The Riddle of Hate
UPDATE: apprently, YNET themselves have translated the article. I didn't need to do it myself.
===
The following article appeared in YNET, an Israeli online newspaper, about a week ago (7/20 I believe). It was written by Yair Lapid, a long-time journalist who always tends to come up with what I consider very powerful columns when the times call for them. I had to share it with you, and so I have taken it upon myself to translate the article to english and post it here. I think he brings up a very important question, and one that I can't answer. Can you?
===
The Riddle of Hate
One hundred years of conflict, six and a half wars, billions of dollars wasted, tens of thousands dead, not including the boy who was lying next to me on the rocky shore of Lake Kireon in 1982 as we both looked at how his intestines were spilling out of his body. The chopper took him and to this day I don't know whether he survived. All of that, and it is still impossible to understand.
It's not all that has happened, but also what had not - hospitals that were never built, universities that were never opened, roads that were never paved, the three years that were taken from the lives of millions of young conscripts in army service. And we still don't even have a clue as to the solution to the riddle that started it all:
Why do they hate us so?
I am not referring this time to the palestinians. Their conflict with us is intimate, focused, with a direct impact on their lives. Without answering the question of who is right, it's clear that they have very personal reasons not to tolerate our presence here. We all know, too, that eventually it will be solved personally, between us and them, in blood, sweat, and tears that will whet the pages of our agreement. Until then, at least it's a war that's understandable, even if no sane human being can accept the methods through which it is being waged.
It's the others that are impossible to understand. Why Hassan Nasrallah, together with tens of thousands of his supporters, dedicates his life, his considerable and obvious talents, and the fate of his country, to fight a country he has never seen, people he has never met, an army that has absolutely no reason to fight him?
Why children in Iran, who can't even locate Israel on the map (mostly because it's so tiny), burn its flag in town square and offer to commit suicide for the purpose of its demise? Why egyptian and jordanian intellectuals incite the innocent and helpless against the peace agreements, even though they know that their cancellation will set their countries twenty years back? Why the syrians are willing to remain a depressed and hopeless third world country, in return for the dubious pleasure of financing terrorist organizations that eventually will threaten their very own existence? Why do they hate us in Saudi Arabia? Iraq? Sudan? What have we ever done to them? How are we even relevant to their lives? What do they know about us? And why do they hate us in Afghanistan? They don't have anything to eat over there, how do they have the strength to hate?
So many answers to this question, and still it is a mystery. Truthfully it is a religious matter, but even religious people make their own choices. The Kuran (together with the "Sharia" - the Islamic parallel to the jewish "Halacha") contains thousands of laws. Why do we occupy their minds so much?
After all, there are so many other countries that have given them much better reasons to be angry. We didn't start the crusades, we didn't rule them throughout the colonial period, we never tried to convert them. The mongols, seljuks, greeks, romans, crusaders, ottomans and english, they all conquered and destroyed and pillaged the whole region. We never even tried, how come we're the enemy?
If this is about sympathy with the palestinians, then where are the saudi tractors rebuilding Gush Katif(1)? What happened to the indonesian delegation building a school in Gaza? Where are the kuwaiti doctors with new medical equipment? There are so many ways to love your brother, why do they prefer to help them hate?
Is it something we're doing? Fifteen hundred years of anti-semitism have taught us - in the most painful way possible - that there is something about us that makes the world mad. So we did the one thing everybody wanted: we went away. We created our own tiny state, where we could bicker with each other without bothering anyone else. We didn't even ask for much in return. Israel's territory is less than 1% that of Saudi Arabia, with no oil, no minerals, and was not part of another country. Most cities being bombarded were not taken from anyone. Nahariya, Afula and Karmiel did not exist until we created them. The other missiles hit places that no one ever doubted our right to them. Jews had lived in Haifa as early as 300 BC and Tveria(2) was the location of the last Sanhedrin(3), so nobody can claim we stole them from anyone.
But the hatred continues. As if no other destiny is possible. Active, poisonous, ever-lasting hatred. This last Saturday the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called again "to work towards the disappearance of Israel", as if we were bacteria. We've grown so used to it that we don't even ask why.
Israel doesn't hope and has never hoped that Iran would disappear. As long as they wanted it we had diplomatic relations with them. We don't share a border or even bad memories. And yet they are willing to stand against the whole of the western world, face a trade boycott, hurt their standard of living, demolish the little that's left of their economy, and all that for the right to hate us passionately.
I am trying to remember and can't: have we ever done anything to them? When? How? Why did he say in his speech that "Israel is the main problem of the Islamic world"? More than a billion people live in the Islamic world, most of them in horrendous conditions. They suffer hunger, poverty, ignorance, blood wars from Kashmir to Kurdistan, from dying Darfur to scarred Bangladesh. How come we're the main problem? How exactly are we bothering them?
I refuse to accept the argument that says "that's how they are". They said that about us so many times, we became suspicious of it. There has to be another reason, some dark secret that causes half the population of Lebanon to cause a quiet border to fire up, to kidnap the soldiers of an army that had already retreated, turn their country into piles of rubble at the exact moment when they have finally eclipsed twenty years of disaster.
We've grown used to giving ourselves all sorts of learned explanations - "it's the Iranian influence" or "Syria is behind the scenes" - but that's too easy an explanation. Because what about them? their thoughts? What about their hopes, loves, desires and dreams? And what about their children? When they destroy their children's lives by sending them to die, do they see it as satisfactory to say that it was all worth it just because they hate us so much?
===
(1) Gush Katif - area vacated in Israel's one-sided withdrawal from the gaza strip in 2005.
(2) Tveria - Tiberias
(3) Sanhedrin - jewish high judaical and ecclesiastical council
===
The following article appeared in YNET, an Israeli online newspaper, about a week ago (7/20 I believe). It was written by Yair Lapid, a long-time journalist who always tends to come up with what I consider very powerful columns when the times call for them. I had to share it with you, and so I have taken it upon myself to translate the article to english and post it here. I think he brings up a very important question, and one that I can't answer. Can you?
===
The Riddle of Hate
One hundred years of conflict, six and a half wars, billions of dollars wasted, tens of thousands dead, not including the boy who was lying next to me on the rocky shore of Lake Kireon in 1982 as we both looked at how his intestines were spilling out of his body. The chopper took him and to this day I don't know whether he survived. All of that, and it is still impossible to understand.
It's not all that has happened, but also what had not - hospitals that were never built, universities that were never opened, roads that were never paved, the three years that were taken from the lives of millions of young conscripts in army service. And we still don't even have a clue as to the solution to the riddle that started it all:
Why do they hate us so?
I am not referring this time to the palestinians. Their conflict with us is intimate, focused, with a direct impact on their lives. Without answering the question of who is right, it's clear that they have very personal reasons not to tolerate our presence here. We all know, too, that eventually it will be solved personally, between us and them, in blood, sweat, and tears that will whet the pages of our agreement. Until then, at least it's a war that's understandable, even if no sane human being can accept the methods through which it is being waged.
It's the others that are impossible to understand. Why Hassan Nasrallah, together with tens of thousands of his supporters, dedicates his life, his considerable and obvious talents, and the fate of his country, to fight a country he has never seen, people he has never met, an army that has absolutely no reason to fight him?
Why children in Iran, who can't even locate Israel on the map (mostly because it's so tiny), burn its flag in town square and offer to commit suicide for the purpose of its demise? Why egyptian and jordanian intellectuals incite the innocent and helpless against the peace agreements, even though they know that their cancellation will set their countries twenty years back? Why the syrians are willing to remain a depressed and hopeless third world country, in return for the dubious pleasure of financing terrorist organizations that eventually will threaten their very own existence? Why do they hate us in Saudi Arabia? Iraq? Sudan? What have we ever done to them? How are we even relevant to their lives? What do they know about us? And why do they hate us in Afghanistan? They don't have anything to eat over there, how do they have the strength to hate?
So many answers to this question, and still it is a mystery. Truthfully it is a religious matter, but even religious people make their own choices. The Kuran (together with the "Sharia" - the Islamic parallel to the jewish "Halacha") contains thousands of laws. Why do we occupy their minds so much?
After all, there are so many other countries that have given them much better reasons to be angry. We didn't start the crusades, we didn't rule them throughout the colonial period, we never tried to convert them. The mongols, seljuks, greeks, romans, crusaders, ottomans and english, they all conquered and destroyed and pillaged the whole region. We never even tried, how come we're the enemy?
If this is about sympathy with the palestinians, then where are the saudi tractors rebuilding Gush Katif(1)? What happened to the indonesian delegation building a school in Gaza? Where are the kuwaiti doctors with new medical equipment? There are so many ways to love your brother, why do they prefer to help them hate?
Is it something we're doing? Fifteen hundred years of anti-semitism have taught us - in the most painful way possible - that there is something about us that makes the world mad. So we did the one thing everybody wanted: we went away. We created our own tiny state, where we could bicker with each other without bothering anyone else. We didn't even ask for much in return. Israel's territory is less than 1% that of Saudi Arabia, with no oil, no minerals, and was not part of another country. Most cities being bombarded were not taken from anyone. Nahariya, Afula and Karmiel did not exist until we created them. The other missiles hit places that no one ever doubted our right to them. Jews had lived in Haifa as early as 300 BC and Tveria(2) was the location of the last Sanhedrin(3), so nobody can claim we stole them from anyone.
But the hatred continues. As if no other destiny is possible. Active, poisonous, ever-lasting hatred. This last Saturday the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called again "to work towards the disappearance of Israel", as if we were bacteria. We've grown so used to it that we don't even ask why.
Israel doesn't hope and has never hoped that Iran would disappear. As long as they wanted it we had diplomatic relations with them. We don't share a border or even bad memories. And yet they are willing to stand against the whole of the western world, face a trade boycott, hurt their standard of living, demolish the little that's left of their economy, and all that for the right to hate us passionately.
I am trying to remember and can't: have we ever done anything to them? When? How? Why did he say in his speech that "Israel is the main problem of the Islamic world"? More than a billion people live in the Islamic world, most of them in horrendous conditions. They suffer hunger, poverty, ignorance, blood wars from Kashmir to Kurdistan, from dying Darfur to scarred Bangladesh. How come we're the main problem? How exactly are we bothering them?
I refuse to accept the argument that says "that's how they are". They said that about us so many times, we became suspicious of it. There has to be another reason, some dark secret that causes half the population of Lebanon to cause a quiet border to fire up, to kidnap the soldiers of an army that had already retreated, turn their country into piles of rubble at the exact moment when they have finally eclipsed twenty years of disaster.
We've grown used to giving ourselves all sorts of learned explanations - "it's the Iranian influence" or "Syria is behind the scenes" - but that's too easy an explanation. Because what about them? their thoughts? What about their hopes, loves, desires and dreams? And what about their children? When they destroy their children's lives by sending them to die, do they see it as satisfactory to say that it was all worth it just because they hate us so much?
===
(1) Gush Katif - area vacated in Israel's one-sided withdrawal from the gaza strip in 2005.
(2) Tveria - Tiberias
(3) Sanhedrin - jewish high judaical and ecclesiastical council
posted by Blinkered at 9:23 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home