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Letter Re: Israeli GSS Chiefs speak out
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John Perkins
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Nov 26, 2003 19:22 PST
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At 14:59 26/11/03 +1000, Doug Everingham wrote:
| | Relayed by Doug Everingham from Global People's Assembly Movement
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The following is a response to Doug's post, which I have written as a
letter to the editor. But I know that letters like this do not get printed.
Four Shin Bet Chiefs (Israel's Secret Security Services) spoke out in
Jerusalem on November 14, 2003 saying "We are Seriously Concerned About the
Fate of the State of Israel". The statement aroused worldwide publicity,
due to the status of the speakers, and was designed to shock the Israeli
public regarding the current strategy in the conduct of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The strategy was unfair, was one of crisis
management and there was no viable plan for a long-term solution. The
current policy was heading in the wrong direction and was only making any
eventual settlement harder to achieve, they said.
This statement is a welcome recognition of the problem, yet the speakers
had no real idea of what to do except to try to avert an Israeli civil war,
a possibility in the process of forcing the settlers to withdraw from the
occupied territories, an action that is necessary to make a Palestinian
state plausible. The speakers did not recognise, that even such a dramatic
move towards the geography and demographics of a two-state solution, will
not permanently solve the problem. There will never be a solution until all
sides recognise what the real underlying cause of the problem is - religion.
A core feature Judaism is that the Jews, as God's chosen people, have a
certain moral right to territory in Palestine, irrespective of the existing
right to the same territory, held by the Palestinians. A core feature of
Islam is that Muslims, as faithful servants of God, when dar-al-Islam (the
land of Islam) is occupied by "infidels", have a moral right, in fact a
moral duty, to wage jihad against such infidels.
The respective religions of the combatants have predisposed them to not
only to mutually incompatible aspirations, but mutually incompatible
conceptions of morality. There will never be peace until this "belief
based" nature of the problem is at first recognized and then overcome. Is
that an impossibly idealistic, inconceivable eventuality? No. Here is how
it can be achieved.
Each side must recognize that there must be no presumption that any
religious belief has any superior claim to authenticity over any other
religious belief. Epistemologically, this is a fact. The parties simply
need to recognize it. The implication is that people should be treated as
equal citizens, regardless of religion. It requires a secular state, not a
Jewish state or an Islamic state. It means there should be no state support
for any religion. It means replacing divisive notions of "religious
morality", with a universal morality based on principles such as honesty,
justice and compassion. This is not an ideal. It is the only possible
solution. The alternative is to just keep on fighting, killing and hating
until finally the obvious is recognised and it is implemented. Then,
instead of being a major global source of discontent and instability, the
achievement of such a Middle East solution would be an inspiration to the
entire world.
John Perkins
Member, Humanist Society of Victoria
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