After 70 years of Israeli statehood, this violent confirmation of our worst fears and perceptions, seals a negative destiny for Israel as far as the moral eye can see.
GRIEF
How can one not feel intense grief for the young Palestinians who out of despair and fury joined the Great March of Return, and so often found death and severe injury awaiting them as they approached the border unarmed?!
This was not a gratuitous event, or something that happened spontaneously on either side. After 70 years of Palestinian suffering, with no end of torment in sight, to show the world and each other their passion was what would be seen as normal, even admirable, demonstrating a spirit of resistance that endured after decades of repression, violence, humiliation, and denial of the most fundamental of rights. After 70 years of Israeli statehood, this violent confirmation of our worst fears and perceptions, seals a negative destiny for Israel as far as the moral eye can see.
HORROR
When exposed to such visual images of resistance and sniper violence the scene expresses the horror of burning steel rubbing against raw flesh. There is no way to grasp this particular cartography of risk, vulnerability, and security than to have recourse the language and imagery of horror. Such a sad narrative of horror will linger on both sides to haunt both collective and individual memories, but one with tragic pride, the other with repressed shame.
The horror was magnified by coinciding with obscene celebratory events in Jerusalem where Americans representing the Trump presidency, including Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, and the American Ambassador, David Friedman, brought infamy to the United States by this unseemly display of indifference to crimes against humanity being unabashedly committed as they spoke. Such moral and political insensitivity will not and should not be forgotten.
OUTRAGE
Words are all we have, but they will do. As Thomas Merton taught, some crimes are situated in the domain of the unspeakable.
The occasions for outrage about the treatment of the Palestinian people are many, but the Israeli reaction to this Palestinian march reaches a new level of moral, political, and legal wretchedness. It recalls the cry of religious leaders of conscience in the last stage of the Vietnam War, expressed by their dutiful compilation of criminal acts of American violence committed in relatively defenseless Vietnam bearing the telling title—NOT IN OUR NAME.
As Jews, as Americans, as human beings, isn’t it about time to take a similar stand, and at least create symbolic distance between the perpetrators of these crimes and ourselves?
The feeble Israeli claims of its right of self-defense or attributing Palestinian martyrdom to Hamas are so shallow and lacking in credibility as to discredit further rather than provide justifications for this exhibition of homicidal violence on a massive scale not as isolated incident but as a series of arrogant reenactments.
REMEMBERING
Not with words or argument, but with tears, and tears will not do.
Certainly as the Martyrdom of Gaza, and quite possibly seen as a kind of silent bonding by the Palestinian people with the African victims of the Sharpeville Massacre (1960)!
From this darkness will come an as yet undisclosed inspiration.
This article was originally published at RichardFalk.WordPress.com on May 15, 2018.
Thank you Mr. Falk for your understanding of the ongoing tragedy that is called ISRAEL.
From pre-historical times, through biblical times, through the time of recorded history there have been genocides. Entire genetic lines of humanity, if one allows Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon to be considered humans, have been eliminated. With the advent of the Abrahamic religions an adherent’s philosophy or beliefs, in addition to facial features and skin colour were added to the justifications for genocide. Zionists justify their genocide both ways – exactly the same as Hitler did. “They are not of our tribe, so we must kill them!” Stones, sticks, blades, guns, bombs – each genocidal technology trumping the last and ratcheting up the body count. Those of us who are awake and can think independently know where this ends. I have a feeling the Abrahamics would be right pissed off if they didn’t get their virgins or heavenly rewards or whatever they hope will be there for them when they die. What if they are banking on that train coming but it never does? Pity. It’s not that god is dead…it’s that he exists in the minds of men as a mantra to eliminate all rational thought – the ultimate act of passing the buck, avoiding responsibility, yet doing what you really want to do no matter how evil, because after all, your imaginary parent tells you to do it. If talking to god is odd, then hearing god answer is absolutely crazy and modern treatments include psychotropic drugs, restraint and incarceration. So why are such crazies venerated because their “conversations with god” are detailed in ancient religious books? Same shit, different day, I guess….