There is a way to clarify our understanding of the conflict in the Middle East and the polarization of Islamic people with Israel. It requires that we take a longer view of the events that have generated the conflict and the interests that fuel it today. This is not a futile exercise. It leads to the realization that the conflict can be resolved and that the resolution shall bring great benefit to all the world.
Let us then, begin at the beginning.
Germany was defeated in the First World War. Its cities were ravaged. Its lands were poisoned. Its people were sick, exhausted and impoverished.
The victors, the Allies---France, England, and Russia--looted the manufacturing and industrial resources, tore up the railroad lines and stripped the countryside of agricultural products. The German mark was near worthless in trade. The government was unstable and between 1918 and 1932, there were only ineffective governments which failed to restore social or political order to rebuild the country
The Great Depression caused world wide economic failures. Unemployment in the US and developed nations ran 25% or more.
In Germany, it was far worse. By 1932, Germany's unemployment rate was 70%. Social chaos and mass rioting was the result of starvation, soaring crime, and failure of the basic infrastructure for food, water, sewage and medical care. Disease was rampant as people were dying in the streets and left to rot.
In 1932, it was estimated that within five years, forty percent of the population would be dead.
Into this nightmare, an uneducated worker drew up a plan: if 40% would die, let the German people survive. Create a public plan in which those who were not historically part of the German people ("true Germans") or who were criminals and parasites stealing from the German people, or those who were mentally deranged or physically without hope of health or constructive participation in the society be eliminated in a systematic and sanitary way. Let those who were foreign born be required to return to their original countries. Let those who defined themselves as "non-citizens", leave or be eliminated from the German population. Let those who dissent from doing what needs to be done be considered obstructionists and enemies of the German people. And let the property of all of those enemies, criminals and outcasts be returned to the German people to restore health, peace and prosperity to them.
How reasonable this seems. How socially conscious. And yet, what devastation resulted.
The simple laborer was Adolf Hitler and his plan is contained in "Mein Kampf". In the social and political chaos, Hitler emerged as a leader who had articulated what came to be seen as a hard but necessary plan for the survival of Germany and her people. Germany instituted what has been named "the Holocaust". The gypsies were killed, The homosexuals were killed. The mentally ill, the aged and the infirm were killed. The priests and nuns, the ministers and students who objected or begged for mercy for others, were killed as obstructionists and therefore, enemies. The teachers and intellectuals who spoke out or wrote criticisms of these policies, were judged to be enemies of the state and they too were marked for elimination. Some 10 million men, women and children were slaughtered. Most were Catholics and Protestants. Some were atheists. It is estimated that an additional 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust and it may help us to understand the present if we look at the factors that made the Jews particular targets .
In the 150 years prior to the rise of Nazism , pogroms in Russia and other Eastern European countries had resulted in wave after wave of Jewish immigration. Germany's Jewish ghettoes held many non-German immigrants. The same was true for Poland and Austria. Many had fled the pogroms of Russia.
The cause of the pogroms was both economic and religious. For more than 1500 years, until 1947 Catholics and Protestants were not permitted to lend money or charge interest on loans and mortgages. This was considered a "mortal sin" by the Church. It was called "usury" and the punishment was eternal damnation.
The Jews became the bankers, mortgage brokers, pawn shop owners and financiers. They became so economically powerful from this, that many countries had laws prohibiting Jews from owning property, even when a mortgage was defaulted. They could sell the mortgage to someone else, but they themselves could not own the land or the factories.
In these times, people would pawn anything: not just jewelry, but furniture, clothing, even their shoes.
When times became very hard, those who had pawned their personal effects would go to church both for some warmth in winter, and to pray. Too often priests and ministers would inflame the congregations with assertions about how the Jews had killed Jesus ( incorrect; the Romans had crucified Jesus) or that the Jews were practicing satanic rites to obtain their wealth. In those days, it was believed that you prospered because God has specially blessed you or because you had sold your soul to the Devil and were required to engage in human sacrifice of virgins and infants.
Half mad from starvation, deprivation and resentment , whole towns would invade the Jewish ghetto , beating and sometimes killing the Jewish inhabitants and taking back from them all the pawned personal possessions, food stores and whatever could be used. The Jews that survived rarely rebuilt and lived again with their Christian neighbors. Most would take the pogrom as a sign that they should move on and find more tolerant communities to establish their shops, banks and services in.
The Jews focused their services on "mobile" assets: education, professional skill such as medicine and dental services, architectural design, accounting, writing, research, teaching;. They engaged in businesses with high valued and easily transported products: jewels and jewelry, art, and wherever craftsmanship was rewarded. Moving and starting over was more the rule than the exception.
The ghetto life served the Jewish community. They banded together for spiritual cohesion and safety. They shared common language (Yiddish, a blend of Germany and Hebrew) different from the European nations that they settled in, Their religious practices and laws resulted in distinctive food, clothing, hair styles and cultural values that kept them alert and "mobile" in their assets. They tended to be more and better educated than the people around them and while the ghettoes walled them in, it also kept out the cultures that could contaminate their spiritual and material lives. And if things became too difficult with the surrounding cultures, they could always move on.
While intermarriage with non-Jews was frowned upon, some Jews intermarried. They more often than not became non-practicing Jews and raised their children as Christians or atheists. They lived outside the ghettos and distanced themselves from the Orthodox community.
It is important to realize that these European Jews-the Ashkenazi--were very different from the Sephardic Jews of Spain, Portugal, North Africa and the Middle East.
Ashkenazi Jews are the Jews of France, Germany and Eastern Europe and their descendants. The term "Ashkenazi" is derived from the Hebrew word for Germany. These Jews lived in fear and tension with the people around them. They had neither security nor safety for any extended time since pogroms would occur disrupting their lives or they would find themselves flooded with the refugees from other cities and nations.
For the Ashkenazi Jews, the future was unsettled. At any time, they would have to move on to find a new community, a new town or a new country in order to survive.
Until the Great Depression. Now, there was no place to move to in Europe. The rise of Nazism and the Holocaust identified the Jews as "not true Germans" ---the isolation in the ghettoes contained most of the Jewish population and the presence of non-German Jews from other countries marked the ghettoes for large scale elimination of unwanted populations. The concentration of professionals and intellectuals in the Jewish community lead to strong resistance and objections to "the Plan" and targeted them as being, therefore "enemies of the German people".
Remember, that part of "the Plan" was to redistribute the assets of those caught in the Holocaust to the German people. Neighbors, even co-workers, would report Jews, dissidents, critics, and others in order to be able to seize their property when they were arrested. Clothing, furniture, residences, cars, jewelry, personal items were now being used and worn by the "true" Germans .
With high unemployment rates and social and economic instability, few countries could absorb those fleeing from the Nazi machine. When Jews attempted to leave for France, they were turned back. Switzerland turned them back. England denied the vast majority. Few European nations allowed significant numbers of Jews to immigrate. The United States turned them back. Some escaped to South America and Africa. Those who had emigrated before the world economic collapse were nearly helpless to bring their families out of Europe once the Second World War began.
The Nazis were very practical in that they would first kill those who were dissidents or who were too old to "work" or were considered parasites on the general population. It was a mixed group. As the Holocaust progressed, and the re-distribution of assets became a way to buy the support and silence of the general population, the focus on the Jews intensified.
They were sent to labor camps where they worked for the State until they grew weak and sick. If they could not "contribute" more than the cost of their food or posed a health danger to the workforce, they were eliminated. Or if too many were being sent to the camps and the personnel could not manage them, they sent healthy men, women and children to the gas chambers to "eliminate" the problem.
The killing and disposal of the victims of the Holocaust was done in a manner that was considered "sanitary" and "skilled" to maintain the idea of superior psychological and hygienic "health" and maintain the image of "benefit" to the life of Germans . The rural location of gas chambers, the mass graves, the recycling of clothing to distant cities or use as raw materials in industry, all isolated the true scope and brutality of the Holocaust from the eyes and full awareness of the German people. Only the "accounting" legers discovered after the War reveal the devastation that took place and document the claims that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust, 10 million non-Jews, 1900 priests, etc.
At the War's end, when the concentration camps were "liberated", the majority of the prisoners were unable and usually, unwilling to return to their cities and towns. Between the grief and memories of those they had loved, and the horror of seeing the personal effects of family and friends in the hands and on the backs of the Germans, the prospect of return was a nightmare.
They wanted, and they needed, to move on.
Again, they were turned back by the other European nations, Russia, and the United States. Limited numbers immigrated to South American nations and a few African nations. Most were too mentally and emotionally scarred and wanted only to go to a place where they would always be accepted as Jews.
From this, the ranks of the Zionists-those Jews who worked for a Jewish "homeland"-swelled.
The Betrayal of the Arabs
To understand the opposition of the Arab nations to the creation of Israel, some background is needed.
Moslems and Jews had lived side by side with relatively little rancor for more than 1,000 years in Arab states. These, however, were Sephardic Jews (who had fled the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal in the 1400s) and the Mizrachim (Jews who had lived side by side with Arabs from ancient times). Today, the indigenous Jews of the Middle East are generally referred to as Sephardic Jews.
They owned land and businesses, they traded, intermarried and argued with their Arab neighbors. They were neither segregated nor oppressed by the Islamic culture. Sephardic Jewish thought and culture was strongly influenced by Arabic and Greek philosophy and science. There was mutual respect between Arabs and Middle Eastern Jews.
Control of Palestine and the Holy Land had been in the hands of Moslems for over 2000 years with only brief interruptions during the Crusades when foreign factions (French and English Catholics primarily) held military control.
The Islamic View, Culture and Laws
The Islamic peoples were primarily desert dwellers with a culture and values formed by life in the desert. In this culture, formalized as Islamic law, theft was punishable by the loss of the right hand. This was the hand that took food from the community shared food vessels. The left hand was used to clean oneself after urination and defecation. It was never used to feed oneself or to draw food from the community plates.
A thief is, therefore condemned to complete isolation from the community and to a slow and painful death by starvation.
This extreme punishment was because, in the desert, one's life depended upon honor among the travelers. A cache of food or supplies left on a travel route could mean life or death to those relying on the supplies. The code of honor was stronger even than blood ties. It required that those moving through life together support and help each other and live in honor with each other. Even today, if someone leaves personal possessions in the desert, they will be there when he returns.
The Arab peoples were a tribal society. With rare exception, information was transmitted orally. The verification of information was based on the history and character of the teller. Was this person and his family known to the listeners? Had he himself witnessed the events he described or had he heard them from another who was reputable, known to the listeners, respected and confirmed as a teller of truth? Or was this a person known to exaggerate? Could you believe the accuracy of the statements? Who else could one call upon to witness the truth of what was told?
During the Second World War, the Arab States fought beside the Allies against the German and Italian Axis. As allies, the British, French , Americans and Russians were extended the full support of the Arabs including the sacrifice of their lives to help and defend them.
During the era between the First and Second World Wars, both European and American companies had been dealing with the isolated Arab emirates and kingdoms over oil. By the end of the Second World War, the isolated Arab tribes were becoming cohesive into nation states. Under the agendas of nationalism, ownership and control of the Suez Canal, the oil fields and refineries, and other resources were moving into Arab hands and away from foreign control.
Britain had developed a policy of "divide and conquer" with colonies that sought economic and political independence. The division of Pakistan into two sections with India in between is a clear example. The division was rationalized as based on religious differences. The economic and political strife that continues to this day perpetuates dependency on Britain and other foreign interests.
Imposing the creation of Israel and occupation of Arab lands by the European Jews was an extraordinary act of betrayal of Islamic law and culture. It was meant to disrupt and distract the Arab nations from their own political and economic focus.
This policy was imposed on the Middle East with the Balfour Declaration. This created the state of Israel by violating the Alliance with the Arab states and profoundly violating both their cultural values and their laws. Britain, backed by the United States and the French, stole the land from the Palestinians, stole the Islamic Holy Shrines of Jerusalem from the Islamic people, and inserted Europeans as settlers upon lands that had belonged to the Arabs for millennia.
As Europeans, the refugees were unlike the Sephardic Jews who had lived in peace with the Islamic peoples. The Ashkenasi Jews carried the scars of war. They were angry. Their hearts were filled with hatred and unforgiveness. They swore "Never again" would they be driven from their homes or fail to fight and revenge attacks on them.
They considered the creation of the State of Israel their "right" as a kind of "payment" for what they had suffered and lost in Europe. They considered it the fulfillment of the prophecy of the Return to Jerusalem and the displacement of "a few Arabs" as a small and justifiable price the world should pay.
The continuing anger, resentment and resistance of the Islamic world to the creation and existence of the State of Israel has been an enormous surprise to the Western nations. To the Islamic culture, the creation of Israel and the on-going polarization with the Arab world has resulted from the perception of a series of lies, thefts, betrayals and dismissal of the rights of Islamic people to their own sovereignty.
Remembering that the Islamic people had lived side by side with the Miszracham for thousands of years and the Sephardic Jews for five hundred years, there was no hatred for the Jews in the Islamic culture. In fact, both Christians and Jews had been considered part of the Islamic world-view because of the shared ancestry to Abraham. Like the Jews, Islam considered Jesus a prophet and a holy man. Only those who violated the moral laws that Moslems, Jews and Christians shared were judged to be "infidels"-those who were "unfaithful" to God's laws.
For the Arabs, there was no justification for the creation of Israel nor any moral mandate to allow the occupation by the European Jews.
To begin with, no Islamic person or persons of merit can vouch for the events of the Holocaust, especially for the claim of 6 million Jews being slaughtered. Besides having no Islamic witnesses, the Middle Easterners had lived and worked with Sephardic Jews for thousands of years. They had, to the Arabs, the reputation for exaggeration. If a piece of cloth was good, the Jewish merchant would claim that it was the best, had been created for princes and was worth far more than what the merchant was asking. The same "bargaining" rhetoric was used by the Arab merchants themselves, so the claims of the European Jews were neither believed nor accepted as even possible.
The confiscating of Arab lands creating the State of Israel and the successive military expansion of Israel to claim more land, violated the alliance that the Arab states had made with the Allies. Here were their "friends", enforcing stealing from them! Here, using the European Jews as the knife, was a wound called the State of Israel which would not heal until the knife was removed. This is the rhetoric used even today.
The resistance of the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors to the confiscation of land and further expansion triggered the rage of Ashkenazi Jews throughout the world. They depicted the Arabs as another form of Nazis. The Jews outside of Israel mobilized economic and political support for the right of Israel to exist and the arming of Israel with weapons to not only defend its borders but with the ability to attack and devastate other nations. Jews from Western nations would visit Israel to "fight" with the Arabs and disparage the Palestinian and Arab fighters who had come from the desert cultures that did not fight to the death, but fought only to drive off bandits and rogues. The absence of weapons and deadly force by the Palestinians and their neighbors in the early years led to Israeli arrogance and contempt for the Arabs.
The Islamic people viewed the European refugees quite differently. They considered that the European Jews had been robbed twice. They recognized that the Nazis had stolen the property and possessions of the Jews. At the end of the Second World War, the Jews should have gone back and reclaimed their possessions as well as taken from the spoils of war in reparation. Instead, the European Jews let the Allies steal all of this from them, again, and used them as a weapon against the Arab world in the creation of Israel. Their "bad bargain" did not entitle them to take Arab lands.
As the demand for oil increased, the resources and political dynamics of the Middle East became a major dimension of the Cold War. Increased oil revenues meant wealth to the Arab nations and the Cold War led to the marketing of military weapons to both Israel and the Arab States. As each side increased military capacity, the other players were forced to match or excel in arms and military knowhow. The tensions and competitions of the Cold War were re-enacted in the nations of the Middle East.
Interestingly, as the Arab-Israeli tensions rose, the Western States more aggressively pursued the building and installation of military bases and their own weapons inside the Middle Eastern States. The borders with the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China became a string of bunkers for communist and Western silos. The questionable security and political instability of these areas was largely ignored until weapons and missals went missing. The accusation of Western nations that Arab states had "weapons of mass destruction" was factual. The weapons had been made in the West and been delivered as part of "mutual aid". The justification was that Israel had these weapons. With the same manufacturers.
In the modern world, the Arab-Israeli conflict continues to be perpetuated by Western interests. Over nearly three generations , the conflict has deepened the wounds. Today, the conflict has become global as the placement of Israeli war chests in New York and London have become targets for Arab retaliation for loss of lands and life. Each target, from the Twin Towers to the London Metro represent supply lines for Israeli interests and caches of Israeli gold and silver bullion. Each bombing of sites in other countries represent meeting places and alliances for the Arab world or disruption of Israeli supply lines and alliances.
Most American Jews are descendents of the European Ashkenazi Jews. While early settlements of Jews were from the Sephardic communities, those who came from the mid 1800s on were primarily Ashkenazi Jews.
In the population of Israel, the majority of Jews are Sephardic Jews who have lived in the Middle East since ancient times. Some are Ethiopian Jews who sought refuge from the extreme Ethiopian famines in the late 1980s an earl 1990s. The rest are the Ashkenazi and their descendants.
In the world community, the Ashkenazi favor military, economic and political policies in support of Israel whether acts by the Israelis are right or wrong, justified or not. This causes sharp divisions in many nations who would choose to be uninvolved in the quagmire of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Joan McKenna is a reseach scientist, a healer and a metaphysician. If we can tell the story to give both sides a fair hearing, perhaps we can heal. She can be reached at jmckenna@LMI.net .