As the Hamas team laughs
By Gideon Levy
Monday, February 20, 2006
From the Israeli journal Ha'aretz:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/684258.html
The Hamas team had not laughed so much in a long time. The team,
headed by the prime minister's advisor Dov Weissglas and including
the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, the director of the Shin
Bet and senior generals and officials, convened for a discussion with
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on ways to respond to the Hamas election
victory. Everyone agreed on the need to impose an economic siege on
the Palestinian Authority, and Weissglas, as usual, provided the
punch line: "It's like an appointment with a dietician. The
Palestinians will get a lot thinner, but won't die," the advisor
joked, and the participants reportedly rolled with laughter. And,
indeed, why not break into laughter and relax when hearing such a
successful joke? If Weissglas tells the joke to his friend
Condoleezza Rice, she would surely laugh too.
But Weissglas' wisecrack was in particularly poor taste. Like the
thunder of laughter it elicited, it again revealed the extent to
which Israel's intoxication with power drives it crazy and completely
distorts its morality. With a single joke, the successful attorney
and hedonist from Lilenblum Street, Tel Aviv demonstrated the
chilling heartlessness that has spread throughout the top echelon of
Israel's society and politics. While masses of Palestinians are
living in inhumane conditions, with horrifying levels of unemployment
and poverty that are unknown in Israel, humiliated and incarcerated
under our responsibility and culpability, the top military and
political brass share a hearty laugh a moment before deciding to
impose an economic siege that will be even more brutal than the one
until now.
The proposal to put hungry people on a diet is accepted here without
shock, without public criticism; even if only said in jest, it is
incomparably worse than the Danish caricature. It reflects a
widespread mood that will usher in cruel, practical measures. If
until now one could argue that Israel primarily demonstrated
insensitivity to the suffering of the other and closed its eyes
(especially the stronger classes, busy with their lives of plenty)
while a complete nation was groaning only a few kilometers away, now
Israel is also making jokes at the expense of the other's suffering.
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This was not the first joke or contribution by Weissglas to the
racist and lord-like public discourse vis-a-vis the Palestinians. His
true face was already revealed about a year and a half ago in the
famous interview with Ari Shavit in Haaretz, when he stated,"And we
educated the world to understand that there is no one to talk to. And
we received a no-one-to-talk-to certificate ... The certificate will
be revoked only when this-and-this happens - when Palestine becomes
Finland." This was the peak of cynicism: The man who was involved up
to his neck in the Annex Research affair - the shell company for
channeling huge contributions to the prime minister - is conditioning
negotiations with the Palestinians on transforming them into the
country ranked as least corrupt in a survey in which Israel was
ranked in the unenviable 26th place.
The recommendation for a "diet," along with the edicts Israel is
poised to impose on the Palestinian people, should have aroused a hue
and cry among Israeli society. Even if we put aside the awful
political inanity of pushing Hamas into a corner instead of giving it
a chance to change its ways, and even if we ignore the fact that
Israel plans to confiscate tax revenues that do not belong to it, the
policy of the Kadima government raises questions about its humanity.
Where do we get the right to abuse an entire people this way? Is it
only because of our great power and the fact that the U.S. allows us
to run wild and do whatever we want?
We stopped talking about morality a long time ago - after all, we are
not living in Finland. Still, it would be good to ask: What country
would dare to exacerbate the living conditions (which are so
miserable in any case) of the residents of a territory under its
occupation? What was the sin of the 4,000 lucky people from Gaza whom
Israel still allowed to work within its borders, and to whom it is
now closing the gates? Did the decision-makers call to mind the sight
of these downtrodden people, crowded and humiliated at the Erez
crossing on their way home from an exhausting day of work? More than
half of all Palestinians are already living in poverty according to
the last United Nations report, published in December. Last year, 37
percent had difficulties obtaining food and 54 percent of the
residents of the "liberated" Gaza Strip cut back the amount of food
they consume. Child mortality rose by 15 percent and the average
unemployment rate reached 28 percent. To travel in the West Bank, the
Palestinians have to traverse no fewer than 397 checkpoints and, in
addition to this, Israel now wants to wield an even heavier hand.
If there is still a staying obstacle, it is only the constraint of
image: Israel fears the spread of hunger only because of the world's
reaction and not because of the bestiality it entails. Nonetheless,
politicians here are competing with a range of extreme proposals,
including cutting off electricity and water and abandoning millions
of innocent residents. Is this also election spin? Is this what the
Israeli voter wants?
What you see from there is truly not what you see from here: From the
posh restaurants where Weissglas and his colleagues from the Hamas
team dine, from the sophisticated road system on which they race
along in their official vehicles, from the splendid concert halls and
frequent trips abroad - you cannot see the suffering. From there, it
is easy to impose more edicts with the flick of a tongue, without
considering their frightful implications in the miserable alleyways
of Jenin and ruined huts of Rafah. From there you can even joke about
it.
===
Today, February 20, 2006 The New York Times published racist
incitement to mass murder Muslims.
Dear Public Editor:
The article attached below and its title really lie outside the bounds
of acceptability. Essentially, it argues that Muslims, who protest a
carefully planned campaign of racial incitement, are acting like
insects, whose brains have been eaten out by a parasites.
Would the New York Times dare to publish such an article that so
treated an American Black protest against a carefully planned campaign
of racial incitement by a major broadcaster in the USA?
Why use Muslims as the example? Maybe Eastern European ethnic
Ashkenazim that have conducted a systematic religiously inspired
campaign to steal and ethnically cleanse Palestine are acting like
insects whose brains have been eaten out by parasites.
A big apology from the New York Times is definitely in order as well
as the immediate termination of Edward Rothstein, the editor that let
this article get through and whoever assigned the title. (Would the
NY Times ever have run a title like "History Illuminates the Genocidal
Agression of Jews?")
Sincerly yours,
Joachim Martillo
-----------------------------------------
History Illuminates the Rage of Muslims
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
February 20, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/20/arts/20conn.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
An ant climbs a blade of grass, over and over, seemingly without
purpose, seeking neither nourishment nor home. It persists in its
futile climb, explains Daniel C. Dennett at the opening of his new
book, "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon" (Viking),
because its brain has been taken over by a parasite, a lancet fluke,
which, over the course of evolution, has found this to be a
particularly efficient way to get into the stomach of a grazing sheep
or cow where it can flourish and reproduce. The ant is controlled by
the worm, which, equally unconscious of purpose, maneuvers the ant
into place.
Mr. Dennett, anticipating the outrage his comparison will make,
suggests that this how religion works. People will sacrifice their
interests, their health, their reason, their family, all in service to
an idea "that has lodged in their brains." That idea, he argues, is
like a virus or a worm, and it inspires bizarre forms of behavior in
order to propagate itself. Islam, he points out, means "submission,"
and submission is what religious believers practice. In Mr. Dennett's
view, they do so despite all evidence, and in thrall to biological and
social forces they barely comprehend.
Now that is iconoclasm — a wholehearted attempt to destroy a respected
icon. "I believe that it is very important to break this spell," Mr.
Dennett writes, as he tries to undermine the claims and authority of
religious belief. Attacks on religion, of course, have been a staple
of Western secular society since the Enlightenment, though often
carried out with far less finesse (and far less emphasis on biology)
than Mr. Dennett does; he refers to "the widespread presumption by
social scientists that religion is some kind of lunacy."
Mr. Dennett understands, too, that iconoclasm, with its lack of
deference, can also give offense. But not even he could have imagined
the response to the now notorious Danish cartoons that have so
offended Muslims around the world, leading to riots, death and
destruction. It was as if the problem of religious belief in the
modern world had been highlighted in garish colors. If Mr. Dennett's
attack is a premeditated spur to debate, the Muslim riots shock with
their primordial force. Together, they leave us with a tough set of
intertwining questions: Can religion — with its absolute and sweeping
assertions — make any claim on a society whose doctrines require it to
defer, in part, to all, even to blasphemers? Can religion be as
dramatically shunted aside as Mr. Dennett desires? If not, what sort
of accommodation is needed?
Mr. Dennett would like the coolness of reason to replace the commands
of faith. The riots, though, show that at the very least, reason alone
is insufficient. They are not just metaphorically iconoclastic in
their challenge. They are literally iconoclastic: attempts to destroy
any trace of forbidden images or inspire fear in any who might object.
They are the latest manifestations of battles that once took place
within the West, particularly during the eighth century, when
iconoclasm got its name. At that time leaders of the Eastern Church,
perhaps inspired by Islamic and Judaic prohibitions against images,
objected to religious icons as a form of idolatry.
Iconoclasm (from the Greek, meaning the "breaking of images") was
adopted as doctrine by Emperor Leo III (680-741) and his successors,
and, for a century, led to the destruction of art, massacres, torture
of monks and attacks on shrines, decisively widening the schism in the
Church between Constantinople and the papacy.
The Iconoclasts of the eighth century and their successors during the
Reformation were like the Taliban or rioting Muslims of the 21st.
Except that that older violence occurred within a religion, inspired
by theology. Today's Iconoclasts want to oppose all attempts to
display forbidden images, whatever their provenance. And for a variety
of reasons, many in the West readily defer. Last fall, for example,
Burger King withdrew its ice cream from restaurants in Britain after
receiving complaints from Muslims that the swirling illustration on
the package resembled the name of Allah.
Of course, to a certain extent, the recent riots also reflect a
struggle for internal power. Rage was deliberately churned up with
supplementary drawings reportedly created by some radical Muslim
leaders and presented along with the original group of 12. One,
crudely offensive even to this infidel's eyes, replaced the political
cartoonist's gibes with the preoccupations of a pornographer, showing
a dog mounting the Prophet. The militants who created and distributed
these cartoons displayed a willingness to violate any principle, to
increase their earthly power — a sentiment that some original
Iconoclasts must have shared.
What response is possible to such attacks? Many commentators have been
surprising deferent, describing the original 12 images, almost
apologetically, as insensitive. But look more closely: the subject of
many is not really Muhammad himself, but the act of drawing Muhammad
and the responses it might inspire. A cartoonist is shown anxiously
leaning over his sketch of Muhammad, sweating profusely, looking over
his shoulder in fear. In another, two Muslim avengers, their scimitars
drawn in fury, are about to seek retribution for an offensive drawing
when their superior, looking at it closely, advises them to "relax,"
it's just a sketch made by a Dane.
Some of these cartoons are not iconoclastic offenses against religious
belief at all. Instead, they are about iconoclasm and anticipated
confrontations with it. The fear and drawn swords the cartoons portray
turn out to be depictions of the very reaction they inspired. They are
expressions that is, of anxiety. In the West, Mr. Dennett's iconoclasm
is absorbed, but Muslim iconoclasm cannot be.
What other possibilities are there? At a recent conference at Columbia
University, "Religion and Liberalism," organized by Andrew Delbanco
and the American Studies Program, there were some fascinating attempts
to try to imagine something other than iconoclasm in the relationship
between secular politics and religion once eighth-century tactics are
left behind. Speakers, including E. J. Dionne Jr., Mark Lilla, Alan
Wolfe, Todd Gitlin, Mary Gordon, Susannah Heschel and Elisabeth
Sifton, distanced themselves from the kind of attack on religion that
Mr. Dennett proposes, while trying, too, to pry religion away from its
contemporary association with conservative politics and
fundamentalism. For some it seemed an attempt to "save" religion for
liberalism, while still keeping a safe distance.
The issues, though, remain intractable and unrelenting. But it may be
that the United States has already offered one kind of an answer,
creating a society in which faith and reason continually cohabit in
uneasy proximity, and iconoclasm is as commonplace as belief.
Connections, a critic's perspectives on arts and ideas, appears every
other Monday.
Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
