Leaving aside the hopelessly optimistic sentiment at the end of this piece, I'm still rather proud of the comparison between Ariel Sharon and the Golem of legend.
It's that time of year when the damp, humid, and sweaty summer gradually turns into damp, cold, and freezing autumn. As we bid farewell for another year to the carefree months of rainstorms and floods and watch the days grow steadily shorter, it seems a good time to look at a land where life is hard. Where life can be so tough that, if the worst the people who live there had to complain about was the weather, they'd be so relieved that they might even forget to organise their regular atrocities. Once again, and to probable sighs of "Aw, not again...” I'm talking about Israel.
It's been fairly quiet in Israel recently. Until the double bomb attack on 2 Israeli buses in Beersheba this week, the leadership of Hamas et al had stopped trying to liberate their people by sending some of their people to blow themselves up. And because of that, the Israeli forces hadn't had much of an excuse to win more Palestinian hearts and minds by destroying terrorists structures such as water pipes, electricity mains, and sewage systems as well as shooting dead potential terrorists (as some of these 'potential terrorists' are children, does that mean we'll soon be seeing abortion doctors sent to Muslim nations as part of the war on terror?). So what's happening? Are these two peoples, of similar racial makeup and geographical origin, separated only by their respective faiths, finally learning to live with one another? Did the 5 months of relative peace preceding the bombs give us an indication that the end of the Palestine-Israeli conflict is in sight? Well, bearing in mind Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat are still the leaders of each gang, what do you think?
I suppose one of the reasons that we haven't been hearing much of the continuing story of "Our God is bigger than your God" from Israel is because we've had a glut of stories about bombings and shootings from Iraq. Why import stories about one group of Semitic people murdering another group of Semitic people in a city we've never heard of when one can read about decent, English speaking white folk being murdered by small Arabic men in a city we've never heard of? But another reason we've not heard about bombings and shootings is pretty much because there haven't been any. There are a quite a few reasons for this, but the biggest one is a wall (or to give its proper title, a "security fence").
Basically, that nice Mr. Sharon authorised the building of a wall to encircle the Palestinian Authority-controlled territory of Israel. This, it was reasoned, would go some way to stopping suicide bombers making their way into Israel itself in order to explode. Leaving aside for a moment the fact that this security fence has echoes of the ghettoisation that the Jews themselves suffered throughout most of their recent history, and the fact that it has been declared illegal by an International court, don't the facts speak for themselves? The wall is erected, and suicide bombs become a comparative rarity rather than a daily eventuality. Doesn't that mean that the wall is a good thing?
Although the answer to that is both yes and no, it's more no than yes. On the one hand the long-suffering Israeli people have every right to do whatever is necessary to guarantee their safety, and the condemnation of an International court probably means little to a people who are used to being condemned by gentiles for...well, for pretty much anything and everything. On the other hand, Ariel Sharon's approach of reducing the Palestinian controlled cities to rubble and then fencing them in to face poverty, disease, and a growing hatred of all things Israeli doesn't exactly seem to be the most far-sighted approach. In fact, it smacks of a short-term solution to guarantee short-term electibility at a time when hard-line Jewish politicians are making life difficult for him. At the moment, there is a plan in place for Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. However, the hardliners oppose this. As Sharon relies on the hardliners to shore up his increasingly blood-soaked regime, he has to be seen to be doing something to ensure that any withdrawal will not compromise national security. Hence the wall.
It seems pretty obvious to my mind that keeping a bunch of people poor, hungry, and angry is not the best way to guarantee that you'll be able to live in peace with them. Surely, even through the entirely understandable siege mentality of the Israeli's, the same thing must have occurred to them? Why have they put a man who has done more for anti-Semitism than Hitler in charge of their security and their future?
The whole scenario reminds me of a famous story in Jewish folklore; the Golem. The story, in a nutshell, runs as follows;
The Jews of 16th Century Prague need to protect themselves from the occasionally murderous anti Semitism of their neighbours. So a wise Jewish Cabbalist, Rabbi Judah Loew, created the Golem to protect the Jews. This golem was an enormous clay Frankenstein's monster-like automaton, brought to life by mystical incantations and the word "Emet" (meaning 'Truth') on its forehead.
However, as the Golem gained experience of the world, it became a menace to the public safety it was supposed to be protecting; the power it wielded went to it's head, and it threatened innocent lives supposedly in the name of protecting the Jews. Rabbi Loew saw that the actions of the Golem reflected badly on the Jewish people of Prague, and realised that the Golem was no longer protecting the people but, through it's violent actions, putting them at risk. So he removed the first letter E from the word on the Golem's forehead (Met means "Death" in Hebrew), and the Golem died.
I believe that, in Ariel Sharon, the people of Israel have created a latter-day Golem. He is supposed to be their protector, and yet all he does is incite hatred and violence by his actions. After stopping the Golem, Rabbi Loew warned the Jews of Prague that strength itself could be dangerous when used indiscriminately, and he cautioned that the strong mustn't abuse their power in order to dominate and crush anything weak that is within their reach.
As a closing point, I became aware of a curious coincidence when writing this; the wise Rabbi Loew was a real man, and lived in Prague in the 16th century. It took his wisdom and bravery to show the Jews of Prague that a defender that creates more enemies is far more dangerous to their safety than anything their enemies could do. It seems that the Democratic candidate for the presidency, John Kerry, is a descendent of Rabbi Loew. Will he be able to convince the Jews of Israel that their leader is amplifying the danger that he is supposed to be protecting them from? And perhaps also convince the Palestinians that they will never know peace whilst Arafat continues to stumble along as their lame-duck leader? As ever, time will tell.
