Israel

There is something deeply humiliating about Israel- its very existence as such. It is this humiliation, I believe, that is at the root of the state's hyper-militarism which is unabated after nearly 60 years of statehood.

To draw a parallel as to why the Israeli consciousness is anchored in humiliation, let us turn today to Iraq. Thomas Friedman, myself, and others have argues that part of the motivation for the civil strife and anti-Americanism in Iraq is simply a response to the humiliation the Iraqis feel at the fact of being liberated at all. What an embarrassment. To live in fear for 30 years and then to have some external power walk in and in a couple of weeks have plucked out the great terror of your lives? What were you so afraid of if the US can just roll in and do what you, thew Iraqi people, wish you could have done for so long. It is a concrete symbol of your impotence.

So. To combat that feeling within, one must turn on the liberators to make them feel your pain, to show them that you are a force to be reckoned with and not some weak, backwards nation. So you fight and lash out against the very people who "saved" you for the very reason that your needing to be "saved" was so insulting.

To feel one's power as a nation one wants to *earn* nationhood. Through warfare, through exploration, through revolution- whatever. It is not something to be bestowed if it is to have its grounding in virility. The Iraqis are now - and have been for 5 years - earning their country by driving out the tyrant-savior. The war will go on until the humiliation is expunged.

Israel, then. Israel was formed by a charter, not by war. It was granted. In the Jewish religion it is Yahweh who will grant us our nation- not the British. This arbitrary land grant, in response to collective European embarrassment at the holocaust (which could have happened in any European country experiencing the kind of recession Germany experienced in the 30's), feels sketchy under the feet. After all, if land can be granted it can be ungranted too, right? No one would think of revoking the British Charter. They earned it through settlement and warfare over centuries. The American charter was won largely through measles and smallpox but it was won nonetheless. Greece, China, Japan, Mexico- these countries all have proud traditions f manly conquest to settle their territories. But Israel was a gift out of the goodness of the world's heart. Not convincing,

In fact it would appear to be another plank in the long line of Jewish complicity with the going master-power. Jews made deals with the Romans for political protection in exchange for subservience and compliance. Similar deals were made throughout history as an exchange for being guests in others' lands. The feeling is not so dissimilar today, at heart. It is a permeating humiliation.

That Israel continues to rely today on support from the US and England, the current global master and its lapdog, reeks of history. And Israel will never feel like a true homes so long as Jew are still entangled in this traditional role as serf.

So how to overcome this feeling of emasculation? Well obviously through warfare. And like the Iraqis, it is not a matter of winning, but of venting, of raging until the manhood is restored, until one effectively can tell oneself, "If I had fought this hard, I would have won the land for myself in the first place." That is what Jews, Iraqis, and all "liberated" people (including, I would say blacks and women in the US) are fighting for- to feel as if they have the power to do for themselves what others have patronizingly done for them.

This can last a lifetime. It can last forever. Ultimately, history can not be unwritten in this way, and so the wound of liberation is ongoing. Perhaps over time the memory will diminish, or perhaps, as in Iraq, the continuing pressure of Israel on the US will turn US opinion against the tiny nation. Perhaps this is what Israel really wants after all, a confrontation with the master. And the pushing, like a spoiled child, for every allowance and concession is unconsciously designed to push away the smothering parent. Would Israel want war with the US? Absurd. But to be freed from US protection, it would be free to test its own strength in the world as a truly independent nation, no longer a feudal serf of the going king-state.

The Iraqis are ahead on this one. Jews haven't resorted to terrorism since the Maccabees in Greece, but perhaps they can learn something from their Arab cousins about how to stick up for yourself.