A Special Place in Hell / Wanted: Two mad martyrs, to make a Mideast peace
The peace process takes no prisoners. No one makes peace and lives.
By Bradley BurstonLike anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.
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Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin |
| Photo by: David Mizrachi |
Martin Luther King, Memphis, April 3, 1968
On the face of it, there is no conflict more thicket-bound, more eye-gouging in its complexity, more heavily barricaded in its resistance to a solution, than the Israeli-Arab morass.
Would that all of this could be boiled down to something more digestible, more easily amenable to change.
It can. It comes down to this: The price of making peace is death. No less. The only leader who can make the kinds of political and social sacrifices necessary to forge a solution which provides for an independent Palestine alongside an independent Israel, is the leader who is fully prepared to make the ultimate personal sacrifice.
From Yitzhak Rabin to Anwar Sadat to Issam Sartawi to Ariel Sharon to Moshe Dayan, the peace process takes no prisoners. No one makes peace and lives.
We, the peoples of the Holy Land, demand no less. Is that fair? Of course not. But it's the way it works. The "land which devours its inhabitants" is even harder on the leaders who choose to try to make that land livable. We cannot forgive our leaders for doing the right thing. We can only forgive them, re-elect them, tolerate them, for doing the wrong thing, measure after failed measure, year after agonizing year.
Which brings us to Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak and, for that matter, Mahmoud Abbas. They have found the Mideast secret of eternal political life: Just say no.
In fact, our most effective rejectionists, among them Eli Yishai, Natan Sharansky, Avigdor Lieberman, are our most prominent political cowards.
In Barak's case, the lack of moral imagination, in Henry Siegman's apt phrase, is stunning. He has borrowed the secret of longevity from his Camp David classmate Yasser Arafat, and is happy as a clam. It is only the peoples of the Holy Land who are left mired in misery and hopelessness.
In the case of Netanyahu, the most absurd of explanations for his failure to seek peace also appears more and more to be the real one: So long as his centenarian father remains alive, lucid, and steely in his resistance to a peace process, so shall the prime minister be.
They are survivors, these men of crippled vision. They survive so that others may die.
What do we need to make peace between Israel and Palestine? A leader on each side who is mad enough and patriotic enough to be willing to be a martyr to the future.
Yitzhak Rabin made peace with Jordan, and was on his way to making peace with the Palestinians, when we killed him. Anwar Sadat was Israel's most lethal enemy, when he took the step that in one stroke made a landmark peace and regained every square centimeter of captured Egyptian territory. Just after Israel made its final large withdrawal, one of Sadat's junior army officers gunned him down.
What do we need from our leaders? Only peace, and their life's blood.
What kind of person could possibly be willing to take on that kind of challenge, in exchange for nothing more than a place in history and a future for millions of children on both sides?
Precisely the kind we seem to lack at the moment. A genuine hero.
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If Gaza was given to the Hamas Group and told this is your country now and you have 3 months to establish your own electricity, get your own food supply, establish services for the people, establish your own money, etc. Once they realize that the area will belong to them as a country, if they attack Israel it would be an official war by an established country. This is a different way for Israel to get the group "off their back." Israel could still maintain checkpoints and lookout areas to keep intruders out. I'm curious if the Hamas group would carry on as they do now. They would be busy keeping the country alive to prevent a revolt from those living under their wing. The Kinneset could vote on this idea and start the process. It is not up to one person like Sadat or those others to move in that direction.
what are the terms for your version of peace bradley???? neither sadat /begin nor rabin/arafat acheived more that a paper contract because peace is more than a bandaid stuck on a moment of history !
Yes, leaders should be willing to die for their people and values, but what type of martyrdom will solve the current problem? Will a martyr's death bring Israel, Gaza, Syria, and Iran into lasting harmony? Is Iran going nuclear only because no Israeli martyr has stepped forward? The martyrdom will bring no lasting value unless others consolidate the program sought by the martyr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed for trying to end unjust war as much as for trying to end racism. Yet the U.S. has continued, despite King's legacy, to conduct the type of wars King denounced.
If those that run Gaza at present were told in 3 months Gaza would be their country- - then Israel would be able to cut off electricity, supplying food, medical, etc. Israel could then specify if attacked by your country that is a sign of war and your government and country would be destroyed. . What would happen - Those running Gaza would have to create a legit government, establish currency, establish all services, everything to survive. The question then would be would they be smart enough to create peace or have a revolt from those living in Gaza that want peace?
nor FDR, nor Churchill... Brad just being Brad... that's all. Although I said about a year ago, the man needs a shrink and a suicide watch. Brad, all the best and I hope to hear from you even more eloquent article, or even a book. I like your style.
The same can be said for Michael Collins and Mahatma Ghandhi.
"After Moses has led the Israelites to Canaan, he seems to question the wisdom of any people's dependence on a single leader, or deliverer, concluding that, 'No man may make another free. Freedom was something internal.... All you can do was to give the opportunity for freedom and the man himself must make his own emancipation.'" Deborah E. McDowell's Introduction to Zora Neale Hurston's _Moses, Man of the Mountan_
This article is excellent with a special "flavor" from a very funny Bradley Burston. Well done!
Ariel Sharon?!?!? I don't think an obese, stressed man having a stroke counts as making a sacrifice for peace!
4:10-20: "He pleased God, and was beloved, and living among sinners, he was translated. He was taken away, lest wickedness should alter his understanding, or deceit beguile his soul..." Mark 8:35: "For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it."
Yitzhak Rabin is in heaven, he done alot for the children of I srael , in war and in peace, "Blessed the peace makers they are children of God:" in the memory of all of us.
Sadat caved in after getting his ass kicked by Israel every time he looked outside. Rabin was a dreamer and would have ended up doing something ridiculous , what I'm not quite sure, but I know it would have put many restraints on Israel. The truth is, when you are dealing with a consortium of madmen, the whole arab world and most of Europe and many in the U.S. that don't give Israel the legitimacy they have earned and have, then there will never be peace in the region. Because the Arab world doesn't want Israel period. The U.N. is a joke. The United States does as little as possible to defend even the sovereignty of Israel, much less back off her Arab and terrorist oppressors. Not that Israel can't handle their own affairs; Believe me they've done it many times in the past, it would just be nice if some country would finally stand up and say to the whole world: " Israel is our friend, sovereign and whole and built out of the return of the people of the four corners of the world who came back as GOD Himself spoke it. And it happened. If the fact that Israel is a land again now offends some, they need to get over it. This time God Is the judge over the matter. And Peace will come and only come when God Himself brings final peace to this world. Not a minute before. Stop looking for heroes of Peace, that's God's job. AMEN
Sadat was brave but Begin earned his place in history too... or have you forgotten?
Moshe Dayan died of natural causes. Ariel Sharon is, apparently to Mr. Burston's surprise, still alive. His comatose state stems from a stroke brought on by obesity, not peacemaking. Shimon Peres, not mentioned in the article, is very much alive and President of the State. What on earth is Mr. Burston writing about?
The issue is life and death of Israel. This simplistic view begs the issue to attack the people and presupposes an sincere desire for peace by the pa leaders and people. Israel withdrawal from 95% of the disputed lansi proof of sincerity. offers of further concessions bolsters the proof.The pa is playing a maximal ever expanding game and they have repeatedly stated, for all to hear, that the end game is control of all Israel, Look beyond your own biases.
I know he does not intend it, but one might translate the meaning of the article to mean that decent politicians must avoid brave decisions because of fear of fanatics. But the politicians of the present government need not worry, political bravery is not their strong point in any case.
I was going to offer you Bill Clinton and Barack O****. But then I read the last line of your piece--genuine heroes. Oh, well!
Rabbi meir Kahane also died because he wanted peace. His idea of peace would have been eternal, because the enemy would have been in their own Lands- 22 of them.
You are no better than Helen Thomas telling us to go back to Poland.
no one with an iota of realism could put kahane and peace in the same sentence.
You are so right..We need a Rabbi Kahane right now. He was so right about the palestinian issues but I wonder if he ever thought things would get so bad. G-d rest his soul .Everyday I thank G-d that I had the chance to know the Rabbi and learn from him.
If one thinks about it, all the author's examples (illustrative or not) involve sacrifices "after the fact," shall we say... and--darn little to show for them, all things considered...SO--what if those "sacrifices" were to be done "in advance" of major peace efforts--as a series of "offerings," as it were? (This worked fine for the Aztecs for centuries--until Cortez, admittedly--but that could have been a "one-off" sort of thing.)
SO WHAT KIND OF GOD ARE TALKING ABOUT?
You have nothing of value to contribute.
The status quo in Israel is and has been, keep settlement expansion going and continue infringement on Palestinian neighborhoods in the west bank and East Jerusalem. All Jewish Israeli politicians support this. If the left wing of Israeli politics is exemplified by Barak and Peres, then there is no left wing. Barak and his party are allied with the extreme right and Peres is a spinmeister for a right wing government. If peace is to be made, it will come by being shoved down the throats of a resistant Israeli public and government. There will be no Israeli "heroes for peace".
Correct me if I'm wrong - but from what we can see, outside of the status quo, things have just become progressively worse.
Unfortunately, it seems to me you are "precisely correct"
Bradley Burston may be right. But how easy it must be to sit at one's computer, typing away, and ask for more heroic persons to do what you think they should.
Bradley Burston and many other Israelis who write on these pages, have served in combat positions in the IDF. Moreover, they send their children to do the same. They have no choice but to expect nothing less from their supposed leaders than they expect from themselves - even as they sit at their computers.
You got it. To survive for others to die: to the point.. But for how long? For how long the Netahyahus of this world can get away with it?
an article that sezitol !! Unfortch.............the current climate on both sides does not breed the type of hero we need . Sad but true.
You forgot Menahem Begin. He made peace, and he lived. Moshe Dayan died of old age and Sharon is still among us. Don't turn peace into the curse of pharaoh.
none of them brought peace, they stopped long way short of it
Sharon got the coma as a recompense for the Gaza withdrawal? (!) Might sound a bit weird, but there just could be another option: A major, all-out war should grant Bibi some more time in office, too, isn't it? There won't be peace any soon, because of the hudna, but deterrence can be used for a longer-lasting period of cold "peace". Bradley has written worse articles, that's 4 sure.
Bradley Burston is correct and perceptive. This is what it takes. Maybe even Obama will not be reelected.
netanyahu is a hero - someone who leads israel with strength - strength! israeli pride! zionism! words that mean nothing on this website...
Maybe. But isn't Netanyahu the prime minister who gave Bethlehem, capital of Judea, city of king David and his descendant Jesus, to Egyptian terrorist Arafat and his PLO?
"Without a vision the people perish" (Prov. 29:18). With this, Bradley can make the choice sharper: Life for the leader and death to his people, or the alternative. And the alternative may include life to the visionary leader and life to his people (see the Ben-Gurion example) or death to the visionary leader but still life to his people, as in the Burston examples. The bottom line is: People in the wilderness need a leader with a real vision in order to survive. "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, on them has the light shined." (Isaiah 9:2)
Sorry ! There is not enough room there due to overcrowding and the expected arrival of Ahmadinejad and more Ayatollas
Well, I believed in the possibility of peace and voted labor many years. Now I believe that no peace is possible and history will repeats itself. We are 6 million Jew here ( Terrible number right ) + we fight each other again like in our history ) and we are supposed to be smart, laugh out laud
In 1996, I was diagnosed with a non-cancerous brain tumor that had to be removed surgically with a statistically measurable chance of death from the surgery. A fanatic friend that I had been in activist cooperatives earlier, asked me "this is an opportunity for you to determine what you are willing to die for". The actual question was "what are you willing to live for? What are you willing to put your heart, mind, body into, to actually invest willful determination for?" It was distinct from the small d, determination of avoiding conflict, or even fear of offending someone's sensitivities. I went the small d life, in deference to my family mostly. My responsibilities were clear, support my wife and children. Anyone asking that question now? "What are you willing to die for? (a question that "martyrs" ask in their instant of service to humanity). What are you willing to live for (a question that sincere social servants ask in their continuous, confusing, lifelong service to humanity).
You are right--It takes more courage to live. However, the tree of liberty must often be watered with the blood of heroes and tyrants alike. From Patrick Henry's speech of 1775, Peace, peace they cry. But there is no peace...as for me give me liberty or give me death! And from the great State of Virginia, their state motto, Sic Semper Tyrannis.
Thanks for your article, it is perhaps the best you've ever wrote. Amos