Pearl Harbor Lookout
The other day, this Substack bait shrimp showed up in my email and I nibbled and cast some live bait back.
Israel, Palestine, And The Unbearable Pain Of Facing The Truth
STEVE QJ
AUG 19, 2024
Of all the low-down, no-good, double-crossing punks in movie history, Cypher from The Matrix is my favourite.
For anyone who hasn't seen this smorgasbord of emo and sci-fi, The Matrix is set in a dystopian future where machines have taken over the world and turned humans into living, breathing battery packs. To keep us under control, they plug our minds into a simulation called The Matrix, where we quietly lead our trench-coat-wearing lives
Well, not all of us.
Cypher, along with the rest of the Resistance, sees through the lies the machines use to control him, he breaks free from the dream world that enslaves humanity, but unfortunately, this dumps him in the “real” world where a nuclear apocalypse has blotted out the sun, where he spends his days running from a tireless, near-indestructible enemy, and where there’s nothing to eat but the same goddamn goop every day.
After nine years of war, when the machines offer to return him to the safe, comforting lie of the Matrix, Cypher can no longer bear the truth.
If it weren't for the whole "betraying what's left of the human race" thing, I might even feel bad for him.
Of course, we don't need to rely on late-90s fiction to understand this dilemma. History is littered with people who choose comforting lies over inconvenient truths.
The good citizens of Hitler's Germany could have refused to euthanise hundreds of thousands of disabled people and gas millions of Jews, but that would have meant taking responsibility for their economic suffering and abandoning their unearned sense of national superiority!
Much easier to swallow the Nazi propaganda that claimed Jewish people were a “racial tuberculosis” in “German lungs.”
Sure, the God-fearing Christians of the antebellum South could have admitted that slavery was a sinful, inhumane betrayal of their founding principles, but that would have meant giving up their Sunday afternoon lynchings and their unearned sense of racial superiority!
Much easier to believe people like Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, when he said, “[slavery] is in conformity with the ordinance of the Creator.”
And ten months after Hamas’ savage attack on October 7th, Israel’s supporters could acknowledge that the slaughter in Gaza has gone far beyond any notion of justice or proportionality or self-defence, that indiscriminately bombing innocent Palestinians was never going to defeat Hamas or free the hostages or do anything except perhaps start WWIII.
But that would mean recognising the racist, genocidal extremism that has infested the Israeli government and abandoning their unearned sense of moral superiority!
It's so much easier to believe that nothing Israel has done over the past 76 years justifies Hamas' brutal attack, while simultaneously believing that Hamas' attack anything Israel does in retaliation is justified.
It’s much more convenient to overlook the fact that after ten months of war, 40,000 dead Palestinians, and the escalating threat of a global war, Israel hasn't “wiped out” Hamas or freed the hostages or even destroyed Hamas' tunnels.
It’s much better to convince yourself that a society where mobs defend the IDF’s right to rape Palestinians, where government ministers say they're, “personally proud of the ruins of Gaza,” and where civilians advocate the murder of millions of Gazans, is nonetheless the “most moral country in the world” (and that anybody who questions this is an antisemite).
This degree of dishonesty, this abject failure of empathy, is impossible for people who believe in their cause, it’s beneath people who care about right and wrong, it only comes from people who can’t bear the truth.
If it weren't for the whole “blindly defending the murder of tens of thousands of children” thing, I might even feel bad for them.
As the rational, emotionally intelligent adults we all are, we're supposed to say that the truth is all we need. We're supposed to follow the facts wherever they take us. We're supposed to believe that the truth shall set us free.
But this, too, is a lie.
Sometimes the truth is ugly and painful. Sometimes it's confusing or heartbreaking. Sometimes the truth is that the country you’ve been taught to believe is moral and just is neither of these things.
And while we've seen that some people will do anything to avoid truths like these, others, like Jewish author and former AIPAC member, Richard Forer, find the strength to face them:
...I decided, I'll go to my library and see if I can find some of these books [about Zionism]. My stipulation was I only wrote down the names of books and the names of authors who were Jewish. I wasn't going to trust that a non-Jewish author could be honest or not antisemitic [...] and at a certain point [...], I was so absorbed in what I was reading that I allowed all the emotions that were going through me. I didn't resist at all.
So I was going through shock at what I was reading. 'Oh my God. I've supported Israel all these years. This is what Israel's doing? Oh my God!' And then anger at Israel for misguiding me all my life and getting me to support the maltreatment of Palestinians. Then my anger turned in on itself and I got angry at me, for being such a dupe and being so ignorant and never checking anything out [...] And then finally, a great sorrow for the Palestinian people for all that they had been through.
And then I put the book down. I needed a break. And I closed my eyes, I don't know how long my eyes were closed, but when I opened them, I felt cleansed and I felt free.
Acknowledging Israel’s wrongdoings is not, as some try to claim, a call for Israel's destruction or the extermination of Jews. It is not a claim that Hamas are innocent or that peace will be easy. It's the first step towards a world where Palestinians and Israelis can live in peace.
For decades, the Palestinian people have been horribly mistreated by Israel andHamas. Yet millions of people are still blind enough to ignore or even support it.
If only they could bring themselves to see the Palestinian people as human beings like themselves, they might even feel bad for them.
Sloan Bashinsky
Sloan’s Newsletter
Liked by Steve QJ
I think you summed up Israel pretty well, did you give President Biden a free pass?
Did you conclude Hamas designed the Oct 7, 2023 attack, my 80th birthday, hoping it would provoke Israel to do what it has done in Gaza, with President Biden’s help?
Meaning, Hamas could care less about the Gaza civilians, behind and under whom Hamas hides, while Hamas uses its Oct 7 hostages to get its people in Israel prisons released, which was the reason Hamas took the Oct 7 hostages.
The more Gaza civilians Israel and Biden kill, maim, starve, plague and displace, the happier Hamas is, because it cannot beat Israel and America on the battlefield, but it has turned much of the world against Israel and America, and lots of Americans against Biden.
I’m curious. If you were president, how would you go forward with Israel, Gaza and Hamas?
If I were president, I would cut off Israel entirely and prepare to meet my Maker.
If I were president, after cutting Israel off and preparing to meet my maker, I would tell Israel on national TV, if it uses even one of its nuclear weapons, I will nuke Israel and make it an eternal wasteland, and end the problem the Bible started, hoping that will cause other nuclear powers to stand down if Israel deploys one of its nukes, to see if I meant what I said, but by then I would be assassinated many times.
Steve QJ
Author
"but you gave President Biden a free pass?"
Did I?? I don't think I mentioned Biden at all. There are many people who are culpable in this mess, I don't give any of them a pass, but I simply couldn't begin to name check them all in every article.
As for what I'd do if I were president, that's obviously a tough question. It's like asking what a firefighter would do when a fire has burned a house 90% of the way down.
Ideally, I'd go back in time and take the fairly obvious steps to prevent the fire in the first place. But failing that, I'd defer to international law. And I'd make military funding for Israel conditional on them following the law.
Of course, the obvious retort here is that Hamas didn't follow international law on October 7th either. This is absolutely true. But Israel has been in violation of international law since long before Hamas existed (and that's setting aside the obvious points about Israel funding Hamas at its inception to destabilise a government that was far more amenable to peace).
Every atrocity one can and should condemn Hamas for, Israel has also committed against the Palestinians. It is inevitable that the fighting will become more and more extreme and intractable if nobody stops this cycle.
So yes, a ceasefire needs to be agreed (both for the hostages and the people of Gaza), Gaza needs to be demilitarised, the settlements need to be removed, the two-tier legal system in Israel needs to be abolished, Israel needs to define its borders (something Israel's governments have resisted doing since Israel's creation) this normalisation would be a strong foundation for peace. Indeed, as I've mentioned in another article, the removal of the settlements and the ratification of the 1967 borders is the backbone of a long-standing UN resolution for peace that has overwhelming international support. Israel, the U.S and occasionally Canada are literally the only significant countries opposed (the most recent vote was 153 in favour, 10 abstaining and only 9 opposed if I remember correctly).
The heartbreaking thing about the conflict is that the solutions are there. They're not going to make everybody happy, especially the extremists, but they will save countless lives. Both now and in the future. Watching people dig their heels in and refuse to consider them, even as innocent Israelis and Palestinians die, is honestly making me feel as if I'm losing my mind.
Sloan Bashinsky
Sloan’s Newsletter
You summed Israel up very well, again. Except you did not factor in the Bible. If there were no Bible/Jewish/Islam scriptures, this would not be happening.
Did you see my comment to Kate Martin?
"There is no solution to something Genesis created via Abraham, Issac and Ishmael, and latter scriptures ratified and expanded; but America can resolve it by getting out to the Middle East altogether and letting Israel and Islam work it out or fight it out, and that way learn which, if either, are God’s chosen people. That’s what Archangel Michael told me as I walked out of a US Post Office about a week after 9/11. Three nights before 9/11, Michael asked me in my sleep if I would make a prayer for a Divine Intervention for all of humanity, and I woke up wondering what that was about? Then, I made the prayer and went back to sleep. On 9/11, my concern was America would get into another foreign war it could not win, I didn’t consider America would get into two such wars: Afghanistan and Iraq. Now Israel and President Biden and Islam have the Middle East on the brink of starting World War III."
What’s going on in Palestine is rooted in the 3 Abrahamic religions’s Scriptures.
Israel’s leader and leaders are convinced God is on their side. Hamas and Islam’s leaders are convinced God is on their side. Bible people in America are convinced America has to side with Israel, because God is on Israel’s side, and because Jews had Jesus killed and thus Israel has to defend Palestine from Islam, and America must help Israel do that.
An American president who disagrees with that will not be reelected, and might not live much longer. Yet, America cutting Israel loose and getting out of the Middle East altogether is the solution for America. But it won’t happen, because of the Bible. A huge ironic unpleasant snake eating its own tail.
Steve QJ
Author
"Except you did not factor in the Bible.."
Haha, drat. Always missing something.😄
Yeah, religion is obviously a huge part of the problem. If I could wave a magic wand tomorrow and cure humanity of this "mind virus" in all its forms, I'd be sorely tempted. But failing that, there's not much to do about the Bible. Billions of people around the world believe in it. Millions of them in the literal sense.
Those people are wholly unpersuadable by facts and compassion and logic on that topic. Or even, when it suits them, by the words of the Bible itself. Because while they might claim to be Christians, it's pretty clear what Christ would have to say about dropping bombs on children in Gaza. Or about anally raping prisoners. Or about stealing people's homes and land at gunpoint.
Simply cutting Israel loose would lead to the deaths of a lot of people. Both Israeli and Palestinian. I don't support that. But I do support imposing clear, fair (to both sides) restrictions that maintain Israel's security but don't maintain its illegal oppression of the Palestinians, and allowing Israel to cut ITSELF loose if it would rather continue slaughtering and stealing from Palestinians than abide by them.
Sloan Bashinsky
Sloan’s Newsletter
Unfortunately, religion, as you painted it about perfectly, is why all this horror is going on in Gaza and the West Bank, and Palestine, and I won’t leave out Israel, nor the entire Middle East. If Muslim jihadists knew what a jihad really is, they would not have enough washing machines to clean all their soiled diapers. Ditto their Christian and Jewish crusader counterparts. Jihad is an internal war, period, the end.
I don’t see any way to have a peace agreement that can be enforced. Nor a re-build Gaza agreement that can be enforced. The religion currents are way too strong to be contained and constrained by something written on paper. Of what value to America is Israel, other than an ongoing problem? Of what value to America is the Middle East, other than an ongoing problem?
There is technology for a road-tested electrolysis device in the US Patent Office, which converts tap water to hydrogen fuel, and oxygen as a byproduct, and can be installed in any old or new car or truck - a sedan can go 250 miles on a gallon of tap water - which can allow America and the rest of the world to tell the oil kingdoms and Big Oil adios.
https://afoolsworkneverends.blogspot.com/2024/07/road-tested-technology-patents-in-us.htmlRoad-tested technology in the U.S. Patent Office allow cars and trucks to run on hydrogen extracted from tap water by electrolysis, but Big Oil and the Atomic Energy Commission prevent automakers from using the technology
sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com
No comments:
Post a Comment