Why We All Bear The Blame, Part 1: The History of Ghettoization

When I was in the Army, there was a phrase bandied about by my commanders and leaders. That phrase was "proportional force." It was a phrase meant to guide our actions as American soldiers, working in a hostile environment where the local population did not always welcome our presence. Distilled to its essence, the phrase's interpretation is clean, elegant, simple. It says: "Defend yourself and those around you, but be measured in your responses." An edict to live by--to use no more force than is necessary. As a soldier, I internalized this lesson.

Sadly, my leaders and countrymen have not.

For as long as I have been alive, the news reports from Israel have always been somewhat stark: blockades and checkpoints in the West Bank, gruesome attacks against civilians in Jerusalem. For every week of my twenty-five years, a tale of violence, a checkmark on the tallies of blood-debt. When one grows up with it, it can be easy to allow that custom free reign. I am not alone in this. "They've been killing each other for thousands of years," my countrymen say. "So what difference does it make?"

We say these things, all of us. We even believe them. But we do not understand WHY.

Just for a laugh, go look up Gaza on Wikipedia. There, you can find a history whose players have shaped the society we know today: the Greeks, the Ottomans, the Israelis. It is a diverse place, with a culture and life of its own, and yet most of us will never learn of that place's history, nor will we care to. Just a few days ago, I had a co-worker ask me: "Who are Israel even fighting? Afghanistan?"

It is this ignorance that I use to excuse my peers. "We don't know," I tell myself, "and if we did, we might feel differently." But we don't know, and most of the time, we don't care. Which leaves me to wonder: where is the line between ignorance and blindness?

We all have something of a working knowledge of modern Israeli history. We know that it is a place raised from the horrors of the Holocaust, a place created so that that tragedy's survivors might have a place to call home. For decades, we have nurtured and defended this fledgling state, like a mother with her young. We have spoken of her virtues to our peers, and bared our teeth to those who might bear her harm. We tell ourselves that we are noble in this, and once we might well have been. But like any loving mother, sometimes we can be too quick to defend our brood, too eager to blind ourselves to their missteps. But still we love them anyway, and try to encourage them as best we can.

But at what point do we stop simply forgiving their mistakes, and start enabling them?

The Jewish people are a people unique among all those of the earth, not so much scripturally as historically. The sons and daughters of Abraham serve for us as a link to the past, a living people whose histories and traditions are recorded in some of the oldest, most well-known documents written by man. The Torah, the Talmud, the Old Testament of Christianity: these are works that tell of how an ancient people once lived, once saw themselves. Even the dullest among us must marvel at this thought. I once had a friend in college, a non-practicing Reform Jew who, despite his lack of observance, still insisted on maintaining a kosher diet. When I asked him why, he replied only: "It's part of who I am, where I come from." In hearing this statement, I felt a flash of envy. If only I had something like that to belong to, I thought. Maybe I might feel more at home in myself.

At the same time, the Jewish people are a misunderstood people, having been forced to endure the worst excesses of history's cruelty. The Diasporas, the Inquisition, the Holocaust: these names serve us as reminders of our own brutality, stark illustrations of how we can marginalize the smallest groups among us. It is a legacy for which many of us still bear shame: every European, every Christian, every child of the Reich, every Baby-Boom baby ever born. The taint of that dark sin stains us all. It makes us who we are, and for that we should be grateful, but we should never let that gratitude blind us to the truth. In that sense, we are all sinners, not against God, but against our fellow man.

Read your histories, the tales left behind by those who survived. It started slowly, of course: Public acceptance of demeaning speech in the public forum, the creation of a narrative within a society that says: We are special. All others must pay tribute. Later, that narrative was given academic credibility, with the publishing of books and letters of dubious scientific merit. Through the halls of learning, dark whispers began to spread, tales of conspiracy and of the dilution of an ancient heritage. Searching for a focal point for their indignation, the majority began to single people out: the sick, the lame, those of alternative sexuality or ethnic minority. And of course, when society begins to seek out those that are different, those with the highest profile begin to stand out. In Germany, as the largest minority, that group, of course was the Jewish community.

Once the seeds were sown, it could not be long before such dark plantings bore fruit. Soon, people of a certain background were subject to loss of employment, loss of social status. Jewish businesses and homes became targets, most infamously on Kristallnacht, The Night of Broken Glass. Soon after, it was declared that the majority were no longer willing to live alongside a culture that they blamed for all of their own social ills. Seeking to purify themselves, the German people rooted out the Jewish among them, saying: You are not like us. Soon, the Jewish people had nowhere to go, having been ousted from their homes and communities. They began to be herded into smaller and smaller quarters, isolated areas where resources and infrastructure were crumbling, even nonexistent. Here, it was felt, the Jewish people could be controlled, could be managed. None ever thought about WHY the Jewish people should have to be managed, but when the question was raised, it often proved more harmful to the interrogator than to the interrogated.

In sociology, there is a term for this kind of forcible isolation, this excise from our midst of The Other. It is called "ghettoization." It is a practice meant to render groups invisible, meant to remove them from the minds of the public; for the memory of the public is short, and Authority knows that what we do not see, we soon forget.

And any sociologist can tell you: once we forget, once ghettoization becomes commonplace, it is only a matter of time before the killing begins.