the ceremony of Innocence
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
the blood dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere
the ceremony of innocence is drowned
the best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Yeats; The Second Coming
The attacks on Gaza have a certain Groundhog Day-like surreal-ness. Where can a resolution ever be found? Each side is mired in it's own destructive and dysfunctional construct. A deadly and perverse gamesmanship seems to infect all the players and a sado-masochistic inevitability permeates the bloody discourse.
"These strikes fuel our popular support, our military power and the firmness of our positions" Mushri al-Masri, a Hamas legislator intones. Yes indeed, and I can walk on water and shit gold nuggets. Who can he possibly think he is kidding at this exhausted stage? Is shooting random rockets into Israeli towns a reasonable response to being slowly strangled to death? Perhaps. Does it "fuel" anything other than the Palestinians ultimate destruction? Of course not. Because all imagination has been sucked out of the hollow shell of "politics as such", nothing more creative than mass suicide is suggested. To get a feel for the state of our "democratic" discourse, click on any comments link to any article on the current assault and read. Ignorance, racism, brutality and coarseness reign like cockroaches after a nuclear winter. Lots and lots of passionate intensity. Am I immune?
We see Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni parade through the propaganda circuit, stone cold and deliberate as lizards. "Right now Hamas didn't accept, is not willing to accept the requirements of the international community..." "We are trying to avoid any kind of civilian casualty.." David Gregory nods.Hillary Clinton blinks. Joe Lieberman checks his mailbox. When you strangle something to death, you can actually let a little air in, draw out the process. Like water boarding on a pleasant afternoon with nothing else scheduled. The Israelis bombed the university, the fishing fleet, the main medical warehouse supplying pharmacies. The rockets fired by extremists don't even have expolsive tips. Whatever.
Last week Mumbai, this week Gaza, next week, who knows? Packistan-India? Have a nice vacation Obama because the next time you say "We only have one president at a time" it will be a sobering gut-check. The "ceremony of innocence", like the water-boarded Palestinian, will be drowned.
posted by troutsky @ 12:16 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
The resistance to the occupation won't stop until the occupation stops. (And even then there is bound to be skirmishes after 40 plus years of subjugation.) Israel knows this, unfortunately many are longing for a "greater Israel." The Serbs faced international damnation for less.
Your quotes from the Hamas parlimentarian, exposes its bankruptcy. Shooting rockets that hit working class and poor Israelis, is not a tactic to win. Its purpose is to negotiate a deal for themselves. Neither Hamas or Fatah ever denounced neoliberalism. That doesn't excuse Israel's attacks on defenseless people.
While Obama vacations in Hawaii.
Seems to me that as long as Israel occupies the West Bank and builds settlements there, the problem will fester forever. If they withdrew, what support in the Arab world, or Palestinian for that matter, would there be for Hamas' destructive "leadership" which consists of firing rockets and sending out suicide bombers?
I think that a lot of Israeli politicians think or wish the problem will just go away if they are tough enough. Hamas is a bunch of fanatic terrorists with no regard for individuals, and the Israeli policy is raining destruction on a lot of innocent civilians who are held hostage to this situation.
It is supremely depressing...
It is yet another expression of our global failure to foster self-determination.We tell them to have an election then murder them for picking the wrong party!
Graeme mentions stopping the occupation but see how far the Israelis have moved the goal posts since Camp David.A viable Palestinian state cannot exist divided into bantustans by roads and settlements.It is "supremely depressing" and I don't have the stomach to visit beakerkins blog.Murder has been "normalized" and all we can do is march and wave signs.
Hamas's tactics reflect its goals, which are small time. They want a piece of the imperialist pie. Never did Hamas or Fatah critique neoliberalism.
There are no threats to Israel.
There is so much hate on both sides I don't know how this can be resolved peacefully.
I think it will resolve itself demographically as the situation in Northern Ireland did.
There is a sizable portion of the American public that just wants Gaza wiped out. A policy that keeps the casualties low and allows some humanitarian development in Gaza may be the best outcome possible.
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight; somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Ducky, it must have been terrifying for Yeats to see the future so clearly. Where is such a visionary today?
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