I come to you, sixty-six years later, in response to your article posted in the American Magazine in November 1947. Please excuse my delay... by those days I was only a project in the dust of stars.
Your vision was indeed reflecting the apocalypses that came only a few months later onto the people.
I can imagine the despair and the abandonment into which the Arab inhabitants of the land of Palestine fall. Many promises were made to them by seven Arab Nations, but not one was fulfilled. They were asking for armament to defend themselves but only some rusty rifles arrived. Some militia that looked like castaways and armed cars that were shooting even their own people in the confusion. Only twenty years after, Egypt, Jordan and Syria reacted to a war to Israel, that ended up in a bigger catastrophe, drowning them even deeper.
All what happened on both sides was, inevitable.
All what happened on both sides was, inevitable.
I have been watching on and on documentaries about Al Nakba, and every time is more disturbing and horrifying. There is no force in this world that could ever convince me that a slight bit of fairness was related to the events. In spite of all arguments, even the one that claims: that, "there was a war, and we won". I came to understand that in a war, the first thing to die is the truth. Anybody with just a tiny bit of good will and understanding can realise that that war had no chance to be a fair one. But you as a representative of an Arab nation you washed your hands from it.
Now you come to America and to the world, claiming that there was their responsibility to welcome the "frightened Jews". It is true. Sometimes we have to face the facts that people just do not walk behind their words. And that is a way to betray a very intimate sense of justice. Somehow... I feel that you should have written that letter to your own people. Not talking specifically of Jordan, because they did get involved, however they could. But the others. It seems so easy to me what you did...
I find a difference between our books on accounting. You've got 70 years of inhabiting the Land and we got 3.000. It can be a tough negotiation, that one...
Then you mention King David and King Salomon, but you forgot about King Saul. These were the Kings before the division of the whole kingdom into Israel and Judah. So I am neatly posting a plate that I found for you in Wikipedia, wishing it already existed in 1947. It would had definitely help your accountants and save you from embarassment:
I hope they are all in place. If not I shall correct it. There is also a geographical discrepancy about the amount of territory but... lets leave it.
Dear King Abdullah, this is not about book keeping, but the intense feeling of belonging to the Land, that the Jewish people always had and will have. So intense as to make them feel in the exile for more than 2000 years. As to invent a word for it: "galut", translated into "diaspora". You are or living in Israel or in the diaspora. As simple as that.
It is about the strength of religious narratives that made the Land of Israel a promise. Such as to call themselves as a nation "the children of Israel". As to say "Am Israel Hai". The people of Israel is Alive -difficult word to translate, "Hai". It has other meaning which relates it to G~d. When people get married the groom brakes a glass with his foot, in remembrance of the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem. When people celebrate and make a toast they say "Next year in Jerusalem"! This did not start last week... this went on from generation to generation. But what to say as for the most significant declaration of the faith of the people of Israel, the "Shema". Many say it with tears in their eyes: "Listen Oh Israel! G~d is our G~d, G~d is One!"."Israel" is referring to the "people of Israel". So as you see, the identification to the Land turn them into "Israel" -themselves-.
And the value of Jerusalem... how could you think that a Jew could ever renounce to Jerusalem? May be because, that, you can only understand when you go through sacred Jewish texts, where Jerusalem is cited thousands of times.
The Zionists were visionaries, a visionary is someone that kind of cancels the reality around in order to project his own visions. From their point of view, they really and honestly came back to where the belonged, and thought of the Arab people as settlers. May be is not a kind of physical belonging in absolutely all of them. Would not dare to run a DNA on all my fellow Jews, but understood as a spiritual one.
You mention the Holy Land as the place of birth of Christianity, that is not right! It was Anatolia in Turkey. But even though we have some disagreements I posted your letter, because it is also full of truth, and when we sum what you say to the Nakba, we undergo a moral "nakba" ourselves. The same flame that made people go to the Land and struggle to such extremes, until today, withholds or at least should withhold a moral character that made out of the Jews a light for the world; developers of books on ethics obsessively written by the detail, philosophers, scholars and altruists.
It is important to have our day when we will understand that Kol Nidre will not release us from the debts with our brothers. That we have to look at them at the face. That redemption will only come when we can face ourselves, our history, entirely. The rest will have to be a deep conscientious job of "Tikkun Olam". We deserve this. And we shall not rest until then.
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