|
Home::Politics
Everything's All Right in the Middle East
Author : Robert Levin
Can we, just for a minute, dispense with the hand-wringing and acknowledge that the problem Israel and the Palestinians have with one another is actually their mutual solution to the problem of being mortal?
Of course to understand what I mean it is first necessary to recognize that it's not love or sex or money that makes the world go around but the fact of death; that what drives virtually everything we believe and do is the need to reduce, to at least a manageable degree of fear, the terror and panic the anticipation of death causes us. (If you can't quite grasp this notion, if you have to be reminded that terror and panic constitute the human default condition, then whatever you're believing and doing is working for you.)
Of the myriad subtle and blatant ways we've come up with to make living with an impossible reality tolerable, one example would be the symbolic immortality we assure ourselves of by leaving behind a scientific discovery, or a work of art, that will continue to have an influence on the world. Another is the accumulation of inordinate wealth. The god-like trappings great sums of money buy enable us to feel not just superior to the common man, but less vulnerable to the common fate. Still another is getting high, which is about getting above the body that we know will one day be our undoing.
And then there's our invention of an afterlife. Presenting us with a chance to survive deathif we honor the pronouncements and follow the dictates we've assigned to deities of our own fashioningit's this immortality illusion that's at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The Arabs are qualifying for eternity by doing what they've determined to be God's work, which is to make war on those who, ignoring or questioning His authority, are undermining His plan for the planet. And Israel, dropped in the Arab's midst, its diverse culture implicitly challenging the validity of Arab beliefs, provides the Arabs with the infidel they need to carry out their mission. For Arabs, it's not about killing Jews, per se. Jews are simply a fortuitously placed means to a purchase on heaven. (You could say thattheir culture being, by all appearances, limited in its repertoire of immortality illusions to the resources of Islamsuicide is the only instrument of self-perpetuation available to the Palestinian terrorists.)
On the other hand, the Arabs afford Israelis an opportunity to continually certify their biblically bestowed "chosen" statusand to assure themselves of the post-corporeal rewards implicit in the anointmentby constantly threatening, but never accomplishing, Israel's destruction. Persistently testing Israel's exalted designation, but never disproving it, enabling Israel to be embattled and remain intact, the Arabs are every bit the blessing to Israel that Israel is to the Arabs.
It follows that the violence each side visits on the other must be measured; balances and proportions need to be kept. For one side to win, after all, would be for both sides to lose; would, that is, end the game and return both sides to a contemplation of the void. We might call this aiding and abetting of one another's immortality illusionsthe cooperation and the accommodations it requires--the deeper definition of the "social contract."
So we can engage ad infinitum in the most earnest discussions about anti-Semitism, about Hamas, about Sharon, about territory and occupation, and forever miss the real dynamic of the situation. The Arab-Israeli problem is, again, a solution to a more pressing problem, to what is, literally as well as figuratively, the mother of all problems. And what accounts for the tenaciousness of the conflict is the ongoing success it's enjoying in the service of its underlying agenda. As long as this holds true, Arabs and Israelis will, for all the anguish it induces, remain at odds because the enmity between them is their buffer against the spectre of oblivion.
The pain we are witnessing is a palliative. These are not the worst of times in the Middle East.
About the Author
Former contributor to The Village Voice and Rolling Stone. Coauthor and coeditor, respectively, of two collections of essays about jazz and rock in the '60s: "Music & Politics" and "Giants of Black Music." Spam emails More free articles Related articles
|
More related feeds |
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad: âWe need slaves to build monumentsâ
All around, a city of labour camps stretches out in the middle of the Arabian desert, a jumble of low, concrete barracks, corrugated iron, chicken-mesh walls, barbed wire, scrap metal, empty paint cans, rusted machinery and thousands of ...Review: âBody of Liesâ
Monahan crafts a very informed and realistic approach to the spy film and it feels like this could/is happening everyday over in the Middle East. Nothing really seems all that far fetched and the Monahan never really gives into clichĂ© ... Exploring East Russia - a trip that changed my life â by AALTJE ...
Nothing has changed there at all! Another thing that has never changed was our cruise on the Amur River, the mightiest river in the world. We joined a cruise that was leaving from the port right in the middle of town, the boat was full, ... Eric Thomson: Letters to Jason
Zoggie-Bush has drained the US military by bleeding it dry in The Middle East, far from the US borders, so as to leave the USA open to massive invasion, which will achieve the results of a war, without firing a shot. ... The commercial John McCain NEEDS to run
... and once and for all, for actually implementing an energy plan that will finally produce enough oil, nuclear, coal, and alternative sources of energy for our nation to finally be freed of its Middle East oil dependency. ... getting loopy in quilotoa
In the 70ÂŽs he explained to me that he hitched all the way across the middle-east from Turkey, through Afghanistan, Pakistan, all the way across to China. A feat like that would be impossible today. He was looking forward to leaving ... Reorganizing and fun with laundry.
Everything is now in the middle of my living room and bedroom and kitchen and bathroom. I am easily distracted. This is a common phase when "reorganizing" "Ooooooooooo, I forgot I had *insert random piece of crap here*. ... 081007
Get that wrong or if a competitor gets it right, and all will be lost and therefore otherwise won in a flash. IT is heartening though to see Middle East Potentates vying to Control the Future Intelligence Market with the Dodgy Dollar, ... âThe Age of the Warriorâ: Robert Fisk on the US Elections, Iraq ...
If you have justice, you can build democracy on it, and then we can withdraw all these soldiers. Weâre always goingâpromising people in the Middle East democracy and packages of human rights off our supermarket shelves, and weâre always ... A voice from Tehran
âSome people nag out of boredom but everything is under control and everybody is happy and our politicians have paved all the ways to help improve the country more than ever and everything is going to be all right.â ...
|
|
|
