http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/article.asp?mador=4&datee=03/15/00&id=71838
A little modesty wouldn't hurt
By Gideon Samet, Ha'aretz 03/15/2000
There was very little lacking for the apocalypse to have occurred here
next week in all its terrible force. The stage on which the Pope was to
have spoken to an audience of 100,000 collapsed in the wind. No
explanations would have helped: this time the Jews killed Christ's
messenger on earth. But there something about the accident that
symbolized the supposedly elevated debate between Judaism and
Christianity - at last as how it has been expressed by the rabbis and
ordinary Israelis in advance of Pope John Paul II's arrival here.He made a
universal and unprecedented plea for the forgiveness of the sins of the
Catholic Church towards Jews, women and infidels. But all kinds of
spokesmen, among them wheeler-dealers in Judaism and the Holocaust,
said it wasn't enough. They complained that he did not mention the
Holocaust, they poked around in his text and (according to the chief rabbi)
did not find the Inquisition, the Wansee conference or the "killing
machine." They demanded a visit to Yad Vashem but pondered the
question of whether he should be allowed to visit the Western Wall.
It wasn't enough that he said, "You have chosen Abraham and his
descendents to spread Your name among the peoples. We express
profound regret for the behavior of those who throughout history caused
these children of Yours to suffer, and we ask Your forgiveness."
The problem is the huge contradiction within the Jewish establishment - for
all that it has made itself the guardian of history, it has no real feel for
history. This blindness, of course, does not stop at the fraught relations
with the Catholic Church (whose believers were not the ones who
perpetrated the Holocaust, but rather mostly Protestants and
non-believers). The (Jewish) representatives on earth of the Holy One,
blessed be He, are also a-historical in other important matters of Jewish
existence.
The vast majority of them do not understand that Israel today needs, body
and soul, a political settlement with our neighbors. They want Abu Dis
now, for example, because they they are unable to rise above the
pettiness of today to picture the tomorrow that lies before us.
This Jewish-Israeli arrogance, which decks itself out in the robe of
preserving our interests, found a classical embodiment in Golda Meir's
attitude both towards the Palestinians ("There is no Palestinian people - I
am a Palestinian") and towards peace ("They don't want it.") And thus
upon her return from a visit to Pope Paul VI in 1973, she expressed
amazement that "the daughter of Moshe Mobovitz the carpenter (the
carpenter!) met with the Pope," and in her hauteur - nine months before
the Yom Kippur War - she reported proudly that she had said no to the
pope when he asked her that Israel behave with compassion towards the
Arabs. "I decided," she said, "not to give in to him - from prior experience
I know not to give in to anyone who starts a conversation in this way."
And then, in a phrase that has gone down in our history, she said: "I had
made a decision not to lower my gaze, and I didn't."
The spirit of Golda is still with us. While we have complaints about the
whole world and a pious expectation that it will go down on its knees to
beg forgiveness, we have not yet arrived at a mature perception of our
place in the world. Thus, relations of supreme importance between us and
the Catholic Church are the province of small minds and big mouths.
Perhaps in the coming months, among the most important in the history of
the efforts to come to a settlement with a historic foe, will bear fruit. But
they, too are full of the same petty, visionless style that is characterizing
our welcome of the second visit by a pope to Israel.
Apart from the experts, like historian of Christianity Aviad Klingberg, few
of the people who have got their hands on the microphone have correctly
assessed the weight of the Pope's statement. It is very much more
far-reaching than the statement by German President Hans Rau, for
example, who apologized for the Nazi's crimes. This is so because he and
his generation cut themselves off from the horrible German past, whereas
the Pope, whose church did not build any gas chambers, is the declared
heir of all his predecessors. In Vatican terms, the Pope went down on his
knees.
The Pope's visit is therefore a test of one of the ills that is devouring us
in nearly every area, from high policy to putting up bridges and stages,
all those staunch stances by serial blunderers who come along with
complaints, laden with fervor and hollow self-conviction, about the whole
world - except for themselves. The visit by this notable man here is
extremely important, if only for the sake of the opportunity to take a
modest look at the beating of the wings of our history - and sometimes to
lower our gaze
