Part One of “A Phalanx of Lies: How Falsehoods Bedevil Middle East Peace”
A Genocidal Middle East – Taking Refuge in the Sciences
Genocide projects are underway, from Iraq to Teheran to Palestine. All the main players are taking their scripts from scripture. (We'll show which passages). False beliefs about ethnicity and race, religion and history, bedevil peace.
The clerics may not be in office, but operate just behind their politicians. This is true in Egypt, Gaza, Israel, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Qatar, Turkey, Iran, North Sudan, Somalia, and in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan as well. The United States is also a player (not an arbiter) because almost half of Americans, take the bible as the only word of God, to be followed literally. So American electronically-boosted politics is fraught with genocidal sentiments directed towards Muslim and Islamic law. Several of the Republican candidates for president have committed themselves to opening offensive operations by land, sea and air, against the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Palestinians, too, will be rolled back. These genocidal sentiments run freely through American Jewish and Christian communities. Even if they succeed in driving all the Arabs out, it will always be stolen land, and hence an aggravating factor, triggering terror and, eventually, nuclear jihad. The Muslims have their own unspoken genocidal impulses and ideology. Of course we are just talking about the radical fringe: most Israelis, Iranians, and Turks see through the genocidal speech of their militant clerics. Some Americans do as well.
We take refuge with science, not to know God, but Man. How do we fight the spread, the outbreak, of genocide? Trace it to its source, to the minds of the perpetrators. Here we list the ways by which modern sciences, physical, social and psychological, inform us as to why politically ambitious clerics of the Abraham hate each other and use scripture to commit genocide.
GENETICS: we are all from the same family, closely related, sharing the same ancestors. There is no such thing as human races and even ethnic groups are hybrids. Humans owe much to bio-social laws against incest, exogamy, as a sign of health, a means of diplomacy, peace through intermarriage, and a mixing of diverse genes and memes. That's the human way. Our ancient Near Eastern empires were multi-ethnic and proud to be so. Yet in the desert, amongst the nomads, there was, is, an obsession with geneology. The Old Testament reflects this racialism. It iis incorrect, without basis. Reference to haplotypes and haplogroups immediately dispels biblical ideas like 'the Semites' 'the Jews' 'nomadic purity of descent' 'the Indo-Europeans.' These are linguistic, not ethnic or genetic, categories.
EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY: the nature of the species. Some scientists believe humans are genetically predisposed for war and genocide. We argue against this: those genetic markers, or a combination of genes cited as being 'war-like', are actually derived from hunting. In any case, the human skull is much too thin to have survived warring genes. Humans were few and far between, and animals so dangerous, we flocked together as allies. Also, exogamy.
ANTHROPOLOGY: study of skulls proves that the human brain has been shrinking since about 25,000 BCE, when glaciers began to recede and the people expanded their ranges and multiplied. Our ability to speak, read, write, has colonized some 200 discrete parts (modules) of the brain. What we call spiritual development involves, in part, re-claiming those parts. Hence real religions teach inner quiet. Contrary to Western thought, one does not need to think in verbalized concepts in order to see, to see the truth, to determine truth from falsehood. Humans possess deep powers, but these inner spaces of the brain, the soul, the psyche, remain latent and non-experienced by our word-heavy personalities.
Humans are distinctive, unique, for marrying outside the clan, the tribe. In some societies, wealthy families use marriage between cousins to keep the property (or blood) in the family. Of course those elite families became susceptible to multiply genetic disorders, many lineages dying out all together.
One can cite incest (marriage with one's sister or first cousin) as damaging the genome, and trace those markers of vulnerability down through the generations. But much worse is the incest inside ourselves: the ordinary clunky associative conceptual mind, is in bed with the personality. Essence has little chance. Essence does not talk.
COMPARATIVE LINGUISTICS: useful for studying the Semites, the Indo-Europeans, and the more ancient groups, like Sumer and Elam and Lydia.
COMPARATIVE RELIGIONS: Many so-called 'modern' clerics claim their scriptures were sent from God, the original architect of the universe, and so are complete and perfect, applicable to all societies at all times. These same clerics claim an exclusive channel to God, which means they are exclusive socially: 'only through us will you be saved.' All the more reason to restore scripture to its context. How possibly could one understand it otherwise?
Study how a religion changes over time. Study how real religions overlap in the ideals they seek to uphold. Examine how clerics and sects go off the rails and become dark. Read about canon law and the priestshoods, their roles through history. Submit the scriptures to linguistic analysis and trace the rites, images, narratives, laws, back to their sources. Examine the history of the faith, its political aspirations, its responses to larger changes and challenges. Behind the history, is the prophet, and behind him, a group of fellow seekers. That group has connections with older esoteric schools - genuine schools of human development.
The Torah relates the deeds of Abraham and Moses, one coming from Ur, the other from Egypt. Right at the start the Bible tells us that law and learning and prophecy, come from outside. Yahweh is a typical storm (or rain) god. There are some seven other words used for the gods, like Elohim. Elohim is the masculine plural of Eloah. El is correlated to the Sumeria Enlil. El Shaddai mean 'strong god.'
The common assumption is that the Judaeo-Christian is a culture, one which we follow, as if on autopilot. But our origins and our constitutions are more complicated, and more interesting, than that. (most of our natural ideas are Greek words in English) we follow. The bible features the birth of monotheism. This is not correct. First of all, ancient Judaism was not a monotheism but a henotheism or monalatry. Second, excavations in Balkh Afghanistan reveal a very old Persian civilization, where Zarathusht preached, allied to King Visp. Most experts are pushing back the time of Zarathusht (to 2,400 BC), while pushing forward the writing of the bible (as late as 345) BC.
When exiled to Babylon the Jews took a great interest in Magian and Zoroastrian (Zarathushtri) wisdom literature. They adopted for their religion: angels, the notion of life after death, the belief in an Apocalypse, the devil – that what we see on earth is a showdown between the forces of light and the forces of dark, good and bad. The one God (Ahura-mazda) will win in the end. A clergy emerged, dressed in black. These are all Persian ideas.
Islam exhibits Zoroastrian practices. The ritual ablutions preceding prayer, and the prostrations, are taken from an unknown Zarathushtri source.
PSYCHOLOGY, Pathological and forensic. Now increasing based on neuroscience. Examine genocidal statements and sentiments at their source. The role of fixed, unchanging ideas, popular interpretations of the scriptures and clerical intent, in putting forth genocidal projects. Examine why the psychological lessons in scriptures are generally not studied or updated. The hysterical roots of theomania: the demonization of one's neighbors, unholy identifications, and, at times, intellectual (spoken) genocidal impulses, including ignoring leaders of other sects and faiths. The science of genocide: pathological psychiatrists point to the role of fixed ideas and exaggerated self-conceptions in mental illness and violence.
PHILOLOGY: the science of textual analysis, based on comparative linguistics, the history of religions and ethnic identifications. Textual analysis.
NEUROSCIENCE: the study of what we have – a brain. There is no brain architecture for a single in-dwelling self, or for negative emotions (excluding fear). The much-vaunted human brain has its own weaknesses: e.g., the us or them mentality, never far from us, derived from the animal reflex 'fight or flight.' Neuroscience also confirms the superior efficacy of meditation.
APLLIED NEUROPHYSICS: spiritual growth involves the rejection of childish beliefs, crude mental concepts and attitudes. The second step in any genuine spiritual work is rising above the neuro-linguistic apparatus altogether– the quieting of the mind.
MODERN ECONOMICS : the Israelis and the Arabs need each other, to prosper. Many observers have remarked on the possible synergies. Also present: the conflict in the Middle East influences energy exports, while high costs for security in the national budgets, preclude economic recovery. Israel, seen as wealthy, has betrayed its socialist ideals, even disgracing its own Jew-first code, by failing to provide for its poorer 40%..
ARCHAEOLOGY: First, to track the moves of species Homo sapiens as he/she breaks out of Africa, via Yemen or via Sinai and Palestine. The first evidence of genocide was found in a well containing skeletons, in Israel, near the caves of Mt. Carmel. We are speaking about the Natufians. Then there is the archaeological record of the various Holocene affairs: the Neolithic revolution; the spread of farming and stock-breeding into Europe, India, China; then, as if in climax, the rise of civilization in Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Syria, Palestine, Sinai, Egypt, Phoenicia, Crete, Greece. So the whole Abrahamic story is rather recent. Like last year's Time magazine.
HISTORY – history is not so long that it cannot be known (5,200 years). The real story of the humans, is much more interesting than the history books say (including the bible). We do not know that we are carrying forward a specific kind of civilization invented in Southern Iraq ca 3200. Very few read archaeological reports, or even general books on the topic (Near Eastern civ).
Millions of cuneiform tablets have been recovered, but a lack of experts in Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyria, Hittite languages, means most tablets will not be read or published. Though many in the West have read the bible, few have studied all the hundreds of other texts: histories, scriptures and liturgies, epics and moral parables and proverbs, of the Ancient Near East. The first part of the Torah – Genesis – identifies itself with Sumer, Shinar. current Near Eastern themes and narratives. I suspect that part of Genesis was written during the Babylonian captivity. No doubt the Israelites benefited from its big neighbors when part of an empire.
Those Hebrews who settled in upland Palestine (ca 1,225 BCE) were thoroughly influenced by the Northwest Semitic traditions of Phoenician, Ebla, Ugarit. They settled and became a Canaanite hill people; and thus drew upon the high cultures of Phoenicia: Sidon, Tyre, Ugarit, Ugarit itself took much of its culture from Mesopotamia till it was destroyed by marauding sea nomads in 1190 BCE. Some of those sea nomads settled down on the coast of Palestine: Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gaza, Jaffa, as far as Haifa and Megiddo. This Philistine presence is phased out in the bible. But they were Greeks, Mycenaean Greeks, whose pottery is much more daring and intricate.
The Hebrews took their version of Noah and the flood from Ugarit, so it seems, but knowledge of Mesopotamian high culture was taken up by the Israelites during the Assyrian captivity or the three generations they spent in Babylon. Sumerian values and tropes were also transmitted to Palestine from the Assyrians, who intervened in Palestine on several occasions.
The enclosed study “High Noon in Western Asia” compares the present seized jammed 'status,' to situations pertaining three thousand years ago. The clerics either run government or stand just behind the 'elected' representatives and their appointees (like the secret police and army). This is the scene in: Gaza, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. It may soon be the case in the newly liberated nations of North Africa. Religious fundamentalism also weighs heavily in the USA.
LAW: As a legal anthropologist who traveled with nomads, I emphasize the unwritten codes, little studied. Nomads, sea and land, were dependent on trade with settled folk, and vice versus. Each had what the other needed. But such arrangements were ultimately contractual. It seems that civilization owes a lot to law, and to the nomads. Some agreements had to be made for trade, particularly long-distant trade. Nomads controlled those routes. The Torah says so also: it was the farmer Cain who murdered his brother Abel, the nomadic stock-breeder. He gets God to hide his ignominy from other people, who would kill him. He becomes a nomad himself, migrating to a place called 'wandering refugee', to the east of Eden, that is, to Elam and Chaldea. He then goes on to found a city for his son Enoch, and all his descendents. Gen. 4: 23-24. then ends with a horrid threat: “If seven lives are taken to pay to kill Cain, then 77 will be taken if anyone kills me.” The story is bizarre, but understandable. Civilization is the source of organized genocidal war.
Written law was a most fruitful Sumerian adaptation. Kings like Hammurabi were judicial activists, determined to root out injustice. He sounds so modern when he says: “First I had to deal with security threats, then I focused on rooting out injustice at home.” Equality before the law was something walled cities had to grant if nomads and farmers were to trade and invest jointly in long-range trade. Except in Assyria and Israel, women had basic rights of freedom: the right to choose one's mate, divorce him, inherit, be free of abuse and slander. These were the same laws that Muhammad revived at Medina. But tribalism trumps his practice.
How do we assess legal systems in the ancient world? Can restitution replace revenge? Are these ancient codes, etched into clay tablets or carved on stone stelae, capable of regular adjustments and reform? Does the king rule by law. Is he constrained by law? How is land bought and sold? What about cult laws and obligations? These do not appear to have any valid function to those outside the community. Why waste time following arbitrary commands whose original meaning was lost thousands of years ago? As for myself, I try to keep the Sabbath and do not believe God can be known by the ordinary mind. To me, that's the inner truth of this old faith, a practical way. Everything else is extraneous. I remember my Judaism whenever and wherever people babble about higher things, my favorite biblical verse being Exodus 20:7: “Do not use my name to cause harm. If you do, I will punish you especially severely.”
Some of the early juridical teachers were so afraid that they might rule incorrectly, that they refused to practice.
The Sumerians invented writing around 3200 BCE, before the Sumerians started building big time. One could argue that writing was invented to square the books and keep track of 'units,' and civilization rose up as a result, about a century and half after the first ostraca with imprinted glyphs.
The first law texts we have are those of King Ur-nammu, the famous statesman of the Third Dynasty of Ur. Of course that's where Abraham and his family came from, some four of five centuries later. The laws recovered and translated pertain to adultery, marriage, divorce, run-away slaves, slave girls who get pregnant, personal injury, false accusations, and the laws of land holding. Cult laws played no part. There exist omen texts and liturgical fragments, but the laws promulgated by the state were basic civil and criminal ordinances, aimed at replacing revenge with restitution.
There was another Sumerian law-giver – Lipit-Ishtar, a King of Issin, Sumer's holy shrine, between Ur-nammu and Hammurabi. His laws stress shared ownership of orchards and fertile land, slaves and free men, land taxes, marriage and inheritance, and fines for damaging animals, like the ox. The 38 laws recovered each have complications, circumstantial qualifications, some demanding extra scrutiny, wisdom. Judicial committees ruled much as they do now, amongst rabbis and the Muslim ulema.
The first laws of Akkad/Babylon were found in Eshnunna, an ancient city now just a Tel (Tel Harmal). The text includes 48 sections, all strait-forward and at times, ingenious. This is the first Semitic code, and it is significant because Eshnunna lies on the Diyala River, a tributary of the Tigris, whose sister city was Nuzi. We hear of Hebrews in Nuzi, mercenaries and their families, about 1800 BCE. Those Habiru soldiers were mounted, and most bore Hurrian names. Others bore Semitic names, and some were Hebrews from Elam. This just points to the northern connections, Indo-European and earlier matrilineal cultures, like Elam.
THE SCIENCE OF GENOCIDE – After the racialism of the 19th Century, and the genocide of the 20th, one might suppose the earthlings would evolve defenses against the wanton murder of whole peoples without provocation. Animals do not behave this way. It is not enough to have an International Criminal Court, prosecuting after the deed, but close surveillance of all hate speech, everywhere.
Such abominations can occur only in darkness, only as a result of wrong thinking – lies. Godless German, Chinese, Soviet regimes perpetrated genocide against their own peoples. We have grown used to 'industrial' or 'secular imperialist' genocides, forgetting that religion-based genocide characterized the rise of Israel, the early Middle Ages – and today. All this religious hate speech occurs because anyone who speaks up against it, is shamed. A congregation is the possession of the cleric, so close inspection of the active psychic elements in this cleric is apposite and prophylactic.
The West has criticized Islamic fundamentalism for spawning militants, but the other religions are just as threatening, once ignorant clerics take the gun or the mike.
Such bizarre behavior as killing strangers just on the basis of their religion or ethnicity or sexual preference, only occurs because ordinary people lie to themselves. 'The law does not apply to me because I get my orders from God.' 'I think I can do, that I can love, that I possess consciousness and conscience. I forget my own nothingness. I forget that I am a very small thing. Every insult can set me off. (Sleeping people are volatile.) Yet I demand people listen to me, as I read the Book of God, which is beyond criticism. So why even discuss these issues? It's all in the book.
Other aspects of genocide that need be brought to light and studied, is human susceptibility to suggestion; the inability (or refusal) of people to think for themselves; the collapse of conscience; the inability for scientific truth to penetrate prejudice and ideology; and the special difficulties democracies have in limiting hate speech.
By John Paul Maynard
Harvard University
