I Want my Foreskin Back
By Eric Alexander
Dear Chief
Rabbi
My foreskin was taken without my permission:
indeed, I was too young at the time to understand what was
happening. Evidently this operation was supposed to symbolise
a covenant made by one of my ancestors with the God of Israel,
and to help establish a sense of my Jewish identity.
I shall tell you two things about the God of Israel, which
I suspect you know already but don’t dare admit.
First, the God of Israel is not the Creator of the Universe.
Equating the two was reasonable enough in biblical times, and
indeed up to the seventeenth century, because in those days
the Universe was thought to be a compact entity: Moses and
Elijah could travel from its centre to its extremity in a few
hours.
We now know that the Universe is totally different. It is
vast, and teems with celestial bodies. It is worse than preposterous,
it is blasphemous, to suggest that the Creator of such a Universe
would do a deal with a small group of a particular species
on a tiny planet amid such vastness.
Second, the God of Israel is thoroughly perverse. He hands
down to his followers, indelibly inscribed on a stone tablet,
the commandment “Thou
shalt not kill”. Yet the history of those followers, as recorded
in the Old Testament, abounds with episodes when God authorised or
commanded them to kill their supposed enemies, sometimes including
women and children (every child in Gaza is a potential terrorist).
More recently, Yigal Amir testified that the God of Israel
had commanded him to execute Israeli Premier Yitzhak Rabin
for the crime of seeking peace with the Palestinians (a crime
for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize). I’ve no doubt that, given the opportunity, Baruch
Goldstein would have cited a command from the same God as his reason
for massacring dozens of worshippers at a mosque in Hebron. The “Breaking
The Silence” testimony of Israeli soldiers regarding the conduct
of Operation Cast Lead in Gaza reveals that members of the
Israeli Military Rabbinate quoted passages from the Old Testament to
convey a sacred duty for Israel’s defenders to rain white phosphorus on
her enemies’ schools and hospitals.
As for my Jewish identity, I take as my cue the words of
the Israeli national anthem, to the effect that every Jewish
soul yearns for the Land of Israel and the City of Jerusalem.
I can definitively say that I do not have a Jewish soul. I
have never wished to go to Israel: right now it is the last
place on the planet I should wish to visit. To my mind, land
and city are cursed by their supposed divine associations
to be the endless source of conflict and bloodshed between
peoples of different faiths. I feel a greater affinity for
Rachel Corrie, James Miller, Tom Hurndall and other international
victims of conscience than I do for Israeli Jews and their
apologists. And I think it time for British and American governments
to end their support for Israel’s stifling
of Arab aspirations in Gaza and the West Bank.
Clearly, the theft of my foreskin has not had the desired
effect. I would be grateful if it could be returned to me.
Eric Alexander
April 2010 |