Israel has not seen real peace throughout its existence. The governing Zionist minority would not recognize or appreciate peace if it landed in their laps. When Yitzhak Rabin took radical steps to negotiate the Oslo Agreement and push forward a peace process, domestic extremists rewarded him with death. President Clinton set out to implement that agreement and The Lobby tossed back a tsunami of absurd political events that eventually forced America to abandon the Oslo deal. Why? Simple petty disputes over land, about the size of a private ranch in Texas, are on top of the heap of excuses.

Thereafter, The Lobby went into high gear: a multi-faceted pressure campaign set out to snuff the Oslo Agreement. It set the religious fundamentalists against the more secular Americans. That essentially hijacked the debate. Alas, few Israeli politicians care to remember that Israel and its modern economy owe their existence to the support of mostly secular Americans and to administrations prior to the Reagan era. Advanced weapons, housing loans, countless UN vetoes, education for immigrants, water and refineries, and IMF money are all due in part to generous American support. (On a per capita basis, total public and private debt of Israel is amongst one of the top 5 highest in the world).

What baffles the mind is how American politicians fail to recognize Israel as an independent, foreign state. This error leads to a false assessment of national priorities. At least one American is convicted for spying for Israel and is serving a life sentence and two senior directors of American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) are targets of spying investigations by the FBI. Where are the dividing lines? Where does national interest end and treason begin? And is it fair to question what America gets in return? Does such blind support help, or devalue, America’s stature in the world? Will there be a level playing field, or level-headed players? More important is whether this is a temporary matter or an endless saga programmed to divert attention from one petty issue to another, an elaborate setup to avoid the real issue and a truly equitable solution.

I cannot help but recall the Nobel-winning masterpiece Das Glasperlenspiel (The Glass Bead Game) by Hermann Hesse, where a fictional monastic organization set up boarding schools to train boys about the reality of life and to engage them in playing a futile game. The game itself remains elusive but is always presumed to be highly sophisticated and complex, as it demands a sophisticated knowledge of ancient history, theology, arts and sciences, all in a special secret synthesis. From time to time, one of the students masters The Game in the isolated school in a protected Ivory Tower community, which exists oblivious to the problems of ordinary people in its nation.