The world as it is

[ProgressiveMuslim]

Chris Hedges, Truthdig, Mar 10, 2008


This article was originally published by Truthdig and is republished with the author's permission.

War creates a world without empathy. Those who have empathy cannot, as did Palestinian gunman Alaa Hisham Abu Dheim, coldly murder students in a Jerusalem library. Those who have empathy cannot drop tons of iron fragmentation bombs on crowded Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza, killing more than 120 Palestinians in a week, of whom one in five were children and more than half were civilians. Those who have empathy do not, as Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai did, thunder at the Palestinians that they face a shoah, meaning catastrophe or holocaust. Those with empathy are unable to rejoice, as many leaders of Hamas did, over slaughter, as if the murder of the other’s innocents is justified by the murder of your innocents.

We live in a world, at home and in the Middle East, hardened and distorted by hate. We communicate in the language of fear and violence. Human beings are no longer viewed as human beings. They are no longer endowed in our eyes, or the eyes of those who oppose us, with human qualities. They do no love, grieve, suffer, laugh or weep. They represent cold abstractions of evil. The death-for-death means we communicate by producing corpses. And we are all guilty, Americans, Palestinians, Iraqis and Israelis. But we are not all guilty equally.
Israel and the United States bear the responsibility for a world that has unleashed twisted killers such as Abu Dheim. It is the decades of repression in Gaza, as well as the callous occupation in Iraq, that has bequeathed to us a new generation of jihadists and gunmen who walk into yeshivas and spray automatic fire at people bent over books. For as the poet W.H. Auden pointed out:

I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

The long, slow drip of collective humiliation and abuse, along with the tiny and large indignities that go into transforming human beings into fanatics, is rarely understood by those on the outside. It ticks away like a clock until it suddenly explodes in our face. Because we do not know where it came from, it strikes us as incomprehensible, irrational, the product of a demented form of humanity. These killers, however, are not formed by the Quran or Islam or a culture that is morally inferior to our own. They are formed by a 40-year occupation, by the continued expansion of Jewish settlements, by the refusal to allow the return of expelled refugees, by the use of fighter jets to bomb squalid refugee camps and by an Israeli siege of Gaza that has blocked fuel, electricity and essential supplies and created a humanitarian crisis for 1.5 million Palestinians. It is what the Israelis have done to the Palestinians, what we have done to the Iraqis, that has brought us to this impasse. We unleashed this violence and only we can end it.

Hamas was a nonentity, a tiny group of radicals who wielded no influence and had little following when in 1988 I first reported from Gaza. But the steady drumbeat of Israeli repression and violence, aided by the corruption and incompetence of Yasser Arafat, led to Hamas’ slow rise to supplant Arafat’s Fatah party. By 2006 Hamas was elected to power. This election, by all accounts free and fair, saw Jerusalem and Washington begin a covert effort to overthrow Hamas, according to documents obtained by Vanity Fair and the Guardian. The Fatah leader Muhammad Dahlan was, according to these documents, given cash, weapons and assistance through Egypt and Jordan to start a Palestinian civil war. Hamas stepped in to thwart the attempted coup. It drove Dahlan and Fatah out of Gaza. The current bifurcation of Palestinian territories, with Hamas in control of Gaza and Fatah in control of the West Bank, began.

(snip)

The dynamics of power have changed. They will change again. Hamas is a reality that, however distasteful, is not going to go away. Any peace deal reached without Hamas is doomed to fail. The only question left is how many more people are going to die needlessly in Israel, in Palestine and in Iraq before Israeli and American leaders begin to deal with the world as it is, not as they wish it to be.



more, more, more...

http://imeu.net/news/article008116.shtml

[Violet_Crumble]

1. That's an excellent article. Thanks for posting it...

From the article: 'Peace eludes us in Palestine, Israel and Iraq not because people do not want peace but because we are governed by moral and intellectual trolls.' Couldn't agree more on that...

[bemildred]

2. Kick. nt

[Vegasaurus]

3. This same old same old?

That "occupation" transforms people and turns them into terrorists and suicide bombers?

Haven't we all moved on from this bullshit yet, since we know that this isn't about "the occupation" anyway?

[breakaleg]

4. "we" know nothing for the sort. Speak for yourself. nt

[Scurrilous]

5. Great article.

:thumbsup:

[hifalutin]

6. I found myself in full agreement

And we are all guilty, Americans, Palestinians, Iraqis and Israelis.

And then came the but....

But we are not all guilty equally.
Israel and the United States bear the responsibility for a world that has unleashed twisted killers such as Abu Dheim. It is the decades of repression in Gaza, as well as the callous occupation in Iraq, that has bequeathed to us a new generation of jihadists and gunmen who walk into yeshivas and spray automatic fire at people bent over books.

Oh no, not another apologist.

[Vegasaurus]

7. The American occupation of Iraq did not turn Baghdad into a sectarian bloodbath

Nor did the Israeli occupation of Palestine turn Hamas and Fatah into a civil war.

Fighting against the occupier, maybe we could understand. Against each other? No.

[hifalutin]

8. I agree

I meant to say I WAS in agreement UNTIL came the
But......

(the never ending blame game)

[Shaktimaan]

9. wow

The only question left is how many more people are going to die needlessly in Israel, in Palestine and in Iraq before Israeli and American leaders begin to deal with the world as it is, not as they wish it to be.

Or perhaps the question should be how long will it take before apologist authors such as this begin to see the world for how it is, not how it fits their viewpoint.

Israel and the United States bear the responsibility for a world that has unleashed twisted killers such as Abu Dheim. It is the decades of repression in Gaza, as well as the callous occupation in Iraq, that has bequeathed to us a new generation of jihadists and gunmen who walk into yeshivas and spray automatic fire at people bent over books.

Why those two countries alone? Aren't there plenty of countries who have exhibited far worse behavior in that neighborhood? What about Assad's actions in Hama? Can anyone say that anything Israel or America has done since then has even approached the level of atrocity seen there?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hama_Massacre

Hamas began as an offshoot of a similar organization in Egypt. Shouldn't it be Egypt's fault? :sarcasm:

I wonder if the author would similarly give a pass to terrorists like Baruch Goldstein, that his actions were born of living under the threat of Palestinian terrorism. I doubt it. Of course he also ignores the fact that Palestinian terrorism existed far before any of the reasons he gives for their cause.

Any peace deal reached without Hamas is doomed to fail.

Because Hamas will derail any peace plan that doesn't give them an adequate share of power in the new Palestinian state, or that they may disagree with in any way for any reason. Such as the Oslo accords which Hamas began derailing with a brutal campaign of terrorism before the ink had a chance to dry. So what's the lesson here? Terrorism works? Peace can't happen until the most extreme elements on every side are appeased? That violence is a tablestake in the middle east peace process?

Articles like this make me sick. The arguments here could be used to excuse terrorism of every variety the world over. Disgusting apologist crap.

[Vegasaurus]

10. Hamas has one goal and one goal only

they are clear in their charter.

They want all of "greater Palestine" and all Jews expelled (or killed) from the middle east.

What makes anyone think they will participate in a peace process, even if they were invited? What a joke.