SEEKING JUSTICE? THEN TRY TO SEE THE BIG PICTURE AND RISE ABOVE ANGER AND HATRED

Once again Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has proven himself extremely adept at making people’s blood boil. His recent visit to New York with its speaking engagements at the United Nations and at Columbia University is the latest example. The overt purpose of this exercise in political theatrics was to gain sympathy for Iran’s insistence on an unrestrictive nuclear program, including the development of nuclear weapons, an idea that is an anathema in the U.S., Israel and in many other parts of the world.

As several commentators have stated, the visit was a flamboyantly graceless effort to lay claim for Iran and by extension for Ahmadinejad himself to a role of importance on the world stage. It’s also no big stretch to see it as Iran’s attempt to convince world opinion that its nuclear program could not possible have any hostile intent and to appeal for sympathy against would-be attackers of that program. How could anyone attack such a principled nation, Ahmadinejad seems to be saying by his presence, whether Iran is developing hydrogen bombs or sending arms to Iraq to be used against the U.S. military or to Hizballah in Lebanon?

Inflammatory Position on Israel

The main reason that Ahmadinejad is such a disturber of the peace, of course, has to do with his position on Israel. In fact, his pronouncement on Israel has frequently been translated into the assertion that Israel “should be wiped off the map.” As an anti-Israel extremist, Ahmadinejad has further stirred up emotion by aligning himself with those who deny that the holocaust ever took place, calling it “a fabricated legend” in a December 2005 telecast, and then a year later hosting a two-day conference of holocaust deniers.

Questioned in New York about his stands on both Israel and its right to exist and the holocaust, Ahmadinejad responded with a rhetorical question. “Why is it that the Palestinian people are paying the price for an event that they had nothing to do with?” he asked. His past denial of the holocaust notwithstanding, he is telling us that his problem with it now is that, in his opinion, it has been used as a justification for, first of all, the establishment of the state of Israel and, second, as justification for the alleged mistreatment of the Palestinians.

Maddening, Short-Circuited Logic

This linkage of these different assertions makes for a maddening, short-circuited exercise in logic and is not all that dissimilar to the line I have heard from others, particularly from some of those on the left of the Israel-Palestinian issue. Those who see the establishment of Israel, whether with approval or disapproval, only as pay back for the holocaust are drastically undervaluing the reason the nation of Israel came into being, and they play into the hands of the Ahmadinejads of the world and their sinister intent.

As I have previously said in this forum, establishment of the state of Israel was the right thing to do in 1948 for many reasons, of which making a homeland for abused and dispossessed people was only one. However, seeing the establishment of Israel as the be-all and the end-all of a comprehensive verdict in the name of justice for the lost Jews of Europe is entirely unsatisfying. Israel as a nation came into being for a whole slew of reasons--religious, historic, political, economic, social—that is, for reasons as broad and diverse as the founding of the United States of America itself.

Separate Nation in Europe

Had an attempt to mete out justice for the atrocities of World War II been truly made in the years immediately following the war, then what we might have seen would have involved creation for the survivors of a protected area, that is, an independent country, within the area in proximity to their home and the home of generation after generation of their ancestors. I speak of creation of a separate nation in Europe as well as Israel.

Such a protected area in Europe should have been taken from the country whose government, military establishment and people were the perpetrators of the atrocities called the holocaust, that is, from Germany.

That said, it must be acknowledged that the concept of justice when applied in a historic and political context is never clear cut and free of Byzantine complexities. What we have to hope for is that people of good will and compassion on all sides of the issue—people who have risen above anger and hatred, however understandable—will prevail.

To communicate with the author, write Stephen.saft@gmail.com.

Copyright (c ) 2007 by Stephen Alan Saft

TO BE ALIVE IS TO KNOW DISAPPOINTMENT

Periodically I think about people who have disappointed me, and people that I have disappointed. I wish disappointment were not so common an occurrence in life, but the fact is it is. The older we get, the more disappointments we accumulate. We are always disappointing each other, and in turn we are always being disappointed by others. In some cases, the disappointment we feel is unreasonable. In other cases it is eminently warranted from whatever the perspective.

To understand disappointment, we have to understand another important emotion—expectation. We come into most of our relationships with high expectation, and sometimes our expectations exceed good sense. We are expecting more than the other can possibly deliver.

Often our attitudes toward our parents include such unrealistic expectations. We expect our parents to be perfect. Because they are human beings, perfect is something they cannot be. Even their deaths are sometimes experienced as a disappointment. We find it hard to get over what we see as their abandonment of us.

High Expectations in Romantic Involvements

High expectation and even unrealistic expectations are also true in our love relations, that is, in our romantic involvements. We do not pursue a romantic relationship with the assumption that we will be mistreated or hurt in the process, nor do we pursue such a relationship with the intention of hurting the other. We enter into such relationships full of optimism. Sometimes, however, mistreatment is exactly the result, and the cause may be an obsession we dwell on for the rest of our lives.

Workplace: Source of Much Disappointment

In the last 30 to 40 years the workplace has become a source of many of the disappointments in most of our lives. This is partly the result of the fact that the workplace is not an isolated entity, but part of a dynamic known as the economy. As the economy has become more and more global in nature, we may experience in our individual workplaces the results of events that originated on the other side of the world.

Layoffs or reductions in force, also known as RIFs, are the painful economic phenomena that come readily to mind. These workplace disappointments always have a personal side to them. When we are laid off, we feel considerable anger towards other members of the rejecting organization, the survivors of the massacre and especially the boss, that is, if he is one of the survivors.

Trust, A Feeling Related to Expectation

Like the parent child relationship we knew growing up, the workplace presents us with a relationship hierarchy where trust, a feeling related to expectation, is assumed. Our assumption is that the boss, the parent substitute in the workplace, will treat us well. For example, we take for granted that promises made to us at the time of hiring will be kept.

We take for granted that the boss will make wise decisions with respect to the hiring of others with whom we have to work and with respect to the expenditure and allocation of limited resources. We do not assume that the volatility of the greater economy will be adverse to our own situation, and we do not assume that we will be victimized by leadership or management problems within the organization itself, such as one misguided decision after the other driving the entire organization into ruin.

Expectations of Those We Hire

In turn if we are the one doing the hiring, we have a feeling of trust in the people we bring on board. Something impressed us in their resume and the interview when we were considering them, and we have high expectation for their performance with us. We assume that they will give us their best effort. We do not deliberately choose people who have a drug or alcohol habit and thus, it may be assumed, will exhibit a high rate of absence or, worse, will steal from the organization to support that habit.

During the last years of a long career as an employee, I experienced both satisfaction and disappointment in abundance. I was working for a branch of a university that specialized in career education. Given our mission we were expected to be more entrepreneurial or business-oriented than is normally the case with universities.

Start Media-Rich Educational Program

I had the satisfaction of starting my own program involving the creation of computer-delivered media-rich applications and guiding it through to financial stability, but then I had the pain of seeing my good works squandered in an ill-conceived reorganization and a series of very poor hiring decisions and other poor management choices, all engineered by someone whose glibness I had previously admired and long mistook as a sign of intelligence and good judgment.

To teach in the program, I had hired several very capable instructors. I also taught in the program. With the loss of the program, these jobs were no longer tenable. Some of those I hired were resentful toward me, but there was nothing that I could do to intercede in their behalf. Thus what had been a very good relationship turned more than a little ugly. I, the founder of the program, had disappointed them.

How do we cope with disappointment? First we must accept that to disappoint and to be disappointed are part of the normal process of living. As long as what we did or what was done to us was not the result of intention or malice, we need to make ourselves get over it. Even if intention or malice was a factor, we need to practice acceptance. If we are the victim, we need to remember the importance of forgiveness. If we are the perpetrator, we may need to forgive ourselves.

Embrace the richness of possibility that is life at its fullest and move on. Yes, we must forgive.

You can reach the writer at this address: Stephen.saft@gmail.com.

Copyright © 2007 by Stephen Alan Saft