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 The World as It IsPosted on Mar 10, 2008
By Chris Hedges 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.
I and the public know
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. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, unable to break Hamas with the siege and frustrated by the Palestinians’ spontaneous rupture of the barricades that separate the Gaza Strip from Egypt, is trying to pound Gaza into submission. During the past three months of unrelenting Israeli strikes, over 300 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have died in Israeli attacks. The strikes have done nothing, however, to halt the rocket attacks on Israeli towns or end Hamas rule. Amnesty International, CARE International and Oxfam UK, along with other humanitarian aid groups, in a report last week said that living conditions in Gaza are at their worst point since Israel occupied the strip in 1967. The report estimated that 80 percent of the residents of Gaza are now dependent on food aid, compared with 63 percent two years ago. It noted that unemployment is about 40 percent among the general population and 70 percent in the private sector. The aid groups document power cuts to hospitals of as long as 12 hours a day, 50 million liters of sewage pouring into the sea daily, and water and sewage systems on the brink of collapse. The groups have called on the European Union and the British government to pressure Israel to open border crossings and begin negotiations with Hamas. Washington and Jerusalem have little interest in a peaceful settlement. They are blinded by their own military prowess. They do not grasp that a continuation of violence and a tightening of the siege will spur more desperate and embittered young men and women to acts of vengeance. The only route left is to hear the cries of all the victims, Israeli and Palestinian, to recapture empathy. Hamas’ offer to negotiate a truce, an offer backed by 64 percent of Israelis, is the only escape route. There is no option other than to finally give the Palestinians control over their lives and land. It is the only option that will, as well, save us in Iraq. The occupation of Palestinian territory, like the occupation of Iraq, is illegal, increasingly violent and counterproductive. I was in Gaza in 1993 after the Oslo peace accord was signed. It was as if, after years of suffocation, Palestinians and Israelis could breathe. But Oslo, in the hands of former Israeli Prime Ministers Benjamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon, was strangled and thwarted. 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. The Palestine Liberation Organization, headed by the Fatah party, was once considered a terrorist organization. It was illegal for an Israeli to have contact with the PLO. Those Israelis who called for negotiations with the Palestinian group were attacked and vilified. The Israeli government, however, under the pragmatism of Yitzhak Rabin, violated its own ban and began secret negotiations with the PLO. These negotiations led to the Oslo peace agreement. Fatah, today, is touted by Jerusalem and Washington as an ally in the war against Hamas and a partner for peace. 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. Previous item: The President You Are Trying to Reach Is Unavailable Next item: Putting Clinton and Obama on the Grill Elsewhere: . CommentsAre you a Truthdig member yet? Login now, or register with Truthdig.
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By Jimbo, March 11 at 6:25 am # I claim nothing. I just have one question: If Hamas stopped sending rockets into Israel, wouldn’t the counter-attacks and the block of fuel and supplies to Gaza stop as well? (This is a real question. I am actually curious what different people have to say.)
By guntotinganglion, March 10 at 7:38 pm # Israeli’s hide behind civilians as well. Military installations are positioned in civilian areas. Odd too, that during the Lebanese slaugher last year, the “surgical” precision of the Israeli weapons produced FAR more civilian casualties than the Qassam rockets ever did. Also, the Qassam rockets amazingly, considering they were unguided, consistently hit near Israeli military installations that just happened to be in civilian areas. So...apparently it doesn’t go both ways. If the Lebanese, or let’s just call them all Dr. Evil...if Dr. Evil has a rocket launcher near homes, he’s using human shields, but if Dr. Good (Israel) has tanks and launchers within civilian areas, it’s what? Never human shields...cause the honorable IDF would never do that. Dr. Evil is evil, Dr. Good is good, it’s just that simple....minded. Pull your head out...it’s a frightening world, but it’s best to see it as it is, rather than the cartoonish hellscape you make up in your mind. Should we discuss the half a million cluster weapons that the brave IDF scattered across southern Lebanon in the closing hours of that conflict? These weapons kill far more indiscriminately than the Qassam rockets. And these weapons bear a remarkable resemblance to a similar terror weapons deployed by the Nazi’s over London during the blitz. They purposefully designed them to look like toys, and were designed to be unexploded ordinance...they weren’t meant to explode, at least not at first. They were designed to attract children, who would then take the small interesting looking “toys” home with them, and play with them, until they were jostled just so, and blew the child to pieces. This is what the high dud rate in cluster weapons is for...to terrorize innocent populations, and to spread fear and terror far and wide, and to tie up medical infrastructure when grievous injuries are survived! And these terror weapons were deployed far and wide across southern Lebanon as the time was running out, and the “brave” IDF knew their last hope was terror. So, they used artillery pieces to fire these hideous weapons over cities and towns, in fields and streams, in trees and bushes, for children to find, take home, and blow themselves and their families apart. Most of the time however, they simply died when they touched them. Israeli’s should be very proud. Their amoral superiority is complete. These are weapons of pure evil. And, they are banned by international law. That of course doesnt’ stop Israel, and never has, and never will, as long at the brutes who are running things now remain in power!
By guntotinganglion, March 10 at 7:12 pm # Howard, are you blind? Can you not see the world around you? Both sides are committing acts of brutality, but Israel is killing FAR MORE Palestinians than the other way round. The eight Torah students were murdered, how many innocent Palestinian civilians were murdered that same day, or the day before, or the day after? Your ethical blindness, and many others, is why this butchery continues on both sides. The attitude that “they” “...celebrate death, despise democracy and seek Israel’s destruction” sounds a lot like, “they hate us for our freedom!”. It sounds a lot like the justifications that have gone on for thousands of years, made manifest by cartoonishly caricaturized bad guys, who are pure evil and can never be reasoned with. Did you NOT read Christopher Hedges article? Both sides are populated by human beings, who are THE SAME in every respect, other than the circumstances of their birth. If you shoot a man’s brother, he will attempt to hurt or kill you, and on, and on, and on it goes, as it always has gone. War’s to end wars never end wars, they only further the brutality of the NEXT wars. And turning your “enemies” into cardboard cutouts without humanity, justifies their killing...and this statement applies in BOTH directions, to Israelis and Palestinians alike! I’m not sure why I’m trying. Your mind is obviously sealed, but as Hedges says, there’s a dearth of empathy in this world, and unfortunately, I have empathy for both sides in an awful, endless reign of brutality. And in this reign, Israel is the all powerful in it’s own mind, and in it’s military might provided greatly by the Unites States. No such advantage goes to the Palestinians. They fire blind, Israel uses “smart” weapons with so called surgical precision...and the damn patient dies every time! These surgically precise weapons in reality, have all the effectivity of a chainsaw for a brain surgeon! I guess the final question is, would you support a “final solution” to the Palestinian “problem”? Vilnai apparently would. Would you cheer, as the murderers of the Torah students did, as a mushroom cloud rises over Gaza? This may well be the future, and if it is, Israel will have damned itself for all eternity. It’s time for peacekeepers to find peace, and warmakers to find the door. These are not cardboard cutouts they putting holes in, these are men, women, children, babies and the unborn, who NEVER HURT ANYONE!!! The people you vilify, are the tiniest fraction of the 1.5 million people being starved in Gaza. Will this insanity never end? Where’s Solomon when you need him? Can reason ever hold sway? History seems to indicate not. I hope history is wrong, for the sake of the innocents on both sides of this expanding bloodbath.
By guntotinganglion, March 10 at 7:18 pm # Re: Re: Brazen Murder of StudentsWhat other country on Earth has claimed the “right to exist”. Name one that has made this a legally binding concept. I’d like to know, seriously.
By Seltzer, March 10 at 2:21 pm # I’m saddened to see that yet again, a reasonably argued online column by an intelligent writer is tarnished by flame-throwing respondents. We don’t have to agree on this or any other issue, but how can we ever expect to solve anything by name-calling and hate-speak? Some examples of such, as shown above: “To them, murder is acceptable so long as it is justified in the eyes of the executor.” “Poor ‘senior fellow/Distinguished Fellow’ Chris Hedges...”
By Joe, March 10 at 1:29 pm # Chris Hedges is a wise and valuable asset to our tortured world.
By weather, March 12 at 1:15 am # Rrowman, you sad and empty little man. Hate doesn’t motivate the critics, you simply hate what they say. I urge you to move to Israel and fix it, its made America very sick.
By Kwagmyre, March 10 at 11:21 am # If or when reason somehow prevails in that troubled area of the world, it will be obvious that only a single state solution is the permanent Rx for a lasting peace. The end of Apartheid in South Africa has demonstrated that as nothing else could.
By guntotinganglion, March 10 at 9:45 am # PP's (Psychopathic Personalities)The wisdom of Solomon is a thing of the past. Amoral troglodytes rule now, in Israel and America, with an iron fist. When Vilnai made his reprehensible, repugnant statement about the holocaust, nuclear weapons came to mind. I don’t doubt that any of these cavemen would use WMD to gain a “final solution” to all these miseries in the Middle East. Thank you Christopher for attempting to remind people how powerful empathy can be. Sadly, psychopaths are incapable of empathy, and ALL of these proto-humans are psychopathic.
By bozhidar bob balkas, March 10 at 6:38 am # arafat, abbas just like geronimo, said/say, I'l fightit can be educed that, once 1 collates all the salient facts, that the warpeace process now 100yrs old, will go on for decades at least. thus, what is abbas, the cadger, to lose by cadging? PA get’s some money out of all this. the record is well known, but in toto skirted by zions and their supporters. isr holds thousands of captives w.o. trial or lawyers. pals hold 1, but w. a lawyer. demolition of homes, orchards, villages, in isr’s favor, expulsion by warfare/terrorism, restriction of movement also in favor of isr by a ratio 100% to zero%. then we h. walls, blockades, killings/maimings. the only crime pals guilty of is their maimings/kllings. pals lesser crimes r property damage and being stubborn to leave en masse. but who leaves 1’s HHH? (home,hearth,habitat? thank u.
By sunzen, March 10 at 5:52 am # war is rawA world without empathy creates war. War is hate realized.
By truthreaderaz, March 10 at 12:10 pm # Re: Palestinians are without a homeDear Mr. Kiss, You have a big misconception. Islam like christianity is composed of different sects and different ethnic and national groups. So just because Palistinians are Moslems that means they can be uprooted to go live in any other Moslem country or any other Arab country. Can you uproot the Norwegians from Norway and expect Sweden to accept them all?? They are all Christians and Scandenivians!!
By guntotinganglion, March 10 at 10:46 am # Re: Baloney..Cartoon caricatures can be very satisfying, but that doesn’t make them true. Ever hear of the Warsaw Ghetto? Apparently a lot of Zionists haven’t, because Gaza is a vast Warsaw Ghetto now, where innocent and guilty alike (but mostly innocent) die. The Zionists (I DO NOT SAY JEWISH, BECAUSE ZIONISTS ARE A PERVERSION OF THE JEWISH FAITH!) are now, and have been, carrying out collective punishment in Gaza. That is, men, women, children, infants and the unborn, are all targets of the “brave” IDF. I recently read an eyewitness account of IDF forces going into Gaza, in pursuit of a militant. This young man ran into his (apparent) home, and the IDF fired a missile into the home and killed everyone inside. Then, out of anger, they targeted every house on the block, firing missiles into each home, without knowledge of who was within, or if any illegal activity had taken place there, and killed EVERYONE in those homes. That is classic collective punishment. The Nazi’s did this in WW2, where if a single citizen of a town killed one of the Nazi soldiers, they then rounded up a hundred citizens, and executed them all on the spot. What’s the difference? Oh ya...the Zionists are good and would NEVER do anything wrong...what a CROCK! The main difference between Nazi collective punishment and Zionist collective punishment is two fold. The Nazi’s were cold blooded, and in this instance the Zionists appear to have been hot blooded. And, the Nazi’s published their collective punishment parameters (100 to 1), while the Zionists do not published theirs, apparently so they can maintain a cloak of “morality” in an otherwise homicidal national policy. Add Your Comment |
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