Years ago, I attended the inauguration of the Stefan Zweig Museum in Petrópolis (Brazil). It stays in the house where the Austrian writer committed suicide alongside his wife on February 22, 1942, depressed by the war and the situation of the Jews amid this tragic conflict. I asked myself why such a desperate act on the part of this author who was revered around the world.
As
the year 2023 comes to an end, I somewhat understand the emotional hole Stefan dug
himself into. From the top of his little house, perched on a hill in my beloved
Petrópolis, he glimpsed the sad spectacle of humanity tearing itself apart.
Time
passed, but the world changed little. It continues to be a planet inhabited by
an immeasurable number of people blinded by hatred and prejudice.
A
few days ago, I celebrated my birthday and the only advantage of getting older
is that we can look around us with more critical and less naive eyes. What we
see doesn't make our nights any calmer. We wake up at dawn, victims of a
frightening lucidity.
It
has been painful to read comments and posts from people I like and some I even
admire writing nonsense regarding Israel, Zionism, the Jews, and this tragic
conflict that is happening there.
The
total lack of objectivity and historical perspective is what hurts the most.
Well-intentioned people decide to shout as harbingers of justice, without
looking in the mirror and identifying the image of medieval priests inciting
the ignorant mob to invade the ghetto and slaughter the Jews.
No matter how “well-intentioned” they are, how
much they legitimately sympathize with the fate of Palestinian civilians
“massacred by the murderous rage of the Israelis”... They are simply and
effectively repeating the role of all the triggers of pogroms and massacres
that the Jews have suffered for the last 2000 years. And, like these, every
drop of Jewish blood that has been and will be shed will inevitably weigh
heavily on them in a karmic way.
The most dramatic thing about all this is that
the non-Jewish world does not understand that Israel is fighting not only
against Hamas, or Hezbollah. Israel is fighting for its existence. Any conflict
between Israel and its neighbors has always been and will continue to be a
life-and-death struggle.
Have any of you taken the trouble to look at
the map of the region? If you haven't done it, do it. Look at the size of
Israel and its Arab neighbors, most of whom still have no official peace treaty
with Israel (Israel has only signed with Egypt and Jordan)...
Israel is slightly larger than the state of
Sergipe (the smallest state in Brazil). Imagine the people of Sergipe having to
face the rest of the Brazilians in a war. Two million people from Sergipe
against the rest of the two hundred million Brazilians.
The notion that Jews are to blame for most of
the problems of the ancient and modern world is beyond stupid. It's as
ridiculous as thinking the earth is flat.
Today there are only 15.2 million Jews in the
world, 0.2% of the world population, which is around 8.1 billion people. The
equivalent of an ant threatening a herd of elephants...
We then arrive at the fallacy that Zionism is
synonymous with colonialism, the fashion of the moment.
A people's right to self-determination is a
fundamental principle of modern international law, defended as such by the
United Nations. The accepted concept is that people have the right to freely
choose their sovereignty and international political status, without
interference. This concept was first expressed in the 19th century and after
World War I, it was encouraged by both Soviet Premier Vladimir Lenin and United
States President Woodrow Wilson.
In
1920 there were fifty independent countries. Today, there are almost two
hundred. One of the motivating forces behind this wave of country creation was
self-determination – the concept that nations (groups of people united by
ethnicity, language, geography, history, or other common characteristics)
should be able to determine their political future. All people have this right,
don't they? But the Jews don't. By asserting this right, they are accused of
being colonialists and invaders...
Jews
are a group united by ethnicity, language, history, and other common
characteristics. Ah, but it lacked geography... Israel's detractors accuse the
Jews of having no real ties to the territory they “chose” for their promised
land.
Don't
they have it? What other people have their history contained in the greatest
bestseller of all time, whose content talks about how they emerged and lived in
this land of their ancestors? A book that served as the basis for the two most
important religions in the world today – Christianity and Islam. That little
book is called the Bible. You can read it, it's all there.
But
the Jews left there more than 2 thousand years ago, they say... Did they really
leave?
The
fact is that Jews remained in Israel even after the destruction of the second
temple in 70 C.E. After suppressing the last Jewish revolts, the Romans allowed
a Jewish center to remain in Galilee. It was in this region that important
Jewish rabbinical and literary decisions took place in the Middle Ages, lasting
until the middle of 400 CE.
Current
historians guarantee that Jews constituted the majority of the population until
the Muslim conquest of the 7th century in 638. A conquest made at the point of
a sword – whoever did not convert, died.
In
1099 the Crusaders reconquered Jerusalem and in the process massacred many
inhabitants, both Muslims and Jews. Those who survived became involved in the
trade of coastal cities. At that time there were Jewish communities spread
across the country.
In
1187 Sultan Saladin defeated the Crusaders, retaking Jerusalem, and invited the
Jews to return.
And,
in 1517, the Ottoman Empire conquered the region and there was mass Jewish
immigration. The Jewish community was made up of both descendants of Jews who
had never left the land, and Jewish migrants from the diaspora.
In
1610, the Yochanan Ben Zakai Synagogue in Jerusalem became the main synagogue
of Sephardic Jews and in 1714, Dutch researcher Adriaan Reland published an
account of his visit to the region and recorded several Jewish population
centers over there.
Throughout
the 19th century until the 1880s, Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe as well as
groups of Sephardic Jews from Turkey, Bulgaria, and North Africa immigrated,
and in the early 20th century, tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants began to arrive.
Ninety thousand acres of land were purchased (not stolen) by Jews and the
revival of the Hebrew language in the region began.
In
1917, the Ottoman Empire ended and the region was under British rule until 1948
when the Jewish State was proclaimed and the Palestinians gave up proclaiming
theirs, as had been agreed with the UN.
Detail:
even fake news was recently posted stating that the Jews who came to live in
the state of Israel from 1948 onwards were not descended from the original
Jews. As if the lack of ancestral Jewish DNA was more important than the right
of these Jews to self-determine as such... The fact is that current DNA
research shows exactly the opposite. Today's Jews are the same as yesterday.
And
more. One day in Israel, in the 70s, when I lived there and worked as an
international correspondent, I heard an interesting report on ‘Kol Israel’, the
Israeli public radio station that had quite intellectual program. The radio
show told about this Palestinian village researchers discovered that they interestingly
referred to Jews. In Arabic, these Palestinians called them “cousins”. The researchers
interviewed the residents. They wanted to know if the custom was because,
according to the Bible, Arabs and Jews descended from Abraham. To which the
inhabitants of that village responded: “No, we are cousins because in the
past we were Jews too”. When the 'gentle' Islamic wave swept through the region
in the 600s CE, forcibly converting everyone, they stopped being Jews and
became Muslims, but retained the memory of their 'genetic' past.
In
any case, if we let the slogan “from the river to the sea” pass without
comment, we will then have to assume that the Jews who do not swim in the
Mediterranean on their way to Europe (adding to the thousands of refugees
already plaguing the region) will have to, one way or another, abandon Israel
because they are nothing more than a bunch of “colonialist invaders”.
Whoever
signs under this notion must also, for the sake of justice and ethics, warn the
entire Brazilian population who came from Europe, Asia, Africa, and other
regions after the discovery of Brazil, that they will have to leave and return
the land to its legitimate and original residents, the Indians...
The
same will be required of the rest of Latin American countries, as well as the
United States and Canada. Right? It doesn't matter how many generations have
passed since the unspeakable colonialist invasion of these territories. The
South Africans and Australians won't be happy about it either.
Leaving
aside the idiotic ideas and the cluelessness of the vociferous and bloodthirsty
mobs, the biggest problem with this whole situation is the difficulty of a
clear perspective.
Although
reality is transparent, people seem to be – on both sides – looking at it
through the distorted lens of emotion. An emotion, in large part, poisoned by
lies and false concepts that the Jew is a pernicious being by nature. As a
result, the Palestinians in opposition end up with the Manichaean role of the
‘good guys.’ No one is a saint or a devil in this story.
The
truth is, that the Palestinians have their reasons and their fair demands. But
the Jews have theirs too. Both people do not seek possession of that region
because it is full of oil, gold, or any other wealth other than their love for
the land itself.
There
are places around the world whose governments would be happy to see populated.
So much so that they offer all sorts of economic incentives for anyone who
wants to move there.
In addition,
also to the fact that Palestinians are receiving billions of dollars in
contributions, whose Hamas leaders use to live comfortably away from Gaza; and
Israel's commercial and creative capacity also generates a lot of capital.
These two national groups could easily buy land in countless parts of the
planet. But both of them want that dry, forsaken, and poorly located patch of
land that is Israel/Palestine. So, before you say nonsense about “colonialism”
and “invaders”, think about these facts.
And
please, before publishing your next poisonous posts, have a little common sense
and character, avoiding inciting hatred and propagating prejudices,
deliberately adding fuel to the fire. Admit the limitations of your knowledge
about the complexity of the subject and let those involved seek a path to
negotiations and, who knows peace. If you can, help us have a truly wonderful
and fraternal New Year...
THE END
