people according to the Old Testament.
But as stories often go, the Jews did not
see eye to eye with the new religions.
Somehow the Christians managed to
append their holy book to the Old
Testament and called it the New
Testament while the Arabs not to be left
out had their own version of a holy book
which they named with finality as the last
testament.
What these religions did was to create a
political tinderbox in the Middle East as
they all found ways to lay claim to the now
so called holy land. And as was atypical
to the Old Testament the wars continued
from where they had stopped. It seems the
journey to Canaan is always violent.
Fast forward to the year of our lord
2016 and in that year a King, actually a
president, is elected to the constitutional
democracy of America with the seat of the
regent, actually the white house, based in
Washington. America is still hailed as the
defender of the faithful or global cop.
In the year 2017, after one year of his
reign, this is how history is written,
the American monarch (the president)
addressed his people and issued a decree
formally recognizing Jerusalem as the
capital of Israel and ordered the relocation
of their temple (embassy) to Jerusalem.
Now that history has been written and
the expected fallout has already been set
in motion and the usually volatile region
has been made a lot more tense and ‘days
of rage’ have been declared and hosannas
have been sung in other quarters, one
begins to try to understand the mess.
According to Ochieng’s atlas the capital
of Israel is Tel Aviv and he wonders if
America has the version 2.0 which they
have not bothered to share. There is a
place called Jerusalem in America and
one wonders if that is the town they were
referring to. (Only if )
But more interestingly why would an
American president, who to the best of
our knowledge has many challenges back
home take time from his twitter obsession
to light a fire halfway across the world and
then retire to mar-a-lago to watch ‘fake
news’ he has created on CNN.
96 MAL21/17 ISSUE
The last word on jus-
tice should be to co-
rrect present injus-
tices if they exist and
not to delve into his-
torical injustices as
you cannot correct a
past injustice without
creating a present in-
justice. Even the co-
lonial farmer in Kenya
who had to leave felt
an injustice had been
committed.
The American president made it quite
clear that all he was doing was to correct
a historical injustice by recognizing
Jerusalem as the correct and ordained
capital of Israel. This assertion, he claims
is based on historical and biblical fact.
If that is his source of reference then
the president does need to refresh on his
schooling but since he already knows he is
the most intelligent man he knows, there
is not much hope for that. But why do
Israelis need a poorly schooled American
president to help them locate their capital.
Whether the American president is
clinically sane or not is not really the
issue, what Ochieng would lie to know
is at what point one begins to redress a
historical injustice? Do we go back ten
years, a century, a millennium or five
thousand years and who is the arbiter?
It appears to Ochieng that the Assyrians,
the Greek, the Romans, the Arabs, the
British and even the United Nations let
alone the Palestinians can lay claim on
Jerusalem depending on how far back one
wishes to go back to. Is the Jewish claim
historical or biblical?
At one time Kenya was proposed as a
possible site for the resettlement of the
dispersed Jews. Israel would have been
between Kenya and Uganda and probably
the mau mau uprising would have been
against the Israelis not the British.
Wh ich raises the question, we have every
five years raised the question of the so
called historical injustices in Kenya as a
campaign issue. What has never been
clear is who can make the claim and who
the arbiter should be.
Kenya got rid of its one glaring historical
injustice when it got independence from
British rule. But what the British left
was a demarcated country that had his
boundaries both externally that defined
Kenya and internally that defined
administrative divisions.
Would historical injustice be righted if we
were to reunite border communities that
were arbitrarily put in different countries
by colonial boundaries? Would historical
injustice be righted if tribal grouping
that used to roam the length and breadth
of Kenya are allowed to resume their
wanderings?
How would the coastal region correct
historical injustice? By removing the
remaining remnants of Omani and Yemeni
overlords or the removal of the upcountry
settlers into the coastal paradise. Who
is the rightful owner of the coast taking
history and stories into consideration?
As we have gleaned from the much
abbreviated history of the Palestine,
historical claims can be very flimsy
grounds to claim ownership and the
attempt to correct the perceived injustices
are steeped with peril as the not so bright
American president has attempted to do.
The last word on justice should be to
correct present injustices if they exist and
not to delve into historical injustices as
you cannot correct a past injustice without
creating a present injustice. Even the
colonial farmer in Kenya who had to leave
felt an injustice had been committed.
If Kenya’s political future is to be pegged
to correcting historical injustices then get
prepared for monumental upheavals that
will only be settled when the last man
with a memory still breathes. The history
and stories of the world is a chronicle of
injustices – as the adage goes ‘The world
is not fair!’