As Israel's butchery in Gaza continues, having left more than 100 dead in Gaza in the past 5 days, I am sickened by both reactions coming from the world's powers. On one hand, we have the condemnations by world leaders who speak of Israel's "excessive force," yet sit on their hands. Excess, after all, is not a crime in capitalist economies; it is part and parcel; more land, more money, more luxuries, more dead natives.
On the other hand, America's leaders hone in on Israel's right to defend itself. All the presidential candidates race to please pro-Israeli voters and money, and stand silent as one in three of Gaza's dead are children.
To begin with, Gaza is a densely populated, impoverished bastion of refugees -- displaced by Israel. If you read the American press and only listened to the pronouncements, you would not know this essential fact.
The people of Gaza survive because Israeli assaults are nothing new. This is just one bloodshed in a history of bloodsheds. As refugees, they know the cost of being on the wrong side of an ethno-religious nationalism dedicated to statehood by any means necessary, in negation of of the rights of the native inhabitants.
Outside observers in the West use self-defense to wash away their cognitive dissonance as the "light among nations" kills so mercilessly. The truth is that Israel must kill. If the world is to believe Israel's spin about the "existential threat" by a displaced and pauperized class of refugees, they must act accordingly. They must erase the existence of that threat -- so they kill and kill, using any pretense, such as aimless rockets, to inflict an exponentially greater act of murder.
It is not the existence of Israel that is threatened, but the existence of the Palestinians. Who is more endangered, Israel with its modern army and ruthless use of superior weaponry? Or the Palestinians, a desperate people victimized for the past centuries by foreign occupiers.
By their mere fact, the Palestinians remind Israel of its original sin -- the fact it was built on stolen land. Palestinian existence stands between the Israelis and their belonging, their normalcy. The original people are an unpleasant reminder. So now, they must be erased.
Sunday, March 02, 2008
The Real Existential Threat
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5 comments:
Victory to the IDF. Israel will triumph over the evil Arab Palestinian terrorists.
What about the nice ones?
On one hand, we have the condemnations by world leaders who speak of Israel's "excessive force," yet sit on their hands.
There is no such thing as "excessive force" in a military operation - that's a law enforcement term. The objective of a military operation is to destroy the enemy. Period.
What about the nice ones?
Nice what? Palestinians? You have evidence there are some? Would you like to share it, mohammad?
"aimless rockets" are not pretense. They create a terrorized living environment in what would otherwise be a middle-class nation. Destroying middle-class security is evil; if Gazans, even in peacetime, can't currently obtain middle-class security, our challenge is to bring that about, but they lose their moral standing when they attempt to fuck with other people's middle-class security.
Terrorizing Sderot isn't the answer. Attempting to emulate the secular, international ideal of middle-class life, rather than fighting to enlarge your little slice of what amount to tribal spoils, is.
As refugees, they know the cost of being on the wrong side of an ethno-religious nationalism dedicated to statehood by any means necessary,
Israel already has statehood. What year are you living in?
The truth is that Israel must kill.
A Jew's gotta do what a Jew's gotta do.
using any pretense, such as aimless rockets,
Heh. And Palestinians are too — what? principled? — to stop the rockets? Why do they provide the "pretense"? I mean, it's a really good pretense: launching rockets is an act of war.
Why do the Palestinians give the Israelis such a fantastic pretense? It doesn't help their case, does it? What are they accomplishing?
What is so important to the Palestinian cause about the rockets?
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