Although I can’t relate, I hear that men with small penises acquire big fancy things in order to compensate for their lack of manhood. So what does an entire nation of little dickheads do?
Not build an empire with borders that resemble a giant cock - cause that's SO 925 B.C. These days, they just rock the world’s largest flag.
Beneath the ancient Jewish desert strongpoint of Masada, the world's largest flag was unfurled Sunday, covering a large stretch of sandy hinterland.
The huge blue and white Israeli flag, 660 meters (2,165 feet) long and 100meters (330 feet) wide and weighing 5.2 metric tons, breaks the record for the world's largest, according to the Tourism Ministry.
In Israel’s defense, the flag was actually created by an evangelical Christian Filipino, Grace Galindez-Gupana, who said that she decided to create the world’s largest sheet of toilet paper after G-d spoke to her “in thunder and lightening.”
Dang, what’s up with the Lord and rain showers lately? Too bad “the chosen people” aren’t
Georgians…
In any case, Shaul Zemach, director general of the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, topped off the unveiling with a fabulous soundbyte:
"This flag expresses the friendship between the Philippines and the state of Israel, and also the friendship between Jewish and Christian communities.”
Zemach must be referring to a "friendship" based on a giant overshadowing of importance, because
Israel is destroying Christianity in the Holy Land. But who cares about that? After all, Israel now has a BIG FLAG!! Woohoo!!!
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The Washington Post actually published this Btselem map of Israel's Apartheid Wall and the matrix of control formed by other Israeli mechanisms. I commend the paper for including on the map the Israeli-only bypass roads, represented by the grey lines. When you take the Israeli-controlled areas and the settlements into account, you quickly see why I and many others claim Israel is creating a series of Palestinian bantustans, disconnected patches of Palestinian areas Israel controls from every angle.
The Post ran a story on the wall as well. The first paragraph describes the wall's chief planner , a"retired army colonel," as a "leading actor in Israel's modern story of statehood, conquest and the volatile task of erecting a boundary that divides Arab from Jew." Without much surprise, he also happens to be a settler -- a modern-day colonizer who thinks the Jews are entitled to more land that happens to be under the Palestinians.
It is deeply troubling how much this sort of language of separation replicates the logic of segregation and apartheid, which the separated people fought in great civil rights struggles. What is even more disturbing is how such logic can be repeated by American journalists and academics without even a pause nor awareness of the obvious analogue.
The Supreme Court of the United States recognized that the formula of "separate but equal" was a fallacious one. Yet, it is the basis for the mainstream view of what "peace" entails in Israel-Palestine. How foolish it is for American thinkers -- people who should know better -- to fail to apply their own history to a conflict their country has a central role in maintaining. The idea of separating Palestinians and Israelis has only amounted to further oppression of the Palestinians.
Nonsense, many Zionuts and other ignoramuses, will declare. They will charge that there was never such bloodshed and violence between blacks and whites in America or South Africa. If they counted all the slaves that dies in the trade of humans, the lynching, the outcome of an evil criminal justice system that for decades punished excessively any black it could (and still disproportionately punishes them), then they would see that the violence between Palestinians and Israelis is actually tame in comparison.
The biggest obstacle to peace is simply the fact that those in power would rather sacrifice rights and equality for continuing a history of dispossession, control, and systematic violence. By "those in power," I mean the US government and Israel of course. The ones with the power and weapons control the terms of the conflict -- not the dispossessed, the refugees, and the downtrodden. Thinking that such an imposing and grotesque wall keeping a people divided and suffering will bring about progress is a flight of ahistorical fantasy.
[tarboush tip: Yasser]
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I recently received an e-mail from an Israeli friend with a Powerpoint presentation attached entitled, The State of Israel and the Muslim World.
"Propaganda, for your reading pleasure," his e-mail warned. I opened it up and began being schooled on the geography of the Middle East:
Totally made me go, "Actually, no... I mean, I can only
kinda see Israel. But wow --- it's
soooooooo small!!!! Is that what people are fighting for over there? That small piece of land??????? Are you kidding me? OMG, leave them alone!!! And look, how unfair -- that small drop of blue in that seeeeeeeeeeea of red blood. We
musssst continue to give Israel our support. The underdog needs our support, America! Heed the call!!!"
Okay, I'm lying.
Lying not unlike that map.
Mark Monmonier, geographer and author of
How to Lie with Maps, would probably agree with the "propaganda" warning. In fact, Monmonier includes a similar map from 1973 in his chapter entitled, "Maps for Political Propaganda." He writes,
"Sometimes propaganda maps try to make a country or region look big and important, and sometimes they try to make it look small and threatened... In the latter case, the map might dramatize the threat a large state or group of states poses for a smaller country. [The above map], for instance, portrays a cartographic David-and-Goliath contest between tiny Israel and the massive territory of the nearby oil-rich Arab nations. Even though the map's geographic facts are accurate, a map comparing land area tells us nothing about Israel's advanced technology, keen military preparedness, and alliances with the United States and other Western powers (p 94)."
Monmonier's book has been used by university geography departments for years to develop critical map-reading skills. Geographers know to approach maps with a "healthy skepticism." All maps lie. Every single one. As Monmonier states on the very first page,
To portray meaningful relationships for a complex, three-dimensional world on a flat sheet of paper or a video screen, a map must distort reality... to present a useful and truthful picture, an accurate map must tell white lies.
Monmonier continues,
Because most map users willingly tolerate white lies on maps, it's not difficult for maps also to tell more serious lies. Map users generally are a trusting lot... As with many things beyond their full understanding, they readily entrust map-making to a priesthood of technically competent designers and drafters working for government agencies and commercial firms... Map users seldom, if ever, question these authorities, and they often fail to appreciate the map's power as a tool of deliberate falsification or subtle propaganda.
To show that Israel is, as has too often been described to me as, "a drop in a sea of Arabs who want all Jews killed," is to not only show a lie, but an irresponsible lie costing thousands of lives and millions of livelihoods.
Please beware, reader, of anyone trying to tell you that maps don't lie. Unfortunately, these folks still exist. Googling the phrase "How to Lie with Maps," you'll find that the 5th result is a site insisting that everything you've just read is false:
Maps Don't Lie!
Beware, reader.
The site,
Masada2000.org, calls itself "Israel 101: A Survival Kit for Dummies" and enjoys using quotations around the word Palestinian as much as I like to use quotes around any reference to their use of "cartography" and "geography."
In said "geography" section, the site ends the lesson of Israel and the Middle East by including a map of Israel imposed on top of the U.S., in the midwest.
Their map shows another method of playing the size card. The "cartographer" has chosen to graphically compare Israel with the United States to say that Israel is, "Tiny,
tiny,
tiny."
So why on top of the U.S. and not on top of Canada or China (other countries similar in landmass)? It seems that the map hopes to serve as a call for sympathy specifically targeted to U.S. audiences, where political and economic support is the most crucial. That Israel has been placed on top of the midwest (which many Americans consider open, vast, sometimes "less significant" territory) is trying to "hit home" for the map-reader, hopefully getting him or her to deduce that the nation-state of Israel was created on equally barren, undisputed territory (a "backwater", as Pre-1948 Palestine is often described by Zionists, if you will.)
Makes one wonder how their readers would react if instead, Israel was imposed on top of Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, New York, St. Louis, or Washington, D.C. It might make the map "hit home" but this time, perhaps for the other side.
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