Theories of causality are many, and none ever explain any given
phenomenon fully, because everything causes everything in a universe
where Jah is One. Some proponents of the Bully, Demonize and Subjugate
campaign like to imagine that the end of political apatheid in South
Africa was caused by sanctions and international boycotts. They then
charicature Israel as similar to South Africa, and suggest it can be
"transformed" (i.e erased) in similar fashion - through boycotts and sanctions.
However other readings of history would attribute to sanctions against
SA only a very minor role. What ended political apartheid were the
inherent contradictions of an untenable system, and the impossibility of
running a capitalist economy while only utilising a tiny portion of the
human resources of a country, and excluding most of its citizens from
paricipation in the market as producers or consumers. In the same way sanctions on Israel will not prove
transformative - on the contrary they will play into the hands of
Israel's right, and harden Israeli intransigence. What could cause the
implosion of Israel in its current form is not external. As with South
Africa it is internal contradictions, and unresolved fault lines (of
identity, vision and purpose) that eventually bring about an "end" (i.e
transition) to name and form - be it of an individual or collective.
________________________________________
The quiet coercion of delegitimization and dehumanization: As a child
growing up in Apartheid South Africa, in the 1970s, largely because of
the attitudes I imbibed from my family, from around the age 11 or 12, if
someone in the circles I moved in - neighbourhood kids, school, Hebrew
school - ever used the word "kaffir" I would upbraid them, and at the
least ask them not to use the word in my presence, because I did not
want to be guilty of a crime of ommission or comission. IIt is the very
same impulse now that leads me to resist the use of the word "Zionist"
when it is flung about as some kind of pejorative term whose negative
connotations both speaker and listener mutually agree to.
____________________________________
It seems to me in terms of Israel putting out the clear message that it
will not accomodate or appease any Palestinian entity which has not made
peace with the idea and the reality of the existence of the State of
Israel as a territorially and economically viable nation state, it must
balance this firm and unambiguous stance with the firm and unambiguous
assurance to the Palestinians that when they demonstrate by deed they
have shifted internally (for example changing their school
curricula to reflect co-existence rather than a staged triumphalism,
not trying to harness anti-Semitism as a "useful beast" that will
further their cause....wild beasts are unpredictable and often turn on
their "owners") Israel will not obstruct the creation of a territorially
viable state which also (depending upon what the Palestinians and their
backers do with it) has the potential to be economically viable.
This
means that Israeli schools need to show Judea and Samaria as “disputed
territories” not as an integral and inalienable parts of the State of
Israel (even if they are inalienable parts of the land of Israel). It
makes it more difficult to request Palestinian maps reflect the reality
of Israel if Israeli maps do not reflect the reality of a nascent
Palestinian state. At the moment the stick is clear, but the carrot is
not, and this is perhaps a crucial omission from Israeli foreign policy
and the public discourse about the conflict.
_______________________________________________
Those “Jews” who are the poster boys/girls of the “radix malorum Israel
est” brigade (the “Israel is the root of all evil” cult) generally do
not participate in Jewish communal life in any of its manifestations, do
not consciously contribute to Jewish thought or culture, and their
children (if they have children) do not identify as being Jewish. These
people only claim their Jewishness when they think it gives them a
platform from which to attack, devalue, malign and misrepresent the
things that the overwhelming majority of practising, affiliated Jews
hold as dear and central to their communal identity.
_____________________________________________
To those who talk of "genocide" in Gaza: Don't debase the word "genocide" by flinging it about, just because you
believe it will help you enroll others to your cause. Save it for real
genocides, and hopefully people will not have grown inured to its weight
because of overuse.
___________________________
Those who demonize Israel (as opposed to merely criticising Israeli
policies) have forgotten that we have met the enemy and he is us: "When
we allow ourselves to be persuaded by speech that seeks to draw evermore
entrenched lines between one set of people and another, we tacitly
accept apathetic prejudice as an acceptable means to justify our
feelings of injustice. This usually results in the demonizing of
otherwise well-meaning people, forcing them into positions they did not
themselves wish for, and from which they can only be expected to fight
back, sometimes vehemently. Listen to just about anyone react to the
outbreak of violence in Arsal (Lebanon) [or Israel / Gaza], and you can
hear this dynamic at play."
https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/559970-limits-of-the-language-world
______________________________________
One of those historical ironies: Zionism, which was meant to end
anti-Semitism, by 'normalising' the Jewish people so that they became a
rooted localised people like "every other nation" instead has provided
the excuse and pretext for 'new' and virulent forms of anti-Semitism,
which in turn bolsters the Zionist narrative that Jews will never be
unconditionally accepted outside of their homeland; (that Jews who think
differently are not necessarily accepted in some parts and strata of
Israeli society is another matter...) Jew hatred of the sort we are
witnessing now turns disinterested Jews into potential candiates for
aliya (going to Israel). So Zionism, rather than resolving
anti-Semitism, now, in some ways, needs it. But if anti-Semitism is the
price for Israel to grow and consolidate itself, it is a very hefty
price indeed...
______________________________________
“If in the past year you didn’t CRY OUT when thousands of protesters
were killed and injured by Turkey, Egypt and Libya, when more victims
than ever were hanged by Iran, women and children in Afghanistan were
bombed, whole communities were massacred in South Sudan, 1800
Palestinians were starved and murdered by Assad in Syria, hundreds in
Pakistan were killed by jihadist terror attacks, 10,000 Iraqis were
killed by terrorists, villagers were slaughtered in Nigeria, but you
ONLY cry out for GAZA, then you are not pro HUMAN RIGHTS, you are only
ANTI-ISRAEL.” — Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, July 15,
2014
______________________________________________
Syria's conflict has killed 170,000 people, including more than 9,000
children, according to the Observatory, and forced nearly half the
country's population to flee their homes." Why are networks not showing
images from this conflict every night? What makes the death of a 100
children in Gaza more newsworthy than 9000 in Syria? Is it because
there is a pre-existing audience ready to thrill with rage and horror at
"Israeli agression" while there is only indifference and apathy re
fatalaties from civil wars and sectarian conflicts within the
Arab/Iislamic world? Or is it because the Syrian conflict has been going
on for two years, and the fickle media just gets bored and moves on to
exacerbating conflict somewhere else? Or is it because its to dangerous
to cover, so they cover conflicts which are relatively safe and easy to
access?.
__________________________________________________
Strange parallel reality: when I read some news sources they report not
only Palestinian casualties, but also from the bomb shelters which
Israelis have to run to several times a day. They report on the
thousands of projectiles fired into Israel. They report on the foiled
series of terror attacks from tunnels dug under Kibbutzim and villages
in the South of Israel, attacks designed to massacre Israelis and in
some cases , to take Israelis captive to use as "trading" cards. They
report on the terror off residents of the South, traumatised by missile
explosions and the sounds of digging (sometimes real / sometimes
imagined) below their rooms. They report on Hamas videos calling
Israeli and Jews "cockroaches"and urging their extermination. They point
out that in most conflicts between Western style democracies and
dictatorships casualties have been lopsided in favour of the
democracies, because the democraceis tend to be both technologically
more sophisticated (because, for example, of the free flow of
information and the inclusion of women) and because democracies tend to
invest in the protection of their citizens, rather than using them as
canon fodder for PR "gains". And they point out that a score card of
casualties has only been lovingly kept in the Israeli - Palestinian
conflict...you won't easily find one for Desert Storm, or the Iran-Iraq
war,or Xianjeng province in China, or for ISIS, which last week and this
has killed more than 700 people. But when I go to the Sydney Morning
Herald all of this has been vanished and the only representations
allowed are Palestinian suffering....
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment