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The Time of The Righteous
This war, perhaps more than its predecessors, is exposing the true deep veins of Israeli society. Racism and hatred are rearing their heads, as is the impulse for revenge and the thirst for blood. The "inclination of the commander" in the Israel Defense Forces is now "to kill as many as possible," as the military correspondents on television describe it. And even if the reference is to Hamas fighters, this inclination is still chilling.
The unbridled aggression and brutality are justified as "exercising caution": the frightening balance of blood - about 100 Palestinian dead for every Israeli killed, isn't raising any questions, as if we've decided that their blood is worth one hundred times less than ours, in acknowledgement of our inherent racism.
Rightists, nationalists, chauvinists and militarists are the only legitimate bon ton in town. Don't bother us about humaneness and compassion. Only at the edges of the camp can a voice of protest be heard - illegitimate, ostracized and ignored by media coverage - from a small but brave group of Jews and Arabs.
Alongside all this, rings another voice, perhaps the worst of all. This is the voice of the righteous and the hypocritical. My colleague, Ari Shavit, seems to be their eloquent spokesman. This week, Shavit wrote here ("Israel must double, triple, quadruple its medical aid to Gaza," Haaretz, January 7): "The Israeli offensive in Gaza is justified ... Only an immediate and generous humanitarian initiative will prove that even during the brutal warfare that has been forced on us, we remember that there are human beings on the other side."
To Shavit, who defended the justness of this war and insisted that it mustn't be lost, the price is immaterial, as is the fact that there are no victories in such unjust wars. And he dares, in the same breath, to preach "humaneness."
Does Shavit wish for us to kill and kill, and afterward to set up field hospitals and send medicine to care for the wounded? He knows that a war against a helpless population, perhaps the most helpless one in the world, that has nowhere to escape to, can only be cruel and despicable. But these people always want to come out of it looking good. We'll drop bombs on residential buildings, and then we'll treat the wounded at Ichilov; we'll shell meager places of refuge in United Nations schools, and then we'll rehabilitate the disabled at Beit Lewinstein. We'll shoot and then we'll cry, we'll kill and then we'll lament, we'll cut down women and children like automatic killing machines, and we'll also preserve our dignity.
The problem is - it just doesn't work that way. This is outrageous hypocrisy and self-righteousness. Those who make inflammatory calls for more and more violence without regard for the consequences are at least being more honest about it.
You can't have it both ways. The only "purity" in this war is the "purification from terrorists," which really means the sowing of horrendous tragedies. What's happening in Gaza is not a natural disaster, an earthquake or flood, for which it would be our duty and right to extend a helping hand to those affected, to send rescue squads, as we so love to do. Of all the rotten luck, all the disasters now occurring in Gaza are manmade - by us. Aid cannot be offered with bloodstained hands. Compassion cannot sprout from brutality.
Yet there are some who still want it both ways. To kill and destroy indiscriminately and also to come out looking good, with a clean conscience. To go ahead with war crimes without any sense of the heavy guilt that should accompany them. It takes some nerve. Anyone who justifies this war also justifies all its crimes. Anyone who preaches for this war and believes in the justness of the mass killing it is inflicting has no right whatsoever to speak about morality and humaneness. There is no such thing as simultaneously killing and nurturing. This attitude is a faithful representation of the basic, twofold Israeli sentiment that has been with us forever: To commit any wrong, but to feel pure in our own eyes. To kill, demolish, starve, imprison and humiliate - and be right, not to mention righteous. The righteous warmongers will not be able to allow themselves these luxuries.
Anyone who justifies this war also justifies all its crimes. Anyone who sees it as a defensive war must bear the moral responsibility for its consequences. Anyone who now encourages the politicians and the army to continue will also have to bear the mark of Cain that will be branded on his forehead after the war. All those who support the war also support the horror.
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Show AllSioux Rose
There is an element of martyrdom present in all three Abrahmaic religions. To the Muslim dying for Allah presages great rewards. Christians identify readily with Jesus sacrificed on the cross; and Jews, given a history of persecutions, have their own martyr complex. From the standpoint of the continuum of life wherein it is the soul that remains intact, plausibly this bloodbath in the Middle East (and I extend it to include Iraq) is a lesson to the world, a sacrifice of utmost altruism, in why war cannot result in anything worth seeking. That so many are being killed or maimed for this implausible idea that a war can be won, is a fiction that I pray is dying on its own bloody cross.
For those so prone to misunderstanding the context of the spiritual, these words in no way encourage what is occuring so disastrously on this plane and in this time. Many speak in the lingo of sports to determine the numbers who have died, or ascribe to one team the winning title; but these analyses are flawed, too. Insomuch as we are all connected, any wound done unto anyone reverberates in and through the shared texture of humanity. These brutal tears into the weave must create a thrust that raises minds, hearts and spirits above any argument that ever again posits war as its answer. May the martyrs of today achieve that purpose so that they may return to this world, anew, and experience the peace their personal sacrifices will hopefully usher in.
As much as people like to believe the media that this is a religious war, it is NOT. It is a war against land theft and occupation. This becomes a religious war only when the Al-Aqsa Mosque is touched. You know the one where the Zionist wants to build the temple of Solomon on? Until then it is a war against occupation.
Good point. Actually, most wars characterized as "religious" are not. Behind the religious differences are real grievances. One religion seems to always come to represent the lower class and another the wealthy or colonizing class. The war for the Irish republic and later The Troubles of Northern Ireland are examples of this.
The Palestinian conflict itself has only very recently (since 2001) been thought of "religious". In the 1970's and 1980's, Israel supporters characterized the fight against the Palestinians as a fight against "godless communism". The Palestinians in those days were led by the PLO and more militant "terrorists" like the PFLP. Both were secular and Soviet-Union backed. So, back then, no one would have ever thought of it as "religious". It was a conflict between "free enterprise" (Isreal) and Soviet communism (the Palestinians).
Hamas got organized in the 1980's with Israel support - because they believed them to be preferable to the Soviet-backed factions.
--USAn---
. . . war cannot result in anything worth seeking.
This is absolutely true! So why does war persist? beyond the apparently obvious answer that humans enjoy fighting and killing each other.
There is the view that humans are acting out of deep imprinting from their early days as a slave species, programmed to fight their masters' turf wars for them . . . as per The Wars of Gods and Men by Zechariah Sitchin . . .
Drunvalo Melchizadek... Is that you?
on "martyr complex", see http://jamescarroll.net/Constantine.html
This war, perhaps more than its predecessors, is exposing the true deep veins of Israeli society. Racism and hatred are rearing their heads, as is the impulse for revenge and the thirst for blood. The "inclination of the commander" in the Israel Defense Forces is now "to kill as many as possible" . . .
This sounds like a description of the United States, as much as Israel.
yes, perpetrated by george 'wanker' bush..............and his cohorts
We need new martyrs for pro-war people--the kind that have been brought to trial and have been judged for their war-mongering actions--and yes let the would-be-tyrants mourn for them as they are rightly executed--tyrants without "troops" are little chickens--just squalking--all bluster and no guts.
Where are the giant flamethrowers mounted on tanks?
I agree with the poster who said that this "war" (if war can be so lop-sided as not to become massacre) is not primarily about religion. It is largely about land and power, the desire for domination and supposed utter security that might be thought to bring Israel. However, it is true that tales of apocolypse in some American evangelical religions increase American support for Israel, support that Israel must have if it is to maintain the dominance it desires. That the evangelicals also would consign Jewish people to hell as soon as their role is done does not seem to cause Israel to question the alliance. No, religious differences are secondary to the situation at hand now.
It's scary when such a group of batshit crazy end-of-the-worlders (and a large Americans agree) works in alliance with the Israel boosters. It's as if they are purposely trying to drive the world into Armageddon. But they don't realize Satan will be laughing and spreading his wings for these War Pigs.
Amazing also that this article appears in Haaretz when it would be widely denounced in the US for its "inflammatory accusations". That's how low our discourse has fallen and how much our politics are controlled.
Hi Siouxrose -
Nice post.
Real wars, in which armies are fielded against one another and the outcomes are up for grabs, are horrible enough. Whatever demonic impulses in the human psyche they manifest, they are at least fair. Sports analogies apply to real wars, because sports are a substitute for war, a de-fanged form of conflict allowing victor and vanquished, triumph and defeat with a cost of only bruises instead of dead soldiers.
These cowardly spectacles we see today are not wars. They are exercises in thievery, cruelty and savagery dressed up to look like war. The "enemy," the miserable defenders of Gaza, Jenin, Fallujah, Sabra and Chatila, do not face our technological hordes with their own Apache attack helicopters and infrared sniper rifles. They are like the game ranch pheasants that Cheney shoots before breakfast, pure victims of pure meanness. If you can imagine war as "normal" (as Hobbes and Kant did), the gratuitous butchery of such juggernauts as Timurlane, the Nazis, the US (in our worst moments firebombing Dresden and Tokyo) and Israel (a country stuck in its worst moments) passes over into pathology, into positive malignancy. No guts and glory, no duals between gentleman fighter pilots, no fears that old glory won't still be flying when the smoke clears. Just the sick delight of shooting fish in a barrel, the voyeurism of the coliseum, war transubstantiated to pornography. That is the disease of empire, when you have run out of viable enemies but you are still filled with malice.
I wish I shared your hopefulness. The older I get the less I care for my fellow hominids. Or as somebody said, the more people I meet the more I like dogs.
Sioux Rose
Hello Vox: Your depiction is right-on, and it's so mortifying that I think sensitive persons almost have to hold their ears and close their eyes NOT to take the reality in. Somehow the image of all the young men forced to give two years to military conscriptus in Singapore comes to mind. Daily these kids would be sitting at computer modules in one of the many internet cafes found in that region, and EVERY ONE OF THEM had some kind of virtual combat operation "live" on the screen. There is no question some dark force is desensitizing this generation to warfare, so much so that the image on the screen becomes interchangeable with that human form just as deftly aimed and fired at. This is a travesty, but I have related that the exaltation of Mars, the powerful individual, the macho component of so-called bravery have tainted Western civilization to the point that war has been made into high art, and wrapped in not only patriotism but an all too real religious zeal. Like the alcoholic who must crash in order to enter a process of recovery*, it seems to me those spiritual agencies that oversee our planet are allowing a similar process, brutal, deadly, and diabolical as it is. That is my best explanation; and like another poster likes to say, "But I could be wrong."
* The analogy would be our nation is drunk on war, and the sickness has also spread to Israel. Weapons are its chief carrier.
I disagree. You're glorifying war. War is not "fair". War has never been "fair".
Furthermore, people not only die in war, but are often severely brutalised, this includes the soldiers.
Also, while sports can be substitute for war for someone, sports can also be art, beauty, bringing transcendental joy for many others. Sports can also be about aesthetics.
This is a war the same as shooting fish in a barrel is fishing.
thank you, i was just about to ask that question myself................
same as the 'war' in iraq..........of which we hear practically nothing these days.
Folks keep calling this a war, because IT IS A WAR.
War isn't about being "fair".
A helpful default I've been making is to the late Joseph Campbell's contention that every decision we make is basically a "war" - one set of plus and minuses contending and conflicting with another set in deciding what behavior to pursue. With this view I've been able to minimize the violence I perpetrate on myself with my thought forms, as well as limit conflicts and frustrations when interacting with others from escalating into violence. I think this construct and recognition of personal and other's frustrations can work on the world stage as well.
This sounds like a very male perspective. I don't function that way and most of the females I know do not either. My 'decisions' are sort of based on what for lack of a better term I will call 'congruence with a more optimal future'. There is no 'war' sort of conflict involved. I do think this is quite an accurate description of how many men function. For a long time now I have thought that 'the nature of all war is civil' in the sense that it is a projection of a 'civil' war going on within the psyches of the men who wage it. (Interesting that the very term 'civil' has such dual meanings !) I wish that people who do function within this paradigm would realize that it is not universal and that there are other ways of making decisions (i.e. following paths of action).
"...following paths of action)." - sounds like a very feminine perspective to me; which is fantastic - a clear statement of the basis of perception. The feminine, in whatever gander it is enveloped, follows the path of action, supplying essences from the expanse of the universe, projected by/with the masculine, in whatever gender it is enveloped, energy to materialize the creative substance and forces.
I reference from Joseph Campbell's conversations with Bill Moyers in the Power of Myth quite a bit...where he also relates the story about the Algonquin's I believe, where they had developed a form of "poetry slam" to settle conflicts between tribes, this of course similar to the "rap battles" sprouting out of the gangland of the American Ghetto. And this morning I just watched a program about the Motown museum in Detroit; where it was relayed that one of Barry Gordy's original intents for the Motown sound was to create great music, with great musician to present an inclusive form of music that would resonate with a world view and across the socioeconomic spectrum based on basic common human concerns about love and war and making in the world. Interesting to me was that to two top Artists asked about were Marvin Gaye, by far number one, and Stevie Wonder - now this, along with the "poetry slam" concept, seem to me great examples of harmonizing of masculine and feminine energies - and very civil ways to express war behavior, or perhaps very civil behavior for transmuting war energy.
Large natural gas fields were discovered off the coast of Gaza in 2000. It's not about rockets, it's about Israel wanting those fields.
www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/01/08/18559670.php
An excellent piece by Gideon!
It appears that the US and Israel are the shortest of the moral midgets we see in government.
"moral midgets"--ugh. Little people have enough stereotypes to deal with.
It's also about the US Military Junta, established during the Dallas Coup of 1963, using Israel to debut new Super Weapon technologies in the field. We're putting on a Super Weapon Side Show aimed at sending an ominous message to Russia, China, Venezuela, North Korea and Iran.
"Mads Gilbert, a Norwegian war surgery specialist working in Gaza, told The Times that he had seen injuries believed to have resulted from Israel's use of a new "dense inert metal explosive" that caused "extreme explosions". He said: "Those inside the perimeter of this weapon's power zone will be torn completely apart." the Times Online/UK
""I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." -- Albert Einstein
Well, I know of five weapons with which WWIII is currently being fought- WHITE PHOSPHOROUS, DENSE METAL SUPER WEAPONS, NUCLEAR STICK UP, MISSILE DEFENSE, AND PROPAGANDA!!!!!
Ike warned us, so....
What I wonder is whether any of the stuff found at Roswell made its way into our weapons? I've heard that NVG techology came from what was found there.
I've heard it rumored once, from unknown credibility so take this with a grain of salt- that kevlar, carbon fiber, transistors, and particularly fiber optics were inspired from that.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1963 & 1968- Dallas and Los Angeles Coup d'État by the US Military Industrial Junta completed
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.", Albert Einstein. (Ed note: WHITE PHOSPHOROUS, DENSE METAL SUPER WEAPONS, NUCLEAR STICK UP, MISSILE DEFENSE, AND PROPAGANDA!!!!!)
I wonder if the Israelis are using directed energy weaponry in gaza like the doctors in Lebanon claimed in 2006...
Humans are revealed! Yes, Folks, if you want to get a good look at what horrors humans are capable of, look hard at Gaza.
Of course, you can only get a partial view because the pathological killers who are members of the IDF won't allow the press in to get the real picture. It would be too shocking.
As the Israelis commit genocide with America's backing, reflect upon what humans are. We are a disgusting species.
We have forfeited our right to exist!
www.dangerouscreation.com
The UN Security Council passes a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire 14-0 and the US abstains.
The US Senate passes a resolution (unanimously?) supporting the Israeli action.
The abstention and the Senate resolution effectively give Israel the green light to continue the massacre.
Does the US public support these positions?
Check Phyllis Bennis and Marjorie Cohn. Both have stated polls, one is the Rasmussen, that the majority of Dems. in the US were against the occupation, then invasion into Gaza, but Republicans were majority supporting. I think together, it's still more Americans say "No" and that's amazing, according to both activists, since the US media is so rotten on the this and other information. www.marjoriecohn.com and Phyllis Bennis is with the IPS www.ips-dc.org
Bennis and Cohn are progressive champions. I think they are brilliant and principled. Thanks for pointing out their work.
Surviving being killed in Gaza in the short term may not be enough:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dense_Inert_Metal_Explosive
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/01/200911084430400848.html
So what are we Americans supposed to do about it? Other than stopping our shipping of high tech weaponry and money to Israel, I see no other solution or even a way of actually controlling their mess from our end.
WYGUNSTON:I have a pal in WY. An apolitical pal but pal did not vote for McCain. I think the US should stop supplying the money for weapons (note:it's stipulation is to be spend on US weapons) and weapons to Israel. I do follow Howard Zinn's point that "our" interests as people are not the same as the government's interests. His wonderful speech on history and government is on Democracy Now on Jan.2,2009 www.democracynow.org transcript is online,free.
Allan Nairn and Amy Goodman, week just past, in speaking about E.Timor in re Adm. Blair becoming NSA chief, pointed out that public pressure (altho it took a long time) got the US Congress to stop military aid to Indonesia because of its military occupation of and murdering of a lot of E. Timorese. Blair was not "doing the right thing" as Nairn points out. Nairn has a decades of expertise covering Indonesia. I remember the coverage from the early 1990s. My point is that public pressure can work at times. I don't know how long or when, sigh.
As an older American Jewish woman, I can not relate to the rightwing and the blood lust. (I add that I grew up Orthodox Jewish, Brooklyn.) It reminds me of the Bush Christian Fundamentalists in speaking about Iraq before and into the attack on Iraq. I opposed all of it:Afghanistan being attacked and invaded after Sept.11,2001, and like most New Yorkers, opposed the war on Iraq. As I've said here on CD, I oppose the Iraeli government policies in regard to Palestinians. I'm a longtime progressive and my very religious Orthodox Jewish grandmother was socialist leaning, but we both voted/vote Democrat. I will not vote for any Dem. who supported the resolutions in either the House or Senate in re Israel "support". I stopped voting for Hillary Clinton and Schumer after their votes in re the resolution authorizing the Pres. to use force and go into Iraq.
This was just posted under another article:
The silver lining is that giving a drunk a few feet of rope and letting him to hang himself. The United States' unconditional support has allowed the Israelis to show their true hand and put and end to playing victim's role after the Hololcaust. Now they are playing Nazis' role.Let them play it as much as they can. Nothing stays the same forever. Even the Nazis' time came to an end. Sooner or later the wind will blow the other way. Hope it will be sooner than later.
Is there any newspaper that can write without bias? How about this one of the "war is jolly good fun" genre from the NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/world/middleeast/11hamas.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=world
Woe to you who are at ease in Zion.
I've never had to hear my grandkids scream while shells fell for hours on end. It's over there right? Nothing to do with me right?
What goes around comes around.
It is a war about land. But it also a religious/cultural war. It's been going on for 61 yrs. Most that write here hate Israel and they hate Jews. Most don't know much about Israel or it's history. Many have accepted whole cloth the most extreme Palestinian rejectionist/eliminationist pts. of view and this is really sad. What it shows me is that opinions on both sides have moved very little these 60's yrs.
Blutodog, I don't think most people on here hate Jews at all; they may hate the Israeli war machine but that is something quite different. Take off your binary blinkers -there's a whole world in between the black and white to which you have restricted your vision.
"Most that write here hate Israel and they hate Jews." That self loathing argument is wearing very thin, especially since the world is watching the slaughter of innocent children who are trapped, hungry, and terrified. Israel has created a concentration camp and is now marching in and behaving as if Hitler himself is in charge of their army. Fuck you and your "woe is us" bullshit.
it is not "hating jews or israel" -- it is hating what ISRAEL DOES to palestinians ...it is hating - what the article FROM A JEW with CONSCIENCE writing for H'aretz -- what the CONSCIENCELESS Israel does.
if anything -- people are simply commending the fact that there ARE jews with conscience...MANY of them in this world that have held through their lives the HIGHEST standards of conscience and decency. ....but they are being defeated and suppressed by those in israel AND the USA - that have LOST the conscience that they pretend they HAVE.
people can also criticize HAMAS and the Palestinians for their firing rockets and suicide bombers, and the other arabs for their versions of complicity in their governments in what amounts to a brutal destruction of the Palestinians..but that ALSO does NOT mean "people hate arabs"...
but what Israel is doing is really beyond description....its only counterpart or comparison is IN FACT what the Holocaust survivors say SHOULDN"T be "compared" with anything else....
as a Holocaust Survivor living in israel wrote :
"when i go around the country -- and i hear jews calling palestinians some kind of low-life ......i hear the Germans calling jews names.....when I see the palestinians cowering in fear and having different identifications...i remember our "jewish yellow stars" in germany....when i see the palestinians being cornered in Gaza ......i remember the jewish Ghettos in germany and poland...we have become what we feared from the past".
i am an avid reader of Gideon Levy actually -- as well as Amira Hess....
ISRAELI JEW and ISRAELI ARAB.
and both have consciences.
Grow up already. Nations act in their own self interest all of them! We slaughtered millions of Japanese men , women and children. Burned them up in a fiery holocaust from 12K feet. Nobody in America shed a tear. Japan killed millions of Chinese in worse ways. War is a brutal savage ugly affair and both sides commit atrocities. Ultimately though it's the winners that write history and might add hold the war crimes tribunals.
How do those atrocities justify Israels current actions? If the tables were turned and Israeli's were in similar concentration camps with their innocent children being burned to death, would your attitude be, "well that's just the way of war"??
Bluto said:
"Ultimately though it's the winners that write history and might add hold the war crimes tribunals."
So you are cynical about the Nuremberg tribunals that justly punished the perpetrators of the Holocaust against your own people? Wow, just wow, that is beyond cynicism into the realm of genuine might makes right fascist depravity. And not only is it morally bankrupt, it is a self defeating philosophy young man because under those terms if the Palestinians gain the upper hand it means you have no ethical counter argument to keep them from slaughtering YOU.
Bluto is the perfect name for you, you are a cartoon bully and lack basic ethical precepts like empathy and a conscience, Please get psychological help for yourself young man before you lash out in a sociopathic way and hurt someone.
Amira Hess is also an Israeli Jew Teddy. She chose to live amongst the Gazans as an act of compassion to write her book "Drinking in the Sea at Gaza" to tell thier story to the world. She is extremely courageous.
Israeli Arabs are simply the Palestinians who are in Israel's 1967 borders. They cannot visit their own families in Gaza and West Bank. The Palestinians cannot move between these three places in most cases. They are stuck in between three small peices of land.
"even during the brutal warfare that has been forced on us, we remember that there are human beings on the other side."
A truckload of compassion enables a barrel full of blood before the killer zionists lose "political capital" at the "OK Corral".
Godz 'n' Gunz 'r' US!
CROCODILE TEARS, in other words; PRETENDING to feel "compassion" for those they kill, maim, and oppress.
amazingly TWISTED kind of mentality. it's literally INSANE. that's what Israel has seemed to become...and completely MAD, INSANE society - with few jews left that have any conscience or are simply marginalized -- just like in the USA.
MADNESS, and BLOOD LUST is what it is.