Hate and Indifference

Four-year-old grabs shotgun,
shoots his teenage babysitter
for stepping on his foot.

Hate and indifference. I assume that is what must be involved in the current Israeli/Palestinian conflict. I mean, really, nothing else makes sense. Why would Hamas keep sending ineffective rockets into Israel when they must know they are only going to bring about an unpleasant Israeli response? And why would Israel overreact so terribly, killing hundreds of Israelis, including women and children, when the Hamas rockets killed at most half a dozen Israelis over several weeks? The Israelis must know that they will become (again) an international pariah (except for the U.S. which supports even their worst atrocities unconditionally). What both sides are doing makes no sense whatsoever, neither militarily or politically. Thus I conclude that both sides are driven primarily by hate. The Palestinians hate the Israelis, perhaps for good reason. Israel was created on Palestinian land and displaced thousands of Palestinians from their homes, and subsequently have taken over more of their land illegally. Not only that, for forty years the Israelis have subjected Palestinians to daily humiliations and reduced them to abject poverty. The Israelis hate the Palestinians because…because…well, because they are Arabs, I guess. Israelis, and their supporters, have made no secret of the fact that they consider Arabs to be decidedly inferior (if they didn’t believe this they could not hate them so much – this has been true in all colonial situations). Personally, I think there may be a deeper reason for the Israeli hatred of the Palestinians; they really hate themselves for what they are doing to them but project this self-hatred onto the Palestinians who simply refuse to go away. As long as any Palestinians survive they are a constant reminder of the Israeli’s shame.

Of course most everyone here in the U.S. says that the problem is simply that Hamas sends rockets into Israel and that no country could stand for such a thing, so therefore Israel has a right to defend itself. This is such a simple-minded explanation for a deep historical problem that I have to wonder if these supporters have any brains at all. They never seem to mention the forty years of brutal occupation, the theft of land, the destruction of Palestinian homes and farms and orchards, the humiliations imposed at Israeli checkpoints, the cutting off of medical supplies and food, and on and on. No, it’s simple, if only Hamas would stop the rockets everything would be fine. Actually, if only the Palestinians would all die or disappear everything would be fine from the Israeli point of view. They are slowly trying to insure that this latter will happen. With the continued uncritical and immoral support from the U.S. perhaps eventually it will.

This, of course, does not explain the apparent indifference on the part of the rest of the world. The U.S. is not indifferent as we are actively supporting these war crimes. But supposedly the rest of the world, especially the European nations, are outraged at the Israeli behavior. And there is talk of meetings to discuss what might be done to bring about a ceasefire. But this is apparently mainly just talk, as no action has been taken and the Israelis are in the tenth day of their bloodbath, the equivalent of shooting defenseless people in a pen (or, as is often said, shooting fish in a barrel). I have heard it said that the Israelis are very careful about killing civilians (bullshit). I have heard that Israel has always been a moral force in the region (bullshit). I have heard the Palestinians called barbarians (bullshit). I have heard repeated so often it is sickening that it is all the fault of Hamas (bullshit), I have heard repeatedly how badly Israel wants peace (bullshit), and I have concluded that there is no truth in anyone who speaks about this atrocious situation. I think the West is indifferent, frankly because the Palestinians are Arabs. I think the Arabs do not want Hamas around because they threatened their own status quo (in this sense they cannot be said to be truly indifferent). Thus, at the moment the whole situation is being drive by irrational hatreds of long standing (that are now being exacerbated even further) and the relative indifference of the world to human suffering and misery (as long as it is not their own). It should make one ashamed to claim membership in the human species.

LKBIQ:
Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all - the apathy of human beings.
Helen Keller
TILT:
It has recently been claimed that early ancestral humans may have used fire as long as 1.5 million years ago.