Because You Never Asked

 

(5/08, Spain)

     Way back in 2001, I wrote the essay “Israelis and Palestinians“. For an American, and even more so for a Jew, it did not whistle the usual Dixie with regard to the pretenses under which the Jewish state was born. Almost all my relatives would consider my remarks as nothing more than blasphemous treason, thus making it far more convenient if the essay found its niche in unread obscurity amongst this group. As for the rest of the 6 billion or so human organisms now terrorizing this planet, my desire to have anything I write be read still stands, so go ahead.

     2008 is the 60^th anniversary of the creation of Israel, its birth being on May 15,1948.  This milestone was surely the genesis of a long editorial page article that appeared in one of the local newspapers where I reside by the Roman Sea. In an occidental, Judeo-Christian nation like Spain, one would expect such an anniversary to be met with the usual back slapping congratulations for a job well done, way to go, keep up the good work, and many more to come, rah, rah, rah, yea Israel!

     And that is why the title of the piece, “Israel: The Myths of a Nation”, caught my eye. There was a touch of negativity here that led me to glance at its content, just to see if the party line was perhaps being deviated from.

     I’ll say!

     It is relevant to note the publication in question is your average daily newspaper, the kind of thing that would plunk against your front door in America if the paper boy has a good arm. Over the years, I’ve come to know it as a fairly normal source of Anglo-Euro spin. In no way can it be considered a mouthpiece for an Islamic point of view, nor any other radical concept one might conjure up. In spite of that, I found myself reading a scholarly article that could never appear in a mainstream American print or electronic news outlet. Once again, the overly filtered, narrow nature of information (propaganda?) in the United States was being revealed.

     As I explain in the Introduction to this book of essays, I am not an “expert” on anything. My voice is meant to be a generic voice, the thoughts of Citizen X trying to put all the stimuli around him into some kind of cohesive, rational order with which to base his feelings and actions upon. In my attempts to most clearly focus these feelings (that is, to try and be correct), I will seek the most stimuli sources possible --- literature, travel, a second language, artistic discovery, the visual arts, imbursements in articles like the one now under discussion, philosophical and scientific non-fiction, contact and debate with others increasing their stimuli base ---  anything that might feed a healthy intellectual curiosity. The purpose of these essays is to try and decipher what goes on around us through the eyes of someone using almost the same clues as everyone else. This does not preclude a certain level of intellectual formation, but it is not the intense field of specialization necessary to be considered an “authority” on something.

     However --- myself and others of similar vocational curiosity, in our attempts to construct this cohesive, rational order, will often revert to the “experts”. This is where Xavier Lacosta comes in.

     Xavier Lacosta is the journalist responsible for the editorial page article now under discussion. Its length and factual minutiae would suggest his having spent a great deal of time studying the Palestinian question, so much so that he’d have to be given some degree of expert status. When one such as myself has expressed some clearly stated opinions on the same subject, how these opinions match up with those of the “expert” becomes a logical question. Were the factual assertions of the layman (me) correct, and were his interpretations of the facts within reason?

     Now, even an “expert”, for all his or her detailed research on a particular subject, can have a point of view or preconceived notion that might alter, in varying degrees, the veracity of their postulations. Everyone sees the world through a different set of emotional glasses. When one can sift through the data and find high levels of corroboration, the idea that a concept or interpretation is “correct” begins to take on meaning. All the major historical facts and their interpretations that both myself and Mr. Lacosta touch upon in our respective works, show a goose stepping synchronization. I’d like to give the reader a few examples:

     As the title of Mr. Lacosta’s article suggests, its purpose is to debunk many of the myths with which the creation of Israel was based upon.

     I quote, “Amongst these justification myths is the idea that the Jews were always in Palestine. This is false. To suggest such a thing would deny the great Dispersion, or expatriation of the Jews in the first century. ( --- ) One of the most evident proofs of this is that only the Moslems confronted the Crusades. There is no narrative that speaks of Jewish troops nor Hebrew leaders or strongmen. ( --- ) The reality is, yes, there were Jews in Palestine of Sephardic or eastern origin, but in very low and insignificant numbers.”

     OK, here is an important excerpt from my essay “Israelis and Palestinians”:

     “But if we examine the history of the region since the times of Herod’s Roman hegemony and Jesus Christ’s non-orgasmic birth, we see the Jews in Palestine reduced to a smattering of people --- “ ( --- )

     “The first great trauma of the Jewish people was the dispersion of their culture by the Romans. ( --- ) Corroborating this is the fact that the Crusades of medieval times were a purely Christian-Moslem affair. The Jews, basically gone from the region, were not players in this joust.”

     Lacosta goes on to say:

     “Another myth is that, according to the preaching of Theodore Herzl, the Jews scattered about the world had a right to create a state in Palestine after 2,000 years of exile. False. Such kind of legal precedent is not formulated anywhere for anybody.”

     Here is another excerpt from the essay “Israelis and Palestinians”:

     “For the last 1,000 years, Palestine has been overwhelmingly imprinted with the Islamic-Arab culture, notwithstanding the drips and blips of Christians, Jews, Copts, Druids or whatever other spiritual dementia the human imagination gives forth with. One predicating the creation of a Jewish state in this region on this historic set of circumstances, might, I suppose, also clamor for the return of North America to the Indians.”

     Later in his article Lacosta says:

     “ --- the recently arrived Jews were a professional elite with a much higher intellectual level than the Palestinians. This is true because these recently arrived immigrants were from the west. ( --- ) What is almost never mentioned is the overwhelming scorn with which the Jewish immigrants treated the native residents ---

     Once again, here is the correspondent excerpt from “Israelis and Palestinians”:

     “It must be reiterated that the vast bulk of the Israeli population are émigrés from developed countries and they have treated the third world natives of Palestine with the same derision and conceit that all colonial powers have shown all through history. But this does not make such behavior acceptable.”

     These are the themes both myself and Mr. Lacosta coincide in and, as can be seen, there is a good deal of harmony. My essay then goes on to discuss some of the dubious decisions made by ensuing Israeli governments, while his article stays within the bounds of the “myths” used to justify the creation of the Jewish state. This includes a whole host of topics my lack of expertise would preclude me from discussing. This means my acceptance of his facts and interpretations cannot be based upon the kind of “corroboration” demonstrated on previous issues. This means the laymen (me) is flying somewhat blind here and Mr. Lacosta is going to have to convince the layman of his objectivity, regardless of his expert status.

     I’ve now had the opportunity to fully digest the article as an integral whole, and it might be said that Xavier Lacosta has an anti-Israeli-Zionist stance that might be seen as excessive. Some of his assertions and interpretations --- including the obligatory reference to the Rothschild family every time the Jews are supposedly up to something in the world --- seem forced and contrived. Before getting to them, let’s also state that my Jewish bloodline could be clouding my objectivity as well. Where exactly does the truth lie, and how do we find that truth?

     Mr. Lacosta, in order to further emphasize the poor treatment doled out by Jewish émigrés to the indigenous population, says that, “it is revealing to note that a number of English colonial officials such as Lawrence and (a few others he mentions) felt profoundly attracted to Islam, while there are no cases of any immigrant Jew having such admiration”. For such a statement to be meaningful, one would have to believe that any member of an émigré group trying to claim a land occupied by Moslems for themselves, would be likely to have such feelings. What would make Mr. Lacosta believe that a Jew, or anyone else in a similar historical circumstance, would ever be prone to cultivate such admiration? In addition, from what research source did this assumption come from? The inclusion of such a statement shows an exaggerated, even absurd attempt to make the Jews look bad.

     In November of 1947, the United Nations laid out its official plan for the partition of Palestine. As most of us know, it was not accepted by the Arabs. Once the Israeli state formally came into being in May of 1948, the Arabs attacked Israel. This is generally accepted, in the west, as the aggressor act.

     Lacosta claims it is just the opposite. He lays out a history of well organized Jewish terrorist groups operating in the years immediately before independence who assassinated British soldiers and policemen, and constantly harassed and threatened Palestinians into fleeing their homes. He claims Jewish terrorists invaded many Palestinian cities --- Jaffa, Haifa, Tiberia, etc. --- months before independence. This is his way of stating the Jews attacked the Arabs, and not the other way around.

     I find these assertions acceptable, if not airtight. But then he does a peculiar thing. He claims this Jewish terrorism was supported by that loveable, cuddly figure in history, Joseph Stalin. It is hard to find a motive for such help and Lacosta gives none, nor does he offer any clues as to the quantity of such support. Maybe there is some connection between Stalin and the historical acts just discussed, but it seems an almost torturous attempt to link the Jews to a notorious villain of our times, an attempt somewhat out of proportion to whoever else was helping the Jews, who he does not mention (except for the obligatory Rothschild reference).

     There is no need to further discuss more detail from the article in question. In trying to calibrate the sincerity or objectivity of an opinion piece, it is not just a question of fact, but of feel, tone, intuition. Mr. Lacosta has given me enough evidence to doubt the purity of his sentiments. The fact that his own prejudices, be they conscious or not, are interfering with his perceptions of reality, is not out of the question.

     In spite of all that, I do believe his version of this history is much closer to the bulls eye than both the Jewish and official versions in the United States, which are pretty much the same thing. I come to this conclusion by looking back at my early Jewish-American perceptions of these events, and how I came to have them.

     American post-war Jewry found a “Bible” for its interpretation of the events in Palestine in a lengthy, “schmaltzy” novel called “Exodus”, by Leon Uris. It hit its stride in the late 1950’s and was a rotund success, so much so it was made into a blockbuster Hollywood movie with a cast of thousands, a red carpet extravaganza of DeMillean proportions. (It was the kind of film Alec Guinness always showed up in, though I can only remember Eva Marie Saint and Sal Mineo for sure). (My God, Sal Mineo!).

     My parents introduced me to “Exodus” when I was about 14 years old, at a time when my life experience was narrowly encased within the confines of the prototypical Jewish-American middle class upbringing. It could have been the first “grown up” novel I ever read, and I do not remember reading another for many years to come. I’m not sure if the fact that I loved it speaks well or poorly for its quality.

     In any event, it had its desired effect. I empathized greatly with the “good guys”, and found my pride in being Jewish noticeably reinforced. It took me many years of intellectual growth and stimulus encounter to understand that “Exodus” was an extremely ethno-biased, romantization of history. It took me many years of Moses-like wandering in the huge intellectual desert most human life exists in, before I realized the creation of Israel was less a tear jerking attempt to return a homeland to an aggrieved people, and more a geo-political stunt brokered by Occidental interests, one they now  probably wish they’d never thought of.

     When I rummage through the attic of my memory and look back upon my “Exodus” experience, what most stands out is not what the book said, but what it failed to say. It is actually incredible to realize that after reading hundreds and hundreds of pages; after having gloried in an epic motion picture, at the time and for many years to come, I had no recollection of the Arabs having anything to do with anything in this whole Homeric saga. Yes, the terrorist history Xavier Lacosta speaks prominently about was an important element of “Exodus” as well, but the fight was always between Jews and British occupational forces. It was as if Palestine was occupied only by Jews and the idea of bringing down colonial rule only pertained to them. Arabs? Didn’t they have their own country somewhere else?

     Right to this day, the “Exodus” version is still the model for the American concept of this region’s history. That is why an article like Lacosta’s, in a mainstream media source, always rocks my world.

     There is one other thing Mr. Lacosta and myself coincide in: neither of us offer any solutions to this mess.