One of the arguments against using epidural anesthesia during childbirth is that it dulls all feeling — including feelings that can be productive and important. And when muscle tension must return, to effectively push a baby — the pain, heretofore not felt, is unbearable.
In natural childbirth, our bodies get used to the normal discomfort of childbirth and adapt to the previous contraction, making it possible to face the next one. But if we deny our body the opportunity to learn from experience, it is completely unprepared for the challenge of birth.
Our bodies, it seems, learn from history, particularly as they face pain.
The late Dr. James Cameron also learned from his history of pain, though his story is not the joy of childbirth but a life struggle against violence. Cameron, who died on June 12, built upon his own experience as the only known survivor of a lynching, at age 16. He also learned from the history of the Jews.
He knew that history is useless if it does not inform the present and shape the future. In 1988, Cameron founded America’s Black Holocaust Museum, which was reportedly inspired by a trip to Israel’s Holocaust museum Yad Vashem. The Milwaukee museum documents the devastating effects of slavery and racial violence in the United States.
Speaking on Tuesday, June 20, from the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, Wisconsin Congresswoman Gwen Moore said, “Dr. Cameron endeavored to use the lessons of an ugly, violent chapter of our nation’s past to build a foundation for real unity.”
She sponsored resolution 867 to honor Cameron’s life and work, and secured $75,000 from the house to upgrade the museum’s technology in its education department.
We Jews understandably cringe at uses of the world “holocaust” to refer to anything other than the systemic and systematic murder of more than 6 million Jews during World War II. People interested in making strong points often abuse Holocaust imagery and language. It has been co-opted by too many individuals and groups who seek to diminish the value of our horror, whose aim is to defame, belittle or disrespect.
Though his use of the word may have justifiably unsettled the Jewish community, Cameron’s aim was not to belittle our horrific history but to call attention to the plight of African Americans. His aim, unlike those who seek to diminish the power of our tragedy, was to cross racial boundaries for the sake of a higher ideal.
On the other hand, there remain people who do not or cannot learn from history. On June 9, as Cameron neared his death, Walworth County farmer Ted Junker was preparing to publicize his own version of history – one that denies rather than learns from hate.
As reported on page 1 of this issue, the 87-year old immigrant fought in World War II as a volunteer officer of the German Waffen-Schutzstaffel (SS). He has built a shrine to Adolf Hitler and had planned to open it to the public on Sunday, June 25.
Junker’s version of history hails Hitler as a great leader. “Hitler gave dignity back to his people,” Junker said in a story in the Walworth County newspaper The Week.
“Hitler united German people. His book, ‘Mein Kampf,’ provided direction for the future. He brought jobs, food and dignity back to the German people,” Junker said.
Pathetic. Junker describes a unity based on fear, a greatness spun from distortion. His story is startling only for those who believe that humanity has evolved beyond such hate, prejudice and scapegoating. Current world events prove otherwise.
Junker’s shrine is likely to draw visitors from afar. But unlike Cameron’s project, Junker’s will only lead to more hate and indecency; and will dishonor and disrespect Holocaust victims, survivors and American veterans of World War II.
I do not seek to explain why Junker’s shrine is obscene; he has already received too much attention. But the notion that a shrine to Hitler exists so close to home may draw a useful and enlightening contrast.
Childbirth teaches another lesson. By feeling normal contractions, one’s body learns to distinguish useful and effective sensations from the sharp and startling pains that can serve as warning signs for real and life-threatening problems.
Our history, likewise, teaches us to glean wisdom from idiocy and hate, to become more, better and wiser, to keep alert and to recognize real danger in our midst.
I join the many voices within and beyond our community who praise Cameron for his life’s work. May his memory be for a blessing.
Palestinian fictions about Jerusalem alienate Israel
By Daniel Pipes
Historically, the religious standing of Jerusalem for Muslims waxed and waned. In a consistent and predictable cycle repeated six times through 14 centuries, Muslims focused on the city when it served their needs and ignored it when it did not.
This contrast was obvious during the past century. British rule over the city, 1917-48, galvanized a passion for Jerusalem that had been absent during the 400 years of Ottoman control.
Throughout the Jordanian control of the Old City, 1948-67, however, Arabs largely ignored it. The Palestine Liberation Organization’s founding document of 1964, the Palestinian National Covenant, mentioned Jerusalem not once.
Muslim interest in the city revived only when Israel conquered it in 1967. Jerusalem then became the focal point of Arab politics.
In 1968, the PLO amended its covenant to call Jerusalem “the seat of the Palestine Liberation Organization.” The king of Saudi Arabia himself declared the city religiously “just like” Mecca — a novel, if not a blasphemous idea.
By 1990, Muslim focus on Jerusalem led Palestinians to begin to deny the city’s religious and historical importance to Jews. The Palestinian establishment promoted this by constructing a revisionist edifice made up of fabrication, falsehood, fiction and fraud.
Palestinians now claim that Canaanites built Solomon’s Temple, that the ancient Hebrews were Bedouin tribesmen, the Bible came from Arabia, the Jewish Temple “was in Nablus or perhaps Bethlehem,” the Jewish presence in Palestine ended in C.E. 70, and today’s Jews are descendants of the Khazars.
Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat himself created a non-existent Canaanite king, Salem, out of thin air, speaking movingly about this fantasy Palestinian “forefather.”
Palestinian Media Watch sums up this process: By turning Canaanites and Israelites into Arabs and the Judaism of ancient Israel into Islam, the P.A. “takes authentic Jewish history, documented by thousands of years of continuous literature, and crosses out the word ‘Jewish’ and replaces it with the word ‘Arab’.”
The political implication is clear: Jews lack any rights to Jerusalem. As a street banner puts it: “Jerusalem is Arab.” Jews are unwelcome.
Three key events, Yitzhak Reiter of the Hebrew University argues, transformed this self-indulgent mythology into official ideology:
• The Temple Mount Faithful incident of October 1990 saw a Jewish group’s unsuccessful effort to lay the cornerstone for the Third Temple, leading to a Muslim riot in which 17 rioters died. This episode increased Palestinian apprehensions about the demolishing of Islamic sanctities, prompting a drive to prove that Jerusalem was always a Palestinian city.
• The Oslo Accord of September 1993 placed Jerusalem, for the first time, on the table for negotiation. Palestinians responded by attempting to discredit Jewish connections to the city.
• The Camp David summit of July 2000 saw the Israeli government, again for the first time, put forward its demands for sovereignty over parts of the Temple Mount.
As Dennis Ross, a U.S. diplomat present at the summit, puts it, Arafat “never offered any substantive ideas, not once” at the talks. However, “He did offer one new idea, which was that the Temple didn’t exist in Jerusalem, that it was in Nablus.” With this, Jerusalem’s pseudo-history became formal P.A. policy.
Palestinian denial of the Jewish connection to Jerusalem has two likely long-term implications. First, it suggests that the Palestinian focus on Jerusalem has reached such fervor that it might now sustain itself regardless of politics, breaking a 14-century pattern.
Second, this denial severely diminishes the prospect of a diplomatic resolution. The Palestinians’ self-evidently false history alienates their Israeli interlocutors even as it lays claim to sole rights over the entire city.
As a result, future negotiations over Jerusalem are bound to be yet more emotional, askew and difficult than past ones.
Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and author of “Miniatures” (Transaction Publishers).
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