COUSINAGE - VOISINAGE

Having seen the peculiar Christian religious bias creating the preconditions of future Jewish persecutions, we may still be reminded that in the modern times things have changed a lot, and today the Christians and the Jews seem to be getting along pretty well, especially in America, where this "getting-along" has flourished into a “beautiful friendship.”

On the other hand, ever since the end of World War I, Judenthum has been steadily sliding into what looks like an existential confrontation with the Islamic world, to the point that for several generations of humanity the situation may seem to have persisted if not since the Creation itself, then surely since the Biblical times. But nothing could be farther from the truth.

It is therefore all the more astonishing now to bring our attention to a case of a most improbable symbiosis, and also one of the greatest reversals of fortune in recorded history… Once upon a time there was Kalam!

…Kalam, and now this?!

But let us have first things first.

The title of this entry plays on the frivolous French proverb Cousinage est une dangereuse voisinage, warning of certain erotic complications which may arise between cousins. But in the case at hand, the danger is by no means a laughing matter, as I am talking now about the relationship of ‘cousins’ inside the Semitic family of nations, that is, between the Arabs and the Jews.

Euripides in The Phoenissæ puts his finger where it hurts: “Dreadful indeed are the feuds of relatives, and difficult the reconciliation.” Which, logically, does not have to be followed by a declaration of a necessary incompatibility between all relatives, as the latter inference would have been a classic non-sequitur, and an absurdity. As a matter of fact, Arab Moslems were living happily side by side with their Jewish cousins in a perfectly tolerant Islamic world, marred only by occasional invasions of foreign Islamic zealots, such as the Almohad neophyte Islamic sect of Berbers, who were themselves of Hamitic, and not of Semitic origin, and whose 1147-1148 invasion of Spain brought the Jews far less misery than the Christian Reconquista three-and-a-half centuries later.

There is a good reason for the early Islamic tolerance of the Jews, who were after all a people of the Book, and, as such, were entitled to certain privileges, in the wake of the blitz Islamic takeover of a huge chunk of the known world, in the course of just one century (600’s-700’s). But what occurred in the wake of that first wake, however, turned out even better.

Earlier in this entry, I happened to use the Arabic word Kalam, representing the enlightened philosophical disposition of the Islamic thinkers, since the eighth century AD, thus presaging the Christian Renaissance by half-a-millennium. The word Kalam comes from Kalam Allah, Word of God, which refers to the Koran (or Quran in modern transcription). The proponents of Kalam demonstrated that the ancient Greek culture, with its priceless philosophical and scientific tradition, had nothing to do with the alleged paganism of the Greek Civilization (the point I have been making all the time in my own philosophical criticism, pushing it even farther, to assert a solid monotheistic foundation to all Greek philosophy) and therefore could be very effectively incorporated into the new emerging Islamic culture with no prejudice or jeopardy to its Moslem religious foundation.

It goes without saying that the profound, pioneering genius of the Kalam principle was to inspire not only the best of the Islamic philosophers, but also the best Jewish philosophical and scientific minds of that time and place. Philosophy and science transcended the specific religious roots of a particular culture, therefore, a peaceful coexistence, as well as a healthy intellectual cross-pollination of cultures (such as in this case of the Moslem and Jewish cultures) was possible, and even desirable, using the wisdom of Ancient Greece as a guiding light.

To keep being fair to that marvelous Kalam civilization, not only did it precede the European Renaissance, but it actually made it possible, as it was only through the Kalam acting as their only intermediary that the priceless Greek cultural treasures would become available to the Christian world, still living in the shadow of the Dark Ages, which had been refusing to let the light in, on their own, so that it had to be smuggled in. Plato, Aristotle, and others all reached Europe in Arabic translations, not in the Greek originals, forbidden by the Church.

…Ach, that was such a lovely piece of sheer poetry. And what magnificent centers of world culture of yore: Damascus, Baghdad, Fustat/Cairo, etc., where the Arabs and the Jews used to live not like cousins, but like brothers. And here again comes my inescapable refrain: “Kalam, and now this?!”

The answer to what actually happened in the course of the last century that transformed the peace between cousins into an ugly and bloody permanent war can be sought in history in what I am calling the new kid on the block phenomenon. In order to understand the exact meaning of this expression, I shall refer the reader to its 1941 origin in Percy Crosby’s comic strip Skippy, where one of the characters delivers this message to the other: “The new kid on the block told me that the next time he saw you he was goin’ to twist your nose.”

Whether in the past this self-assertive role belonged to the early Christians, with their incredibly aggressive missionary zeal, or to the Turks, or to the Berbers; in the twentieth century, no offence to its perfect historical legitimacy, such a “new kid” was Zionism. (As the reader can see, I am not among those who would like to blame the Middle East problem on the British, or on Comrade Stalin, who was exceptionally instrumental in the 1948 creation of the State of Israel. Zionism was a great force of nature that was bound to succeed on its own anyway, but receiving a lot of political and practical help after World War II obviously did not hurt.)

Just as Christianity’s super-aggressive spirit had created a firestorm, even involving a two-way persecution street within itself, but was eventually expected to settle down with a considerably watered-down ‘civilized’ version; the militant spirit of Zionism, assisted by a series of downright awkward political decisions, on the part of the Great Powers, and backfiring in a predictably fierce cousins’ feud, might have been expected to quieten down eventually, with the watering-down of the Zionist Spartan zeal, a de facto recognition of the Jewish State of Israel by her Arab neighbors and by the rest of the Moslem world, and the enthronement of capitalism in the region, with its penchant for selling grudges for profit.

Tragically, nothing of the kind has occurred, with the laws of civilized society taking a back seat to vicious stone-age tactics of settling scores by muscle, rather than brain. Who is at fault?

It is easy for the strong to blame the weak, but nobody would believe them. It is even easier for the weak to blame the strong, but nobody would listen to them. For those who cannot come up with a reasonable plan to stop the violence, it is easy to call the conflict existential, and even apocalyptic. Incidentally, the latter view is prevalent among American Evangelical Christians. By its very definition, an apocalyptic conflict can’t be resolved, but, on the contrary, it is likely to be encouraged and exacerbated by the Armageddonists, ever so eager to bring on the end of the world, with its promise of the Second Coming.

Happily joining forces with the American Christian Armageddonists, and against the better judgment of the religious Mashiach-awaiting Jews, the immensely powerful American Jewish pro-Zionist community took it upon itself to promote alleged interests of Israel by throwing their unconditional support behind extremist Zionist elements, depriving the United States of the critically important role of an honest broker in the Arab Israeli conflict. As a result, extremist elements on both sides of the conflict have triumphed, and robbed the rest of any prospect of peace. Instead of a peaceful resolution of an intense regional conflict, what we have today is a global “War of Civilizations.”

The Armageddonists must be happy with this situation, but I fail to understand the Jews. Having endured a long and tragic history of recurring Holocausts, and having been armed with the glorious Jewish Manifest Destiny of Tikkun Olam, they appear insensitive to the noble mission of repairing the world, having chosen instead to ally themselves with Koran-burning arsonists and other such warmongers, as if the world which they have been called to repair has become for them a burnt offering waiting to happen…

But whose “god” is this offering meant for?