(click for bigger vrs.)Tuesday, March 27, 2007
What's happened to our ability to disagree? Just what are we afraid of?
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Apparently, a peaceful march memorializing the 40 anniversary of the Israeli occupation of Palestine is just too much to advertise. This ad was originally rejected CBS Outdoors, which manages advertising for the Washington, DC metro rail system. Thankfully, the ACLU stepped into defend this ad, put out by US Campaign to End the Occupation, and CBS Outdoors relented. It will be displayed on the DC metro, commuters will see it some 9 million times and the sky wont fall. More and more, I find myself just saddened by our inability to civilly disagree with each other, especially about the Holy Land. There's a raging debate in Israel about the ins-and-outs of the occupation, but the only socially acceptable opinion here in the United States goes something like this: "I support both Israelis and Palestinians. It's such a complicated situation." I hope that more and more people will begin to offer real friendship the Israel - the sort of friendship that prevents a friend from destroying itself through violence.
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3 comments:
I'm reading the Old Testament for the very first time right now and it's mournful how far the modern "state" of Israel is from actually fulfilling the law which has always been part and parcel of the Jews living on that land.
I try and avoid getting into these sorts of conversations with my one zionist friend because I am afraid of moralizing and I don't want to instigate an argument for fear it will de-evolve. But if Zionism is only a political ideology that revolves around a national expression of the Israeli people then it's existence ought to be arbitrary and for the sake of diplomacy it would have been better placed in Lawrence Kansas or Czechoslovakia than in West Jerusalem. Still I can't help but marvel at how much easier the Israeli people would have it if they were to actually observe the laws of Moses, speciffically the ones about social justice, human rights and equality under the law.
In the Torah the system we know as aparthide was strongly and repeatedly warned against.
"You shal not move your neighbour's landmark, which the men of old have set, in the inheritance that you will hold in the land that the Lord your God is giving you to posess."
Deuteronomy 19:14
is just one example.
Well, some settlers like to quote that verse as a reason for continuing in the settlements. It's very difficult to figure out how to apply those vrs. to today; it seems like everyone see in them whatever supports their own ideology. I've decided, personally, to let Jewish people figure out what those vrs. mean to them, but you do make an interesting point. A couple of other locations for a state were purposed by early Zionists.
yah I guess it always gets messy when people start pulling out the bible in order to butress their arguments, anyone can do it and depending on your own hermanutic any verse can be a potential support to your argument.
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