Letter to the Editor: ‘Slouching Toward Bethlehem’

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Advent, the 25 days leading up to Christmas, is a passage traditionally associated with wreaths, greetings and joy, a succession of purple and pink candles and mounting excitement. This year however it is a dark and dreadful path, followed with heavy tread and mounting dread. The Christmas stories told in churches, in carols, in the art and which permeate our traditions and culture, have been infernally transformed into a hideous reality torn limb from limb on the wheel of the daily news. It is king Herod returned to earth to fill the graves of the holy land with children.  Marys and Josephs are carried out of bombed hospitals with newborn infants, whose lives lasted milliseconds, cradled in their dead arms. Soldiers, like reembodied Roman centurions, pillage Christian churches In the city of the Nativity.

The towering wrath of Netanyahu reverberates with the sixteenth century Coventry carol, the lullaby of mothers to their doomed infants:

“Herod the King, in his raging, charged he hath this day, His Men of Might, In His Own Sight All Children Young to Slay” …

Israel aspires to erase all traces of its sibling faiths. Christian churches on the Mount of Olives, where Mary is said to have been buried, are being confiscated, in the name of creating a green National Park. Muslim cemeteries have been bulldozed, some containing the bones of Muhammad’s comrades, and, later, the Saracens of Saladin’s armies.  Mamilla Cemetery has been mostly swept away, and replaced by Independence Park, in a celebration of Israel’s creation.

The world appears helpless. As Yeats wrote, “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with a passionate intensity”.

Christ was a Palestinian and a Jew, and Palestine is the Holy Land.  Here the Old Testament prophets admonished their human flocks, and Jesus was born, bringing his message of love. It was from here that Mohammad embarked on his miraculous Night journey to Heaven. The occurrence of the Nakhba should have instantly tipped off the imperialist world builders that their creation of a Jewish state in Palestine was not going to work.

Israel has lost the right to be custodian of the holy land. It is a failed state. It needs to go back, and solve the problem where it began. European Jews must rediscover their deep European roots, torn out only two generations ago. They should be given Upper Bavaria, where ideas of holocaust were once conceived. Or they could have Swabia, accompanied by a graceful exodus of Germans who in turn could be satisfactorily re-housed by hospitality engineers. Europe has shown expertise in absorbing newcomers. The relocation of Israel is just another of the challenging problems of rejected Empire.

Or, a nation state of Israel, currently confined to a mere 8,00 square miles, could be allowed a generous portion of the state of Nevada’s 110,000+ square miles.

This Advent, this season of Festivals of Light, celebrating the sun’s return, is a reenactment of the foundational metaphoric tales of our cultures, only in a macabre, mocking travesty. As MLK did, and would again put it, it is the liturgy of a final approach to spiritual death.

[Ellen Taylor]