WNY I AM (STILL) A ZIONIST

The flag of Israel, recognised by the UN in 1948

It is almost like admitting to being a paedophile these days – saying you are a supporter of Israel when there has been virtually universal international condemnation of their actions in Gaza, where women, children and journalists have been killed by the Israeli Defence Force. In the name of wiping out Hamas which they (rightly) see as their mortal enemy, Israel seems to be conducting a policy of ethnic cleansing in the areas they have conquered.

I should say first of all that there are two types of Zionist – those that think Israel is like any other country and can attract criticism and condemnation if it does things that are wrong. Then there are those that think everything Israel does should be defended and justified. There are similarly two types of people who believe in a Palestinian state – those who think it can coexist with Israel and those who think Israel should be abolished in order to create it. 

 

In both cases, I am a believer in the first definition of a Zionist and a supporter of a state for the Palestinians. This means I support a ‘two state solution’ (a phrase you do not hear often these days) in which Israel lives side by side with its Palestinian neighbours. If might be too much to hope that the two countries would do so in peace, but it is essential to the future of the Middle East that they each recognise the others right to exist.

 

Many Israelis are suspicious of the Palestinian desire for a separate state because they say that this will only allow them to move their rockets closer to the Israeli border. They prefer to see the Palestinians as contained in an area where they cannot threaten Israel. In that way, Israel can continue to exist in security if not in peace. Safety and security come above everything else – the rights of the oppressed and the need to make peace permanent.

 

For what it is worth, I think that what the Palestinians lack is a Mahatma Gandhi or a Nelson Mandela, someone who says to his people: “We may not like these people but we have to live with them, so we had better learn to do so.” Everything that comes out of Palestinian leaders seems to say: “Burn, destroy and abolish Israel, so we can create a Palestinian nation in its place.” Is it any wonder that the Israelis have stopped listening?

 

If anyone should know about ethnic cleansing and the destruction of a people, it is the Jews. They suffered – as they often remind us – at the hands of the Nazis and were systematically and comprehensively destroyed in the Holocaust, surely the worst example of mass killing devised by man. “And now they are doing the same to us,” said a Palestinian guide to the Holocaust Museum, according to my partner, who has a lot of sympathy for their cause.

 

Even if they succeeded in destroying Israel, what would happen to the roughly six million Jewish people who live there today? This is a hugely significant number, of course, and I dare say that even those who are most vociferously anti-Zionist are not suggesting the reintroduction of Zyklon B to solve the problem. I make no apology for using it, however, as the matter of what to do about Israel’s Jews is not going to go away.

 

They are hardly going to end up in Florida, are they? Even if the USA supports Israel’s war against the Palestinians, the country would be unlikely to welcome in its people. They have an increasingly closed-border attitude and a hostile view of incomers, both legal and illegal, despite the fact that they rely on them for a badly paid and non-unionised workforce who will work at jobs that ‘real’ Americans are increasingly reluctant to do.

 

We are rapidly approaching the eightieth anniversary of the establishment of Israel by the United Nations in 1948 after the horrors of the Holocaust became clear. I am old enough to remember how (almost) everybody supported Israel in the six-day war in which it was fighting for survival and defeated the Arab - and undemocratic - enemies that surrounded it. As Howard Jacobsen has said, they should have lost that war to retain public support.

 

But this is a very western approach to the problem. Israel wanted – indeed needed – to defeat its enemies to survive. They knew that defeat would result in destruction and wanted to continue to exist rather than be loved. Everybody hates us: we don’t care, as Millwall’s sing with a bit of sarcastic pride. A country’s first duty is to protect its people and the failure to acknowledge this is what is holding the Arabs back.

For various reasons – many originating in Jewish contempt of Arabs, it has to be said – Israel has never been accepted as legitimate by the Arabs. When we saw the film about the Palestinians, there was little doubt about the wish to destroy the Jewish state by the Arab rock-throwers, who were aiming their stones at Israeli soldiers with the aim of driving them out so that a Palestinian state could be established - without any Jewish presence.

 

We seem to be no nearer a solution to the problems of the middle-East. Jews keep voting for Netanyahu, who has never accepted the idea of a Palestinian state; Palestinians want to see Israel destroyed so that this Palestinian state can be set up without Jews; believers in a two-state solution like me are dismissed as hopelessly naïve and unrealistic. Well, let idealism and naivety triumph over defeatism and a repeat of the holocaust.  

 

This explains why I am still why a Zionist, albeit an increasingly reluctant and apologetic one.

Edwin Lerner 

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com

CHRUCH BUT NOT RELIGION

Rev Giles Fraser, the kind of priest I admire

I believe two things when it comes to religion: first, that there is no after life. ‘This is it. It’s all we have,’ a friend said to me not long ago. An afterlife in heaven might prove a little dull – being nice to people all the time, not enjoying sex or sleep or food - the things we like on this earth. That was best expressed by John Mortimer’s father in his play A Voyage Around My Father in which the same father railed against the sheer pointlessness of life in Heaven.

The other thing I believe is that the creation of religious belief is one of the most creative things humanity has done. Almost every society has religion and a belief system based on the afterlife. That was instilled to make people behave themselves and accept their lot in life on this earth (as another friend said). The existence of an afterlife in which you are rewarded for not creating a fuss is a fairly cynical way of looking at Heaven but a realistic one.

 

It is for this reason that, despite being seen as an atheist who has no belief in the afterlife, I still go to church (occasionally) to reaffirm my belief, not so much in religion as in the church which is a manifestation of it. Religion may be ‘the opiate of the peoples’, as Karl Marx said, but it is still an effective one. Marx had little ability to manage his own life and was very dependent on his friend Engels for financial assistance but he did hit on a few truths here.

 

Christian Aid, a charity I support, puts it well when they thought up the slogan: ‘We believe in life before death.’ People might – or might not – have faith in an afterlife in which their good deeds and acceptance of their fate in this life are rewarded in Heaven, but the charity wants to concentrate on bringing a degree of fairness to this life on earth before death inevitably claims us, as it must do for all – rich and poor on this earth.

 

Once, when I went to a talk given by some African-American writer, he has one of his characters say words to the effect that slavery does not exist in Heaven. Life as a slave was so miserable – giving the lie to people who say and think it is best for those same black people – that it was impossible it could exist in the afterlife as well as this one. I agree with this – it is impossible to imagine a Heaven in which people are not both free and equal.

 

Freedom and equality cannot exist side by side in this world but are alternatives. Start everybody from the same line and some will reach the finish post before others by virtue of ability, luck or the support of parents who are able to help their offspring. Do not underestimate the power of nepotism. We may talk about the dangers of being born with a silver spoon in your mouth but the dangers of a poor background are, in reality, far worse.

 

That is why the church has so often failed people: it encourages them to accept their lot, when it should be supporting them if they rise up against it. The only successful societies that were unashamedly atheist (with ‘museums of atheism’ of all things) were communist ones but their failure has led to churches being packed once again in those same former communist countries that once rejected their teachings.

 

Chruches did not grow because they were imposed on an unwilling people but because those same people wanted them – and still want them – as they believed in a higher power controlling their destiny and at least keeping a tally of what they did and did not do so they could be rewarded (or punished) in the next world. Belief in an afterlife is so strong that only man made societies can reject it and even they have limited success in this.

 

Vladimir Putin is supposed to have embraced the Russian Orthodox church because, presumably, be believed it would be worthwhile. (He is, after all, a politician.) However, he proved to be unwilling to prostrate himself before God, saying words to the effect that was leader of Russia, what did he have to gain by being answerable to some (probably fictitious) deity. He showed his true colours here - not believing in God but knowing that others do.

 

I remain convinced that priests do enormous good in society, going to places which social workers have given up on, and offering comfort to many people who would otherwise face darkness. (Giles Fraser, a writer and priest I admire, has said this.) However, I cannot believe in the Bible as being a true account of how God made the earth and, even if say the Creed when I go to church, I do not really believe in the truth of it in my heart.

 

Yet, I do not think that I am being a Putin-like hypocrite in going to church. Working as a tourist guide, I tend to go in and out of churches quite a lot and, evidently, some of it has rubbed off on me. To fully appreciate a church, you have to experience it as a worshipper who attends a service there sometimes and, even if it is just evensong, you should go to hear the Psalms, readings and choir, who make up so much of the modern church.

 

That church needs worshippers, more than it needs sceptics like me, to survive, so I do not sneer at those who believe in the literal truth of the Bible even if I cannot share their beliefs. In essence I take my religion seriously – but not literally. That is why I cannot believe in an afterlife and I accept that death is the end of what we have on this earth. It is also why I am getting ready for it as my years advance.

Edwin Lerner

My other blog is diaryofatouristguide,blogspot.com