Recognize Israel Now! Tear Down that Wall, Part II

by Dr. Robert D. Crane  

  Yesterday, July 22nd, 2006, the NeoCon spokesman, President George W. Bush, announced that at last we have reached “a moment of clarity” in world affairs.  In explanation, the official NeoCon spokeswoman, Condoleeza Rice, praised the Israeli carnage in Lebanon as “the birth pangs of a New Middle East.”

  In Washington and Israel utopias abound, but no-one is following a long-range strategy based on facing the facts.  The new Middle East war could and should focus attention on the future rather than on the past.  Rather than create still more grounds for the inevitable destruction of Israel in the perhaps not so distant future (decades rather than generations), it would be so much easier for Israel to release the many thousands of Arab political prisoners from lifetimes in Israeli prisons, with no strings attached, immediately start to tear down the apartheid wall, and support the “Saudi peace plan” to recognize a Palestinian state based on the borders of 1967.  This, in turn, could provide the basis for the incremental growth of an Abraham Federation based on peace through economic and political justice.

  Unfortunately, it appears that the NeoCons are a reincarnation of Dr. Kevorkian, the prototype of a master in assisted suicide, and that the most committed suicide bomber is the State of Israel.

  Hamas and its supporters generally are equally myopic.  As collateral damage during the death throes of the Zionist venture, the Arab cities necessarily would disappear along with those in Israel, and in retaliation perhaps so would parts of American cities as well. 

  As an act of true courage and tawakkul or trust in Allah, Hamas and HisbAllah should release the Israeli military hostages, also without preconditions, who are not the “roots of Jewish rage” but a pretext for creating a “new Middle East.”  This would expose the hollowness of the NeoCon campaign for democracy through regime change.  Hamas would thereby gain the moral high ground to back the comprehensive peace plan known as the Saudi Peace Plan, which all the Arab governments unanimously approved four years ago in Lebanon.  This called for all sides immediately to address the real issues that were postponed at Oslo for the never-never land of the “future,” without buying into the trap of interminable “confidence-building measures.”

  “Peace through power” is the right concept, but the ultimate power is God, not the false gods of NeoConservatism and Secular Zionism and of copycat Muslim extremists.  From the perspective of history, Israel as a state is a flash in the pan, but the recognition over untold centuries that Muslims and Jews are destined to be each other’s most reliable friends is permanent.  The underlying challenge is the transformation of identity on both sides, which can be accomplished only by adopting the same history textbooks throughout the Holy Land, a project that should start immediately.

  Given its location as the crossroads among continents, the Holy Land from time to time over the millennia has been a flash point for a clash of civilizations.  Its enduring legacy, however, over most of the last 5,000 years has been as a crossroads for civilizational enrichment.  Its greatest achievement was the birth of Judaism and Christianity and as the divinely chosen birthplace of the truly greatest ecumenical movement in human history, Islam.  Now is the time for Muslims at last to recognize this mercy and power of Allah and act accordingly?