Everyone is horrified by what is going on in Gaza or at least, they should be.
It's been happening for a very long time now. It's not new.
But the horror has escalated in recent times and is now very firmly in our event horizon thanks to mainstream, social and other media.
Is that why we seem to care more now than we ever have before - it's just so in your face?
What have we been doing for the last few decades?
Do people have any clue how and when this mess really started?
Someone recently asked me for context on this issue and try as I might, I can only find one real story here and it isn't necessarily a popular one.
It's obvious (if anyone has been reading my posts on Facebook recently) that I have an inclination toward Palestinian sympathy but let me be clear - I don't condone what Hamas is, does or what it stands for and I do not believe for a moment that the average Palestinian Muslim does either but I sure as hell understand their desperate need for something to be done to resolve this humanitarian crisis.
And I think Hamas represents the ethos of the average Palestinian Muslim as much as militant women's-libbers represent the majority of women - they simply don't. But they act out anyway and establish a very convenient target as the bad-guy when the current global enemy has been firmly established as Islamic fundamentalism (now that the dirty commies aren't there any more)... and, hey, weren't those the guys who did the whole 9-11 thing and who encourage recruits to blow up themselves and as many infidels as possible? I guess so.
It's in the Jihadist manual so it must be how every Muslim thinks, right?
Erm, no, not the ones most of us know.
However, according to the US - there is no human rights crisis - at least that's what their UN Human Rights Council vote on a resolution into the matter emphatically says. It doesn't matter what low opinions we may have of the UN, a largely toothless tiger with contrived agendas, sure. But it certainly had teeth enough to have created the problem in the first place.
If a world forum is asking the question: Should the protagonists be suspending conflict while we are launching an enquiry into human rights issues in Gaza with a view in mind to addressing such atrocities as may be found? Should we not be addressing that fundamental question?
Instead, people embark on yet another pointless debate about the legitimacy of the UN, the hypocritical stance of nations who have horrific human rights records themselves and once again everything is fudged into a morass of illogical arguments...along the lines of: how can the sentiments of the nations with bad human rights track records be legitimate in the current situation?
Shouldn't we simply be sticking to the original question and answering that with the spirit of innate integrity?
Is Gaza a mess?
Are human rights atrocities being perpetrated there?
Should we be doing something about it?
In short - should we care?
And the answer to all of those questions by any sane, rational, empathetic, humane individual or nation would be a most emphatic yes.
Not what our opinion of the UN Human Rights Council or their member states is...
The mere fact that the single largest claimant of western liberty and democracy votes NO in such a referendum pretty much indicates how loaded the agenda is when it comes to the situation in Palestine / Gaza / Israel - call it what you will. Ergo: there is no human rights problem. What does that say about the United States?
Everything we should already know, I guess.
And when the represented G8 nations (France, UK, Italy, Germany et-al) as well as Ireland, Japan and others abstain from voting on such an issue, isn't that simply saying that they really don't care what's going on in Gaza either - it's not our problem?
That's certainly the way I see it.
And that doesn't just stagger me - it beggars incredulity. Are we that cold? Or more accurately - are the people we supposedly elected to represent us that cold?
Apparently so.
Edmund Burke's famous quote always springs to mind under such circumstances: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
Well, I guess they have to be "good" to begin with...
And yet some of those self same nations (abstainers and naysayers) were the ones instrumental in creating the State of Israel in the first place when they voted (starting late 1947) in favour of establishing a unitary State in Palestine through UN Resolution 181 in which the (supposedly) Democratic Constitution would guarantee the human rights and fundamental freedom of all its citizens without distinction as to race, language or religion. Which all went kind of pear-shaped when the incumbent inhabitants strenuously objected before the US eventually admitted that the partitioning of Palestine to accommodate what was now being referred to as a "Jewish" state (there goes the objectivity of religious affiliation) would not be a peaceful process and so the UN would have to get involved...
Not that the UN had the necessary authority to do what it ultimately did nor, it has to be said, was the resolution mandated through the second Security Council process but hey - they wanted what they wanted by a 58% majority so who needs actual due process...?
Thus began the displacement of the Palestinians and the creation of Israel.
I still maintain to my core that even with the illegal implementation of this partitioning of Palestine there may have been a modicum of hope had the world stuck to its original mandate of creating one or two national identities rather than assisting the militant Zionists to create a single State within (at first) then subsuming all of the region into a religious instead of a national identity where, within the space of a year, Palestinian Arabs, the majority of whom were Muslims, were being ruled by a divergent religious hegemony.
The US knew and admitted that this was going to become a military issue yet almost exclusively American Zionists forced the situation to transform the proposal of a unitary state where all religious affiliation was to be guaranteed, into a Jewish (read; militant Zionist) enclave with absolute power over all its residents new and incumbent.
It was a recipe for disaster and that is exactly what it has been ever since.
All that aside, I also still firmly believe that unless there is a shift from the legacy and current thinking based on religious zeal and military authority, there can never again be peace in this region.
It should be the United States of Israel or Palestine and it should be defined first and foremost on a national identity and secondly on religious and ethnic affiliation which should be tolerated with equanimity.
Any form of religious extremism that calls for violence or violation of another citizen's rights to worship as they will, should be summarily outlawed and such people or groups disavowed from representing any group politically.
But here's the thing. That means the Israeli hegemony has so much to give back and those pesky Palestinians so much to regain...
Given the track record of Israeli concession, it's never going to happen without a modern day miracle.
Holy land my ass! It's wholly land and wholly religion that is the fundamental problem.
It needs to go to another level for sure - a sane and higher level of enlightenment not a material level of possession and military authority.
http://www.1948.org.uk/un-resolution-181/
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