Pink Cloud Diplomacy

By TAD BARTIMUS

"President Bush was criticized ...for not having a clear stance on the Middle East Crisis. You know what? Good! The only people with a very clear stance on the Middle East are the crazy people in the Middle East." -- Tina Fey, "Saturday Night Live"

Like so many of us, George W. Bush was raised on the pink cloud version of the Holy Land.

Raised on the Judeo-Christian tradition, our ancient kingdom of Palestine was a watercolor-rendered place of beautiful people wearing haloes and flowing robes, strolling serenely through misty landscapes and presumably reciting beatitudes. Men rode cute little donkeys while Madonna-like women swept their paths clean with palm branches. Except for their scowls, our Biblical villains were idealized as mostly benign. No one looked sick, tired, hungry or frightened. Nearly everyone was portrayed as Caucasian.

In my childhood's Holy Land, date palms grew in abundance, rock wells overflowed with sweet water and turbaned children who looked a lot like me frolicked in front of picture-postcard houses. Bethlehem was an airbrushed place where farm animals never messed in their straw. Jerusalem's strangers were kind to one another. Galilee's miracles were commonplace.
Sunday after Sunday, Christianity's sacred landmarks were idealized in art, song and sermons. I grew to believe that the Middle East was a land of real milk and honey populated by sinners who always got punished and saints who always forgave them.

No wonder Bush and I are having trouble reconciling our childhood imprints of Christ's birthplace with the blood-soaked images of Jews and Muslims locked in a death grip of desperation and rage inside the Church of the Nativity. If Judaism's and Islam's crucible is the land where "love thy neighbor" originated, what happened?
Nothing new. Remember persecution of the tribes of Israel? Remember crucifixions? Remember the martyrdom of Mohammed's followers? Despite the spinning by generations of religious dream weavers, nobody in the Holy Land has ever lived on a pink cloud. The Middle East is, and always has been, a killing field. 
I don't want to believe this because it undermines three of the world's greatest religions and the foundations of a civilized society. It casts doubt on the sanity of anyone who's persecuted, deprived of a homeland or shoved to the edge of the abyss by terrorism and martyrdom. It means that anyone, anywhere, under certain circumstances, can become crazy.

President Bush and I have never been pushed that far. If we were, how would we react? Would we turn the other cheek, or would we strap on a bomb and go in search of an eye for an eye? Our response to Sept. 11 suggests that human nature's appetite for vengeance spans cultures. Hopefully, we will never go to the lengths of those in the Middle East. For some, Martyrdom is always easier than compromise.

If there is to be any hope of peace in the Middle East, President Bush and his envoys must set aside their personal naivete and pink-cloud baggage and accept that Muslims, Christians and Jews have despoiled and debased the Holy Land for countless generations. Then they must force Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to stop shooting and start talking, because dead mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters do not nurture cease-fires.
If Bush can accomplish this mission impossible and succeed where all of his predecessors have failed, he deserves not only the Nobel Peace Prize, but his own pink cloud.

© 2002 The Women Syndicate

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