Dear "Israel loves Iran",
I am quite mad at you! I am mad at you because I think you are not doing ENOUGH to stop the war.
"Please" stop the war is not enough!
Why don't you shout "not in my name"?
Why don't you hold Israel accountable to its illegal settlement announcements?
Why don't you hold Israel accountable to assassination campaign, to derailing the peace process?
Why so TIMID?
Why PLEASE?
In war, "politeness"?
90 Palestinians are killed in retaliation to 3 Israelis who were killed in response to Israel's assassination of a Hamas leader--who happened to be the negotiator for release of an Israeli hostage.
Is this FAIR? Is this something that you like Israel to "please stop"?!
Why begging the murderers to be PLEASED to stop a war that is generated out of their strategic calculations (based on reliability of the desired retaliatory response with toy-weapons from the opposite side)?
Isn't Israel a democracy?
Have you no voice to DEMAND Israel to stop this madness?
Why not declaring solidarity with the innocent victims?
So far they are 300% more on the Gaza side.
Why not sending condolence messages to a family whose three generations were "exterminated" by a bomb IN YOUR NAME?
How about calling for TRUTH and RECONCILIATION?
Have you no voice to speak to the 90% of Israelis who support these atrocities, to make them SEE what is the root cause of this all: "illegal settlements" and refusal to allow a two-state solution go ahead??
What kind of activism is this?
How about calling for anti-war strikes?
How about posting pictures of candle vigils showing you in opposition to war?
And how about reporting on how dissent from this war-line of rhetoric in Israel is tolerated?
How about being genuine?
Thanks
Naj
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Monday, November 19, 2012
Silence of the lambs: Israel, Gaza and The New World Order
The war raging in Gaza will have direct implications for Iran; but that is not why I care.
The reason why I care is because the war raging in Gaza will have implications for the world.
In 2001, I watched in disbelief on our Hospital's waiting-room TV: a plane smashed into the second of the twin towers. I almost fell: The third world war is to begin.
Ever since, all I have been hearing is the chant of the "new world order", and a clearly failing strategy, a clearly failing global strategy ...
First, Iraq whose oil revenues are not quite as promising any more as is Afganistan's gas fields and virgin mountains, which came next.
Then the eyes glued to Iran. They are still glued to Iran--the 'little' Gaza riffraff may as well be Israel's testing the waters, for uncle sam, for what can be done to Iran, next. (they piloted the bunker-busters in the previous operation, now they are piloting the defense cloud--they cannot test their new technology without Hamas being provoked to shoot at it, can they?)
But that is besides the point. The point that is pricking in my eyes, that is making me cry, is the silence and the complicity of the world.
When 911 happened, a friend asked me "what is wrong with you people"; I had to ruffle her ignorant feathers by explaining to her what is really wrong with people whose lives are undermined by the economic interests of the nations such as hers in which the popular ignorance and political apathy worked in counter-production to democracy!
And now, as the war in Gaza rages, it is the silence of my most progressive friends, the human-right defenders, the activists, the leftist, the religious, the god fearing republicans; it is their indifference to the images of carnage, the photo after photo of dead baby corpses held in the arms of mourning parents; that is the real threat.
Their world goes by; as if nothing is happening, as if the other is none of our business, as if Israel is exercising its god given right to kill indiscriminately to retaliate indiscriminate firing of baby-rockets that have not killed in their entire history more than half as many as Israel has killed in the pas few days.
Eager to support the rights of every student pepper-sprayed on the campus; forefront in sighting for the rights of Iranian women; petition flaunting when the rights of homosexuals are violated; and outraged if someone denies the dangers of the climate change, these active intellectuals are totally mum on the issue of what is raging in Palestine. I wonder WHY? Are they scared? are they uninformed? are they indifferent?
And for others (the not typically involved ones),an illusion governs that the ghosts of injustice will not find political zombies. "The world is too large", they say, "I just mend my own fence and trim my own grass." Wonderful! this is what most of the post-Nazi Germans said to excuse themselves: "we didn't know, we were just simple people." But does being "simple people" exclude us from the world ecology?! Berlin's rubble women will testify differently.
Worse, are the political impostures who wear an air of sophistication and turn their noses up at the "childish stupidity of the middle easterners who are not capable of living in harmony."
I don't know how hard it is for people to see that in a connected world, such as the one we live in, that the political climate will not discriminate when it becomes turbulent. Isn't the Bush-induced economic collapse enough of an evidence? Isn't the rage in Europe awakening anyone? It is even awakening the chinese despite their tightly controlled communist ecology.
And here is the really scary and somewhat prophetic truth: the fights in Israel and Palestine are far from ideological; they are RESOURCE battles in a piece of land with scarce land and water. Their fight is about land and water that is currently exploited by those who have bigger muscles and have first driven away the aboriginals from their ancestral belongings, and are presently pushing to expand further.
There is no denying the fact, even by the Israelis, that what Israel demands is full submission of the palestinians, if they do submit then they will be given bread crumbs! But, do all these bombings and humiliating rhetoric give ANY opportunity for them to surrender in a dignified manner? Would you succumb to whom you consider a thief, to the one who has your grandfather's blood on his hand; and who insists on humiliating you by further pushing you, kicking you and harassing you?
For Europeans, that these "childish" nations cannot get along is a bit of a dilemma. After all, they have survived Nazis, and have managed to make peace with Germany. Hell, Germany who once carpet bombed Rotterdam's harbor is now practically owning all of it--at least in terms of transport loads.
But these wonderfully white gloved members of the universe ignore the fact that Europe has never had to deal with the problem of resources; they solved it by colonizing the land of others, whom they murderously brutalized!
It is just a matter of poor irony and bad planning that the Israelis have ended up colonizing the neighboring cousins. If they were exploiting the land of others in some exotic island, then none of this will have happened, and the arabs and jews will have lived the same kind of superficial 'respect' that the French muster for the English, and the English for the German, and the German for the Dutch, and etc.
But to go back to why would/should we care: because the world is radicalizing, at an incredible speed, towards a new world order far different from that promised by the Bush-co.
This new world order is awakening from a long oppression; the Arab spring which the westerners managed to throw their support behind (out of fear of its ramifications for the sake of the safety of the future's history) are promising a new world order in which the sacrifices and the martyrdom of the "muslims" will pay off.
This radicalization is also happening as the world resources are becoming scares ... you see the cultural trend Israel is setting, and do you feel sympathetic to that, I wish to ask the silent ones!
Since yesterday, since Israel's promise of ground operation, I have been seeing a form of fatalistic cheer leading from the "oppressed" of the world. It is the same sentiment I feel every time the US or Israel 'promise' to annihilate Iran; it's this sense of "you have left me no choice, so bring it on and dig your own grave" ... it is a dangerous cycle; and when this turns into a cyclone, it will blow away all of us who have been taking a pose on the grass ... we are accountable to justice ... and what Israel is doing now is unjust, and so is our silence ...
The reason why I care is because the war raging in Gaza will have implications for the world.
In 2001, I watched in disbelief on our Hospital's waiting-room TV: a plane smashed into the second of the twin towers. I almost fell: The third world war is to begin.
Ever since, all I have been hearing is the chant of the "new world order", and a clearly failing strategy, a clearly failing global strategy ...
First, Iraq whose oil revenues are not quite as promising any more as is Afganistan's gas fields and virgin mountains, which came next.
Then the eyes glued to Iran. They are still glued to Iran--the 'little' Gaza riffraff may as well be Israel's testing the waters, for uncle sam, for what can be done to Iran, next. (they piloted the bunker-busters in the previous operation, now they are piloting the defense cloud--they cannot test their new technology without Hamas being provoked to shoot at it, can they?)
But that is besides the point. The point that is pricking in my eyes, that is making me cry, is the silence and the complicity of the world.
When 911 happened, a friend asked me "what is wrong with you people"; I had to ruffle her ignorant feathers by explaining to her what is really wrong with people whose lives are undermined by the economic interests of the nations such as hers in which the popular ignorance and political apathy worked in counter-production to democracy!
And now, as the war in Gaza rages, it is the silence of my most progressive friends, the human-right defenders, the activists, the leftist, the religious, the god fearing republicans; it is their indifference to the images of carnage, the photo after photo of dead baby corpses held in the arms of mourning parents; that is the real threat.
Their world goes by; as if nothing is happening, as if the other is none of our business, as if Israel is exercising its god given right to kill indiscriminately to retaliate indiscriminate firing of baby-rockets that have not killed in their entire history more than half as many as Israel has killed in the pas few days.
Eager to support the rights of every student pepper-sprayed on the campus; forefront in sighting for the rights of Iranian women; petition flaunting when the rights of homosexuals are violated; and outraged if someone denies the dangers of the climate change, these active intellectuals are totally mum on the issue of what is raging in Palestine. I wonder WHY? Are they scared? are they uninformed? are they indifferent?
And for others (the not typically involved ones),an illusion governs that the ghosts of injustice will not find political zombies. "The world is too large", they say, "I just mend my own fence and trim my own grass." Wonderful! this is what most of the post-Nazi Germans said to excuse themselves: "we didn't know, we were just simple people." But does being "simple people" exclude us from the world ecology?! Berlin's rubble women will testify differently.
Worse, are the political impostures who wear an air of sophistication and turn their noses up at the "childish stupidity of the middle easterners who are not capable of living in harmony."
I don't know how hard it is for people to see that in a connected world, such as the one we live in, that the political climate will not discriminate when it becomes turbulent. Isn't the Bush-induced economic collapse enough of an evidence? Isn't the rage in Europe awakening anyone? It is even awakening the chinese despite their tightly controlled communist ecology.
And here is the really scary and somewhat prophetic truth: the fights in Israel and Palestine are far from ideological; they are RESOURCE battles in a piece of land with scarce land and water. Their fight is about land and water that is currently exploited by those who have bigger muscles and have first driven away the aboriginals from their ancestral belongings, and are presently pushing to expand further.
There is no denying the fact, even by the Israelis, that what Israel demands is full submission of the palestinians, if they do submit then they will be given bread crumbs! But, do all these bombings and humiliating rhetoric give ANY opportunity for them to surrender in a dignified manner? Would you succumb to whom you consider a thief, to the one who has your grandfather's blood on his hand; and who insists on humiliating you by further pushing you, kicking you and harassing you?
For Europeans, that these "childish" nations cannot get along is a bit of a dilemma. After all, they have survived Nazis, and have managed to make peace with Germany. Hell, Germany who once carpet bombed Rotterdam's harbor is now practically owning all of it--at least in terms of transport loads.
But these wonderfully white gloved members of the universe ignore the fact that Europe has never had to deal with the problem of resources; they solved it by colonizing the land of others, whom they murderously brutalized!
It is just a matter of poor irony and bad planning that the Israelis have ended up colonizing the neighboring cousins. If they were exploiting the land of others in some exotic island, then none of this will have happened, and the arabs and jews will have lived the same kind of superficial 'respect' that the French muster for the English, and the English for the German, and the German for the Dutch, and etc.
But to go back to why would/should we care: because the world is radicalizing, at an incredible speed, towards a new world order far different from that promised by the Bush-co.
This new world order is awakening from a long oppression; the Arab spring which the westerners managed to throw their support behind (out of fear of its ramifications for the sake of the safety of the future's history) are promising a new world order in which the sacrifices and the martyrdom of the "muslims" will pay off.
This radicalization is also happening as the world resources are becoming scares ... you see the cultural trend Israel is setting, and do you feel sympathetic to that, I wish to ask the silent ones!
Since yesterday, since Israel's promise of ground operation, I have been seeing a form of fatalistic cheer leading from the "oppressed" of the world. It is the same sentiment I feel every time the US or Israel 'promise' to annihilate Iran; it's this sense of "you have left me no choice, so bring it on and dig your own grave" ... it is a dangerous cycle; and when this turns into a cyclone, it will blow away all of us who have been taking a pose on the grass ... we are accountable to justice ... and what Israel is doing now is unjust, and so is our silence ...
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