LET it be said from the outset that my ancestry is Sephardic Jewish, from southern Spain, or the area otherwise once known as Al-Andalus or Andalusia. I take pride in that heritage for the fact that this was once a place of intercultural and inter-religious engagement. There, people of different faiths and tradition — Jews, Muslims and Christians — lived together amicably, with respect, and a committed sense of toleration, all “People of the Book,” all children of Abraham.
I am today by no means a practicing Jew, in the sense of being one who, like orthodox Jews, keeps the commandments, statutes and ordinances that are given in both written and oral law within Rabbinic Judaism. My approach to this tradition is that of the historical and textual critic. Most importantly, I am certainly not a Zionist, by no means an apologist for what has always been a deformation of true Judaism.
Long ago I decided the State of Israel was hardly a benign or benevolent entity, given the way in which it pursues ostensibly “Jewish” interests yet depreciates and dismisses with malice the legitimate interests of Israeli Arabs within Israel, Palestinians living in the occupied territories, and Palestinians exiled long ago but refused their legitimate right of return. The fact is that Israel is itself a sponsor of state terrorism, the antagonist that escapes all sanctions against it, which should be demanded by the international community, international law thus finding its just application against all Israeli leaders long guilty of war crimes.
I write at the moment as an American, but also as a teacher and scholar of ethics in international affairs. I have the vantage point of one living with Arabs and Muslims in Saudi Arabia. Here I have found, without fail, many who daily greet each other and me in peace, consistent with their Muslim profession of faith, their genuine hospitality carried in their greeting of peace, in both their word and deed.
I write today in protest at the Israeli aggression in Gaza. I write to issue my own indictment of Zionists such as Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and those in the international community who tolerate what is clearly not merely scandalous but manifest criminality. The current aggression is hardly a legitimate response to alleged terrorist acts of Hamas. That is but pretext. The text is the truth that says: Livni wishes to be prime minister in the upcoming election, and so to secure that goal, she acts to show herself an able hawk, even as does her competitor Benjamin Netanyahu. I chose my words in the foregoing statements precisely, deliberately, and with commitment to the truth of the claims made.
The fact is the State of Israel long ago abandoned its defense of a true Jewish spiritual heritage. Those who seek positions of leadership, such as Livni or Netanyahu, manifest their excess of egoism in their commitment to ongoing hostility toward Palestinians living in the occupied territories. Claims of self-defense against terrorist actions are mere euphemisms for blatant aggression in Gaza, all in violation of recognized standards of international law and morality.
As such, Livni and her associates shame the good Jewish identity that would otherwise be appropriated by any honest Jew who speaks the truth about Zionist ideology: That truth is that those who say “Never again!” after the Nazi genocide of Jews have come to show themselves transmogrified into their Nazi other. Try as they might to sanitize in word, the deadly reality they perpetrate in the deaths and injuries of Palestinian civilians, disproportionately women and children, cannot erase their shame or their crimes.
The cultural historian William Irwin Thompson long ago wrote of the phenomenon of enantiodromia, understood to mean that strange occurrence according to which in seeking something zealously one turns out getting its opposite. Vis-à-vis the Palestinians, Israel shows itself transmogrified — it is Nazi in its words and in its deeds, though Livni smiles away her guilt in every rationalization of her misdeeds. A supposed democracy in the Middle East is by no means that, not in the slightest.
For shame, and for shame again...
— Norman K. Swazo lives in Riyadh and teaches at Al Faisal University.
