Like the rest of the world, I'm watching the events in Gaza with dismay. If this proportion of deaths were occurring in the US, the dead on the first day would number 46,000.
First Israel, with help from Egypt, starved the Gazans. Some Gazans responded with unlawful, but largely ineffective homemade weapons, as well as despicable suicide attacks. Now, however, Israel is killing policemen and schoolgirls from the air, and apparently intends to go on doing it (until what?) No end in sight.
These are war crimes. "Strategic bombing" is a war crime. Supplying high-tech weapons, knowing the track record of the Israelis, is also a war crime.
Pro-Zionists will argue that Israel has a right to defend itself. Perhaps, from a short-term perspective.
Zionism, despite the hollow pronouncements of some of its early leaders, could only have meant what it ultimately accomplished--the expulsion or elimination of the indigenous population, based upon a newly-discovered interpretation of the Jewish religion. Unfortunately, however crudely and stupidly led, the indigenous population has refused to acquiesce in its dispossession.
Meanwhile, Zionism has meant the uprooting and destruction of small Jewish communities the world over, the extinction of their languages, and their subjection to the religious dictates of pettifogging Ashkenazic rabbis, whom the secular state has empowered.
It has also created a claque for the most aggressive and mindless U.S. policies.
In short, although I have defended the existence of Israel notwithstanding my rejection of its mythology, I must recognize another truth, "Zionism poisons everything." That proposition is the beginning of wisdom. It is the same idea that the French officer expresses in the film "The Battle of Algiers," if you want to keep this place, implicit in the wish are the tactics we employ.
Whether some form of accommodation is still possible, or whether the best solution is the evacuation of Israel, which has already begun through voluntary emigration, which now exceeds immigration, I do not know.
I do know this: Zionism poisons everything.
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4 comments:
It probably comes with the territory.
"Self-hating" also comes to mind.
Jews are indigenous to Gaza?
Even in Biblical times, Gaza was one of the five cities of the Philistines (from whose name "Palestine" came).
The Jews were defeated in AD70 and went into exile. Even the Orthodox Jews say it was because of sin. After the fall of the Temple, they had to completely reinvent their religion, which was centered around the now-destroyed Temple.
Among its many contradictions, Zionism was invented by atheists, but relies upon a supposed Biblical promise. I am prepared to say that the Israelis are now established and have some rights on that score. The right to semi-starve and bomb civilians is not one of them, however.
Couldn't agree more, Grumpy.
dw, dw, whoever you are, where to begin in picking apart your diatribe?
If we go back to Roman times to parcel out real estate to modern peoples, we start by sending the Anglo-Saxons back across the Channel and the French (Franks) back across the Rhine.
The reality is that the vast majority who lived in Palestine when Zionist settlement began were Christian and Muslim Arabs, with a sprinkling of pious Jews. If you say Israel is there by right of conquest, fine, but don't put on Biblical airs. The Jews lost the wars in 70 and 135, and used to believe they had to live with the consequences.
Are the Palestinians paragons of Hong-Kong-esque enterprise or Athenian civic virtue? Hardly. They are, however, children of God, just as you and I.
I don't want to pay for the bullets, guns, bombs and planes that slaughter God's children, who have done nothing to us.
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