Juicy, Gaza and the End of Israel's Humanity

This just came in. Wonderful, I am not sure if I should be laughing or cringing at the horrible nature of this picture. Laughing at the complete idiocy of the bearded individual or cringing at the intention being projected, instead of "juice" it would be spelling out "Jews".

"Death to all Jews," does he even know any Jews? Maybe that is the problem, to him all Jews are the scary, villainized versions of the mythical conspiring Jew constructed by Western sensibilities and prejudices.

Had he known Jews maybe he would know that Zionism and Judaism do not necessary equate together. That while, many Jews support Israel, there also Jews within that large support group who question the treatment of Palestinians. I can't stress how important it is for these Jews to be heard and seen over the "Israel is a sacred cow zionists".

I guess this brings me to the obvious current situation. I can not tell you how frustrated I am with Obama and how disgusted I am by the actions of Israel. There is absolutely no justification for the bombing, destruction and death being meted by Israel, when a comparison is done in regards to weapons- homemade rockets versus F-16 bombers, definitely a fair fight.

President Bush, the failure he is, continues to be so. However, I never understood what exactly prompted this explosive response by Israel. I was intrigued by the timing, obviously President Bush being the silent supporter, instigator of the Lebanon war, gave Israel an oppurtunity to strike before having to place a huge burden on Obama way before his term deserves to be tested by the foolish antics of Israel. I believe Israel is trying to use the last few remaining hours of the waning President Bush adminstration to "change the realities on the ground" and "advantage Israel's ability to negotiate on its terms".

But what isn't explained is why the sense of desperation in the rhetoric by Israeli leaders. That this is the "begining" that it will "destroy the Hamas government" and all this. Benny Morris in "Why Israel Feels Threatened", from NYT does a really good job of advancing a perspective that makes sense to me:

What is common to these specific threats is their unconventionality. Between 1948 and 1982 Israel coped relatively well with the threat from conventional Arab armies. Indeed, it repeatedly trounced them. But Iran’s nuclear threat, the rise of organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah that operate from across international borders and from the midst of dense civilian populations, and Israeli Arabs’ growing disaffection with the state and their identification with its enemies, offer a completely different set of challenges. And they are challenges that Israel’s leaders and public, bound by Western democratic and liberal norms of behavior, appear to find particularly difficult to counter.

What is IRONIC is that Israel is constructing what it terms a "security fence" and we all know as the Aparthiad Wall to protect itself, Morris says that all these factors, and I include the "security fence", are leading to Israel feeling the "walls closing" in on it. Yes, thats exactly what Israel should be feeling- the Aggressor, the Oppressor- victimhood to its own design. In terms of Israel that isn't a new role, is it?

But I wouldn't leave you hanging there with the analysis, while a long post, we all deserve to reflect a little bit further on the circumstance the current Gaza war is uncovering. I am reminded of Darwish's verse- "All that you have done to our people is registered in our notebooks," - and as a consciencitous observer this is quite true.

Nir Rosen was asked by a American Journal whether Terrorism was ever justified, his reponse was "that an American journal should not be asking whether attacks on civilians can ever be justified. This is a question for the weak, for the Native Americans in the past, for the Jews in Nazi Germany, for the Palestinians today, to ask themselves."

He goes on to write that:

Terrorism is a normative term and not a descriptive concept. An empty word that means everything and nothing, it is used to describe what the Other does, not what we do. The powerful – whether Israel, America, Russia or China – will always describe their victims' struggle as terrorism, but the destruction of Chechnya, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the slow slaughter of the remaining Palestinians, the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan – with the tens of thousands of civilians it has killed … these will never earn the title of terrorism, though civilians were the target and terrorising them was the purpose.

You can read the rest of the article in the Gaurdian, bu tthe point I am trying to get at is best put by the Archbishop Dom Helder Camara that once a spiral of violence begins, it operates on its own internal logic. Injustice leads to revolt. Revolt induces repression. Rpression leads to greater injustices, which in turn encourage more radical forms of revolt. These then induce more sever forms of repression. This continues, spiralling and unbroken, until we kill the very thing that lets us be human.

Here we have Israel continuing on its path toward inhumanity, building on the colonial aspirations of failed western imperial democracy's. In its response is the seething hatred and blind fanaticism exibited by the "juicey bearded man".

(picture from Jewish Journal's Brad who posts up on the GodBlog, who got it from some other sites and you can see the original here.)