YETMO

"The politics of the impossible"

Peace in the Middle East. Slavery Reparations. These mega questions have been raised before and even at a United Nations conference on racism in Durban, South Africa.

Do you get the feeling, especially with recent (or is the better word constant?) events in the Middle East, that we won't see either of these in our lifetimes? I fear that neither will, or can, occur in any lifetime.

Talk about intractable issues. I'd even say disparate issues, but we know better, as the Bible is replete with examples of Jews -- and others -- as enslavers and enslaved.

The Bible also is oddly silent on slavery, isn't it? There's no commandment that "Thou shalt not be master of anyone but thyself." Yet who, back then, or now, can defend slavery as morally acceptable? Even today, black-on-black slavery is practiced in the Sudan. Where's the hue and cry? Who's doing anything about it? Who was doing anything to stop the Holocaust while it was claiming millions?

Sadly, war in the Middle East has been as enduring and predictable as snow in the Rockies and bears in the forest. The day after David Ben-Gurion's provisional government proclaimed the state of Israel on May, 14, 1948, war began with the Arab League. The U. N. couldn't mediate an armistice until July, 1949.

And so it goes. And so it went, back and forth since the Israelites and Philistines invaded Palestine in 1200 BC and Turkish mercenaries captured Jerusalem in 1244, which stayed in Muslim hands until 1917 when the Brits reclaimed it and said that the region should go to the Jews. The U.N. General Assembly voted for it, but the Arabs, of course, didn't.

And so it went. And so it goes. Why do I feel that, in addition to events I just recounted, that there are thousands more of which I'm unaware? And who's keeping score? Can one keep score? Should one? Who's been violated the most? The Bible says the Jews are God's chosen people. Does that trump any mortal, Palestinian claim? Does that rule out a Solomon-like sharing of Jerusalem and its environs? Christians see Jerusalem as holy, too. Can a tri-partite coalition be forged to govern this land? Share and share alike hasn't work for 3,200 years. Can it now?

Maybe the Jews' special status must prevail. After all, with only 12 million in a world of 6 billion, many of whom would be pleased if there were no Jews, perhaps only divine intervention explains survival of a people outnumbered 500 to 1.

When will we talk about slavery reparations? We have been. The men and women of the Middle East have been slaves to violence forever. Who's responsible for the debt? What's the reparation? Peace?

The Red Sox have a better chance of overcoming the Curse of the Bambino than we have of seeing peace in Palestine. And every Bostonian knows, ever since Bill Buckner booted that routine grounder at first base, that the Curse will never be broken.

How do we repair iniquities and inequities? If you're on the winning side, you hold a war crimes tribunal, convict monsters, and execute them. If not, you plug along.

Descendants of former slaves in this country never had their war tribunal because neither side won the Civil War. The battle has been raging, albeit abated significantly, ever since this great country decided to step away from Great Britain and make a go of it on its own.

Questions of reparations are so morally clear and pragmatically opaque that resolution is totally and unquestionably impossible.

Who can divine when slave chains were completely severed from wrists, necks, and ankles? Have they ever been cut psychologically? Who can say when a person, or group of peoples, can satisfactorily shake off past horrors, stand independently, move on, and succeed?

When people give up reaching goals, is that society's fault or theirs? Is it a deficiency of character or community? Why does my young son cease running after his older sister as soon as she gains a step in the footrace? Doesn't he realize that she may trip or tire? She may lose. He may succeed. Can't he see that? Can't we?

Dynamics such as these make reparations so murky that true justice, repentance, and absolution of victors and vanquished alike remain forever out of reach.

I shouldn't be so pessimistic. There must be a solution.

Eureka! There's hope.

Reparations for slavery will be resolved as soon as we have peace in the Middle East and we'll have peace in the Middle East as soon as we resolve the reparations issue.

That should only take another 3,200 years.