Father and Son

In moving about the capital last week, with my ear to the ground (figure of speech, only), I encountered a lot of rumbling. In addition to the expected uproar over Olmert's dogged pursuit of longshot brinksmanship (he really does think he can pull off a real estate deal with Abbas), there were lots of cosmic interpretations of unfolding events.

Most of these explanations involve historic parallels between current events and those leading to the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Roman armies under the command of Titus in 69 CE (or 70 CE depending on who you read).

It is necessary to listen to these various interpretations in order to understand fully the level of discord throughout the country today. It is deep and quite serious.

Paradigmatic is the following story YNETNEWS.com ran last night in the wee hours of the morning.

A group of rabbis has sent US President George W. Bush a letter urging him not to meet with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during his upcoming visit to Israel scheduled to begin Wednesday.

"The prime minister is ready to betray his homeland and people in order to evade law authorities," they said in the letter. The most prominent figure who signed the document was head of the Yesha Rabbinical Council and chief rabbi of Kiryat Arba, Rabbi Dov Lior.

"Dear honorable president, we have written to your honor several times regarding your pressures on the State of Israel to hand territories to the Arabs, while uprooting communities and expelling their residents," the rabbis wrote.

"The experience from Gush Katif has proved that destruction was imposed on 2,000 families, Hamas was crowned in Gaza and, our enemies were aided in getting tronger and threatening our existence… If, God forbid, they continue like this, they will cause a civil war and put millions of Jews in mortal danger."

The letter was also signed by Rabbis David Druckman, Yakkov Yosef, Shmuel Eliyahu and Shalom Dov Wolpe.

It is true that these individuals are on the conservative end of the Israeli political spectrum, but it is very important to understand that they are not Hariedi rabbis. They are strongly invested in the State of Israel as well as being very involved in religious reforms. They are very similar to the sort of religious interests that make up the President's own conservative political block.

Moreover, they are realists. They recognize the intentions of those in Hamastan and Hizbollahstan; naturally, they are cautious. They are also rabbis with an eloquent turn of Biblical phrase.

They went on to say that "it is totally presumptuous that while the US fights terror, it pressures Israel to make concessions to terrorists!

"We are amazed by the insolence of the secretary of state, Ms. Condoleezza Rice, who is holding talks with a prime minister who is under criminal investigations from top to bottom, while his personal situation pushes him to give in to pressure.

"It is unbecoming of a president to hold talks with a person suspected of criminal acts, who is ready to betray his homeland and people in order to evade law authorities."

The rabbis added, "In the name of the people of Israel, the Land of Israel, the Torah of Israel and the God of Israel, we demand that his honor the president cease the pressure on the State to hand lands to the Arabs. We ask the president not to meet with Mr. Olmert to discuss these issues, particularly not at this time."

The rabbis concluded the letter on a historic note: "Honorable president, you must not be remembered in history as Nebuchadnezzar (a Babylonian king from the 6th century B.C.) and Titus (a Roman emporer) who destroyed Jerusalem.

Now, this last item may seem like some form of asiatic hyperbole, but it requires a bit of an explanation, a commentary if you will, of its own. The Babylonian king came from the east and Titus from the west. Both personages are associated with the destruction of Jerusalem, the destruction of the First and Second Temples. Like many Israelis, the rabbis here are worried about the offhanded manner in which US policies so blatantly contradict in the handling of Israel to curry favor with Arab principalities that have been actively seeking Israel's destruction.

"What IS the role of the US", Israelis repeatedly ask me. They are NOT referring to the US's top of the world political hegemony. They are referring to the prophecies in the Book of Daniel. They are referring to the prophetic war of Gog and Megog. Is the US the Beast of the West?

Now, what in the world would make the stereotypical rational Israeli worried about such fundamentalist speculation? Well, this picture from the AP that accompanied the article in YNETNEWS.com. The YNET story captions this as "Bush: The Next Titus?"

"Okay", you might say. "It's a picture of George H.W. Bush and his son George W. Bush. So what?"

I asked several rabbis in Jerusalem the very same question last week to their discussion of exactly this topic. Here's what they said about that. Titus was the general of the armies that tackled Jerusalem and it was his men who got out of hand setting fires in the Temple Courtyard to smoke out, literally, the resistance. But, it was his father, Vespasian, who was the proconsul, and who later became Emperor of Rome, a title his son, Titus, took over. In other words, it was a father-son Imperial team that did in the Israeli state 2000 years ago.

Why the concern about this father and son presidential team. Why, it's in the initials: G and G! In Hebrew, this is written גוג or Gimmel-Vav-Gimmel in Latin script, where the letter VAV also means and. From this reading, George and George is GOG.

Rearranging the political vectors, the rabbis are asking Hans Solo's question to Obie Wan Kenobie: whether the secular religious ideals of pax americana is any match for a good blaster. Judging from what Obie Wan's ancestor, Henry Kissenger, who said in Israel today, the answer is a resounding NO.