The Oslo Process as Cargo Cult

Arutz Sheva ^ | 16 February 2003 | Steven Plaut

[SJackson]

I think that the main problem so many people are having in understanding Israeli politics is that they make the common mistake of looking upon the Oslo "peace process" as a form of diplomacy or politics, as opposed to it being a cargo cult.

Let me explain.

Cargo cults were fascinating social phenomena that have occupied a central position in textbooks of anthropology for many decades. They refer to a phenomenon that occurred in some South Pacific Islands during World War II. American forces had taken possession of some islands on which there lived primitive aboriginal tribes. The Americans built air fields used for military and logistic purposes.

After the war was over and the US troops left, the native aborigines adopted a bizarre religious cult. You see, the savages had observed the planes landing and taking off in the airfields built on the islands and understood them to have been sent by friendly gods as gifts to the American medicine men performing the correct rites. So the aborigines tried to induce the magical gods to send them planes of goodies by copying the rites. They built their own "airfields" of sand and gravel. They built their own "air tower" of sticks. They even carved from wood what looked like a microphone and spoke the same magical conjuring words into the "microphone" - "Roger over and Out" - to induce the gods to send the magic metal birds with gifts. In some cases the attempts to conjure the magic cargo angels lasted for years. All of which made a certain behavioristic sense.

I mention all of this because it is impossible to comprehend Oslo without understanding that at its very basis is a primitive belief in magic. The savage aborigines known as Israeli politicians have observed peacemaking in other lands. They see how one country makes concessions and shows goodwill gestures and eventually peace breaks out. Like the aborigines on the islands of the South Pacific, they confuse substance for rite, procedure for magic, essence for form. They try to mimic the processes of peace making they have seen, in the same ways that the islanders built seeming "airfields". Just as the savages mistook the science of aviation for magic, so the savages of Israeli politics mistake the rites of peace for actual peace making. The Israeli witch doctors want to give the Palestinians a state and agree to withdraw more or less to the 1949 borders. They grant the PLO funds and arms. They withdrew unilaterally from Lebanon and offered Syria all of the Golan and chunks of pre-1967 Israel. And they do all of this while singing "Let there be Peace" into a wooden microphone not connected to any speakers.

One sees evidence of the "peacemaking" cargo cult everywhere one goes in Israel. People believe that if they place bumper stickers on their cars that say peace is nice, this will bring down the great peace cargo metal bird from the heavens. They think that if they carve a wooden microphone of self-debasement and renunciation of national pride, this will earn them the gratitude of the magic cargo angels. The medicine men and witch doctors of the Knesset think that if they go through the mechanical rites of making concessions to the PLO fascists and the rest of the Arab world, then this will magically produce the bounty.

Without attributing Oslo to the belief in magic, it cannot be explained at all. Only due to faith in magic can one understand the total disregard for empirical observation and reason by Israel´s elites. One cannot build an airfield without first understanding the basics of aerodynamics and electricity. Airplanes based on faith in conjuring words do not fly. Oslo was based on disregard and ignorance of the basic physics of the Middle East. It was obvious to anyone with common sense that Oslo would never fly.

Magic has indeed replaced Jewish tradition faith and belief for most of the Oslo camp. The Polynesian savages kept running through the empty rite over and over. They believed that if the magic metal bird did not materialize it must be because they were performing some detail in the rite incorrectly. Oslo exactly. It is the Jimminy Cricket view of the Middle East conflict: If Jews simply wish upon their wishing star hard enough, if they simply tell themselves into the wooden mike how important peace is, the magic will occur. And if it has failed to occur to date, someone out there is not performing the magical rite properly or with insufficient devotion.

To tell you the truth, I have always thought that the strict Torah prohibitions on the forms of paganism based on "cloud reading" and such were referring to cargo cults like Oslo.

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Steven Plaut teaches at the University of Haifa and is author of The Scout (available from Gefen Publishing House: http://161.58.167.199/shop/indi_scout.htm).

[SJackson]

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The last cargo cult

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[SJackson]

Very un-PC. You couldn't put that bumper sticker on your car in Israel, the cargo cult says it's hateful. :>)