The Not-So-Holy Holy Land

by Pamela E. Apkarian-Russell

In the beginning there were the British, or should one say the BritishEmpire? No monarch was ever so powerful or ruled suchvast and varied lands as Queen Victoria. The Holy Land had belonged to the old Ottoman Empire. The British "liberated it" and made it a Mandate. One can blame the British Empire for many things, including thinking they were noble and selfless in all their deeds, and for thinking Palestine is just one more item on an inconceivably long list.

In India, they tried to make the Hindus and Moslems get along. They gave them education and they gave them a common language, which meant for the first time they could understand one another. This was not a good idea. It had been tried once before and that is why the whole Tower of Babel experiment had so be scuppered. God obviously knew a lot better than the British what he was about. The minute these groups began to understand each other they realized they didn’t dislike each other - they loathed each other.

Independence caused many people to be killed. Gandhi proved that Pacifism is a great idea, but just that, an idea. Independence also caused two groups to have a reason to fight over Kashmir. This meant that the people from Kashmir would be manipulated and get in the way of bullets from two groups, neither of which they wanted to be ruled by.

If the British should never have ruled these places they certainly should never have pulled out of them, but then no one has ever accused the British of having good judgment.Today, both India and Pakistan have nuclear capabilities, which means they can destroy each other and everyone else. This could be the start o fsomething big, and the people who make sweaters and shawls will not have much say about it.

Eventually the British got tired of being blown up with bombs in Palestine by the Ergun and Haggannah and other "Freedom Fighters" who were returning after years of exile untold, to claim the chosen land. The Moslems and the Christians, who had been living there for centuries didn’t enjoy this at all. So the British had another good idea, which was to checker board the country - separating the Arabs from the Jews.

The Christians were such a minority and were only there because they either didn’t have anyplace else to go or they we affiliated with all the holy shrines in places like Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth. What was to happen next was going to make the Crusades and Richard the Lion-Hearted look like a bunch of missionaries at a Hell’s Angels road rally, or taking an afternoon saunter across the Roman Coliseum on a day when the grand stands were full.

With a sword you can only kill one person at a time, but with bombs, hand grenades, tanks, and oozies you can not only kill people, but you can also destroy hundred-year-old olive trees, or a person’s home or place of worship. The "Save the Rain Forest" people, or in this case, the olive groves, hadn’t been invented yet.So that is how the 54-year (to date) war began.

Now it is a well-known fact that the Israeli’s favorite word is "Ma".No, it doesn’t mean mother, it means, "what"? Most of the time they are speaking so quickly in such diverse accents that they don’t understand each other, therefore, "Ma" becomes a very important, and overused sound or word.The Arabs have so many dialects that they don’t understand each other either. So if nothing else this language factor should have been a uniting factor, but it isn’t. The British should have taught them English and maybe someone would stop and listen to what the other was saying, not what they want others to think they are saying.

So bombs fall, suicide bombers blow themselves up, tanks roll over whole villages, and the land continues to be torn asunder. The non-Israeli and non-Palestinians that are still in the country, i.e. the Christians who have long ago forgotten which cheek they should be turning next as they are getting it from both sides, have left the country in droves, and only those that have to stay do so, only to get shot at by one side or another who can’t tell a priest from a flying saucer.

The answer may just be one that the British never even considered. Here are some alternatives: Flatten the entire city of old Jerusalem leaving no stone unturned then turn it into a parking lot so anyone who wants to, for a fee, may stand on the old walls that David knew and look toward Bethlehem and wonder how long it will take for the trees to grow again and for so-called civilized beings to rise above their Neanderthal ways. The British can act as Peacekeepers who will allow anyone of any religion to park for an hour and contemplate how inhuman human beings are. Is the life of one good person worth the Mosque of Omar or the Wailing Wall or the Church of the Holy Sepulcher? Better still the Bahi’s seem to have a knack for beautiful gardens or a Japanese Shabumi garden would be nice. Anyone but Christians, Jews, and Moslems can be let into old Jerusalem.

The entire Holy Land, which is called this as it has so many bulletholes in it, could turn into an antique haven. All the world’s antiques and art, crafts and objects de verte will have to be bought and sold here. The antique lobby will become the strongest, richest in the world open seven days a week with no days off which will not give anyone any time to fight about religion and all moneys will be given to Native Americans and the Eskimos to turn the Gobi Desert into a center to clone and bring back the dinosaur and turn it into a tropical paradise.How much would Disney pay to open a theme park there?

"Step right up and see David kill Goliath, David kiss Bersheba, Salome dance her dance, an dMohammed leap on his steed into the Mazamouta. How much will the tickets be?" And yet, there is something beautiful about looking at the Dome of the rock glistening in the sun, or the thousands of candles and lights in the Holy Sepulcher, and placing a little prayer, regardless of your religion or gender, in the cracks of the Wailing Wall.

We all have a lot to wail about,and will have more to wail about if we destroy all these beautiful edifices. Human beings have produced so many horrible things since they have been on this earth that to preserve the few beautiful ones should be a major task. After all, what is mankind without the few beautiful things he has created? The Pyramids, Stonehenge, The El Aksa, the Taj Mahal, the Dead Sea Scrolls. Where, oh where is the Colossus of Rhodes? Each generation gets to see just a little bit less than what could be seen a mere hundred years ago.Even the Wisdom of Solomon couldn’t save the Cedars of Lebanon.Who will build the next Noah’s Ark? Will the Church of the Nativity disappear as the Twin Towers did?

It’s hard to believe, but you could write a pictorial history book ofthe world just using postcards. Beautiful edifices are as easy to destroy with a bulldozer as a person is with a bullet. Postcards of Manhattan’s Twin Towers, which should be fetching $2-$5.00 ea, are fetching sums at auctions up to $50-$60, which is ridiculous. How soon before the cards of a little church in Bethlehem which gave sanctuary to Mary and Joseph in the shape of a stable and of any and all who have gone there for sanctuary of the years, is no more?

I can remember sitting on the roof of the family quarters of the Armenian priest, overlooking Nativity Square and having coffee and being glib about Jerusalem being the not-so-holy, Holy City. Perhaps, I should have said the inhabitants of these places are not so human, human beings. After all a city is man-made and is not a city, but a ruin, without people. People can make or destroy anything they want to, but do they have the right? Aren’t they destroying something that belongs to all generations an dall peoples?

Look at the most beautiful, or the most historic building in your town and think how you would feel if a developer came in, razed it to theground, and left the rubble just because he hated people from your town. Each day somewhere in the world something good and beautiful is callously destroyed. The Taliban blew one up in the name of religion. Which side will do so in the "Little Village of Bethlehem"? Will all that is left of this historic land be a handful of souvenir booklets, photographs, and postcards? The good that humankind does is often forgotten and buried under the strata of civilizations, but the evil, it will live on to haunt generations to come. Thus the ghosts of time march on and the sands bury the good, beautiful, and brave, while the memory of destruction lives on, repeating itself over and over.