It is dark on Gelson's supermarket terrace as closing time approaches. A small disco light from the bar counter inside swirls dots of changing colors on the hammock like cloths that lower the terrace ceiling. The electric heaters are still on, contributing their own warm red glow. Store music has been turned off. Mexican music is playing softly from the telephone of one of the two men sitting down in the back, a couple of six packs of beer on the table before them. On my way to unlock my bike - this terrace is my bike parking space by special permission of the management - I say to them:
- Just got off work?
- Yes.
- Where do you work?
- (We'll leave that out.)
- (We'll leave that out.)
- Upstairs in the food court, the Middle Eastern place?
- Yes. Lebanese food.
- And are you Lebanese?
- I'm Armenian.
- Christian then? But still, you are on the side of the Palestinians in the latest Israel-Gaza war?
- You stereotype me?
- Yes. Am I right?
- Yes. Would you like a beer?
- Yes. Lebanese food.
- And are you Lebanese?
- I'm Armenian.
- Christian then? But still, you are on the side of the Palestinians in the latest Israel-Gaza war?
- You stereotype me?
- Yes. Am I right?
- Yes. Would you like a beer?
He reaches out to me a bottle. Beer and argument. I am a happy man. A smile is spreading across my face and he doesn't like it. (He'll in a later conversation admit to not liking Jews.) If we talk, I warn him, you'll end up jumping to your feet and running away. 'You won't mind?' I ask. 'We'll see,' he answers. I expect he is going to jump metaphorically from one false claim to the next as I discredit each one after another, as always in these discussions, but this time around I want to see if can catch an old theory of mine in action.
- Do I know this theory?
- You do. Give me a minute and I'll come back to it. At a guess, this man is the restaurant manager; beside him, a Mexican worker, silent with limited English. I say to the putative manager: 'So you approve of terrorists who burn babies alive in ovens, rape, mutilate, murder?'
- Freedom fighters, whose calculated action is justified by the Jews colonizing and occupying Palestinians land.
- You are not uncomfortable, to use an amazing phrase I heard yesterday one Palestinian activist express, normalizing massacre? You feel good about the mental state behind the acting out of sexual fantasies of extreme sadistic violence?
- It's the Israelis who are committing genocide, who are massacring civilians, killing babies, engaging in the war crime of collective punishment.
- Israel is fighting a war, having been brought out of peace by attack but aiming to return to peace, responding to an invasion and to open threats of more invasions by terrorists openly committed to perpetual war until all Jews are dead. The fact that civilians are supporters of their Jew eliminationist government has bearing on what needs to be done for their reeducation once the war is won.
- You do. Give me a minute and I'll come back to it. At a guess, this man is the restaurant manager; beside him, a Mexican worker, silent with limited English. I say to the putative manager: 'So you approve of terrorists who burn babies alive in ovens, rape, mutilate, murder?'
- Freedom fighters, whose calculated action is justified by the Jews colonizing and occupying Palestinians land.
- You are not uncomfortable, to use an amazing phrase I heard yesterday one Palestinian activist express, normalizing massacre? You feel good about the mental state behind the acting out of sexual fantasies of extreme sadistic violence?
- It's the Israelis who are committing genocide, who are massacring civilians, killing babies, engaging in the war crime of collective punishment.
- Israel is fighting a war, having been brought out of peace by attack but aiming to return to peace, responding to an invasion and to open threats of more invasions by terrorists openly committed to perpetual war until all Jews are dead. The fact that civilians are supporters of their Jew eliminationist government has bearing on what needs to be done for their reeducation once the war is won.
- As a Jew you'd say that.
- As a Jew I'll say this. Rabbi Sacks, the late chief rabbi, distinguished between the priestly and prophesy. Priestly was seeing god in nature, in an ordered world, prophecy was seeing god in history, in our own individual history. The sabbath day was priestly, the six days leading up to it prophetic, time making a shift from history to nature, from action to contemplation of the results of the action. The ritual weekly affirmed the aim of life towards knowledge. In fact, we can see monotheism itself as the replacement of ritual, which aims not a knowledge but power, by making all of history a single ritual in progress.
- Ritual: an individual feeling weak, together with others in his group also feeling weak, acting out together a story of an old god embattled with an enemy, resulting in a new god reborn, with each individual participant reborn individually in strength and success.
- Correct. Monotheism, by making all of history one single ritual, has allowed in our single history of the world of one god three different phases of focus: on the act in the midst of history, that will if successful lead to the rest, sabbath, of knowledge; of the thought of love, openness, at the end of time and history, calling upon us to give up our fantasies of power ritual provides us with and simply love each other. And then the last phase, where we in our single ritual of history, have decided for us both act and thought of god's direction.
- Correct. Monotheism, by making all of history one single ritual, has allowed in our single history of the world of one god three different phases of focus: on the act in the midst of history, that will if successful lead to the rest, sabbath, of knowledge; of the thought of love, openness, at the end of time and history, calling upon us to give up our fantasies of power ritual provides us with and simply love each other. And then the last phase, where we in our single ritual of history, have decided for us both act and thought of god's direction.
- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
- Correct. The Jews used the weekly sabbath as a model of incremental knowledge.
- But the Christian, could you say, made of each moment a reckoning, an act-judging rest, a sabbath?
- Correct. The Jews used the weekly sabbath as a model of incremental knowledge.
- But the Christian, could you say, made of each moment a reckoning, an act-judging rest, a sabbath?
- Correct.
- And a Muslim, at every moment, a judgement of submission to acts that are required and an imagination of the world that will be granted by correct submission. Don't say correct.
- You are right. For the Muslim, each situation has its specified action required by god and god's specified heavenly reward.
- (1) Incomplete history, the Jews. (2) The end is near, the Christians. (3) The end is here, everything decided, determined, submitted to, the Muslims.
- Correct. So what we need explained is how in this quiet corner of this opulent shopping center this fellow displays a cretin's lack of emotional intelligence and lack of critical thinking.
- Instead of there being a Jew's sabbath that serves to link act to knowledge of the world, hypothesis to test, results, or a Christian's continuously running attack of the vanity of power, there is the Muslim's closure of history which makes of every act and thought a complete unit. Not here will you find uncertainty of individual endeavor in straining towards love. Each act an individual takes is isolated from what was done before and after. Every act is constructed to its own known specified purpose. I saw something on Rodeo Drive, the famous designer clothing shopping street, late last night. One of our city's hundred thousand who live on the streets was in one shop doorway, bedded down, worldly possessions of apparent high quality neatly packed and arranged filling the entire space A plain-clothed guard takes out his phone and a woman, or a man putting on the appearance of a woman, jumps out from under the covers, gets out of the picture, says: can I go back now? The guard nods and she/he slips back under the blanket.
- And your point in telling this story?
- Decontextualization: there is according to the photo taken, no one sleeping in the doorway. Jews are massacring civilians out of genocidal intent if you ignore that previously Israel had been invaded, its people murdered, tortured, mutilated, raped.
- A falsely concocted statement, like the falsely concocted photo, which has no connection with the situation before and after.
- Curated, decontextualized, manipulated, as an Israel official government spokesman put it.
- Yes.
- So follow with me. I say to the restaurant manager: Israel is waging war in response to an invasion, with comparatively speaking low ratio of civilian to soldiers deaths. The Palestinians have repeatedly stated they want to kill all Jews. Their war doesn't end until all are dead. The Israelis' war ends when the security it seeks is obtained. One side seeks peace, the other only war. There is no equivalence between sides, like in a feud cycle each act is justified in compensating for a previous act of compensation.
- The Jews, he says, are the ones who are sadistic, perverse, keeping the Palestinians in an open air prison.
- Egypt has a border with Gaza not controlled by Israel. What kind of prison has an open door?
- Israel is an apartheid state.
- Israeli Arabs have complete civil rights. They have positions in the government.
- Token positions.
- Not at all. Israeli Arabs are on the supreme court, in the legislature, in the universities, in medicine.
- Not at all. Israeli Arabs are on the supreme court, in the legislature, in the universities, in medicine.
- They don't control their air space, water, electricity.
- You mean, not in Israel, but in Gaza, because Gaza, under Hamas government is in a declared state of war against Israel shooting tens of thousands of rockets into Israel every year. Civil rights don't exist in war. War is about killing people, breaking the rules of civilization.
- Israelis are colonists who occupy stolen Palestinian land.
- There have been no Jews in Gaza since 2005. And in Israel proper the Jews bought their land, not stole it. If you mean by occupation the lands of Judea and Sumeria, these were taken in war, and held by Israel for security. And the Jews are the indigenous people people of this land, and if colonizers what would be the Jews' metropole, or motherland that is supposed to have sent out the Jewish settlers if not the land of Israel itself?
- The argument you are making with the restaurant manager is that the astonishing act of "normalized massacre", these couplets of action and situation: apartheid, open air prison, genocide, occupation, are like the photo of the empty doorway on Rodeo Drive, decontextualized.
- They are as it were mechanical acts of accretion, one religiously necessary act piled upon another, with no knowledge of the world or human nature to connect them. Perverse, sadistic, acted-out sexual fantasies? No, their mass murder is not about them, they feel certain, is not about ethical conduct or its lack, because every act taken is god's will not theirs as a single individual. It is god's will they kill all Jews. In this third monotheism, at the announced end of the single ritual of history, in pursuance of the intention of killing all Jews an appearance of genocide, occupation, imprisoning, apartheid state is created in language. Each end-times priestly/prophetic act/thought unit of the world as it is and must be is curated, manipulated without connection with the real world, fabricated in ritual's memory destroying passion of weakness therefore without connection with human nature of seeking knowledge and love.
- And what happened with the guy at the shopping center?
- As expected, he fled. 'Just to be sure,' I said to him, 'again, you don't feel bad, feel dirty sitting there endorsing, approving of rape, torture, mutilation?' He said, 'I've had enough, personal attacks aren't arguments,' and he got up and left together with his silent friend.
