What is it about we Jews that our Ishmaeilite cousins hate us so much? That hate, of the sort that penetrates the minds of people like the chap who decided to pick up an AK-47, and go to work at a Yeshiva in Jerusalem last evening in Jerusalem, killing 8 people, (7 of whom were between 15-16 years old, and one person 26 years old) is not something that comes instantaneously. That is, unless your belief system includes using women with Down's Syndrome to act as human bombs. I do not call these individuals "suicide bombers" because the intent to kill does not derive from the bomber herself, but from the person who sends her on her deadly mission. And that kind of hatefulness, of the sort this writer never wants to feel, one that has been instilled from birth, is what is driving these people to act not like human beings, but like animals. I will grant them status as belonging to the species homo sapiens. Given this situation, I feel comfortable calling them human animals. For what they did yesterday does not qualify, at least in my consciousness, as the act of a human being(s).
As much as they consider we Jews the descendants of pigs and monkeys, I daresay I would rather be a descendant of something rather than not having grown or descended from anything. For descent in terms of evolution means progress in adapting to a changing environment. And it is clear that some of our Ishmaelite cousins have actually regressed back to the animal kingdom. At some point in their history, they decided that they would rather hate and die rather than make an attempt to progress in their existence in view of a changing world and all that implies, for better or worse. I am, alas far too ignorant of the religious history of Islam (for that, I will have to consult Oxford's Bernard Lewis, whose history of the Middle East still sits, lonely, on my library shelf) to be able to determine exactly when things started to go mad within Islam.
But I can tell you this: something within the culture that gives rise to atrocities like that yesterday in Jerusalem is seriously flawed for anyone to kill any, let alone 8, civilians, in the name of "a cause" and say to the world "Islam approves of, and encourages this behavior, so watch out, Jew infidels." What kind of document is this that it could be so twisted into this, I don't care how illucid or gravely ill that mind happens to be?
I have read the Torah. On my most awful day, I could never find, nor imply, anything in our Bible to have me kill innocent civilians who have not done anything wrong. Granted there is quite a lot of violence in the Bible, but only goofy fundamentalists believe every word is literal and not somehow metaphorical. And even Jewish fundamentalists don't go around killing innocent Arab children in the name of the Torah. (Of course there are exceptions, as we are oft-reminded of mentally ill Jews who have done the same thing as the Arabs are doing. But they are the exceptional exceptions to the rule. For Islamic terrorists and their folllowers and supporters, intentionally killing innocent civilians IS the rule. This is the reason why there is such a large body of oral Torah, which is what we generally look to today for guidance spiritually and othewise.
So the question, as Shabbat approaches is: what to do? First, we can get sad. Because it is sad. Sad not just for Jews, but for all of mankind. If I thought that the US was divided and violent because we still have not yet learned to live together, imagine, I tell myself, what that must feel like in Israel. As if the whole world was just mad; upside-down crazy. Of the deadliest sort.
And we are, as Jews often are if history is to be believed as a key into the future, the first to be made examples of what will be done to others. Canaries in a coal mine. Once the canary dies, you better get out or it'll next be you. I am sure that the IDF will respond with the most care that it can to try to avoid killing civilians. Perhaps one day, those civilians who don't like having rockets launched from the courtyards of their apartment complexes will join together and suggest to Hamas that they all kill themselves, for they are killing not just Jews, but their own people and its hope for normal lives.
Yesterday's attack should be as a warning to the world. For something about 8 dead kids, sitting and having dinner at their school by terrorists in the name of their hate for Israel and Jews has me thinking that maybe,just maybe, this will at long last, serve as notice to the rest of the free world that they are next if we go. But I doubt it. Better to pander to fundamentalist killers and their followers.
Adar is the month of joy - of Purim for Jews and Easter for Christians. It sure isn't getting off to a very good start. Not for me anyway.
Shabbat Shalom
30 Adar 1 5768
2 comments:
Dear Randy
Sorry, I can't agree with what you write.
We are all human beings - the Palestinian who killed the 8 yeshiva students and wounded 10 others on Thursday night in Jerusalem and Baruch Goldstein - the Jewish-Israeli physician (?!) who killed 29 Muslims at prayer in Hebron in 1994. They both - and others on both sides - committed terrible acts of violence against innocent people, but they are not 'animals' . They were human, like you and me.
Something terrible drove them to consider their actions as 'logical' and 'justified', and they chose the path of killing and wounding innocent people as a way of furthering their cause. Their actions were immoral and terrible and violent and disregarding of life. But they are not animals, and using epithets to describe them only furthers the hate and puts further obstacles in our way to solve the problem in a way that will help humanity. The use of such terminology damages us all and does not help us better deal with this often frightening world.
All of us have within us the potential to carry out such terror attacks; none of us are 'immune' from such behaviors. We all need to constantly be on guard against becoming violent, and becoming bigots; we constantly need to work on ourselves not to fall into the trap of cultivating hate and accepting violence against the other as the solution to the conflicts that characterize our relations.
By calling 'them' "animals" and by "them" calling "us" "animals" all we do is further anti-Semitism and Islamaphobia. I recommend James Waller's book on Extraordinary Evil and Ervin Staub's book on The Psychology of Evil. There is not us vs. them - we are both in this world together. We need to find ways to educate ourselves and others and work toward some kind of non-violent co-existence if we are to have any hope of living life the way that all of us are entitled.
The events of Thursday evening in Jerusalem and the killing of innocent children and babies in Gaza Strip by the Israeli military make this work all the more difficult. But by stereotyping entire peoples, and separating those others from humanity by using such terms as 'animals' we are falling into the highly dangerous trap that helped convice peoples in
(modern) history to commit genocides.
I will not be dragged into that trap, and ask that you consider different possibilities of thinking about and addressing the terror attack on those yeshiva students two nights ago.
Hoping for a quiet Shabbat
Julia
What characterizes a human being? Their physical form? The two instances of delusional Jews who did kill innocent Arabs were the exception to the rule. They were not the modus operandi of an entire group. I agree that we have to find ways to avoid violence by anyone, how do we deal with beings that do not care about life? THIS is the fundamental quesetion and the reason why I question whether they really do belong among the human race. It's sad, and frankly, after what Sderot (and sadly Sapir College) has gone through and now this, I am sick of being sad. How much self-flagellation can we Jews stand about how to respond to this situation? Thanks so much for writing. I really appreciate it
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