eatbees blog

Two days ago my friend doga, who has contributed several times to this blog, wrote to me to apologize for not finishing an article he promised to write. He was disturbed by the violence in Gaza, and the deaths of innocent children which have been neglected in the Western media. With his permission, I’m reproducing the e-mail he sent me, because it is a cry of conscience that deserves to be heard. I hope that publishing it helps to ease his frustration at not being able to do anything in the face of injustice. For the rest of us, we might ask ourselves how we can sit here, and take images like the one above for granted.

I’m sorry I haven’t communicated with you over the past few days, but I haven’t been able to concentrate. I was on the point of finishing a modest article for your blog, but I lost the energy because of the massacre in Gaza. I saw children whose souls left their bodies right in front of Al Jazeera’s cameras. It was horrible for me to see those images, and the helicopters that arbitrarily dropped bombs on people who were expecting a bomb to fall on them at any moment, all on live television.

When the West revolted against the Church and against injustice in general, I thought that humanity was siding with what is sacred rather than with books, or even with God Himself. When the world stood with the Jews at the time of the Holocaust, and the West compensated them a bit, I thought it was an act that was purely humane in nature!

I saw how Western presidents were proud of hosting or visiting with Nelson Mandela. When the United States waged two wars after 3000 of its citizens died because of terrorists, everyone took the initiative to be against terrorism. Then Israel went to war with Hezbollah because that group kidnapped two soldiers from the Israeli army.

What bothers me isn’t this sort of corrupt, interest-based politics, because despite the fact that I’m expressing myself innocently, I know about this kind of politics. But why do you or I, or others, have to get caught up in it even involuntarily? Why not fight so that human beings are valued as sacred? Otherwise, we have to say that the people of Gaza aren’t human!

You can see why I’m saying that I can’t concentrate, because I’ve noticed that there is a huge force that obliges us to enter into its game. Innocents enter into it, and intellectuals, and human rights activists. We all enter into the game as defined by this force, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.

I’ve just understood why there are associations that fight against drug use or street crime by trying to convince people that arbitrary crime and drug use are a danger to daily life. I’ve come to understand that they do this to hide organized crime. I’m almost certain that it’s the same in politics, that money is handed out to associations that talk about human rights in order to try to convince people that the danger threatening their lives can be found in things like preventing a journalist from working for ten years, or throwing someone in jail because he is gay. In the end, the purpose is once again to hide the organized crime that exists within our global instututions.

I remind you once again that it bothers me to be forced to enter into this dirty game, even involuntarily.

— • —

For those who remain largely clueless, as do I, I’ll provide a little context on what was going on in Gaza over the last few days. But let’s not get distracted from doga‘s larger point. Israeli violence aside, or questions of who started it or who is most to blame, we are all part of a corrupt global system. Whatever comfort and security we may have, it is ours thanks to the global policeman that destroys pharmaceutical plants, wedding parties, and families in their sleep, all in the name of “fighting terror.”

Palestine threatened with a holocaust, Electronic Intifada:

Israeli officials began damage limitation efforts after the country’s deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai threatened Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip with a “holocaust.”

The comments came a day after Israeli occupation forces killed 31 Palestinians, nine of them children, one a six-month-old baby, in a series of air raids across the Gaza Strip. …

Speaking to Israeli army radio today, Vilnai said, “the more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, [the Palestinians] will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves.”

A report on the BBC News website headlined “Israel warns of Gaza ‘holocaust'” noted that the word “holocaust”—shoah in Hebrew—is “a term rarely used in Israel outside discussions of the Nazi genocide during World War II.”

Media blackout of Palestinian suffering, Democracy Now:

Amy Goodman, host: Israeli troops have reportedly pulled out of northern Gaza after days of fighting that killed more than 112 Palestinians in the deadliest military assault on Gaza in years. … The clashes reached a peak on Saturday, after Israel sent in a regiment of ground troops in an operation dubbed “Hot Winter” that killed seventy-seven Palestinians in two days. According to Gaza health ministry statistics, twenty-two children were killed. More than 350 people were wounded. …

Amira Hass, Israeli journalist: This kind of news is completely absent from the news diet, the journalistic diet of Israelis…. I, for personal reasons, am today in Tel Aviv and not in Ramallah… [and] I can report about how life sixty kilometers north to Gaza, how life is normal, how everybody—except for one demonstration yesterday, that the group of leftwing Israelis held in front of the Ministry of Security… there was one demonstration, and that’s it, and people live their life.