GOD'S CHOSEN PEOPLE
ISRAEL IS HISTORY
BY JOSTEIN GAARDER, world renowned Norwegian philosopher and author (this is an unofficial translation of his chronicle in
www.aftenposten.no)
ISRAEL IS HISTORY.
We do not acknowledge the country called Israel anymore. There is no way back. Israel had raped the world’s goodwill and will not have peace before they lay down their weapons. The nation Israel in its present structure is history.
THERE IS NO WAY BACK.
It is about time to learn a new lesson: We do not acknowledge the country Israel. We could not acknowledge the South-African apartheid government, and neither did we acknowledge the Afghan Taliban government. Also, many of us did not acknowledge Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, nor the ethnic cleansing of the Serbian government. Now we have to get used to that Israeli Government is history as well.
We do not believe in the idea that anybody is “God’s chosen people”. We laugh of this idea and cry over their misdeeds. To behave as God’s chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but a crime against humanity. We call that racism.
OUR TOLERANCE IS LIMITED.
There are limits to our patience, and limits for what we can accept. We do not believe in divine promises for occupation and apartheid. We are not in the Middle Ages any more. We laugh uneasily of those that still believe a God of flowers, life and everything in the galaxy has chosen a specific group as his/her favourites, and given them curious stone tablets, burning bushes and license to kill.. .
Murderers of children are murderers and we never accept that such persons have any divine or historical authorization that excuses their crimes. We say: shame to all apartheid, shame to all ethnic cleansing, and shame to all terror against civilians whether it is done by Hamas, Hezbollah or the government of Israel!
MARTIAL ART WITHOUT SCRUPLES
We acknowledge and accept the serious European responsibility for the fate of the Jews, the disgraceful mobbing, the pogroms and the Holocaust. It was a historical and moral necessity that the Jews got their own home. However, the government of Israel, with its martial arts without scruples and their revolting weapons massacred their own this necessity and reason to exist. Systematically Israel has committed crimes against international law, international conventions and a number of UN resolutions and can therefore not expect any more favours from the UN or anyone else. The have carpet-bombed the approval of the world. The years of distress Israel has caused the world by
its behaviour is over. The Government of Israel has met its Soweto. We have arrived by a divide now. There is no way back. The Israeli government has raped the world’s approval of the Israeli state and will not have peace before it lays down its weapons.
NO DEFENSE ANY MORE
May words and spirit blow the apartheid walls of Israel down. The government of Israel has no right to exist anymore. They have no defense for what they have done. May the world have mercy on the Israeli civilians. We do not extend these prophesies of doom to the single individual Israelis. We want everything good for them but we retain the right to not eat Jaffa oranges from Israel as long as they taste so bad and are poisonous. After all, we survived many years without the blue apartheid grapes [Norway had for many years a ban on all imports from South Africa – translators remark]
THEY CELEBRATE THE TRIUMPHS
We do not believe that the Israelis mourn 40 murdered Lebanese children as much as they for 3000 years have lamented the more that 40 years in the desert. We have noted that Israelis celebrates such triumphs as they once were jubilant over their god’s scourges over the Egyptians as a “suitable punishment” (their god appears as an insatiable sadist in that story). We must ask ourselves: are the Israelis of the opinion that one Israeli life is worth more than 40 Palestinian lives of 40 Lebanese lives?
We have seen photos of small Israeli girls who write greetings of hate on the bombs that are to be dropped over the civilians in Lebanon and Palestine. Israeli girls are not pretty when they obviously enjoy the thought of deaths and destruction on the other side of the border.
BLOOD FEUD AND REVENGE
We do not approve of the current rhetoric of the Israeli government. We do not accept the ideas of blood feuds and vengeance as in “an eye for en eye and tooth for tooth”. We do not accept the principle of “ten or thousand Arabian eyes for one Israeli eye”. We do not accept collective punishment or ethnic cleansing as political weapons. Two thousand years ago a Jewish Rabbi criticized the ancient dogma “eye for eye and tooth for tooth” He said: “what you want others to do to you, you should do to them”. We do not accept a government based on inhumane principles and the ruins of an archaic national religion, a war religion. Or let us quote Albert Schweitzer: “Humanity means never to sacrifice a human being for a principle”.
COMPASSION AND FORGIVENESS
We do not acknowledge the old kingdom of David as a plan for the Middle East in the 21 century. The jewish rabbi said 2000 years ago that the kingdom of god is not a warring revival of the ancient kingdom of David, but that: “the kingdom of god is inside us and between us”. The kingdom of god is Mercy and Forgiveness. Two thousand years have passed since the jewish rabbi fought and tried to humanize the old warring religion. But it should be noted that already at his time there were zionist terrorists in the his society.
ISRAEL WILL NOT HEAR
For two thousand years we have tried to instill the doctrine of humanity in people, but Israel will not hear and learn. It was not the Pharisees that helped the man that was found helpless on the road because he had met with highway robbers The one that helped him was a Samaritan, today he would be a Palestinian. For FIRST; we are human beings: christians, moslems, jews, and so on. To quote the jewish rabbi again: “and if you give a friendly greeting to your own, why is that so grand?”. We do not accept the kidnapping of soldiers, but neither do we accept deportations of large groups of people or kidnapping of legally elected members of parliament and cabinet ministers.
We do acknowledge the government of Israel of 1948, but we do not accept Israel’s government of 1967. It is the Israeli Government that does not acknowledge, respect and accept the international rights and commitments of Israel of 1948. Israel now wants more of everything; more water, more land, and more villages on Arab land. To obtain this, some people want god’s help to solve the “final solution" of the “Palestinian question”. As some Israeli politicians express it “the Palestinians have so many lands, we have only one”.
USA OR THE WORLD?
OR, as the great protector of the state of Israel expresses it: “May God continue to bless America!” A small child took notice of this and as she turned to her mother and said: “Why does the President always say God bless America? Why doesn’t he say God bless the world?”
A couple of hundred years ago a Norwegian poet once wrote “ Why does Humanity Progress so Slowly?” This is the poetwho authored a long, kind edict about the jews [the Norwegian constitution did not allow jews into Norway until around 1860 – translator’s remark]. But he vehemently opposed that a group of people could call themselves “God’s Chosen People”.
DELIBERATION AND MERCY
We do not acknowledge the present government of Israel. Not today, not at this moment, not in the hour of sorrow and anger. If the whole Israeli nation should self-destruct and some of them may have to flee from the land they have occupied to yet another diaspora, we say: Please let everybody be considerate and merciful with them. It is ever and forever a crime without mitigating circumstances to mistreat refugees and people without a state. Give peace and free passage to civilians who must flee and no more have a government that can protect them. Do not shoot at them! Do not aim your weapon at them! They are vulnerable as snails without their houses, vulnerable as slow, endless columns of Palestinian and Lebanese refuges, defenseless as women and children and old people in Qana, Gaza, Sabra and Shatila. Give the Israeli refugees housing, give then “milk and honey”! Do not let a single Israeli child die, too many children and other civilians have been murdered already!
Not the best translation, but a great analogy.
