66. Ostriches
PlowsharesCathy , |
Sunderland, MA USA |
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(01.10.10) |
As an American I can see that many Jewish Americans are well educated and intelligent. They are doctors, lawyers, bankers, academic scholars and leaders in information and entertainment media. So why can't Israelis be smart enough to avert a tragedy?
It isn't very intelligent to keep foreign media out of occupied territories when certain events are occuring. It is not very intelligent for your own press to bow to pressure from the military to not publish certain events. Then when outside sources mention those occurances, you act offended and attack the messenger.
Israelis and supporters of Israel act like ostriches that when frigntened bury their heads in the sand. Well, ostriches have small heads and big asses. We can still see them.
Wake up people. I'm writing to you on the internet. For most of the people of the world, newspapers and television are still their primary sources of news, but information keeps getting out on that unsurpressable world wide web.
Talk of the blockade of Gaza has been in the news lately. If this continues, even the dimmest of Americans will have heard that the blockade has been going on since 2006. Therefore, Israelis were not defending themselves last year when they cast lead into thousand of Gazans; they were defending their military conquests.
You don't get to say that you are no longer occupying a territory when you still control the airspace, the borders, and the flow of goods. If you are keeping people under occupation and seige, and they fire homemade rockets accross the border into your territory, and some of the rockets do a little bit of property damage, then the intelligent thing to do would be to talk to the people you are beseiging. You are the military occupiers. Talk to yourselves. Try to figure out what you are doing wrong.
Sixty years ago, Jewish people rightfully defined thewmselves as victims. They also succeeded in defining victims as Jews. Jews are victims; victims are Jews. It doesn't matter what the events under discussion actually are. The Jews are the victims, and the bad guys are whoever the Jews say they are. Well, sixty years of home demolitions, land confiscations and arbitrary detentions have eroded that kind of sympathy.
Last January, during the incursion of Gaza, I was attending a series of meetings at the Episcopal Church in Amherst, Ma. A Rabbi who was giving us a lecture there told us that Palestinians don't like Israelis because Palestinians are antisemitic. That's good. I'm glad it's not the bombs and the occupation that they object to.
Sixty years ago, Jews had the sympathy of the world. That esteem has been squandered on land annexation, water diversion and settlements. Increasingly, Israel is becoming a pariah state facing a future of outrage and tragedy. It is time to make changes.
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