On the Middle East and the End of the World
by Stojgniev O’Donnell

As it first came into sight, the elderly Palestinian driver turned to us with pain in his eyes and shook his free palm at the wall, as if to ask us to explain it. Though he glimpses it daily, the quiet, distinguished man in western clothing will not accept its existence. Not far from that wall, which has caused such grief among Palestinians, we were refused passage to predominately Palestinian Bethlehem. Passing within the wall’s shadow, we detoured and succeeded in crossing at a second Israeli checkpoint leading to Bethlehem.

The wall, of course, is illegal, and much of the world has demanded Israel tear it down. It’s not a traditional wall, but rather a line of rectangular concrete slabs with a circular leave-out at the top. The wall has disrupted everyday life for many Palestinians. I got some sense of that in our efforts to cross into Palestinian-controlled territory. But the primary impression for the visitor is one of ugliness. The wall lacks the dignity of traditional fortifications and smacks of the ugly practicality of modernity. Not only has it disrupted their lives, but the Palestinians have to face the concrete ugliness every day.

The wall tells us something about the future, for such structures like the Berlin Wall are never permanent. To build such a physical barrier is to admit, at least in the back of one’s mind, that someday the wall will come down. Who will predict the manner in which this wall is demolished?

In Israel and Palestine, the weight of history hangs everywhere like a humidity. In the Garden of Gethsemane, I observed olive trees which already breathed and produced fruit in the time of Christ. I’m reluctant to juxtapose history and religion, something which Americans often attempt so falsely and ridiculously, yet one can hardly help thinking that human history and the future of mankind are linked to the lands in and around Jerusalem. Entering the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, I was overwhelmed by the energy of history. At that moment, I felt that, indeed, I was at the spatial and temporal center of the world. According to Christian visionaries, important Biblical events took place on the site of previous significant Biblical events. It is said the bones of Adam and Eve rest beneath the site of Golgatha within the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where also the Final Judgment will begin.

I wondered how many Christian Palestinians carry in their veins the blood of Biblical Jews. If a Chosen People survives today, where do we find them? Unfortunately, the numbers of Christian Palestinians and Christian Arabs, with few friends in the world – certainly not America, have been shrinking for decades.

A recent issue of The New Yorker (23/30 January 2006) includes a biographical essay by an Israeli journalist who interviewed Ariel Sharon over the years. The Middle East might be a safer place if there were more Israelis like Sharon, i.e. more Israelis brutally honest about Israel and the Arab world. To be sure, Sharon was implicated in the slaughter of innocent Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. His ranch of some one thousand acres stands on the site of a Palestinian village destroyed in 1948. Yet Sharon was relatively free of the complexes that plague Jews. Speaking about the rest of the world, he said, “If the Jews were to disappear, they’d…be happy.” Sharon understood well the opposition of the Palestinians and their Arab allies (he admitted admiration for their unwavering determination). He was pessimistic about peace in the Middle East. Viewing world events today, who will disagree with him on that point?

Israel understands that it can survive only through the protection of the United States, its chosen shabas goy. For generations now, all Jewish efforts, honest and dishonest, respectable and perfidious, have been concentrated on forging an Israeli-American alliance. As America succumbs to the influence of the Jews, it is alienated from the rest of the world. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, we observe three quite simple political divisions in the world, split today between Israel/America (with cowardly Britain lurking in the background), the Arab and Muslim world, and disinterested parties which don’t want to fight the next (and last?) war. The opposition to Israel and America is led by Iran, a nation of zealots who seem eager to escalate tensions in the Middle East. The wall in Palestine, Iran’s nuclear aspirations, the West’s senseless, tactless disrespect of Islam and the subsequent rage erupting throughout much of the Muslim world – all these events portend the escalating conflict. One needn’t admire Sharon to share his pessimism.

In allying itself with Israel, America has signed on to a troubling future. Those of my own faith and blood, those of my nation, have nothing to gain by participating in that conflict. It is not our war, and it is immoral for us to participate. Unless one relishes irrationality, one will stay clear of Jews and their allies, for the Jew provokes irrationality.

I am convinced that Armageddon will be something entirely different from what Americans and especially their pro-Israeli Amen section imagine. There are no “good guys” in the Middle East these days, and those who want to build for the future are advised to cut their ties to America and Israel. At this point in history, to consent in any way to America is to support Israel.

9 February 2006
from a backward place