Shulamith Hareven Quotes

you could always tell a man's calling by his dress.

Two acquaintances meeting in the street would warm one another's hands with a shy smile.

We would lie numb, waiting for the night's Operation Cauldron to end, the leaden silence to return, the hollow grief.

Francis Fukuyama wrote about the end of history-and he may have had in mind the end of historical narrative consisting of war and conquest, victors and victims, the kind of history that has been dictated by the patriarchal hierarchical society and that seldom took into account ordinary life, creation, culture at all levels, literature, ideas, everything that happened between wars. But the end of history means the beginning of ecology, both in the broad sense and in the primary sense of the word, which comes from the Greek oikos, meaning "home." In the present era we concentrate on the home and its environment, in networks and partnerships and cooperation, for the benefit of all. The moment people realize that war is not only cruelty, brutality, and the complete failure of human common sense, but also the most antiecological act possible, we are on the way to the most beneficial and the sanest possible peace. Our semantics already enable us to take this road. Politics would be well advised to follow.

After Auschwitz, absolute justice has no meaning; the Nuremberg trials did not bring a single murdered child back to life. We do not expect absolute justice today, perhaps not an absolute anything. The preferred term now is "beneficial justice," one that would do most reasonable good to all parties concerned. Conflict management has taught us that presenting each other with lists of grievances will not bring about any justice at all, and that it is the feasible, rather than the absolute, to which we should aspire. The astute listener will of course understand that the moment we use terms like "cooperation" and "conflict management" we have given up the old or neo-Marxist vocabulary of power struggle as the sole human motivation. Thus do linguistic changes, new semantic habits, usher in a different era.

Today, we can discern from the vocabulary the underlying ideology of a text or a speech. No self-respecting liberal would freely use the terms "enemy," or "annihilate," or "avenge," which no fundamentalist can do without.

With the waning of the patriarchal society, we have also freed ourselves from the tyranny of the past and do not feel obliged to prefer that tense over our present, here and now. In Hebrew, writing in the present tense was considered bad form only half a century ago; now it is prevalent, almost as a kind of protest language. But other languages have undergone the same process: the present, previously used mostly in slang and street parlance, is now completely legitimate in literature, and not by accident. We are important; the here and now is important; we need no more obey blindly the supremacy of the past.

In an era when patriarchal, hierarchical, patronizing attitudes have lost their importance, when we do not accept the patronage of one culture over another, when women are no longer treated as inferior beings, and when children have their legal rights, management and cooperation are prevailing over war. The horizontal society of equals rather than one of perpendicular hierarchical groups, a society that creates worldwide networks, is the society of peace. Minorities struggling for recognition have taught us that assertiveness is good, while aggression is dangerous; that empowerment is good, while the abuse of power can be catastrophic; that discrimination is not to be tolerated. We now describe situations rather than groups at fault. All these constitute a modern dictionary of terms unknown to our grandparents.

Cultural change that enables people to think in terms of cooperation, rather than enmity and strife, is the conceptual change from the language and state of mind of a closed agrarian society, the forerunner of the nation-state, to that of an open technological one.

Anyone who wants to maintain the current situation, the so-called status quo, lays the groundwork for the next war. In fact, the term "status quo" is only part of the phrase "status quo ante bellum": the situation as it was before the war. There are no static situations in the world, least of all in the roiling Middle East. Anyone who thinks it is possible to arrive at peace through continued force-without accords, without rules, avoiding the determination of new and secure borders-misleads people. Anyone who thinks the policy of "nary an inch" will bring about an accord is a deceiver. No one will come to talk to him seriously.

The so-called Arab-Israeli conflict-that is, the problem of the territories and their population-is one of the last remaining conflicts, and one of the most superfluous. It can be resolved. Not by love: by accord.

It seems that the right to hate-so well understood in these parts-is a right not granted the Arabs. We may hate them. In parliamentary elections we may grant legitimacy to individuals and movements that talk of deporting the Arabs, if not worse; but they may not hate us. Even if their houses and property are laid bare to any who would break down their doors. Even if any sadist and sicko can kick their shackled sons.

That is precisely what agreements are for: so that hatred won't become war.

If we leave aside Israeli self-pity and examine the facts, we'll see that it is Israel, not its neighbors, that, to date, has broken all of the made through various intermediaries since the Yom Kippur War in 1973; that it is the Arab states, not Israel, who greatly need guarantees that Israel will keep its agreements. Not out of love or hate, but for reasons of “stateness”; to abide by matters that have been agreed upon.

We are living in an age of peacemaking. Not peace through love. Peace through accord.