Evil, especially state evil, finds nourishment in self-delusion that feeds on visions of superiority cultured in ancient myths that have not been allowed to atrophy despite reason and historical events. Both Sharon's Israel (and now Olmert's) and Bush's America feast on such delusions as they are fed "truth" by the ministers of superstition in the Zionist cults in Israel and the right-wing evangelicals in America. That the people of Lebanon must suffer the outrages of these demented minds only illustrates what uncontrolled power can inflict on the innocent.

Consider the enormity of the delusion: by instilling fear in the minds of their followers that God speaks through them, proclaiming that the existence of Israel is essential to the fulfillment of "end time" prophecy, that thousands must die to enable His truth to manifest itself, that the horrors of technologically sophisticated warfare mirror the images in the Book of Revelation, that despite hundreds of predictions over the centuries that Armageddon was imminent though it never came, they not only command obedience, they extol the savagery in Lebanon and mock the voices that dissent in the name of Jesus and his teachings to "love one another and thy enemy as thyself." Such men belong in jail not in our houses of worship.

Evil knows no morality; it savors no regard for the weak or oppressed; it admits no rights but those it imposes; it condemns those who dissent without regard for evidence or truth; it denies all wrongdoing since its actions alone determine right; it feels no shame; it accepts no blame; it pleads innocence, seeks to cloak itself in the victim's stripes, and curses those who condemn its crimes.

Franz Kafka presented a vicious portrayal of such a country in "The Penal Colony." Considered as a metaphor for Israel today, ironically since Kafka wrote from the vantage point of being a Jew, the "Officer" and executioner delighted in describing the virtues of his state's torture machine as it inscribed on the victim's skin his crime, and in the duration of its agonizing process the victim learned what he was guilty of, though, until that moment of recognition as the steel spikes carved his sentence on his back, he had never been charged with a crime. Kafka knew the consequences of being a Jew in a world without compassion.

Thus it is in today's Israel; the state, in the figure of its Prime Minister, determines what is right, what is a crime, and who is guilty; there is no need for due rights whether of an individual or a state like Lebanon. Israel alone determines what terrorism is, it alone defies international law and the UN resolutions with impunity, it alone chooses the words that will describe its actions determining for the world community how it is to understand Israel's actions. And so it is in the Penal Colony. All live in fear of the executioner, both the colonists and the occupied. So long as that fear can be maintained, so long can the Colony survive under its brutal regime. But time catches up with the Penal Colony. An outsider is brought in to witness how it operates and how it executes its "civilized" approach to management of the colony. The witness listens to the detailed explanation of the Officer as he justifies the policies and procedures of the Penal Colony, but he marks the Medieval and barbaric reality of the colony and its treatment of its citizens and those it condemns to execution.

Kafka notes with remarkable insight and wisdom that the state will not change until it accepts its own guilt, until it comprehends that its behavior rests on principles that are corrosive to human kind, blind to the reality of human equality, and self-destructive because built on superstition and fear. Once that recognition comes, the Officer and executioner mounts the torture machine and straps himself in its bed. And as the machine begins to run, the witness watches the spikes inscribe the sentence on his back, "Be Just."

Evil exists in the delusion that grows from ignorance and alienation, necessary ingredients in a state of demonocracy. Peace is possible when openness proliferates and people remove the barriers that isolate and separate them from each other.

=================
 
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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