The Real “Final Status”
July 21, 2002

Each week, as Sunday morning builds to high noon near the Water Tower on State Street, a group of Jews amass to protest the Israeli government’s policies as directed by General Ariel Sharon. Sharon has led an aggressive campaign to ensure the security of Jews victimized by Palestinian suicide bombers. The group, Not In My Name, feels that Israel has been illegally occupying the West Bank, Gaza strip and Arab East Jerusalem since seizing control of those areas during the 1967 war. They hold up two large banners that read “Jews for a Just Peace with Palestine.” The banners are white with blue writing; the color scheme—which matches the Israeli flag—is not only soothing to the eyes, but can also be interpreted as a gesture of solidarity with the mother land. They are of the Left.

Each week, as Sunday morning builds to high noon near the Water Tower on State Street, a group of Jews amass to protest the protesters previously mentioned. They have no group name, because they consider themselves the “rational” Jews, the ones not hung up on a treason trip, the ones who seek not a peace with Palestinians who, in their view, want all Jews run out of the region or even killed, if need be. They have no banners, and their signs are terse, the slogans structured as mathematical equations: “Peace with Palestine=Israel in Pieces.” They are of the Right.

Every Sunday at high noon the internal conflict among God’s “chosen people” plays out in full view of tourists. (You can always tell a tourist by his or her need to view every square inch around them—lots of head turning and slow-motion steps.) Hundreds of them run—or rather, stroll—the gauntlet of gamines pushing flyers and older, nerdier males with multicolored signs that contradict each other. At least half the people who walk past the protesters are, or could be, Jewish, and their reactions say a lot about just how divisive this issue is among people whose fates are intertwined.

“Shame on you, shame on you,” shouts an older lady to the Left.

“You people are nuts,” says a man to the Right.

Invariably the two sides engage each other. The Left’s focus is on the passersby, alerting them to a situation that most of them—especially the kids—have never stopped to really think about; whereas the Right’s attention is on the Left, heckling, baiting, antagonizing them. They seem to be having more fun, because they know that all the external conditions, those conditions beyond the control of the population, reinforce their view: that the Palestinians need killing, badly, because nothing will temper their lust for the destruction of Israel. “What they need to do is, instead of bulldozing their homes [the houses of suicide bombers and other Palestinian militants], is kill their families,” says Warren, who leads the right, smiling.

“If you’re going to harass us, we’ll call the police,” says a mildly retarded Leftist whose sign shakes in his almost useless left hand. Jews, unlike other ethnic groups, don’t say things they don’t mean, and sure enough a cop soon arrives to partition the protesters. The Left complains that the Right is causing confusion with their contradictory message so close to them—presumably because all Jews look alike, though that goes unsaid. The Left has a permit, so they get the prime shady spot near the water tower, while the right is banished across the street, where their signs can only be seen by passing cars.

As the impartial observer, I find this scene rather metaphoric: the internecine squabble between two groups of more or less irrelevant protesters results in the pro-Sharonists (on the Right) side getting the same treatment that the anti-Sharonists (on the Left) receive on the only levels where any change in the situation can occur—politics and media. Splitting the camps robbed them all of the chance to demonstrate just how weird and complicated the Israeli-Palestinian situation is, in a way that cannot be understood without doing a lot more reading than the average American is willing to undertake. That their odyssey of consumption was not made more difficult (via a congested sidewalk) by this scaled-down ideological war, between two sides who share a common goal of saving their people from extermination, undermined the inroads both sides (especially the Left) sought to make with the tourists, most of whom were too busy looking for high-priced sweatshop goods to pay attention to anything that couldn’t be easily ignored.

Of course, it’s too late. The Jews and Palestinians of the Middle East region have a few more months, perhaps as much as a year, before they are all destroyed. I keep this to myself, because I want so badly to be wrong. My years of studying the world’s political dynamics have led me to Chicago, in the summer of 2002, hoping against hope that hope will prevail. My instinct leads me to believe that, in the history of human “civilization,” September 11 was the first paragraph in the final chapter.

The problem is that the United States government is the only force in the world that is capable of forcing a resolution to the conflict, because they are the only ones who have the necessary stroke to resist the two sides’ natural inclination to pursue ideal goals that are unfeasible. Unfortunately, this country (other than Bush, who has other interests) is run by Christian fundamentalists whose faith holds that the Book of Revelation is the truth. They feel that it is mankind’s destiny to destroy the Earth, so as to bring about the return of Christ, and so they pursue those ends. In 2002, this means using the tragedy in New York as an excuse to start World War III. The first major casualty in the War will be Israel and Palestine.

The possibility of “good cop/bad cop” shenanigans on the part of Europe and/or Russia should not be tossed aside just yet. A major motivating factor in the European Union’s formation was their perceived need to balance American economic and strategic military dominance around the world. Sensing that no single nation could counter US on anything, they joined forces. Britain has thus far kept the Union at arm’s length, playing to the same nationalist tendencies that have swept across other parts of the continent, but this may be a charade. Few politicians in the world have as keen a sense of America’s weaknesses than Britain’s Tony Blair and Russia’s Vladimir Putin (who learned a lot about us during his stint in the KGB), and they will be ready to exploit those weaknesses when the time is right. That time is soon approaching, as our economy nears the crisis stage (for more reasons than can be enumerated here) and we begin prepping for a war that could easily spin out of control. For any of our major allies to suddenly sever their lines of support once the war has begun—say, by declaring neutrality or vetoing a Security Council resolution authorizing the use of NATO to prosecute the Iraqi invasion—could lead to trouble of a kind that we can’t quite fathom.

It’s generally assumed that a desperate Saddam Hussein would use whatever weapons of mass destruction he has against Israel first, since they are closer and more vulnerable; also, Israel has always been regarded by the Arabs as a product of American imperial design. It’s a suicidal gesture, for sure, but our President is on the record with his desire to remove Hussein by any means necessary. (And, of course Hussein, like bin Laden, can never be allowed to live long enough to stand trial in an international court.)

So, the most obvious result of the invasion will be disaster for Israel. They will likely lose more people in one day than in their entire half-century feud with Palestine, and their retaliation will surely double or triple the body count. Israel has the capacity to send nuclear warheads anywhere they wish, and they will be justified in doing so if gassed or bombed themselves. As targets go, Baghdad’s a given, but I doubt that Sharon will be able to resist “ending” Arafat and his crew like he’s wanted to all along. The difficulty of neutralizing extremists in the Occupied Territories is familiar to anyone who reads newspapers; since the killing of Arafat (which is going to happen regardless of whether Iraq is invaded—neither he nor Sharon will be alive in a year) can only serve to empower groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and groups yet unnamed, the “optimal” solution will be to simply destroy all the Palestinians, pre-emptively.

And then, as they say, it’s on. Even the moderate Arabs, who have held their tongues during the second Intifada and the Afghan bombing, will regard such an action, especially if it results from an Iraqi invasion that none of them supported to begin with, as a declaration of War against all Arabs. That will break the already fragile coalition that Bush has formed with countries like Egypt, Syria, Jordan and the OPEC states, who will be forced to either put down their own enraged populations or fall in with the jihad of Hussein. And then, at the very worst possible moment, we’ll find out where Osama bin Laden really is. The course from there is predictable: Full-spectrum chaos; apocalypse.

The only solution, short of a total reconfiguration of US foreign policy, is to simply force a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict before launching the invasion of Iraq. A simple move than saves much face for the white man. Any other course of action will lead to the complete and final destruction of mankind, unless there exists scientific proof that Christ is really coming back.