The greatest destructive force humankind ever invented, by an order of magnitude much greater than hydrogen bombs, is religion. Since 1500 BCE, the date scholars generally assign to the birth of the world’s oldest religion, Hinduism, people have used their religion as the reason to kill, steal, maim, enslave, starve, and destroy people who believe in a mythical god different from, and therefore opposed to, their mythical god.
Thirty-five hundred years later, we are still at it.
The war between Israel and the Palestinian splinter group Hamas is unsurprising and expected. I do not understand the world’s shock at it. Where did people think the situation in the Middle East was going to go? On both sides the status quo was unsustainable. Muslims terrorize Jewish communities by lobbing missiles indiscriminately into Israeli towns, and sending suicide bombers, well, anywhere. Jews steal (they use the word “settle” — how quaint) land in the West Bank and establish Jewish settlements, driving Palestinians from ancestral homes.
The travels which inform my attitudes include visits (some as long as three months) to Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Malaysia, Indonesia, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, and the West Bank. I will add a surprising footnote: Among those trips the only place I felt I could relax and enjoy myself truly was Ramallah, in the West Bank. Malaysia was soulless, Algeria and Tunisia brutal, and Israel paranoid and depressing. The list of ills is long.
Regional leaders seeking peace have their lives ended. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who had visited Jerusalem after the 1973 war, was assassinated by his countrymen in 1981. The assassination was led by an Egyptian military officer and approved by Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was at the time the leader of the terrorist organization Al-Jamāʻah al-islāmīyah. In 1995, after signing the Oslo Peace Accords, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by Jewish extremist Yigal Amir.
The world might even dispose of the Putins, the Lukashenkos, the Jong Uns, the Aung Hlaings, Boko Harams, ISISes, and the rest of the despots poisoning this planet, but as humanity learned after the war to end all wars, other demons rise. They always do.
Even when Muslims don’t stop Jews from reaching peace, or Jews Muslims, they stop themselves from reaching it. It was King Solomon who in Ecclesiastes, another great fiction, says, “there is no new thing under the sun.” In the Middle East, peace would be new.
As with conflict everywhere, children suffer the most. But that is not surprising. Babies have always been killed in war. Greek philosopher Aristotle campaigned for killing imperfect children immediately. And there it is, two thousand years of infanticide. Yet we are surprised? My surprise comes from people who believe people have changed.
If you are waiting for me to offer a solution to all this, I will disappoint you. The Middle East is impossible because humanity’s idiocy is insuperable. The Israelis might kill all of Hamas. Good luck with that. The world might even dispose of the Putins, the Lukashenkos, the Jong Uns, the Aung Hlaings, Boko Harams, ISISes, and the rest of the despots poisoning this planet, but as humanity learned after the war to end all wars, other demons rise. They always do.
And so the world finds itself exactly where we are now. Yet again those in power present to us their solution: we must be forever vigilant, eternally paranoid and perennially stressed, about our neighbors, our allies, our enemies, and our mythical gods.
It is absolutely no surprise, then, to find that most of us are exhausted.
Now, regardless of the time of day you read this, step outside, take a deep breath, and eat some ice cream. Then get a good night’s sleep.
Because you have to start this all over again tomorrow.
