Worldwide Java Jag: 2008-12-28

Monday, December 29, 2008

Something Hopeful

(NOTE: This was written 3 days before the Israeli counter attack on Gaza, but that event makes it more relevant.)

OBAMA, ISRAEL, PALESTINIANS, AND THE END OF HATE
The imminent inauguration of Barak Obama can have a deep and important resonance for the Jewish and Muslim citizens of Israel, as well as the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Obama’s Presidential ascendancy represents the ultimate triumph of hope, decency and humanity over hate, fear and prejudice. The war weary citizens of Israel and a Palestine yet to be, should pay close attention to the long path America walked that ended in Obama’s election.

In my lifetime black and white Americans were killed for daring to stand up to racial hatred. In 1964, when I was 13, three men -- two Jewish, one black -- all with a powerful desire to help black Americans register to vote were murdered. It turned out that Mississippi officials helped commit the crime. Because segregation was state law half a century ago, Andrew Goodman, James Schwerner, and James Chaney gave their young lives to redress this inequality and servitude. Lynching of black Americans continued into the 1950’s. Fear was the fundamental social interaction between blacks and whites well into the television age. We watched the hate on display at the school door in Little Rock on the nightly news.

Now, the impossible to believe has happened. Go anywhere in America. We have a completely integrated country. Visit any deep Southern town and every institution from the police force to the chamber of commerce is multi-hued. Clubs, schools, churches, jobs and marriages are open to all. Where intimidation and death dwelled, acceptance and freedom now thrive. The level of racial integration is so complete that anyone under 40 doesn’t even notice what would have been beyond the imagination of anyone over 50. America’s ability to renew itself, to overthrow its dysfunctional past, is as revolutionary a force as any Hamas parade or Hizzbollah rally.

I witnessed an insignificant but telling example. Over a decade ago there was a traffic accident in a small deep-south city. A minor crash between two cars, one driven by a black and one a white. The two drivers got out to survey the damage. Police cars arrived within minutes. One policeman was white, the other black. Everyone did their professional thing: they looked around, wrote it up, took pictures, ascertained that no one needed an ambulance, and went on their way. I watched the whole event thinking, “What would have happened in the past?” In all probability, the black driver would have been automatically at fault. The cops would have been all white and they would have either beaten the black driver before arresting him or while he was in jail. This oppression, institutionalized for centuries, changed in the span of 50 years.

Now we have elected a black man to be our president. From hate to hope. In our desperate need to save ourselves, we have looked beyond skin color.The message should be heard by the Palestinians and the Israelis, the Arabs and Jews of the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea who, need to look at Obama and America as an example of what is possible. In many ways it may be even easier in Israel as so many Palestinians are physically indistinguishable from Israelis. You could play a guessing game if looking at a group photo.

Hatred can be, to use a popularized word “overcome.” What it takes is small first steps. Demonization must stop. The intolerance preached weekly at the Mosque against Jews, the constant religious denigration of an entire people, must come to an end. The sermons, the school textbooks, the newspapers and their cartoons, all filled with hate, must end. Arabs must resist the steady diet of intolerance fed to them daily.
So too must the humiliations of the Arabs by the Israeli army and the settlers come to an abrupt halt. All non-Jews must be treated fairly and with courtesy, their needs and concerns legitimized, their humanity counted. Israel’s leadership must reach out to all its Arab citizens and draw them more closely into the national circle.

Obama could encourage a dialogue between the Israelis and Palestinians. He could do more than just re-start the Mid-East peace process; he could reinvigorate it on a new plane. He could use his people’s journey in America as a bully pulpit to build acceptance of the other in Bethlehem, Hebron and beyond.

Some might call this naive and simplistic, Kumbaya stuff. I don’t think so. The Arab world is changing. Seventy percent of it is under age 25. They are more plugged in than we think. Obama’s words and actions can get out. Try as Egypt and Syria might, they will never be able to block the thoughts of the new American President with an Arab middle name. I don’t think it is unrealistic to expect that he can change attitudes and make hate un-cool. It’s hard to think that there will be a viable peace treaty with a territory swap without former enemies reexamining their assumptions about each other.

This is the real politic that Obama can bring to the Mid-East. If he tries and fails he will just be the last in a long line of Presidents who met the same fate. If he fails to try he will have sheathed the most powerful weapon he has…the sword of hate vanquished.