We are now spectators of the latest – and perhaps penultimate – chapter of the 60 year old conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people. About the complexities of this tragic conflict billions of words have been pronounced, defending one side or the other.

Today, in face of the Israeli attacks on Gaza, the essential calculation, which was always covertly there, behind this conflict, has been blatantly revealed. The death of one Israeli victim justifies the killing of a hundred Palestinians. One Israeli life is worth a hundred Palestinian lives.

This is what the Israeli State and the world media more or less – with marginal questioning – mindlessly repeat. And this claim, which has accompanied and justified the longest Occupation of foreign territories in 20th C. European history, is viscerally racist. That the Jewish people should accept this, that the world should concur, that the Palestinians should submit to it – is one of history’s ironic jokes. There’s no laughter anywhere. We can, however, refute it, more and more vocally.

Let’s do so.

John Berger, 29 December 2008

The great novelist and art critic John Berger (Ways of Seeing) has dedicated his latest book From A to X to the late Palestinian writer and political activist, Ghassan Kanafani. Berger is a long-time supporter of Palestinian and other indigenous resistance movements.

Last week, Berger sent a video of his reading of “Letter from Gaza” (full text here) to be played at the Zapatistas’ intergalactic conference in Mexico. The Zapatistas have put the audio up on their web site.

I recommend listening to Berger’s reading of Kanafani’s piece, as his delivery in phenomenal.

http://dignarabia.ezln.org.mx/index.php?p=466

[Tarboush tip: hbb]

Related posts:

1. Letter from Gaza (1956), by Ghassan Kanafani
2. Walking the Boycott Walk
3. Mack on John Updike’s Terrorist
4. John Who?
5. Our word: A murmur, a loud voice, and then a shout they hear in Gaza