A harrowing warning Albert Einstein delivered about Israel and Peace in the Middle East way back in 1938
Look, I'm a Lebanese Christian who loves Jesus and blogs principally about our inheritance in Christ. However, Israel is very important to me and millions and millions of other believers in Jesus worldwide. But we are a confused body of Christ, who can not differentiate between the ancient Biblical stories that foster in us all a spiritual longing for a physical state embodying God's principles from what the reality of today's Israeli state is. I love both Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians, but I don't shy away from writing the ugly aspects of this conflict, no matter who did what, and the 100 year long war that still rages and hurts my land and people to this day. (Every once in a while I get stuck in a writer's rut or keep writing incessantly about one subject and I'm in the middle of one such feedback loop right now... for more articles on Israel and Biblcial prophecy, click here).
When I saw these words of Albert Einstein, once dubbed by some "the Greatest Jew Alive" and a man whom I admire very much, as very few people understood, I believe, such a holistic level of responsibility and who had such depth to his thinking... so anyways, I just had to write this post. Most of us don't even understand the most basic of aspects of his work - we leave that to physicists - but as a biologist myself, I'm deeply impressed by the level of awakening and social responsibility this man imbued.
Einstein loved the Jewish people, but he understood so keenly from it's inception that it was doomed to a horror beyond words. In a way, that's exactly how I found myself feeling for Israel, this great love for a people who are both my ancestors and brothers, but this great hatred for what they are building... a happy state and future built on the broken dreams and ruined aspirations of another people; in short an illusion.
In 1938, a whopping decade before the state of Israel of 1948, Einstein so accurately described what Israel's future would like today, 80 years into the future.
This is what he said:
Einstein's deepest fear was that his people would become like the fascists he just left behind in Germany. If you don't understand what he was trying to say, just on the eve of WWII and the holocaust that would claim 6 million Jewish lives, he understood that the State of Israel that would be built on the ruins and expulsion of another people (the Palestinians; if they even are 'another' people) would destroy the inner soul of Israel - it would doom a nation to being an oppressor; for Einstein this was the ultimate low point no matter how much economic and scientific success would be achieved. [These are Einstein's recorded general views on such topics.]
Instead, Einstein wanted a home for the Jewish people that would embody the very essence of Judaism, that would mean building a state where tikkun olam (a Hebrew saying meaning the repair of the world) would be the first and most principle driving force for themselves and their neighbors.
Today, I wonder what is their game-plan for the 4 million people living under the control of the Israeli Army in the West Bank and Gaza who have no citizenship, no freedom of movement; whose lands are constantly appropriated, half of whom are refugees from areas that are now modern day marvels just across a giant wall, whose olive groves and vineyards are being uprooted, burnt and then stolen, whose waters are constantly being forcibly taken. What is the Israeli government's game-plan?
Will it be to expel them? Could it be genocide? No one's saying the Palestinians are blameless in this war (as a Lebanese, I understand this very clearly since I know what that the PLO's plan in Lebanon was to do to us what had been done to them). I understand very clearly that the spirit of the air, the world, he is satan, he instills in peoples a recurring curse; the evils done to them, they begin to do to others and don't realize they transform themselves into the image of the ones they hate and become worse. I say this of all the peoples of Israel and the Middle East alike. You don't fight such evil and darkness by doing more evil and dark things. You overcome evil with good.
So is there a way out? I believe there is: click here for more on that.
When I saw these words of Albert Einstein, once dubbed by some "the Greatest Jew Alive" and a man whom I admire very much, as very few people understood, I believe, such a holistic level of responsibility and who had such depth to his thinking... so anyways, I just had to write this post. Most of us don't even understand the most basic of aspects of his work - we leave that to physicists - but as a biologist myself, I'm deeply impressed by the level of awakening and social responsibility this man imbued.
Einstein loved the Jewish people, but he understood so keenly from it's inception that it was doomed to a horror beyond words. In a way, that's exactly how I found myself feeling for Israel, this great love for a people who are both my ancestors and brothers, but this great hatred for what they are building... a happy state and future built on the broken dreams and ruined aspirations of another people; in short an illusion.
In 1938, a whopping decade before the state of Israel of 1948, Einstein so accurately described what Israel's future would like today, 80 years into the future.
This is what he said:
I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state. Apart from practical consideration, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain–especially from the development of a narrow nationalism within our own ranks, against which we have already had to fight strongly, even without a Jewish state. We are no longer the Jews of the Maccabee period. A return to a nation in the political sense of the word would be equivalent to turning away from the spiritualization of our community which we owe to the genius of our prophets. If external necessity should after all compel us to assume this burden, let us bear it with tact and patience.Einstein was being very circumspect in this speech but his message was very clear. Einstein was not against Zionism as he defined it back in 1938, but against how it would be enforced. He understood that conquering a people through war, expelling them and then forbidding their return, denying them citizenship (West Bank, Gaza) and creating such damage (even if it was in response to an attack) would erode the sacred moral, social and intellectual position of the Jewish people. Yeah, Einstein was a genius but he was stating the obvious; for the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob as revealed to us by the Bible was not a god for whom the end could justify the means. He knew the means by which Zionism would be upheld, had to be inline with the spirit of the moral teachings of the Bible.
Einstein's deepest fear was that his people would become like the fascists he just left behind in Germany. If you don't understand what he was trying to say, just on the eve of WWII and the holocaust that would claim 6 million Jewish lives, he understood that the State of Israel that would be built on the ruins and expulsion of another people (the Palestinians; if they even are 'another' people) would destroy the inner soul of Israel - it would doom a nation to being an oppressor; for Einstein this was the ultimate low point no matter how much economic and scientific success would be achieved. [These are Einstein's recorded general views on such topics.]
Instead, Einstein wanted a home for the Jewish people that would embody the very essence of Judaism, that would mean building a state where tikkun olam (a Hebrew saying meaning the repair of the world) would be the first and most principle driving force for themselves and their neighbors.
Today, I wonder what is their game-plan for the 4 million people living under the control of the Israeli Army in the West Bank and Gaza who have no citizenship, no freedom of movement; whose lands are constantly appropriated, half of whom are refugees from areas that are now modern day marvels just across a giant wall, whose olive groves and vineyards are being uprooted, burnt and then stolen, whose waters are constantly being forcibly taken. What is the Israeli government's game-plan?Will it be to expel them? Could it be genocide? No one's saying the Palestinians are blameless in this war (as a Lebanese, I understand this very clearly since I know what that the PLO's plan in Lebanon was to do to us what had been done to them). I understand very clearly that the spirit of the air, the world, he is satan, he instills in peoples a recurring curse; the evils done to them, they begin to do to others and don't realize they transform themselves into the image of the ones they hate and become worse. I say this of all the peoples of Israel and the Middle East alike. You don't fight such evil and darkness by doing more evil and dark things. You overcome evil with good.
So is there a way out? I believe there is: click here for more on that.
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