Reading this thread, I thought of this section from Skinny Legs and All by Tom Robbins.
Ginny
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“Ah, but there is no comparison,” Abu objected. “The Israeli army uses excessive force in quelling protests on the West Bank, true enough, and sometimes sadistic and cruel force, but even though it is racially motivated, and directed against my cousins, I must regard it an insignificant trifle compared to the Holocaust—”
“Hold on, my friend,” said Spike. “For one minute, hold on. Holocaust? We Jews perpetrated our own holocaust, I’m telling you. When? Who against? Over three thousand years ago against the Canaanites, that’s when and who. How is the Land of Canaan turning suddenly into the Land of Israel? By what sale, what deal, eh; what magic trick? By a holocaust. The Hebrews escaping from Egypt invaded Canaan and killed everybody, the whole country, old men, women, children, little babies what were in arms. A million, we butchered. Look it up. In history, maybe the first recorded act of genocide. The only Canaanites left alive were a few what were good for slave labor.”
“Wow!” said Ellen Cherry. “That’s pretty heavy. But that was a very long time ago. And, anyway, weren’t the Jews just taking back their homeland; you know, fighting to recover their promised land from these Canaanites?”
“Ha! So who is telling you this? The ghost of Moses, maybe? A homeland the Hebrews have never had. We’re nomads, already. Our tribes shlepped through this Canaan, lived there among its inhabitants for a while. Then, most of them moved on into Egypt. So, a long time passed, and then the Hebrews were slaves of the pharaoh, too bad for us, and this guy Moses told them, ‘Hey, we’re getting out of this mess, we’re going to escape.’ And the Jews said, ‘Okay, but where’s it to that we’re escaping, already?’ ‘To Canaan,’ Moses said. ‘Canaan is our rightful home in case you’ve forgotten it. God spoke to Abraham personally and said, “I promise you the Land of Canaan. You are my number one people what I’ve chosen, and Canaan is the place I’ve set aside for you, for your own forever.” Good. Only nobody read the fine print, which said that to move into our new home, we had to slaughter hundreds of thousands of human beings what were living there at the time.”
“You’re not exaggerating, Mr. Cohen? Wasn’t Canaan kind of a wilderness area that was open for settlement?”
“Hoo boy! You young people today, you’re knowing nothing very much. An advanced civilization, we’re talking about here. Already two thousand years old when the Hebrews invaded it. A lot of our culture comes from Canaan. You believe, darlink, that God told Moses go invade an advanced civilization, pilfer its territory, and kill all its people? Suppose in Westchester you had a nice house, and I stayed there the weekend as your guest, and then years pass and one day I come back and say, ‘God promised me your house.’ You would believe such a cockamamie story? No, you would not. So, okay, I murder you and your kids and your grandmother what’s in a wheelchair and your cat and your dog and your three goldfishes. And I say to the neighbors, ‘It’s my house now, don’t be peeing on my lawn.’ Hoo boy!”
“I guess we got America the same way,” ventured Ellen Cherry. “From the Indians.”
Spike ran his index finger, stubby and liver spotted, along the rim of his dry glass. “Okay, yes,” he said, “but at least John Wayne never said that God promised it to him. He honestly stole it.”
He paused. “I can tell you something?” He paused again, and Ellen Cherry could detect tearwater magnifying the green gooseberries of his eyes. “I can tell you something? Why I changed my birth name? Abu knows this, but no other body. I quote to you from the Old Testament. Joshua ‘carried off all the livestock of these cities,’ meaning the cities of Canaan, ‘but all the people he put to the sword, not sparing anyone who breathed.’ Joshua ‘plundered,’ Joshua ‘burned,’ Joshua massacred,’ Joshua ‘wiped them out,’ Joshua ‘put to death,’ Joshua ‘turned his forces,’ ‘all were taken by storm . . annihilated without mercy and utterly destroyed,’ Joshua ‘subdued,’ Joshua ‘slew,’ Joshua ‘left no survivors.’ In your Christian Bible you will find this nice story of this nice guy Joshua. You think I could go on living when I wear the name of such a man?”
Ellen Cherry was both touched and embarrassed. She reached out and patted the cuff of his canary-and-catsup plaid sport coat.
