José Saramago, the Portuguese novelist and Nobel Prize winner, was even more graphic in another encounter, a kind of town meeting that took place in Ramallah. Indifferent to his popular standing in Israel, he used a metaphor from Nazi concentration camps that continues to ring around European literary and intellectual circles even a full year afterward. Saramago’s intent has been much misunderstood, being considered insensitive and hyperbolic by many, including some within our own rank of literary witnesses, but the very fact that this comparison was wrung out of a friend of the Israeli literary constituency contains its own lesson, and is one that cannot be ignored except at peril.
I witnessed the reality of this humiliation in domestic settings on which the contempt of an occupying force had been visited. I witnessed it at checkpoints. I heard it in the numerous recitations of personal experiences across all classes, in numerous episodes, on the campus of Birzeit University. Most depressing of all, I read it in the eyes of the young, where humiliation had hardened into a resolve not to yield up that very ineffable possession, dignity, the loss of which would finally affirm the nullification of their human status. Most frightening of all, I saw it congealed into a hard, cold, unremitting hatred. Yes, I understood the counterclaims of Shimon Peres, his anger at what he read as the treachery of the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat over that leader’s repudiation of a negotiated agreement with former prime minister Barak at Camp David. And I acknowledged the weight of responsibility that rests on a leader whose primary mission must be to shield his people from attacks that have raised the barometer of terror through the relentless and undiscriminating use of the suicide bomber. Nevertheless, it was clear to me that, on his part, this astute Israeli leader, perhaps the most thoughtful of past Israeli leaders, did not truly grasp, or else deeply underestimated, the factor of humiliation, and the human attachment to that contentious possession — dignity.
The republic of the disillusioned expands by the day. Recruits into its army have abandoned all hope of justice from within and without, but remain committed to one all-consuming pursuit — dignity. As that goal recedes, they come to lose, like the Irish youth, all faith in a universal concept of human dignity and become indifferent to the moralities and restraints that hold up the scaffolding of civilized coexistence.These are the willing recruits to the army of terror: the “harmless neighbor,” the shy but pleasant young man or woman who helps with putting out the garbage and wishes you a good morning. Behind that friendly “Good morning” at a shopping mall, however, may lurk the sardonic smile that is powered by the secret knowledge of a terminal “Good-bye.”
The quasi-state, we know, sometimes overlaps or interlocks with Community and seeks to take it over. Critical mass occurs at the point at which one can no longer be distinguished from the other, and the overrun Community is seen to appear to bow totally to the control of the quasi-state, if only for a measure of preservation of its own identity. The responsibility that we owe ourselves is to prevent the attainment of that critical mass that then pits one Community against another.
Let us cast aside all further pretense. The genesis of the present climate of fear will be found right within the smoldering heart of the Middle East, that confluence of multiple civilizations within which are nestled the most influential spiritualities of the world — Judaic, Christian, and Islamic. The dispersal of the climate of fear therefore rests, fundamentally, in a just solution in the Middle East — it has been said often enough, it cannot be disputed, let no one be in any doubt about it. The time for tergiversations is over, it is time for a holistic confrontation of a global dilemma.
No Community, true, dares succumb to an arrogation of power over the lives of its innocents, and the doctrine of There are no innocents must be strategically and morally repudiated. To do less is to surrender our self-esteem, deny ourselves all dignity, diminish our own humanity, and indeed forgo our fundamental right to existence. Yet even as we build protective ramparts, and pursue the proponents of that impious catechism There are no innocents to the ends of the earth, the mind that aspires to an all-inclusive Community must expand beyond the immediate and address the genesis of the current climate of fear, not as an abstraction, but as a man-engendered reality and, thus, one that remains within the compass of human redress.
Between my first lecture, “A Changing Mask of Fear,” and this, yet another annunciation of posturing power left such a flaming imprint yet again on the world, this time on the railway tracks of Madrid, that there flashed across my mind a moment in the career of European fascism. That was the infamous event which a General Millán Astray, at the University of Salamanca, spat the shout of “Long live death” in the face of the humanist philosopher Unamuno. That banner of morbidity appears to have been hoisted all over the world. To take it down, the world must act in concert, and with resolve, but must also embrace or intensify a commitment to the principle of justice that ensures that the dispossessed shall enjoy restitution, and the humiliated are restored to dignity.
Five
“I Am Right; You Are Dead”
The French nation lately was involved in a controversy over its decision to ban ostentatious symbols of religious faiths from secondary schools. I was invited to take part in that debate, and readily accepted. It was a chance openly to interrogate my long-held conviction that there should be a period in the development of the young mind when the perception of differences in humanity is reduced to an absolute minimum, even if, obviously, it cannot be eliminated completely. That period, it appears equally obvious, is that of school pupilage, where the space of instruction is cleansed of manifestations of private wealth, tastes, class, and so on. The symbol, as well as practical expression of this oneness, the leveler, is of course the school uniform.
Objections surfaced in the mind — the indelicate, even provocative timing of the French government— indelicate to the extent of almost sounding like a declaration of hostilities! Then the positive role of religious symbols as spiritual and ethical reminders in the consciousness of youthful minds at all times, a corrective mechanism when one might be on the verge of misconduct. In short, the mind was readying itself for the dialogue mode, anticipating even its extension into protest demonstrations on the streets of Paris and the wharfs of Marseilles. Capitulation by the government was a possibility. I foresaw a protracted dialogue, from objective to acerbic — the basic philosophy of education, instruction traditions from different cultures, inductions into age-groups in traditional societies, reconsiderations in view of the vastly changed nature of the world since Socrates preached his “impieties” in the street “schoolrooms” of Athens…
For some, alas, such dialogue was superfluous. A hitherto unknown group — vying to overtake rivals as the terminal censors of our time — warned the French government that it was next in line for a Madrid-style reprisal, and should prepare for a season of “sorrow and remorse” for its perceived assault on the Islamic faith. At first I was numbed, then surprised at my reaction. Of course, in the world we now inhabit, it should be only a matter of time before some public target, preferably even a school, is bombed, and the contested Islamic head scarves are torn off to serve as tourniquets for severed limbs — and even as shrouds.