From Nightmares To Revelations
By William A. Cook
11 June, 2013
Countercurrents.org
JERUSALEM, June 9, 2013, AP - A senior member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party said in an interview broadcast Sunday that the Israeli government will not accept a Palestinian state with the borders favored by the Palestinians and the international community, a new hurdle to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's effort to restart peace talks in his latest visit to the region.
“A new hurdle” seems to be an understatement, perhaps it is a nightmare, an on-going perpetual nightmare foisted by the Zionist state on the United States and the international community as a mouthing of interest in peace but with a silent intention that all Arabs must be removed from “their” land. In light of this anticipated consequence, I offer what might be the only positive way to comprehend Israeli deceit and it comes in the form of a dream, a mode of understanding that may reveal what should be while the reality does the opposite.
Dreams have in centuries past been understood to reveal truths about the conscious world that provide deeper insight into our day to day lives than what we discern when awake. Similar insight can come through the arts whether in the form of novels, short stories, films or plays. One need only read Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” or Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” to grasp the concept that we dream as an extension of our state of mind when awake to realize the implications of this. Hawthorne’s dream explores the universality of human depravity, rooted in its very nature. Dostoevsky seeks to show how that nature erupts in action in an individual, an enlightened and intellectually superior being. Both unveil the suffering that attends the common ordinary person as a result of forces beyond their control.
I awoke early this morning from such a dream spurred into my unconscious mind I have no doubt from viewing “For My Father,” a recent film that focuses on the reality of day to day behaviors in occupied Palestine. It like Kosminsky’s “The Promise” captures the lives of average people caught in the suffering of conditions imposed on them in most cases by forces over which they have no control, people caught if you will in the middle, sandwiched between those isolated in hopelessness and despair acting out of hate and vengeance and those isolated in their opulence and power who have removed themselves from the cloak of brotherly love to forgo the natural sympathies that bring harmony to the masses of people in order to inflict their will with force to secure their desires. It might be said that we, the mass of humanity, are mired in a slough of pathologies, driven to live each day in the sickness imposed by these extremes, unable or unaware of the causes or the means to allay them.
Let me tell you of my dream, focused as these two films are focused, on conditions in the occupied territories; it is a picture of the dichotomy of those alone in a society they cannot accept and a puppet caught in the maelstrom of power alone and unable to control the greed and arrogance that gives him life: the story of a terrorist and a President. In many ways this dream has haunted me for years. It begins with a Rabbi, perhaps the most revered Rabbi in Jerusalem until he died in 2006, Yitzhak Kaduri. This man proclaimed on his death bed that the messiah would come soon and revealed the name of that messiah in a sealed note that could not be opened until one year had passed from the day of his death. He also predicted that the messiah could not come until after the death of Ariel Sharon. It is this man that has haunted me these past 12 years, a man who is the inspiration for the protagonist of my morality novella, the Prime Minister of Nefaria who lies in a coma, immobile but able to think and relive his life in silence and isolation. The novella is titled The Chronicles of Nefaria and my protagonist like Sharon is still in a coma and Katuri’s prophecy has yet to be fulfilled since Sharon has not yet died.
In my dream the Prime Minister of Israel, having spent years in a coma reliving his life that encompassed the early days of terrorism against the Mandate government of Britain, the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the massacres at Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, and his rise to the position of Prime Minister despite his responsibility for those massacres, arrives at an awareness that only sincere uninterrupted reflection and contrition can provide, a need to confess and state the truth of what must be done if justice is to be served. Yet ironically he can confess to no one and can proffer his revelation to no one. But since it was my dream I will reveal all. There follows Sharon’s revelations confronted in his coma told through this intermediary.
No other nation in the history of humankind was created for a people, identified as one through their religion, by the people of the world as represented in the United Nations Partition Plan, Resolution 181, out of sympathy for the horrendous suffering they had experienced at the hands of their fellow humans. The purpose was to alleviate their suffering and to demonstrate to all humankind that civilized people, roused by charitable thoughts and conscious of human weakness, could create a state that would better the human condition and explore the potential of civilized man to exist in harmony and peace with all. This did not happen as Ariel Sharon knew all too well. As he lay there in his coma, he recognized that if peace were to be achieved, he must address the underlying absolute; that absolute is justice.
To proclaim a nation civilized, advanced, democratic, and assured means it must possess inner trust, so that what the nation proclaims to be, truly exists and can stand examination by others. Reliance only on those nations whose leaders can be bought contradicts every one of the characteristics that determine a culture as civilized, democratic and capable of interaction with all nations. A corollary of that follows logically enough, reliance on raw power, a policy that might solidify the people out of fear of enemies, turns the state inward isolating it from its neighboring states who find themselves the victims of that power, turning them into enemies. The result is isolation, a growing dependency on self against all others: reversion to ancient tribal organization takes place, exclusionary laws are designed to protect and defend, beliefs that bear no resemblance to contemporary life take hold as protection against outside forces whose ideologies threaten the exclusive nature of the nation.
Knowing as he did the growing hatred crystallizing against the state of Israel, falling in the latest polls to the virtual bottom of nations respected by their peers, he decided to construct a declaration to be set before the world body: a Declaration of Peaceful Intent. I present here Sharon’s declaration as remembered in my dream; should it be adopted, he believes that peace will reign throughout the world, a peace that surpasses all understanding.
The Declaration of Peaceful Intent
As Prime Minister of Israel, I declare that this nation will seek peace with its neighbors by cooperative efforts determined by all parties and their respective citizens to ensure that all have a say in the laws that will operate in the greater middle-east.
a. To this end the state of Israel acknowledges and regrets that it has not abided by the original Partition Plan that was created for its behalf and proffered 55% of the land of Mandate Palestine to the Jewish people. Since we established our state in reference to that Resolution, 181, we seek forgiveness from the nations of the world for the policies adopted by us to acquire by illegal means in excess of half of the land determined by that resolution for the Palestinian people who lived here for centuries. Stolen land does not assure peaceful neighbors.
b. In furtherance of peace, we state categorically to the people of Palestine, including those driven these many years to refugee camps in many countries that we have wronged you, and we seek forgiveness and will anticipate the need for reparations in recognition of the wrongs we have inflicted upon you.
c. Additional needs must be addressed if true Justice is to be attained on behalf of all who have suffered from our aggression. We offer in this regard the following considerations for a gradual and peaceful transition to the future as two nations rearrange the realities on the ground to accommodate a just and lasting peace. We understand that not all will find this testament acceptable and indeed may seek to undermine what must be accomplished. For a civilized nation to exist as an active military state both in occupied territories and in its own cities and towns is contradictory to its beliefs and to the beliefs of its neighbors. Therefore it will be necessary to seek from the nations of the UN peacekeepers who can operate along the borders of the Green line for an indefinite number of years while the transition takes hold. The details of this transition will be the work of the Palestinian State and the Israeli State working in conjunction with the United Nations Task Force created to aid in this effort.
d. The State of Israel will assume that the Palestinian State will approve these recommendations and accept Israel as a neighbor just as we will accept the Palestinian State and any and all the refugees that desire to return. Given the extensive growth in people of both states, it is clear that walls will not be ultimately a satisfactory solution to a meaningful peace. I believe now, although I did not while I controlled the state of Israel, that Jews and Palestinians can and will become friends and good neighbors. The walls that now exist will fall and the land will once again sustain the people who live on it.
As I reflected on Sharon’s Declaration I could not help but realize the film I had seen the night before, “For My Father,” presented as a reality the imposed state of fear used by the two forces mentioned above to dominate and control the people. Obviously, I thought to myself, if the hatred imbedded in the soul of those in despair could be alleviated by removing the source of the hate, the occupying forces, and if the powerful that imposed their will on the masses could be convinced that the world needs to give justice a chance, then the people would see themselves as equals living, working, learning, growing, and praying together in their own way, recognizing the purpose of life through sharing in a meaningful way.
After all, the roots of both people grow deep in the same land, the beliefs of both rest in the same teachings, the desires of both are to seek harmony, compassion, caring, learning, and love that can reach into every individual soul with the ultimate hope that the land of Palestine will be the home of all who find in each other a brother or sister or cousin or neighbor worthy of love.
William A. Cook is a Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. He writes frequently for Internet publications including The Palestine Chronicle, MWC News, Atlantic Free Press, Pacific Free Press, Countercurrents, Counterpunch, World Prout Assembly, Dissident Voice, and Information Clearing House among others. His books include Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East policy, The Rape of Palestine, The Chronicles of Nefaria, a novella, and the forthcoming The Plight of the Palestinians. He can be reached at [email protected] or www.drwilliamacook.com
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