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Olmert Leads the Jews into the Land of Darkness:
William A. Cook

Olmert’s folly in Gaza contains the seeds of a Conrad or Kafka tale of human desire, fulfillment, and regret, tales that revealed the consequences of man’s inhumanity to man in the twentieth century. Needless to say, we have not progressed in either wisdom or morality as we seed this new century with a wanton pitilessness toward our  fellow men. Consider this passage from Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” as it reveals the underlying “rationale” for Olmert’s folly and its inevitable consequences.

“They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force – nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind – as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea – something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to ….”

Conrad’s narrator, Marlow, makes this observation as he describes his journey into the heart of darkness in search of Kurtz, the enlightened, civilized man who represents the advanced nations of Europe as they set about colonizing the “underdeveloped” lands in Africa. Because they were civilized they had not just a responsibility but a right to bring their enlightenment, their advanced technological and scientific culture to the world. Besides, they needed the natural resources of these underdeveloped lands to accomplish their desire and that desire drove them to exploit, oppress, occupy and destroy those who would obstruct the fulfillment of their goals.

What has this to do with Olmert? This. He is the new and untried leader of a nation that is as yet undefined, lacking definitive borders, populated by thousands of immigrants from diverse lands around the globe, speaking different languages, housed in “settlements” scattered on land belonging to another people, in fear of an indigenous people they are prevented from knowing except as they are fed a constant stream of invective about them as terrorists out to destroy their state; the Jews must live in the midst of the incomprehensible, both of themselves and their neighbors. How deep then the uncertainty, the powerlessness, the regrets, the desire to escape, all that can destroy a state unless it is resolved by a unifying idea, a belief that can sustain the people, a belief that goes beyond reason, something “you can bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to…”. Olmert knows this. He ran his campaign based on the need to determine the fixed borders of Israel, unilaterally, regardless of the consequences to the indigenous people. The idea submerges reason, offers purpose, but above all grants rights that override common sense and secular law that grants equality to all.

This is the idea that rides above the hapless lives of the Palestinians, gives license to brute force, and allows the destruction of those who would prevent the fulfillment of the idea.

This is the idea that rides above the hapless lives of the Palestinians, gives license to brute force, and allows the destruction of those who would prevent the fulfillment of the idea. Olmert’s invasion of Gaza, and its collateral actions in Jerusalem with the dispossession of Palestinian inhabitants and the completion of the Wall of Fear encircling the residents of the truncated land still occupied by the indigenous people, rests on the ideational belief that a God created by men thousands of years ago trumps international law, the rulings of the International Court of Justice, the Charter of the United Nations, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights even though the state of Israel is a signer of that declaration. That idea puts Israel above all other laws made by humans in general assembly and universally accepted from the days of the Magna Carta to the Resolutions passed by the UN.

Conrad’s narrative mirrors the Belgian exploitation in the Congo, a colonization of dubious legality that had the extraction of as much ivory and rubber as possible regardless of the virtual enslavement of the natives, the mistreatment, mutilation, and starvation of thousands upon thousands. Gradually these facts became known to the public and resulted in an international outcry. That, one might hope, will be the result of Olmert’s folly, a world outcry that will then produce the “regret” that is the inevitable end product of human depravity. Whatever sadistic satisfaction Olmert and the IDF derive from their bestiality is not shared by all Jews, but rather by the cadre of fanatical Zionists that encase their beliefs in racist terms while those without resort to paid advertisements to declare their separation from the twisted rationale of Kadima. Kurtz’ fall in “Heart of Darkness” illustrates the barbarity of western civilization as it imposes its will on the weak dressing its savagery in euphemistic niceties like “liberty,” “freedom,” and “democracy.”

But however Olmert and his cronies paint their actions as justified, no words will erase the paralysis that now prevents a three year old girl from moving her arms or legs; no words will wipe away the tears that pour from Nidal’s soul at the loss of his wife, Fatma, his two year old daughter Farah, his one year old son, Khaled, Fatma’s brother Dr. Zakariya Ahmed, his daughter in law who was pregnant, and his 78 year old grandmother when a missile crashed through the roof as they ate lunch; no words can justify the wanton killing of seven family members who had gone to the beach for a day’s outing only to be slaughtered by an Israeli missile, the real cause of the action by the Palestinians against the IDF that resulted in Olmert’s vengeance.

It is the nameless victims of this regime that suffer the consequences of the idea. Kafka, a Jewish writer from Prague, offered a parable that embodies the greatest truth, one he understood precisely because he was a Jew. Kafka knew the isolation and alienation that comes from being targeted as different. He knew that an idea could be imposed upon a group without individuation, without known reason, without evidence of guilt or crime. He knew that those with power could incarcerate, torture, and kill indiscriminately. He knew that those with an insatiable desire to attain their ends, to fulfill their driven appetites would go to any length to rationalize their actions and thus to suppress their own experience. He knew this because he understood that all people are the same, different only in the guises others design to distinguish them from themselves, for their own purposes. He knew the base of human nature to be the depravity of their humanness, the sadistic drive to destroy an innocent without remorse, to turn the savagery of their oppressor against another when they had the power to do so, to be, ultimately, the victim and the executioner.

Kafka’s parable tells of a man who asks entry into the law but is prevented from entering by the gatekeeper. The man persists. The gatekeeper explains that there are many other gatekeepers beyond him, all more powerful than he. So the man decides to sit and wait until he can gain entry; he even bribes the gatekeeper but to no avail. Years pass, he grows old and feeble. “Everyone strives after the law,” says the man to the gatekeeper, “so how is it that in these many years no one except me has requested entry?” “Here no one else can gain entry,” yells the gatekeeper, “since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close it.” That realization is the ultimate despair, a negation of human purpose caught in the mystery of a gate that must lead somewhere, guarded by an authority that proclaims its value but denies entrance, humankind caught in the paradox of perception and reality. The truth: everyman lives in isolation from the human race, the inevitable absurdity of the human condition; that realization alone should give us pause to make it otherwise. No where should that reality be more obvious than in Israel where the world turned in complete sympathy by creating a nation as a home for victims of oppression. But now, Olmert leads the Jews into the Land of Darkness as he becomes the gatekeeper that denies life and destroys it; ultimately, he and his nation will regret the infliction of such pitiless suffering on the weak and powerless as he stamps a legacy of unforgiving force and unnatural remorse on the state of Israel..  

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William Cook is a professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California and author of Tracking Depception: Bush's Mideast Policy

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