Time, Forgiveness and Change

They say that time heals all wounds, but they don’t tell you how much time! It seems as if the Civil War is still raging in too many state legislatures and in the halls of our own Congress. Rural versus urban, the same issues that brought the United States into conflict with itself a century and a half ago.

In the Middle East, Jews and Muslims once lived in harmony for centuries, to the extent that Jews even ran to the Moors (Muslims) for shelter when the Spanish Inquisition was crushing them in the Middle Ages. Hard to accuse Arabs of being “anti-Semitic,” when they are Semitic peoples themselves, cut from the same cloth of Judaism, one of the three “peoples of the Book” (the other being Christianity) acknowledged by the Qur’an.

Even in “Palestine,” during the time that the British passed the “Balfour Declaration” in 1917, Jews and Muslims were fine neighbors living quietly and peacefully together. The declaration, for those who are interested, read: “His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

Today, after the creation of the Jewish state in 1948 (justified by that declaration) and a number of subsequent wars and conflicts, Israel is fairly uniformly the enemy of Islamic nations everywhere. How would you orchestrate a peace between Arabs and Jews? What exactly would you do with Jerusalem, a city sacred to both? What is John Kerry’s plan?

Why did European Jews migrate to Palestine in the late 1940s? No mystery at all. The death camps of World War II – where millions of Jews, hundreds of thousands of gypsies and untold numbers of Bolsheviks and other Nazi-described “undesirables” perished, are a massive scar on history itself. Those wounds remain unhealed for many.

Most of those Nazi perpetrators are dead and gone; the very few that are still alive are mostly in their nineties. The much-heralded Simon Wiesenthal Center is committed to rooting out the last vestiges of these beasts, even as younger Germans believe that it is time for the past to be sealed: “The Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center hung posters on the streets of major German cities [July 23^rd] seeking information on the last perpetrators of the Holocaust still at large nearly 70 years on.

“The 2,000 placards displayed in cities including Berlin feature a chilling black-and-white photograph of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp and the tagline: ‘Late but not too late.’…Part of the Wiesenthal Center’s ‘Operation Last Chance’ to catch the surviving suspects behind World War II-era atrocities, the signs offer a reward of up to 25,000 euros ($33,000) for information leading to the capture and conviction of such criminals.” RawStory.com, July 23^rd. This level of “forgiveness” will not occur until there are no more such Nazis left.

And while Shiites and Sunnis have been at each other’s throats since shortly after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, for the most part they lived peacefully in modern Iraq, often not even being aware of their neighbors’ specific affiliation, even as friends and solid social acquaintances within most of the country… until the 2003 war dragged back ancient issues, attracted jihadists with religious agendas at the fore, and exploded that land into a suicide bombers’ paradise. Today, neighbors live in distrust, avoid sites where bombings are frequent and cannot wait for the ability to leave the country for a more peaceful environment. Whether you are a Sunni or a Shiite pretty much defines your risk profile in Iraq these days… and hatred has resurrected to levels not seen in centuries. Across the Islamic world, this escalating bifurcation between Sunni and Shiite is reconfiguring political alliances and tensions everywhere.

Sometimes, time creates new “enemies” from within. “In New York City in 1925, 85% of kin-related black households had two parents. When [Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick] Moynihan warned in his 1965 report on the coming destruction of the black family, however, the out-of-wedlock birthrate had increased to 25% among blacks. This figure continued to rise over time and in 1991, 68% of black children were born outside of marriage. U.S. Census data from 2010 reveal that more African American families consisted of single-parent mothers than married homes with both parents. Most recently, in 2011 it was reported that 72% of black babies were born to unwed mothers.” Wikipedia. Social change, frustration with the system, a contracting set of opportunities from global competition, the rise of inner city gangs that coincided with the cut of school budgets and the overcrowding of classrooms, the magical sixties (sex, drugs and rock n’ roll)… whatever the reason, it has been change that has benefitted no one.

We call all of this history. Old enemies become friends (remember whom we fought in the Revolutionary War?), old friends become enemies (remember when the Shah of Iran was our eyes and ears in the Middle East)… and new enemies arise all the time. Animosity that happens in the blink of an historical eye, however, can take generations to negate and stabilize. And it is in these constant vectors of change that we all live, love… and hate.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the only certainty I can guarantee is that none of the above tensions, trends and realities will last forever.