Epiphany
The word epiphany originally referred to the manifestation of Christ to the Magi who, according to the Christian faith, arrived bearing gifts for Baby Jesus 12 days after his birth. Consequently, epiphany is marked on 6 January, the 12th day after Christmas. Now, however, the term’s meaning has expanded to mean a moment of sudden and great revelation or realization.
This year, US President Joe Biden, a deeply religious man, clearly had an epiphany near Christmas, but he had it on 12 December, 12 days before not after Christmas. So what? Anyone can get these things mixed up.
On that day, it dawned on Mr. Biden that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the leader of “the most conservative government in Israel’s history,” which does not “want anything remotely approaching a two-state solution”, as he was quoted to say in the New York Times.
President Biden was so astute to notice this. After all, it was only in 1996 that Mr. Netanyahu was elected Prime Minister on his promise to annul the Oslo accord. Since then, he has never missed an opportunity to reassert his rejection of the peace accords in word and deed, up to the 12th of December, when the Jerusalem Post quoted him to say that he would “not allow Israel to repeat the mistake of Oslo.”
Throughout his long political career, Mr. Netanyahu has been as subtle as a sledgehammer in his rejection of the Oslo peace accords and any other peace initiatives; but remarkably, only now the White House suddenly realized that maybe, just maybe Mr. Netanyahu does not want a two-state solution.?
This was not Mr. Biden’s only great discovery. In his infinite perspicacity, he noticed that Israel may be losing international support because of its indiscriminate bombing of Gaza for nearly three months now, to say nothing of its decades of oppressing Palestinians.
领英推荐
Mr. Biden’s surprise was understandable. For decades, Western officials and media worked desperately to obliterate the truth about Palestine and mobilize support for the Zionist movement’s campaign to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their historic homeland. Everything was used to mobilize support and sympathy for the Zionist project, down to the terminology used in academic and media references to the Middle East.
Today, for instance, the killing of more than 18,000 unarmed Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, is termed self-defense. Additionally, US officials insist that Israelis do not deliberately target Palestinian civilians and their media and academics do not ask how it is possible to kill tens of thousands of people not deliberately.
But the truth was discovered and tens of thousands of people came out in demonstrations in all major Western cities, some in defiance of legislation that censures criticism of Israel in their countries. Thousands of Jewish demonstrators in the West openly criticized Israel and accused it of violating Jewish principles.
No wonder Joe Biden was shocked and stunned. This was a major paradigm shift and it will continue to show effect for years to come.?