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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 Daniel, March 19 at 6:30 am # Too many humans on this increasingly small planet!
By guntotinganglion, March 15 at 10:47 am # Consider if a bunker buster does go bust, and blows apart in a conventional explosion (this would be the dirty bomb scenario that Bushemada fabricated against Jose Padilla (a US CITIZEN), whom he then tortured into insanity while attempting to get him to admit to). The penetrator would disintegrate as it hit, say a thick basalt layer, at perhaps ten meters depth, and the splash ejecta from the explosion (carrying the vaporized radioactive core) could easily scatter highly radioactive powder over a wide area. That area would then be a no-mans land (virtually) forever. Come to think of it, that’s probably the plan. No more centrifuge activity there, whether there was any to begin with or not. Poison the land permanently, story over. Remember the old joke about oxymorons and military intelligence? Well, the people who design and fabricate these grotesque weapons may be smart, but the people who use them are often even more dense than the rock layers they intend to penetrate. They believe that America can do no wrong technologically. Tell it to the crew of Challenger, or Columbia. Tell it to New Orleans. Tell it to the victims of 9/11 who should have been protected by a country that firehoses money on national security, but totally misses this threat that was screaming in their faces (that would be you Condoleeza Rice, Ms National Security Advisor!) for months in advance of the attack (a time when oddly, John Ashcroft stopped using public air transport, which as Attorney General, he is required to do). When America fails, it fails in spectacular ways...and this insane gambit is a guaranteed failure in the making. The sheer number of required targets that ALL have to be taken out with “surgical” precision (like doing surgery with a chain saw) in a very short time, boggles the mind. And truth be told, they don’t know where a lot of what they want to target actually is! But that never stops Lord High Inquisitor Bushemada! He is the master of ignorant arrogance, and I am certain he intends to prove that again very shortly. And he will fail, as he did in Afghanistan, and as he did, and continues to do, in Iraq.
By guntotinganglion, March 14 at 9:46 pm # Consider if a bunker buster goes bust, and blows apart in a conventional explosion. This would be the dirty bomb scenario that Bushemada claimed Jose Padilla was planning, that he tortured him into insanity for. Have the penetrator break up in a thick basalt layer, and have this happen ten meters down, and the splash of ejecta from the explosive impact would atomize the warhead core and scatter the powder over a wide area. That area would then be no-mans land (virtually) forever. Come to think of it, that’s probably the plan. That’s also how depleted uranium rounds work...but that’s another story. Remember the old joke about oxymorons and military intelligence? Well, the people who design and fabricate these grotesque weapons may be smart, but the people who use them are often as dense as the rock layers they intend to penetrate. They believe that America can do no wrong technologically. Tell it to the crew of Challenger, or Columbia. When America fails, it fails in spectacular ways...and this insane gambit is a guaranteed failure in the making. The sheer number of required targets that ALL have to be taken out with “surgical” precision (like doing surgery with a chain saw) in a very short time, boggles the mind. And truth be told, they don’t know where a lot of what they want to target actually is! But that never stops Lord High Inquisitor Bushemada! He is the master of ignorant arrogance, and I am certain he intends to prove that again very shortly. And he will fail, as he did in Afghanistan, and as he did, and continues to do, in Iraq. However, most Americans can’t grasp the concept that they aren’t the omnipotent master race that can never fail if it just throws enough resources at the problem (hey...we landed on the moon!). Regardless of the US press, we are normal human beings who screw up a LOT...Bushemada’s Presidency being a prime example of that concept. This may be our last failure though, before the shit hits the fan...and when it does, it’ll be duck and cover time all over again, one way, or another.
By guntotinganglion, March 14 at 3:52 pm # Re: I am here recommendingExceptional anti-war book, and movie. “Johnny Got His Gun” is also a stunning anti-war book, and move. It was written in 1938 by Dalton Trumbo, who was blacklisted by the HUAC in 1950 and spent 11 months in prison (for, of all things, CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS). One of my favorite films he wrote the screenplay for (among many great films) was “The Brave One” in 1956. It was shot in Mexico because he was still under the blacklist and couldn’t work in the US.
By Sandy Q, March 14 at 9:59 am # killing civiliansThe article sys half of those killed in Gaza by fragmentation bombs were civilians. What were the others? Does Palestine have an army?
By guntotinganglion, March 13 at 5:04 pm # I’m adding one more thought that just can’t be avoided in this discussion. If the US, uses first strike nukes against a non-nuclear state, we will go down in history as the most evil nation in history. And, when a man like Bush, refers to these as “weapons of mass murder” and then uses them, what does that make him? Even Howard can add 2 + 2. He uses weapons of mass murder (HIS WORDS), he is by definition, a mass murderer. He said it, not me. Is there any way to put this more simply? Perhaps only that (even considering) the use of these monstrous weapons is a sin, and a crime against humanity. I know Bush was a “history major”, but clearly he learned nothing whatsoever from history. The holocausts that were ignited over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, should have ended any discussion of future use, since so many innocent people died so horrifically. The US became a terror state when it used those weapons of terror and mass murder, especially since they were unnecessary, since the Japanese were defeated, and all the US had to do was wait them out. That act was specifically meant as the starting gun for the Cold War, and it’s only purpose was to warn the Soviets against trying to tangle with the US...and we see how well that went. First strike will seal the fate of this country, because the entire sane world will turn against us. Insane states like Israel will applaud, but they will also face the wrath of the world as a whole. Using nukes against the USSR was always considered to be MAD, and it was accepted that it should NEVER happen, by sane human beings anyway. And they could hit back. Iran has no such defense, they can’t hit back. But, they can do other things that will change this world in profound ways. I hope doomsday isn’t around the corner, but we have a doomsday President who thinks it would be “cool” to use the one weapon he’s been denied...weapons of mass murder. And if he does, history will remember him as the mass murderer that he is.
By Xenophon, March 13 at 4:16 pm # Desert Gods = DeathHi, psychos! Check this out…
By guntotinganglion, March 13 at 2:49 pm # Re: LouiseI have read some about the bunker buster nukes, and they assume certain geologic conditions for effective penetration. Hit a strata of granite, or perhaps an unknown basalt layer, done. Hit some high density boulders on the way through sediment layering, dead stop. Penetrator design, by definition, is an incomplete science...unless you have accurate seismic data (from test explosives) that can very precisely characterize the specific target. Otherwise, it’s guess work based on assumptions. The g-forces acting on the penetrator warhead are insane. I am not schooled in this, or even truly knowledgeable, but basic physics says you have to hit the ground at a very high speed to make penetration possible, and those high speeds produce very high g-forces at impact. Hard to imagine how robust a warhead’s internals have to be to survive the initial impact, and survive to operational depth (30-50 meters??...maybe?). I’d assume that impact velocity has to be above mach 3...but that’s a total guess. My interest in this area is more about use in planetary missions, purely for science, and the two times that this was done, at Mars, during the Mars 96 Russian mission and the US Mars Polar Lander mission in 1998, the two penetrators (on each mission) were total failures! After years of preparation, the penetrators went in, and were never heard from again. If they do this, first and foremost their going to plunge the world into a true world war, and second, it will fail. They aren’t even sure where all the targets are, and the indication is, they’ll have to have about a thousand successful hits to keep this whole thing from blowing up in their faces...or more appropriately, in OUR faces. We are the ones who’ll pay the price for this insanity. This is Doctor Strangelove (or how I stopped worrying and learned to love the Bomb) shit...purity of essence, POE...POE...POE...YEEHAAWWWW...nookler combat toe to toe with the Islamofascists! Can you see Cheney riding a bomb down, waving his cowboy hat all the way???? Goin’ out with a BANG!!!
By guntotinganglion, March 13 at 11:32 am # Re: Re: Unspeakable truth ?Ignore the H man, he doesn’t converse, he only lectures.
By Maria Martinez, March 13 at 7:48 am # Re: the khazarsGreat comment. Including the story of 90% of the current “jewish” population would be interesting, though you make your point without it. Thanks.
By Winston, March 13 at 7:16 am # “In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trials 1945-1949), I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.” -- Captain G. M. Gilbert, Army psychologist assigned to interview and analyze the defendants at the Nuremberg Trials
By Maria Martinez, March 13 at 7:09 am # Re: Re: Unspeakable truth ?Right on. Unfortunately, most gentile westerners have no idea just what they’re dealing with when it comes to Israel, world class liar “evolved” in the art beyond the pale.
By AwakeAndAriseOrg, March 13 at 4:36 am # LDS Church President Spencer W. Kimball in 1976, not speaking favorably of his own “flock” and people, nor of the United States in that Bicentennial year said this: “When I review the performance of this people..., I am appalled and frightened. “We are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord. When enemies rise up, we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel—ships, planes, missiles, fortifications—and depend on them for protection and deliverance. When threatened, we become anti-enemy instead of pro-kingdom of God; we train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan’s counterfeit of true patriotism, perverting the Savior’s teaching: “ ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; “ ‘That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven’ (Matthew 5:44-45). “
By weather, March 12 at 3:07 pm # Re: Unspeakable truth ?howard, I’ve read your posts, you’re in full flight from reality. If Israel ever wanted to even remotely get close to telling the truth, they’d have absolutely no idea where to begin. - and pls. leave America out of Israel’s dark [plans and designs, they’re toxic.
By guntotinganglion, March 12 at 8:57 am # Re: OutragedMany were protected by the CIA, and given new lives in the US, for their information on the Soviet Union. A prime example is General Reinhard Gehlen. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB146/index.htm Operation Paperclip is one to look at if you’re interested. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip This all involves the end justifying the means, i.e. protecting and using known mass murderers (of Jews, Gypsies, Poles etc) who had as much anti-communist zeal as the US. Gehlen had a vast intelligence network on the Eastern Front, and it was his database on the Soviets that kept him from having his life terminated at the end of a rope...which is what he deserved, because he was a mass murderer. On the other side of the world was another charmer that the US took in and protected. Shiro Ishii, one of my personal favorites in terms of cold blooded, inhuman butchers. Unit 731 was his team that was put together to create biological and chemical weapons. They carried out the most vile and deeply evil experimentation on humans, most of whom were Chinese, but during the war they also did live dissections (without anesthesia) on Australian and US prisoners. They also experimented on men, women and children, removing organs to see how long it would take them to die. Injecting drugs, toxins, biotoxins, pathogens...a wide variety of substances into the bodies of their victims to see the results. Shiro Ishii died peacefully at home in Japan in 1959...after having been protected by US intelligence (CIA et al) because of his research and database on bio and chemical weapons development. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 I only mention these, to illustrate the amoral nature of the upper levels of the US government. Our illustrious CIA has quite a history, and most of it is like this. And the concept of the end justifying the means continues, in the Middle East and elsewhere. And then there was Prescott Bush...and his direct connection to the Nazi war machine. But we’ll leave that for another time…
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 guntotinganglion, March 11 at 12:50 pm # Re: the various Aramaean tribesThank you for this post. Most enlightening. Greatly appreciated.
By guntotinganglion, March 11 at 11:18 am # Re: Turmoil in GazaPinpoint targeting? Like when IDF troops destroyed an entire block of homes, killing EVERYONE, because one militant ran into a single house? Precision collective punishment is what we’d have to call it, huh? Sieg Heil mein Herr! Are you incapable of reading anything that doesn’t mindlessly follow Zionist propaganda? It’s obvious that NONE of the thoughtful posts here have had any effect on you at all. You simply continue with the mindless pro-Zionist propaganda campaign. If you were capable of a conversation, I’d want to engage you, but that’s obviously a complete waste of time. Keep posting...keep parroting...others can respond, but I won’t waste my time again. Add Your Comment |
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Huckabee’s Major Misfire
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