50th Anniversary Year:
S E P A R A T E A T D E A T H
MER - 3 July:
It was the Iranian Revolution in 1979 which caused the West to think
of the Middle East in increasingly religiously radical and "Islamic" terms. But
today, less than 20 years later, the Iranian mullahs have shown progressive trends few in
the West imagined were coming, along with a commendable political sophistication that has
the Americans, and the Israelis, confused and insecure.
Furthermore, it should be remembered that these Iranian developments
are taking place even while the U.S. "containment" and "embargo"
policies remain active, and even after the devastating near-decade war that the U.S.,
Israel, and the conservative Arab "client regimes" foisted on Iran via Iraq
hoping to destroy the Iranian revolution and bring a controlled regime like that of the
Shah to power once again.
But in broad historical terms it is actually the modern-day
post-Holocaust Jews who brought religious nationalism and fanaticism to the modern Middle
East. Even the modern-day term "terrorism" can be traced back to Jewish attacks
against the British and the Arabs in the days before the birth of the "Jewish
State." Indeed, the trends in the region were toward secular governments after World
War II; something partially undermined by the establishment some 50 years ago of a
pecularly "Jewish State" in what was then very heart of the "Arab
world".
Consider this most recent religious flap going on in Israel even
today: "We do not bury observant Jews with the non-observant in the same
section" of the cemetery says Rabbi Shmuel Shlesinger to the Ma'ariv newspaper. The
reason usually given by Israeli rabbis for this "separate at death" approach is
because of the Talmudic warning "lest a righteous man lives with a wicked man."
According to Rabbi Shlesinger the recent public revelation that this
is the way burial societies in Israel have always handled Jewish death since the creation
of the State means that there is no need for any legal or procedural changes. True enough,
few people were even aware of such separate burial policies; but then a great deal about
the realities of the State of Israel remain hidden from easy public view.
Lior Horev, spokesman for the Am Hofshi sect which has brought these
matters to public attention in recent weeks, has nevertheless announced his movement is
now demanding that the Government Ministry of Religion enact laws codifying this
heretofore "customary" burial practice.
All this is but one more variant of the "who is a Jew"
debate that continues to plague Israeli society and which transforms the great majority of
American Jews who are either Conservative, Reform, or atheist -- many of whom provide
considerable financial and political support to the "Jewish State" -- into
second-class Jews who must obey the teaching of the "Orthodox" Jewish sect which
alone has religous authority in Israel.
The contradictions that continue to torment Israel today are not
just in regard to the disingeneous "Peace Process" and the racist treatment of
the Palestinans; but are more basic going to the very nature of the "Jewish
State" itself, who are its citizens, what are its laws, and agony that it has evolved
into a pecularly "Apartheid-like" State for the dispossessed Palestinians, not
to mention the divisions it fosters and promotes among Jews.
