By: Dr. Rahmat Rabi
Zirakyar (Independent Scholar), U.S.A
This writing is organized around a
passionate quotation, a philosophical play, a challenging poem, and a moving
letter to President Barack Hussein Obama. To end the war, you have to check the
“High-Power people”.
PRESIDENT CARTER’S PASSIONATE QUOTATION
Nobel Peace Laureate (2002), Biblical scholar and author of numerous
books, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is admired for waging peace, fighting
disease and building hope. He has come out with an urgent new book: Jimmy
Carter, We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work (New York and
London: Simon & Schuster, 2009), XXV+228 pages. With the new President
Barack Hussein Obama, former President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) “sees a unique
time for hope, not despair.”(Introduction, XIX). This book comes more than two
years after the publication of Carter’s “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid” (Simon
& Schuster, 2006) which was designed to point out the plight of
Palestinians. When Carter completed the text of this book in summer of 2006,
“there had not been a day of peace talks for more than five years”, he writes in
the introduction of his new book, which was released on January 20, 2009, the
day of Barack Obama’s inauguration. In his new book, President Carter laid out a
plan for solving the Middle East conflict. He gave the first copy of his new
book to then President-elect Obama on December 6, 2008. Carter suggests that
“details” of the peace plan shall be resolved by the two sides to the conflict
“but with active assistance” from Washington, and then “the basic framework to
be proclaimed” by President Barack Obama. Carter’s peace agenda includes several
steps: a two-state solution based on Israel’s withdrawal, “basically” to the
1967 borders; the sharing of Jerusalem to serve as the capital for both states;
the right of Palestinians to return to the West Bank and Gaza; reconciliation of
the Palestinians and unity between Gaza and the West Bank; and deadline for
achieving the above goals (pp. 180-181). Also, see Rahmat Zirakyar, “Relocate
United Nations to Jerusalem to Harmonize Civilizations”, (January 15, 2008),
online version. (The full text of my research paper was sent to: UN Secretary
General,
Secretary General of the Arab League, Secretary General of the
Islamic Conference, leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel, Pope Benedict
XVI, European Union, some members of U.S. Congress, President Bill Clinton,
President Jimmy Carter, and U.S. and other scholars.)
President Carter
begins his new book with his own quotation from 1985: “The blood of
Abraham…still flows in the veins of Arab, Jew and Christian, and too much of it
has been spilled in grasping for the inheritance of the revered patriarch in the
Middle East. The spilled blood in the Holy Land still cries out to God-an
anguished cry for peace.”-The Blood of Abraham. By Jimmy Carter (1993). This
quotation is repeated on page 182 of Carter’s new book. “Holy Land” refers to
Palestine. But sometimes Carter as a Biblical scholar uses the term to mean the
entire area between the Jordan River, Egypt, and the Mediterranean Sea and
Lebanon. President Jimmy Carter concludes his urgent new book with a short but
encouraging sentence that today “It is time to replace anguish with joy and
celebration.” (p. 182).
A PHILOSOPHICAL DRAMA
The 21st century
must learn from the utterly brutal consequences of the fantasy about the Jew
which culminated in the “secular crusade”, namely fascism. (Karen Armstrong,
Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today’s World. New York and London:
Doubleday, 1991, p. 524). We must dismantle the fantasy about each other by
eliminating the knowledge deficit regarding each other. For this urgent need we
could learn from the late 18th century play, Nathan the Wise, by Gotthold
Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781), a German freethinker and Enlightenment essayist.
Nathan the Wise (original German title Nathan der Weise, published in 1779, and
first performed in Berlin in 1783) is a philosophical play about the idea of
respect-an important communication stage for creative cooperation, religious
tolerance, and mutual understanding. Set in Jerusalem during the Third Crusade
in the 12th century A.D., this didactic drama depicts how the wise Jewish
merchant Nathan, the enlightened Muslim ruler Saladin, and the Christian Templar
are building bridges between the three sister faiths (Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam). The work theme is organized around the concepts of communication and
peaceful coexistence among Jews, Christians and Muslims. The centerpiece of the
drama is the parable of the three rings reflecting contemporary awareness of the
need for respect of others’ beliefs. The Muslim ruler Saladin summons Nathan for
help and confronts him with the question, which in his opinion was the right
religion. Nathan proved his wisdom and tolerance by telling Saladin a parable
comparing God and the three main monotheistic religions to a King with three
equally beloved sons: Many years ago, an Eastern patriarch owned a very precious
ring with mystic powers. It could make the bearer, who trusted its powers,
become beloved by God and mankind. The original owner commanded that the mystic
ring would be passed from father to the son he loved most. By then, in one
generation, the father had three sons, whom he loved equally. He promised it to
each of them. So he had two replicas made, “in all point identical”, and gave on
his deathbed a ring to each of them, claiming that it was the mystic ring. The
three brothers quarreled over who owned the real ring. A wise judge admonished
them that each of them should put trust in his own ring to be the true and
genuine one, because all of them had equal position in the heart of their
father. He did not want to elevate one of them by lowering down two of them. The
philosophical drama culminated in the discovery that Nathan’s adopted daughter
Recha and the young Templar who loved her are actually brother and sister, the
children of Saladin’s late brother and his Christian wife. Lessing’s main idea
of religious tolerance in his didactic and philosophical play, Nathan the Wise,
is important to the brotherhood of mankind.
French philosopher,
essayist and poet Paul Valery (1871-1945) looked at poetry as “a language within
a language.” Writer and historian Dorothy E. Robbins defines poetry as “the
voice of heart.” (The Language of Poetry, 1997). Kenneth Koch think of poetry as
a language in which the sounds of words enjoy the same importance as their
meaning has, and also “equal to the importance of grammar and syntax.” (“The
Language of Poetry”, The New York Review, May 14, 1998). To reduce these
definitions of poetry to a common denominator, I consider poetry as the
emotional skin of language. Now, I would like to introduce a poem, “To the
Israeli Soldier”, by Mirza Yawar Baig:
A COMPELLING POEM
Listen and listen well
O! One who could have been our
brother
For we are one people, whether you like it or not
You are
Semite, A son of Israeel (Isaac)
I am a Semite, A son of Ismaeel
(Ishmael)
Our father, the father of both you and I
Is Ibrahim
(Abraham)
Or are you one who will even deny his own father?
Listen and listen well
O! One who could have been our
brother
We will die on our feet
But we will not live on our
knees.
You know how to kill, But we know how to die
Hitler gassed
6 million of you, But he could not kill your
Spirit
Those who
died only made stronger, those who remained alive
Why then do you
imagine; that if you become Hitlers
The results of your “gassing”
Would be any different?
Listen and listen well
O! One
who could have been our brother
Just as others silently watched you going
into the gas chamber
Others silently watch us burying our children, the
children that
You continue to kill
But we remind
ourselves
That the blow that does not break the back only
strengthens
You.
So O! You who used to be the People of Musa
(Moses),
But today you have become people of the Firawn
(Pharaoh)
Remember we are the real people of Moses, for we believe in
his
Message; not you
Remember that when the fight is between Moses
and Pharaoh
Moses always wins.
We say to the silent watchers, the
cowards,
We say to those who sit securely in their homes
We are
the frontline who are holding back the enemy
When we fall, it will be
your turn.
Remember O! Arabs
The story of the White Bull (Al Thawr
il Abydh)
Who said to the world when the tiger finally came for
him
Listen O! People, I do not die today,
I died when the Black
Bull died.
Listen and listen well
O! One who could have been
our brother
We did not come into this world to live here forever
Neither did you
One day we will go from here
Whether
we like it or not
What is important my brother, son of
Israeel
Sons of a Prophet, O!What have you become today?
What have
you allowed them to make you?
Kill us, if that is what you want to
do
At least we die at the hands of our own brothers
And not at the
hands of strangers.
Listen and listen well
O! One who could
have been our brother
We laugh as we see your Apache helicopters and F-16
jets fly
Overhead
We laugh because we can smell your
fear
Why else do you need Apache and F-16 to fight children
with
Rocks?
A battle of honor is between equals
We
challenge you, you who have sold your honor
Com to us as equals; so that
we can show you how to die with
Honor
We laugh at you because we
know, that not in a million years
Will one of you ever have the guts to
stand up to one of our
Children
Without hiding behind an array of
weapons that the American tax
Payer gives you
We laugh at you,
because that is what every warrior does
When he faces an army of cowards.
Listen and listen well
O! One who could have been our
brother
It is not whether we live or die that is important
It is
how we live and how we die
Ask yourself: How would you like to be
remembered?
Without respect, despised and accursed through the
centuries,
Or blessed, honored, your passing mourned.
Allah is our
witness: We lived with honor; begging for no favors
And He is our
witness: That today we die with honor; on our feet
Fighting until the
last breath leaves our body; even if all we
Have in our hands are
stones
He is the witness over us both
As you kill us and as we
die
And to Him is our return
Listen and listen well
O!
One you who could have been our brother
On that Day, my little baby whom
you killed last night
Will ask Him for what crime she was
murdered
Prepare your answer, O! One who could have been our
brother
For you will answer to Him
I swear by His Power: You will
answer to Him
-Mirza Yawar Baig
I wish observant Baig would have
included in his didactic poem a few lines about the American soldiers in
Afghanistan and Iraq. I wish he would have reminded the power elite of the
“United States of Israel” (USA) of the truth that common “Low-Power people” get
crashed in the face of war while the monsters, the “High-Power people” retreat
behind secured walls and collect financial and political benefits from the
“terrible dance” of power-“a dance of death and destruction.” The Coalition of
Women’s Organizations in Israel issued a statement demanding an end to “the
dance of death and destruction” in Gaza. Their statement also said that “war no
longer be an option, nor violence a strategy, nor killing an alternative.”
(Robert Fisk, “The United States of Israel”, April 28, 2006, Independent,
electronic version; Barry Oshry, Seeing Systems, 1996, pp.111-112; Statement by
Women’s Organizations in Israel, January 1, 2009, gazanow.wordprocess.com).
A MOVING MESSAGE TO PRESIDENT OBAMA
The Israeli Deputy Defense
Minister Matan Vilnai threatened Gazans (February 28, 2008) with “a bigger
Holocaust” (Time Online, March 1, 2008/U.K.). According to BBC News, Vilnai said
that Palestinians risked a “Shoah”, the Hebrew term for a “big disaster-and for
the Holocaust.” (BBC News, Middle East, February 29, 2008, online version).
Khalid Amayreh in East Jerusalem wrote that “A holocaust, after all, doesn’t
become lesser when perpetrated by Jews. There is no such a thing as a kosher
holocaust or kosher massacre.” (Jews and the Gaza Holocaust”, March 1, 2008,
online version). Israel launched a massacre attack on Gaza on December 27, 2008.
Dr. Norman G. Finkelstein, a former political science professor, whose
parents were survivors of the Nazi camps, is author of several books, among
them: “Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History”
(2005, expanded ed. 2008) and “Holocaust Industry: Reflection on the
Exploitation of Jewish Suffering” (2000, expanded ed. 2003). He is currently
independent scholar and has compared Holocaust to Gaza by presenting pictures of
both catastrophes. On Norman G. Finkelstein’s official website (January 16,
2009) you can read this introductory sentence “The grandchildren of Holocaust
survivors from World War II are doing to the Palestinians exactly what was done
to them by Nazi Germany.” See the pictures for yourself by visiting his website:
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=11&r=2510
Philip
Slater has confronted Israel with a strong message not to play victim anymore:
In his writing, “A Message to Israel: Time to Stop Playing the Victim”, Slater
tells Israel that “When you drop bombs on a crowded city, you are bombing
civilians. Bombs don’t ask for ID cards. Bombs are civilian killer. That is what
they do. They are designed to break the spirit of a nation by slaughtering
families.” (Posted on huffington.com, January 7, 2009). Attorney in private
practice Elizabeth Molchany begins her writing with the following quotation:
“Israel is like the abused child who grew up to be the abuser.” Gaza Strip
encompasses 150 square miles (25 x 6) with a population of 1.5 million
Palestinians presenting “the world largest prison” (Molchany, “The Gaza
Holocaust” (Source CASMII/Campaign against Sanctions and Military Intervention
in Iran, January 10, 2009, electronic version). I conclude this writing with a
clear and appealing message to President Barack H. Obama from an Israeli woman
which she wrote on the day he was elected. Herein she describes the pain of the
Palestinian people and her shame about it. For examples, she says: “Please help
us to save us from ourselves…. Free us from controlling other people”, and “take
away the pain” from her stomach. She pleads for an end to the occupation. Her
serious voice and related pictures are posted on Youtube.com, January 13,
2009:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcGm-gxmxHw
February
25, 2009