just ‘cause

Joan Huguenard takes us out of our personal comfort zone. And that can be a good thing.
That’s the case with the periodic topic for “just joan”: the Middle East. We take no active side in the battle over homeland in Palestine. We have shaken our heads in dismay at the arrogance of a succession of U.S. Presidents who think they can, by the sheer power of their personality, solve an irascible problem that has existed since almost the beginning of recorded history.
By their separate texts, the Torah and the Koran, the Jews and Muslims share a common history: creation of the universe by one, true God; God’s creation of Adam and his wife, and their banishment; God’s covenant with the childless Abram, sending him to a land called Canaan; and the birth there of two sons, Ishmael by the servant Hagar and then Isaac by his wife Sarah. In simplest terms, the Muslims descended from Ishmael, who had 12 sons, and the Jews descended from Isaac, whose son Israel had 12 sons. Thus both Muslims and Jews trace their lineage back to God’s human covenant-partner, renamed Abraham, who banished Hagar and Ishmael to the desert and kept Sarah and Isaac with him, amassing great wealth in the new land.
In both traditions, God gave Abraham the land of Canaan for his children and their descendants, so what goes on today might be viewed simply as a continuing family feud over entitlement to their ancestor’s estate. And this family has since developed seemingly irreconcilable divisions over who was God’s last prophet, Malachi about 420 B.C. or Mohammed about 620 A.D. Moreover, their adopted cousins, the Christians, have periodically inserted themselves into the issue, having conquered the land most recently some 60 years ago and assigning it then to the Jews. Not that all three haven’t lived and worked together respectfully for many periods in many places.
We don’t succumb to Presidential pride in believing we can solve that problem. Consider that the Israelites left the Holy Land for Egypt when famine struck about 1850 B.C., then returned to conquer Canaan about 1400 B.C. and ruled it for some 800 years, falling to a Babylonian conquest and deportation about 600 B.C. The Jews returned about 540 B.C., after the Persians had defeated the Babylonians, and they rebuilt Jerusalem. And while Israel was under Greek and then Roman rule from about 330 B.C., that area did remain a Jewish homeland until 70 A.D., when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem. It would be more than 1800 years before a Jewish homeland was created again, when after World War II Jews were encouraged to emigrate, especially from Europe and the Soviet Union, to the newly created nation of Israel.
The predominant opinion in the U.S. is that the Jews should remain in control of that nation in that place and that they may defend their control in battle, if necessary. But human violence is always abhorrent, and Huguenard opens our reluctant eyes to the truth that, at the personal level, war is especially horrific. That’s a valuable message, especially for those of us who may someday affect the course of war at more impersonal levels.
So we continue to carry “just joan” in the Sun and her occasional columns about the Middle East. It doesn’t mean that we believe her chosen cause is just; it’s just ‘cause we believe that it’s an acceptable role for an opinion columnist to question settled beliefs. We welcome, and print, responses from readers.
We seek truth when we allow our own opinions to be challenged; that should make our convictions, whether changed or not, all the stronger.