semitism.net

When you visit Israel and Palestine, you can see the site of many a miracle. Depending on your faith, you can visit the location where Jacob wrestled with an angel, where Jesus walked on water, or where Mohammed ascended to heaven. Although the time of biblical/historical miracles has ended, Israel and Palestine have nevertheless been home to a modern miracle, a miracle that we should all pray has ended. The miracle? The transformation of any fact or argument or issue into a circle…

So, the hardest part of disengagement is over. Or, when transformed by the Miracle of the Circle, it will never be over. The Miracle of the Circle, in case you do not know it by name (you are familiar with it if you have ever tried to take a side on any issue involving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict), is the power to transform a fact or an argument on one issue into another fact or argument, whether tangential or totally different, and place it in such a way as to ensure that the now-two existing facts or arguments will never be resolved. For example, when I give you a fact or argument about Palestinian suffering under occupation, the Miracle of the Circle introduces the issue of suicide bombers or “Palestinian textbooks” and, voila, a never-ending circular discussion. Want to affirm Israel’s right to self-defense in response to terrorism? Once the Miracle of the Circle takes over, you will find yourself discussing 1967. Or Lebanon. Try to resolve that one.

The best example of all may be refugees. Mention the right of return for Palestinians, and you will be taken by the Miracle of the Circle to late 1940s/early 1950s Iraq or Egypt and asked to discuss the plight of the Jews who were forced to leave those countries. On the flip side, the hard fact that Palestinian refugees really won’t have much of a place to go if they do return to Israel will take you to a fine-toothed comb reading of decades-old U.N. resolutions. In either case, we have a Miracle where real people in a real place with real problems have their real lives transformed into unreal discussions that seem to need no end. The Miracle of the Circle is not interested in final resolution based on present reality, only academic and/or emotional arguments standing on selected history or excerpted legal texts that insure that no one wins – just that everyone loses.

In his column in Sunday’s New York Times, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel displayed for everyone how the Miracle of the Circle worked its magic on disengagement. In his column, Wiesel used his moment, his chance to speak to the world, to do one thing: criticize the Palestinians for rejoicing during disengagement.

Now, to me, the failure of Elie Wiesel to use his moral authority, his own experience of suffering and his exalted place in the Jewish world to become a broker of peace has always been truly astonishing and depressing. Wiesel is one of the few people in the world who can command and inspire nearly any audience – Jewish or not — he speaks to, and demand that they listen to him speak about the principles of human rights and human dignity. But, as far as I know, he has never used that power to ask Israel and the Jewish people to look inward when considering the conflict in the Middle East, and specifically the human consequences of occupation. Rather, in what I have seen, heard and read, he has always defended the occupation and attacked its critics as haters of Israel or outright anti-Semites.

So it should not have been a huge surprise that his discussion of disengagement would focus on, even exalt, the pain of the settlers. Rather than at least reflect on the needs of the settlers upon their arrival in Israel, or consideration of the present-day need for an end to the settlements in order to achieve peace, he sympathizes with the settlers for being forced to move from the place of “their dreams” to a “future among strangers.” Strangers? They were moved into Israel, their country of citizenship, the home of the Jewish people. Weren’t they “among strangers” when they lived in Gaza? If Wiesel were to think about this statement a bit more, he would realize it is quite a condemnation of all non-disengaged-settler Israelis.

He then lightly taps some of the settlers on the wrist, specifically those who attacked soldiers. But was he, of all people, not offended by the settlers who exploited the memory of the Holocaust by using vivid and painful symbols to compare their disengagement to the extermination of 6 million Jews? Did Wiesel, who believes that no tragedy anywhere can or should be compared to the Holocaust, not notice this? How can he not have lashed out at the settlers who compared Jewish soldiers to the Nazis who condemned his own family to death? The answer is the Miracle of Blindness, another commonplace miracle in Israel and Palestine, one I began to describe in a previous post.

Regardless of his blindness or other shortcomings when writing about the settlers, Wiesel then displays for everyone a perfect example of the Miracle of the Circle. It’s a bit different from the above examples, but still a common occurrence in this Miracle’s work. Here, the Miracle does not introduce a new or tangential fact or argument, just an irrelevant one. For, after discussing the trauma inflicted on the settlers, Wiesel does not discuss why it happened or, even more importantly, what comes next. Instead, he says he wants to “take a step back” and spend 2 columns talking about Palestinians rejoicing while the settlers were being evacuated.

Now, can anyone, including Elie Wiesel, really believe that whether and how Palestinians in Gaza danced or paraded at the sight of their occupiers leaving is an issue that we should think about for a second? Should we really stop thinking about and debating all of the myriad issues facing the real people, Israeli and Palestinian, and the real solutions to their real lives that need to be worked out — and worked out soon — in order to consider some barely-seen symbolic gestures that will naturally mean something very different to anyone involved or observing them?

I began to criticize the specific details of Wiesel’s discussion when I stopped myself. I realized the Miracle of the Circle was taking over, and I am determined to see it broken. Because my response to Wiesel consisted of a whole range of arguments based on selected history, filtered through my own contextual assumptions. Elie Wiesel is free to believe whatever he wants to about disengagement and how the Palestinians did or did not respond, just like I am free to write in my last posts about how the Israeli and Jewish left lost some opportunities along the way, as well.

But the Miracle of the Circle would have us continue to focus on those issues, now almost entirely irrelevant, using irreconcilable facts or arguments about what happened, according to the sources we believe. And the Miracle would demand that we focus on them, not ad nauseam, but ad mortem – until more people die.

So let’s break the Miracle. Because this Miracle, unlike all others, is within human control. And after such a disappointing article, Wiesel ends with one appropriate sentence, one that offers us a chance to focus on breaking the Miracle. Wiesel tells us “Gaza, after all, is but one chapter in a book that must ultimately be about peace.”

A book about peace. That is exactly what we must all write. Together. So I ask everyone, including myself, to break the Miracle of the Circle. When asked to speak about disengagement and its effects, let us all focus on the future, on the book of peace. When the first Palestinian suicide bomber enters Israel from Gaza (which we know will happen at some point), we on the left should not let the Miracle of the Circle take us to a discussion about why the Israelis have not constructed a safe passage to the West Bank, or why they occupied Gaza for 38 years. When looked at without the Miracle of the Circle, we can see and say together that suicide bombings must end. Period. And we can focus on the reality that everyone must work together, not only to fight and end the circumstances that encourage such terrorism, but also to acknowledge its evil and the suffering of its victims.

When the Palestinians decry the fact that Israel has still not relinquished control of the border, or is not making sufficient progress on ending the occupation in the West Bank (which we can also be reasonably sure Israel will be accused of), we must resist the Miracle of the Circle. Let us not speak of Yasser Arafat or the incident of the Karine-A, but the real needs of the Palestinians to live in a viable state with contiguous territory that can sustain its people through economic opportunity. Along side a safe and secure Israel whose citizens do not fear attack more than anyone else in this world does.

The Miracle of the Circle has plagued Israel and Palestine, and those viewing the region from the United States who support one side or the other, for decades. The result has been tragedy and death and, worst of all, the seemingly casual acceptance of both as the fate of the region. Disengagement provides us all with the opportunity to refuse to accept more tragedy and death and to refuse to give into the Miracle of the Circle and say it’s only the other side’s fault or responsibility. Disengagement demands a new Miracle, one with no name or shape yet, a Miracle based on drawing all arguments and facts toward a book of peace.