
The Unloved Race
in every place
Where they amass
their dividends
From Riga to Jerusalem;
But all the course
of Time makes clear
To everyone
(except the Hun)
It does not pay to interfere
With Cohen from Jerusalem.
For, ‘neath the Rabbi’s
curls and fur
(Or scents and rings
of movie-Kings)
The aloof,
unleavened blood of Ur,
Broods steadfast on Jerusalem.
Where Ishmael bides
in his own place –
A robber bold,
as was foretold,
To stand before
his brother’s face –
The wolf without Jerusalem:
And burthened Gentiles
o’er the main
Must bear the weight
of Israel’s hate
Because he is not
brought again
In triumph to Jerusalem.
Yet he who bred the
unending strife
And was not brave
enough to save
The Bondsmaid from
the furious wife,
He wrought thy woe, Jerusalem!
COMMENTS
