August 08 , 2014
Tyranny of Today
What seems like a thousand years ago, I took an early morning flight on an empty Eastern Airlines jet from New York to Washington. The plane was completely empty except for a lone passenger sitting at the back. When the stewardess served breakfast, I beckoned him to join me.
“From Jordan?” I queried. “No, from Israel,” he answered.
Swiftly the conversation turned to the Arab-Israeli conflict. With a triumphal gleam in his eyes, he was dismissive of Arab fighting prowess. He said, “Arabs could never take on Israel.”
Well, less than 10 weeks later, Egypt and Syria attacked, whereupon a faltering Israel was bailed out by President Nixon.
There is no such thing as a Final Solution -- a message and lesson that Israel, of all nations, has neither heeded nor comprehended.
In Washington circles today, there are constant reminders about the
Holocaust. But it is easier to condemn the excesses of the past, from the comfort of the present, when there are no consequences to be faced in condemning past tyranny. But it is a different ball game to speak truth to power today, when one could immediately face the consequences of one’s actions.
For pummeling Palestinians, Israel is not alone to blame. Here, the Arab Establishment stands tarnished as an unindicted co-conspirator.
The pusillanimity of US officialdom makes a mockery of its super-power status, which Senator Fulbright had so presciently ascribed to being “a crippled giant.” The United Nations, which was supposedly founded to prevent wars, is, in effect, an aider and abettor under the meek Ban Ki-Moon. Pope Francis I, for all his public empathy for the oppressed, is as quiescent and ineffectual as his predecessor, Pope Pius XII, was during the butchery of humanity during World War II.
A harsh question inescapably comes up: if what is happening to the children of Gaza were happening to pups and kittens, would the Western public have stood by and cheered?
And, as for the US Muslim elite, it refuses to be insulted, as most recently exemplified during the White House Iftar where the Gaza slaughter was endorsed in the presence of the Israeli Ambassador who, too, was invited. A simple walk-out would have restored self-respect.
On a plane ride over Munich on a sun-lit afternoon, the fields below looked placid, neatly ordered, and lush green. It was hard to fathom that the vicious embers of vengeance, stoked here in the aftermath of World War I, would devastate the world, leading to 60 million deaths.
It is instructive to watch an Oscar-nominated Israeli documentary, “The Gatekeepers”, which culls exclusive insights of former heads of Israeli intelligence, who are unanimous in stating that Israel’s iron-fisted approach to the Palestinians is by itself putting Israel on the road to perdition.
Those blinded today by Pharaonic arrogance may refer to Shelley’s immortal 1817 poem on the temporariness of power, “Ozymandias”:
“‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.”
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