This really has gone a bit too far. While I expect it of FOX and the wing-nut thug-o-sphere, not to mention the GOP and right wing pro-Israel organs, it seems that everyone is piling on in the aftermath of Obama’s speech. The quote in question?
We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.
This is, as we all know, a well-established, consensus concept. On what, alternatively, should borders be based? A kabbalistic mandala super-imposed on the map? A game of twister? Numerological speculations based on suras of the Qur’an, funneled through a computer model and divided by values extracted from running a Bach Fugue through the same system, with the results imported into a graph in PowerPoint?
The 1967 “border,” or “green line,” or “1948 Armistice Line,” (all it what you will) is the only logical starting point for negotiating final status. Oslo used this template. Camp David and Taba used this template. Olmert used this template. Ever internationally accepted map in the world uses it. To get an idea of what this would look like with land swaps, see the Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo Geneva agreement.
(More detailed maps, including a sound proposal for how to deal with Jerusalem, can be found under the “Accord” menu at the official site: http://www.geneva-accord.org/)
The problem with the outrage is that we seem to be recapping the plot of Christopher Marlowe’s classic Elizabethan play Doctor Faustus. Act I details Faustus’ almost methodical descent into nihilism. A remarkably talented polymath, he despairs of Philosophy, then Medicine, then Law, determining that each is ultimately vain and meaningless, he turns to Theology. He reads from St. Jerome’s Latin Bible (the Vulgate, as it’s known):
Stipendium peccati mors est. Ha! Stipendium, &c.
The reward of sin is death. That’s hard.
Si pecccasse negamus, fallimur, et nulla at in nobis
veritas; if we say we have no sin, we deceive
ourselves, and there is no truth in us. Why,
then, belike we must sin, and consequently die:
Ay, we must die an everlasting death.
Faustus then decides to turn to necromancy and make a deal with the devil. The problem here is that the initial biblical verse that he quotes, Romans 6:23, continues:
…but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
This verse is one of the most pivotal in Christian history. It’s the basis of Calvinist Gift Theology and served the scriptural rationale for the reformers rejection of justification through works (that is, that salvation can be attained through effort and performance of ritual rather than through the free gift of faith by God).
Why [“the hell,” we might insert here with special resonance] doesn’t Faustus, a singularly remarkable scholar, read the second half of the Pauline verse, which promises “eternal life?” Marlowe deftly slips an answer into Act V, when Mephistopholis confesses:
I do confess it Faustus, and rejoice:
‘Twas I that, when thou wert i’the way to heaven,
Damm’d up thy passage: when thou tookst the book,
To view the Scriptures, then I turned the leaves,
And led thine eye.
Beyond the delightful play on building a dam in the way of Faustus’s passage to heaven, effectively damning him through blocking his reading of a passage of scripture, it opens the question of Faustus’s culpability. He didn’t reject the “truth” conveyed in scripture. Rather, one of Satan’s lieutenants impeded his access to it. What was he to do?
And now, it seems like Mephistopholis is trying to thwart Obama’s attempt to move negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians forward based on a consensus concept by doing the same thing.
Obama (in the role of Paul) says:
We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.
But what is received is:
We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines…
Is Mephistophilis flipping the leaf again, i.e., turning the page?
Are those who are now screaming condemnations based on the most elementary form of irresponsible reading in the sway of Satan’s minions, or are they themselves playing the part?
(PS For one of the best responses to the speech, I recommend Peter Beinart’s piece, entitled “Obama’s Moral Universalism” in the Daily Beast: http://www.thedailybeast.com/b…
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