What came out for me in this discussion is the fact that the Prisoner taker told Mor's cousin not to worry as she would be home in a few days. I guess that was the plan of the perpetrators of the attack on the kibbutz just wanted to show Israel that it was not invincible and to get Palestinians released from Israeli jails. It appears Benjamin Netanyahu saw it differently and probably worked with other Zionists such as Biden and Blinken to use the opportunity to erase the presence of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.
Here we are a Year later with over 42,000 Palestinians murdered and thousands more still buried under the rubble of thousands of buildings vanquished by 2,000-pound US-supplied bombs with constant talk of "we are very close to a ceasefire". It is disgraceful that we have not done enough to stop this madness; the military-industrial complex (MIC) runs the State Department and the Pentagon now and it is in their interest to keep the wars going as it is good for their bottom lines.
Zahiro's use of the word "unimaginable" describes how many of us are feeling. In addition Bibi is holding the world hostage by his refusal to accept a hostage deal. As the saying goes, Bibi has "crossed the Rubicon"! He has gone too far and he is not turning back. Ugh!
Thank you, Zeteo. I am "scared" to watch any other news outlet today. Palestinian journalists, you and Democracy Now, are the only ones I follow. Keep pushing; we are here with you, for peace, for "not again" for ALL. One humankind, we are one humankind.
As has been the case with two previous comments, the censors of Zeteo have been editing out certain portions (allow correctly pruned to fit the #words requirements) that would allow fellow subscribers to pursue/look up related works by others outside the Zeteo bubble, no matter how supportive I have been of Medhi's efforts. As per usual, call it the MSNBC projection.
At the likely risk of becoming too annoying--for the last time--can we try to solicit some "other voices" from "other rooms"? Here, again, sorry, in a much abbreviated version, is another take on these things that may be of interest to some fellow Zeteo supporters. The complete text is available on request from mischa139@gmail. com.
"Gaza, Sophie’s Choice, & The Myth of
the Immaculate Victimization Conception"
Nearly a century ago, Max Weber delivered a speech in Munich at the University that had for its topic “Politics as a Vocation.” That address, now more well known in essay form, contained a lot more than just occupational advice about finding a job somewhere in politics and then holding on to it. Indeed, it offers some rather remarkable observations that can serve to kick start our thinking about one of the most horrendous abominations of our time, Gaza and the Palestinians. . . . .
And so what on earth could this seemingly good, decent man be thinking?
Here’s what, I suspect. Here’s what he (Biden) and a good many other seemingly decent people—rabbis and politicians alike—are actually thinking or feeling deep down inside. Here’s what they cannot confront or acknowledge, perhaps don’t even understand.
Here’s the rub.
To call out Israel—even just Netanyahu and his ultranationalist, ultra-orthodox, “settler”-intoxicated-driven or enabling cabinet member buddies—for genocide would threaten, undermine, if not destroy, the until now unimpeachable century’s-long legacy of antisemitism, that almost cherished history of the horrific pogroms that have been visited upon the Jewish people. That entire mythological infrastructure. Call it the current ideological weaponization of a people’s suffering. For calling out the genocide would trigger an accounting or reckoning that a good many decent people are not willing or able to even imagine or countenance, let alone perform, given what they’ve been through. It would destabilize the entire iconic edifice, this identification of Judaism with an unblemished record of victimization that we have all assumed and embraced—tear-jerkingly celebrated even—for decades. It would violate the myth of the immaculate victimization conception, calling all that into question.
For to acknowledge the reality of a genocidal Zionism would send Israel, as a conquering colonizing occupier ever since 1947, headlong into a shared parallel final solution universe. It would shred any lingering vestige of semitism as the ne plus ultra of world historical victimization. Israel the gold standard, the GOAT. And yet perhaps the greatest irony of all could very well be that by refusing to do this work of reckoning we all will most likely ensure that Israel and the Zionist occupation will eventually go up in the flames of its own making. Or, failing that, simply continue collaborating with its malingering on as the last vestige of Middle East colonial exploitation, the last justly-earned and crowned Pariah state. Where the once invincible nation of Israel ends not with a bang, but a whimper.
By arming Netanyahu under the legitimating claim of Israel’s “right to defend itself,” by encouraging, enabling, going along with the genocide, Biden and others preserve and prolong the Zionist myth of an uniquely Semitic victimization. No wonder the reluctance to concede, issue, and act upon an indictment of genocide. For perhaps he returns from innumerable trips to Holocaust cemeteries around the country smug with a self-righteous, glorifying certification, a false equivalency malingering in the back of his mind. One horrendous sacrifice back then justifies yet another not quite as horrendous now. And so we offer the Palestinians up as a long overdue reparation for centuries of Gentile sin. When he and other such collaborators cannot hide from the responsibility of slaughtered Palestinian babies, children, and woman perhaps spiritual compensation comes from this biblically-cloaked fabrication of a not quite so equally-shouldered sacrifice. And so a few thousand Palestinian lives on the sacrificial altar of Gaza are not too much to pay to preserve this legacy of centuries of even greater Judaic suffering and grief.
What is more, the loose talk of a final solution coming from a few all too transparent zealots, of pushing the Palestinians into the sea or out of a projected “Greater Israel” entirely, no doubt stems from the recognition that if they remain they will serve as an inconvenient reminder of this historic axis of occupation and ethnic cleansing, from the original Nakba onwards. Hence the seemingly irresistible urge to remove the final lingering remnants of that colonial occupation. Wiping the slate clean. Closure.
And so given the inability of a good many seemingly decent, caring people to conceive of or countenance any other end game that might follow in the wake of any such recognition and acknowledgement of Israel’s crimes against humanity, that phone call will not occur. Better the continued annihilation of thousands of brown babies, children and mothers, and a Middle East seething in chaos—better anything else—than that.
Sophie’s Choice.
But not really.
Michael F. Sparks
phd. University of Chicago
Seattle
(206) 633-5072
Paradise Joe’s: A Cultural Sociology of a Christian College Community—An Exploration into the Meaning and Significance of American Evangelicalism (2020)
Forthcoming: The Dusk of Everything: The Origins, Meaning, and Significance of the Evangelical Rebellion of the Last Half-Century
Thank you for this Medhi.
He's proof that this is not the will of all Israëlis but the Zionists that rule their government.
I am sorry for Zahiro Shahar Mor's loss.
What came out for me in this discussion is the fact that the Prisoner taker told Mor's cousin not to worry as she would be home in a few days. I guess that was the plan of the perpetrators of the attack on the kibbutz just wanted to show Israel that it was not invincible and to get Palestinians released from Israeli jails. It appears Benjamin Netanyahu saw it differently and probably worked with other Zionists such as Biden and Blinken to use the opportunity to erase the presence of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank.
Here we are a Year later with over 42,000 Palestinians murdered and thousands more still buried under the rubble of thousands of buildings vanquished by 2,000-pound US-supplied bombs with constant talk of "we are very close to a ceasefire". It is disgraceful that we have not done enough to stop this madness; the military-industrial complex (MIC) runs the State Department and the Pentagon now and it is in their interest to keep the wars going as it is good for their bottom lines.
Wars are never the answer, only PEACE is.
Couldn't agree with you more.
Zahiro's use of the word "unimaginable" describes how many of us are feeling. In addition Bibi is holding the world hostage by his refusal to accept a hostage deal. As the saying goes, Bibi has "crossed the Rubicon"! He has gone too far and he is not turning back. Ugh!
Thank you, Zeteo. I am "scared" to watch any other news outlet today. Palestinian journalists, you and Democracy Now, are the only ones I follow. Keep pushing; we are here with you, for peace, for "not again" for ALL. One humankind, we are one humankind.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/abandon-harris-endorses-green-partys-jill-stein
As has been the case with two previous comments, the censors of Zeteo have been editing out certain portions (allow correctly pruned to fit the #words requirements) that would allow fellow subscribers to pursue/look up related works by others outside the Zeteo bubble, no matter how supportive I have been of Medhi's efforts. As per usual, call it the MSNBC projection.
At the likely risk of becoming too annoying--for the last time--can we try to solicit some "other voices" from "other rooms"? Here, again, sorry, in a much abbreviated version, is another take on these things that may be of interest to some fellow Zeteo supporters. The complete text is available on request from mischa139@gmail. com.
"Gaza, Sophie’s Choice, & The Myth of
the Immaculate Victimization Conception"
Nearly a century ago, Max Weber delivered a speech in Munich at the University that had for its topic “Politics as a Vocation.” That address, now more well known in essay form, contained a lot more than just occupational advice about finding a job somewhere in politics and then holding on to it. Indeed, it offers some rather remarkable observations that can serve to kick start our thinking about one of the most horrendous abominations of our time, Gaza and the Palestinians. . . . .
And so what on earth could this seemingly good, decent man be thinking?
Here’s what, I suspect. Here’s what he (Biden) and a good many other seemingly decent people—rabbis and politicians alike—are actually thinking or feeling deep down inside. Here’s what they cannot confront or acknowledge, perhaps don’t even understand.
Here’s the rub.
To call out Israel—even just Netanyahu and his ultranationalist, ultra-orthodox, “settler”-intoxicated-driven or enabling cabinet member buddies—for genocide would threaten, undermine, if not destroy, the until now unimpeachable century’s-long legacy of antisemitism, that almost cherished history of the horrific pogroms that have been visited upon the Jewish people. That entire mythological infrastructure. Call it the current ideological weaponization of a people’s suffering. For calling out the genocide would trigger an accounting or reckoning that a good many decent people are not willing or able to even imagine or countenance, let alone perform, given what they’ve been through. It would destabilize the entire iconic edifice, this identification of Judaism with an unblemished record of victimization that we have all assumed and embraced—tear-jerkingly celebrated even—for decades. It would violate the myth of the immaculate victimization conception, calling all that into question.
For to acknowledge the reality of a genocidal Zionism would send Israel, as a conquering colonizing occupier ever since 1947, headlong into a shared parallel final solution universe. It would shred any lingering vestige of semitism as the ne plus ultra of world historical victimization. Israel the gold standard, the GOAT. And yet perhaps the greatest irony of all could very well be that by refusing to do this work of reckoning we all will most likely ensure that Israel and the Zionist occupation will eventually go up in the flames of its own making. Or, failing that, simply continue collaborating with its malingering on as the last vestige of Middle East colonial exploitation, the last justly-earned and crowned Pariah state. Where the once invincible nation of Israel ends not with a bang, but a whimper.
By arming Netanyahu under the legitimating claim of Israel’s “right to defend itself,” by encouraging, enabling, going along with the genocide, Biden and others preserve and prolong the Zionist myth of an uniquely Semitic victimization. No wonder the reluctance to concede, issue, and act upon an indictment of genocide. For perhaps he returns from innumerable trips to Holocaust cemeteries around the country smug with a self-righteous, glorifying certification, a false equivalency malingering in the back of his mind. One horrendous sacrifice back then justifies yet another not quite as horrendous now. And so we offer the Palestinians up as a long overdue reparation for centuries of Gentile sin. When he and other such collaborators cannot hide from the responsibility of slaughtered Palestinian babies, children, and woman perhaps spiritual compensation comes from this biblically-cloaked fabrication of a not quite so equally-shouldered sacrifice. And so a few thousand Palestinian lives on the sacrificial altar of Gaza are not too much to pay to preserve this legacy of centuries of even greater Judaic suffering and grief.
What is more, the loose talk of a final solution coming from a few all too transparent zealots, of pushing the Palestinians into the sea or out of a projected “Greater Israel” entirely, no doubt stems from the recognition that if they remain they will serve as an inconvenient reminder of this historic axis of occupation and ethnic cleansing, from the original Nakba onwards. Hence the seemingly irresistible urge to remove the final lingering remnants of that colonial occupation. Wiping the slate clean. Closure.
And so given the inability of a good many seemingly decent, caring people to conceive of or countenance any other end game that might follow in the wake of any such recognition and acknowledgement of Israel’s crimes against humanity, that phone call will not occur. Better the continued annihilation of thousands of brown babies, children and mothers, and a Middle East seething in chaos—better anything else—than that.
Sophie’s Choice.
But not really.
Michael F. Sparks
phd. University of Chicago
Seattle
(206) 633-5072
Paradise Joe’s: A Cultural Sociology of a Christian College Community—An Exploration into the Meaning and Significance of American Evangelicalism (2020)
Forthcoming: The Dusk of Everything: The Origins, Meaning, and Significance of the Evangelical Rebellion of the Last Half-Century