Exodus

This Friday Jews everywhere begin their 8-day celebration of the Exodus from Egypt. 'Exodus' is a funny word, part-Greek, part-Latin, suggesting 'the road out.' A better translation might be 'the Book of Migration,' and indeed the story is a migration narrative, fraught with all the ambivalences and hard choices migrants face. Take Pharaoh: he can't decide whether to hold onto his low-wage migrant labor force, or deport them. And the people of Israel themselves, like migrants everywhere, are unsure whether to put up with the misery they know or risk the unknown. So the story has a contemporary, timeless quality, and in that light I've been thinking about four particular Red Sea situations that trouble our world right now.

The best known is the Aegean, whose waters parted last year to allow a million or more Syrians, Iraqis, and others to reach the Promised Land of Germany or Sweden or some other European receiver. Those waters closed over some thousands of others whose boats weren't sea-worthy, and now Pharaoh Merkel may be changing her mind about letting these people go. And I say that with respect--like all politicians, she has no easy choices when it comes to migration. This Exodus story has received quite a lot of attention, and we Americans have been occasionally reminded how our reckless invasions have precipitated much of the upheaval in the region.

We hear less than we should, though, about a second migrant crisis for which we bear almost total responsibility. I refer to the Holocaust taking place in slow-motion in the northern half of Central America, with murder rates more than 50 times (!) those in our most dangerous cities. Thousands of migrants have taken their chances and headed north, despite uncountable murders along the route, despite the fact that as many as 90% (!) of the women and girls on that migratory route are raped or sexually enslaved. Despite the fact that our Red Sea--the Rio Grande, I suppose, though it's really the whole border--doesn't open willingly if at all. When our present Pharaoh and all the Pharaoh-candidates talk about stabilizing the border and developing a comprehensive immigration policy, these Central Americans fleeing their local holocaust are the ones being talked about. And let's be clear: not only is this Central American crisis a direct consequence of 100 years of American intervention, subterfuge, exploitation, and violence, but the gangs that have made life no longer worth living in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala were formed in Los Angeles, their members deliberately deported by our government to wage their reign of terror 'back home' in countries where they had never lived.

A third Red Sea, about which we hear even less, is the Timor Sea, where migrants crossing from Indonesia are routinely intercepted as they reach Australian territorial waters by naval vessels that transport them to offshore detention centers in places like New Guinea and Nauru. There, facing mounting threats of hunger and disease, they will wait forever, as Australia vows not to admit a single boat-borne refugee, regardless of circumstance. Many of these refugees are fleeing Syria and Iraq, though some are Muslims fleeing terror and ethnic cleansing in Burma, and others are climate migrants from Bangladesh. Australia's Liberal [sic] government not only rode to power on this rigid policy, but is widely marketing it to European politicians, who are listening with interest.

And a fourth Red Sea, probably the most deadly, is the slip of Mediterranean Sea that divides the coast of Libya from the Italian island of Lampedusa. For a time this route declined in use as the Aegean one looked more promising, and the EU tried to put more controls in place, but with the closing of the Aegean--and in the absence of any effective Libyan governance--the Libyan exodus is expected to resume with full force. While these migrants are coming from all over Africa--North, sub-Saharan, Horn--as well as the Middle East, it is worth noting that some fraction of them are in the first wave of what will gradually become a huge swell of climate migrants. Diminishing rainfall, along with rising coastlines and other agricultural displacements, will become a major theme of this century, on a timetable we don't quite know. All the other migrant crises already in process might come to look like dress rehearsals for this big one.

So what should we learn from our retelling  of the Exodus story? I would suggest that migration, exodus, always poses difficult and dangerous choices. We as a species are moving inexorably, whether we like it or not, toward a vast decision, taken perhaps in many stages, but it's the same fundamental choice: are we a global species, all 7 or 8 or 12 billion of us, interdependent and mutually accountable for our collective and personal welfare? Will we address the migration question globally, as one people, one species? Or will we fall back into our separate clans and groups, fortify our borders and violently defend them, keeping the Other out at all costs? It's worth recalling that the Book of Exodus concludes with horrific accounts of conquest and ethnic cleansing--no easy answers there. But if we can see ourselves as the migrant, the stranger, the pilgrim in search of milk and honey, corn and wine, perhaps we can see others, ALL the others, that way too.