What thoughts come to mind in May this year, some six decades after the declaration of the state of Israel,asks William A Cook* "We dance round in a ring and suppose/ But the secret sits in the middle and knows." -- Robert Frost Victors' celebrations harbour shadows that lurk in the soul as revellers dance in remembrance, burying in laughter the suffering screams of those displaced and destroyed, furiously hiding forgotten faces framed in fear from mocking the glorious dance should they be awakened once more by the reverie. 14 and 15 May were paradoxically days of celebration and catastrophe: victors "dance round in a ring and suppose," caught in a never-ending quest to know if indeed this celebration is for victory or for defeat, while those vanquished understand "the secret that sits in the middle and knows." Are the secrets a truth that we are afraid to delve into, too ashamed to acknowledge, or fear of a pending Nakba for the victor signaled by a merciful and just God? This May, a Biblical age of three score and four for the state of Israel, only six years short of Biblical death, an appropriate time for reflection about judgment and retribution, about peace and justice lest the sins of the fathers remain the curse of the children. What is the secret that sits in the middle and knows? What is it keeping secret? Who is it, since it is personified and knows? Who are the dancers? Are they the children of the next generations whose fathers sinned? What do they suppose? What do they suppose the victory remembrance celebrates? Does it celebrate the men, the fathers and husbands and sons that massacred the fathers and husbands and sons at the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin? Do they meditate on those relatives of the dead who live now in refugee camps in foreign countries who have not been home for 64 years, nor seen the town now transformed into a psychiatric institution, nor visited the graves across the street, tombstones upended and defaced? What minds contemplated the barbarity of Deir Yassin a month and five days before Israel declared its freedom as a democratic country desiring recognition by the nations of the world? What minds could lie to the president of the United States, even as they laid waste the village and its people, appealing to him to immediately recognise Israel because they would bring peace to Palestine by obeying the Charter and Declaration of Human Rights held sacred by the United Nations? What personified being knows? Is it the omniscient and just God who heard the voices of the dying mothers and children and the lamentations of the men trucked through the streets of Jerusalem, living proof of Israeli might, mocked and ridiculed as inferior beings before they were returned to their town for execution? What is it about secrets that stir such fear in the hearts of the revelers? Certainly they know the faces of the dead do not die to the mind of the reaper; they live just below the twisted thoughts that gave rise to the slaughter, for why kill if remembrance of that fulfilled savagery is not possible? And isn't that after all what the Almighty meant when he proclaimed the "sins of the father are visited upon the children"? But what if we turn to the ring; what does it represent? Perhaps it's the Wall that Israel built to hide the enemy they have been unable to cleanse in the manner of Deir Yassin and the other known and unknown massacres recorded by historians Benny Morris and Ilan Pappe. Perhaps the Wall does not hide the indigenous people as it was supposed to do; that may be what they suppose as they dance round in a ring. Perhaps it rather makes obvious that lives exist beyond that wall, that freedom to move is curtailed for them, that hours can pass attempting to get permission slips to visit Jerusalem, and hours more can pass to travel the seven miles to their former home. Perhaps this is more than just an "inconvenience:" perhaps it's an intentional and calculated inhuman interference in personal lives that casts as dirty an image on the occupiers as the affront casts on those dispossessed of rights. How unfortunate that those who dance must have their backs to something or someone they cannot see; how disturbing that must feel since it is the unknown that raises fear and turns it inward, corroding the comfort that comes with openness and friendship. What peace of mind exists when one knows that life has been made miserable for people beyond the Wall? What peace blossoms when fear circles behind the back because the government determines the on- going need for greater and greater military power making a police state of a nation inside and outside the Walls built to contain both the body and the soul? What hope evaporates for a future without the shadows that the Wall casts on both those hemmed in and those cut out, as life becomes a constant search for unknowns that threaten life and limb even as the very protection the Wall is supposed to create destroys friendships with others and isolates each citizen in the sick minds of those who rule the country? The sins of the fathers began 64 years ago when they swore allegiance to a group of men who had taken control of Palestine from the British government laying waste both the Arab people and the Mandate government regardless of agreements made and pledges of cooperation signed between the Mandate authorities and the Jewish Agency. It began with an oath, the Hagana Oath, that necessitated selling the soul. From the moment an individual took the oath, they were committed to a life of secrecy and hence of disloyalty and betrayal to those they were most intimate with in their day- to-day life. Neither their actions nor their true identity was discernible to those with whom they interacted regularly. This was a life that encapsulated the necessity of lies, deceit, coercion, extortion, and obedience to a group that dictated the actions one must pursue; freedom no longer existed, self- direction no longer existed, loyalty to others no longer existed, indeed, friendship with others was compromised or impossible, one became the subject of that group, a veritable slave to their desires and wills. The mindset that promotes such control allows for spying, for deception of friends, for ostracism in one's own community for thinking differently, for imprisonment without due process, for torture, even for extrajudicial executions. It is a total commitment to a cause that supersedes all others determined and dictated by an oligarchy in silence and subject to no legitimate institution and to no one. The darkness of the Zionists' deceit was and is camouflaged by the appearance of civil structures existing within the framework of a legal authority, the Mandatory Government's accepted agency for the Jewish community in Palestine and, today, the presence of lobbies, think tanks, controlled media of communication, and legalisation of policies that allow for dual citizenship, among others. Fear still operates, fear of the non-friendly, enemy states that surround Israel and that are promoted as existentially threatening to America's security, fear of representatives in the US Congress who dare not confront the desires of the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its affiliates lest they find themselves bereft of political support and consequently bereft of their position, and fear induced by corporate media that fears offending the power base represented by the lobby. Until Israel's 2006 blitzkrieg of Lebanon, when the world had an opportunity to witness the ruthlessness of Israeli Zionist violence unimpeded by concern for helpless civilians fleeing for their lives or orphans unable to take shelter from missiles or children returning home after fearful flight from invading forces only to find toy-like cluster bombs left intentionally to maim or slaughter, the world community felt a sympathy for the offspring of those victimised by the Nazis. Prior to that destruction wrought by a military of enormous power, the people of the world knew little of what went on in Palestine and knew only that the Jews of Palestine in 1948 and 1967 had to fight against overwhelming odds against Arabs of many nations intent on pushing them into the sea, victims of human violence once again. Then came December 27, 2008, and Israel's Christmas bombing of Gaza, which was holiday giving with a vengeance. Once again, the might of Israel's state-of-the-art military -- its air force, navy, and army -- invaded the defenseless, imprisoned, physically destitute residents of Gaza. Once again, the world witnessed the ruthlessness of Israel's Zionist intent to subjugate, humiliate, and obliterate the indigenous people of Palestine. Now the world knows the truth: the Zionists that ruled the Jewish people in Palestine in the 1930s and 1940s, like their counterparts in the Israeli government of December 2008 and January 2009, intended to expel the people of Palestine from their land and had the military means to do it against an enemy incapable of defending the people. There is an unraveling of the lies of omission that have quilted the truth these many years. As each square rots in the sun now shed on it, the plight of the people of Palestine becomes more and more apparent. Historian Benny Morris revealed in June 2009 that "there were far more acts of massacre than I had previously thought [with the new documents made available]... and many cases of rape ... and [between April-May 1948] units of Hagana were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them and destroy the villages themselves." He continued in response to an interviewer's questions: "because neither the victims nor the rapists liked to report these events, we have to assume that the dozen cases of rape that were reported... are not the whole story. They are just the tip of the iceberg." "The worst cases [of massacres] were Saliha (70-80 killed, Deir Yassin (100-110), Lod (250), Dawayima (hundreds) and perhaps Abu Shusha (70)." Israeli leader David Ben-Gurion "covered up for the officers who did the massacres;" "the commander of the Northern Front, Moshe Carmel, issued an order in writing to his units to expedite the removal of the Arab population;" "from April 1948, Ben-Gurion is projecting a message of transfer... The entire leadership understands that this is the idea;" and, quoting Morris himself, "without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen." In his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, historian Ilan Pappe states that "the Zionist project could only be realised through the creation in Palestine of a purely Jewish state, both as a safe haven for Jews from persecution and a cradle for a new Jewish nationalism. And such a state had to be exclusively Jewish not only in its socio-political structure but also in its ethnic composition." Pappe's accounting of the ethnic cleansing is not pleasant reading. It is a detailed presentation of calculated ruthlessness. Considered alongside Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi's All That Remains, it provides the reader with a visual context that forces consideration of the mothers and fathers and children who once lived and worked and played and prayed in the 418 villages destroyed. It is that human element that can give meaning to "Never Again". Such is the sorrowful tale of the sins of the fathers. * The writer is professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California.
