[Marxism] Shoot then cry

["James Holstun" <jamesholstun@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Regarding the NYT piece by Elie Wiese forwarded by M. Junaid Alam: there's a
great Israeli (and/or Palestinian) idiom used to describe the particular
sort of sanctimony that Elie Wiesel has perfected: "Shoot, then
cry"--frequently applied to the IDF/IOF, a.k.a. "the most moral army in the
world." In IMAGE AND REALITY, Norman Finkelstein is very good on a similar
motif in Nazi death camp memoirs--Rudolph Hoess, for example, talking about
the great pangs of conscience and humanity he suffered in the performance of
his daily rounds at Auschwitz.

Wiesel's essay is excellent of its kind--it may be that the citizens of
Gaza, whom dear Elie berates for not spending enough time commiserating with
the settlers who are moving up the beach to their new state-subsidized
villas, are spending more time thinking about the 23,000 Gazans who have
been unhoused by bulldozers and bombs since 2000, or the Israeli
colonialists who are being resettled on the West Bank (see today's Al
Jazeera).

Sadly, Tony Kushner, who has been pretty good on the Occupation before, is
in the midst of a classic shoot-then-cry screenplay--Steven Spielberg's
MUNICH, which will focus on the exquisite moral second-thoughts suffered by
the Israeli assassins sent to kill the Munich assassins and other
Palestinian leaders. My guess is that there will not be much cinematic time
devoted to the 200 Palestinians, almost all civilians, were killed in
Israeli "reprisal" raids in Syria and Lebanon.  Then as now, dead Arabs
don't count.

Feh.



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