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M.J. Rosenberg is Director of Policy Analysis for , a long time Capitol Hill staffer and former editor of AIPAC's Near East Report.
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By M.J. Rosenberg
April 7, 2004
Passover, the Jewish holiday that is celebrated this week, is intrinsically political. The story it commemorates - the liberation of the Jews from Egyptian slavery - has inspired groups seeking to throw off oppression for millennia. In our own country, the civil rights movement adapted the song "Let My People Go" as an anthem, just as previous generations of African-American slaves had sung songs about the Exodus to express their yearning for freedom.
Passover is truly a holiday any group can make its own. That is why there are so many nondenominational seders (the seder is the traditional Passover dinner) in this country. Any group can utilize the seder to celebrate its own struggle for freedom or equality - but so can people who are in no way oppressed themselves. For them the seder can be a means of expressing solidarity with those who are.
One of the most surprising and impressive aspects of commemoration of the Jewish struggle for national liberation is that it is it is anything but chauvinistic.
There is one moment in the Haggadah (the book Jews read at the seder) which epitomizes a universal worldview which was undoubtedly rare at the time it was written.
It comes from the Talmud and it is a reflection on the Israelites' escape from the Egyptian slave-drivers. The Red Sea parted and the Israelites were able to cross on dry land. But when the Egyptians came rushing across in hot pursuit, the waters closed upon them and they drowned.
This is the commentary on their drowning from the Talmud. "When Israelites saw the wondrous power which the Lord had wielded against the Egyptians... the Israelites sang a song of praise to the Lord... At that moment, the angels of heaven wanted to sing praises to God. But God silenced them, saying: 'My children are drowning and you are singing to me?'"
The message here is unambiguous. We may rejoice in our own triumph but may not celebrate the killing of others.
That message needs retelling these days. Israelis and Palestinians continue their struggle against each other. Close to a thousand Israelis have been killed in the 40 months since the collapse of the Oslo agreement (in contrast to the fewer than twelve in the previous three years) while three thousand Palestinians have been killed.
The Israeli government claims that it does not have a partner with whom to negotiate an end to the killing.
But Avraham Burg, the former Speaker of the Israeli Knesset and a current Member of Knesset, argues that this is chicken-egg logic. If Israel will announce just what it is willing to offer, credible partners will come forward.
And perhaps that is what is happening now. Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Ala (Ahmed Queri) says that he is willing to give Ariel Sharon's unilateral withdrawal plan a chance. "The Gaza pullout proposal could be a chance to revive peace moves," he said, "and we all should work together to seize this chance in a wise and courageous manner." Of course, the Gaza initiative cannot stop with Gaza; it must be a first step toward withdrawal from most of the West Bank as well.
As for the Palestinians, the fact that they have far less power than Israel does not mean that they cannot put forth their own offer. That offer must be a full and complete end to violence. Look at what Dr. Martin Luther King accomplished without violence. He transformed America and the conditions of his people. Palestinians say that Ariel Sharon will not respond if they lay down their arms. But they should understand that even if a particular Israeli government ignores a Palestinian peace offering, the Israeli people will not.
Palestinians seem to be getting that message. Seventy prominent Palestinian leaders signed an ad in the Palestinian newspaper Al Ayyam calling on Palestinians to end the violence and undertake "a wide ranging peaceful and popular Intifada." This is no group of Palestinian doves but a mixed group of mainstream Palestinians who are sick and tired of the violence and want to move peacefully toward the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.
More Palestinians need to speak out, and other Arabs as well. Writing in the Jordan Times, James Zogby, the head of the Arab-American Institute, said that all Arab leaders "ought to embrace" the call of the 70 Palestinians for an end to violence "and underwrite it with a reinvigorated peace initiative of their own." He envisions a restatement (and strengthening) of the Arab League Initiative of two years ago, which offered Israel full peace, normalization and security in exchange for the West Bank and Gaza. He says that "such a vision cannot be introduced and dropped as it was in 2002... It must be the start of a campaign..."
In fact, both the United States and Israel ignored the unprecedented Arab League initiative and it withered on the vine; it should have been seized with both hands as a vehicle to get negotiations going. America does Israel no favors when it stands back and allows Israel to pass up opportunities for peace. A real friend, a real ally, would help Israelis and Palestinians break the stalemate - not simply follow the path of least (political) resistance by doing nothing or exceedingly little.
But no U.S. effort will succeed if the two sides continue to regard each other as eternal enemies rather than as potential partners. That was one of the flaws of Oslo. Yes, Israelis and Palestinians worked as partners to combat terrorism and saved many, many lives. But, at the same time, Israel never stopped expanding settlements in the very areas they were supposedly negotiating with the Palestinians over, and Palestinians did not crack down on anti-Israel incitement.
With the exception of the tragically short Rabin period, both sides behaved as if the peace process was a zero-sum game. If one side won, the other lost. Neither seemed to understand - as Yitzhak Rabin did - that the peace process is the opposite of zero-sum. Unless both sides win, neither does. They still don't understand it.
That is why Israeli talk about not allowing the Palestinians to view an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as a victory for them is as pointless as Palestinian claims that it does, indeed, represent victory.
What kind of victory can it be when so many have died, with so many more still likely to?
We should all take a page from the Haggadah. There can be no victory, and no singing while "my children" are dying - anyone's children.
Except perhaps for one song: the Passover song, Dayenu. It means "enough."
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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