[Marxism] The meaning of the Gaza atrocity

["Gary MacLennan" <gary.maclennan1@xxxxxxxxx>]

I have been meditating on the following piece which I found following a link
from <angryarab.blogspot.com> another indispensable source for alternative
views on the Middle East.  It was an interview on the BBC site
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7801641.stm with Mrs Mechi Fendel, a
resident of Sderot and the mother of seven. There is a photo of the beaming
mother of many and she is quoted as saying

"Finally, a month and a half before the elections, Israel takes some action.


I definitely see this as linked, but it's OK, better late than never. *What's
been happening in Gaza is fantastic*. I feel very bad about the man killed
in [the Israeli town of] Netivot.

We usually like to vote for someone quite right wing and who actually does
something, so definitely not Kadima, and not Labour. So that probably leaves
Likud. It's unfortunate that we have to choose by a process of elimination.

The other day my daughter arrived at school in tears. It's only a six minute
walk to school, and it was nice weather, but during that walk she had six
rocket warnings.

The Arabs are reminding us again that they don't think we have a right to
Sderot and they want us out. (my emphasis)"

What can one say to this?  Just before he died Michel Foucault read the Arab
-Israeli conflict thru the prism of the Nietzschean will to power. Within
such a reading there is no right or wrong.  The conflict is regarded as
beyond good and evil and in some senses the victory of the strong is to be
welcomed as it prevents humanity from being weakened by such notions as pity
or compassion. Onwards and upwards towards the glory of the ubermensch. Such
a reading obviously makes sense of Mrs Fendel and her fellow settlers.

But there is another reading possible and that turns on the meaning of the
word "humanity".  Despite what Nietzsche believed, we are nothing without
pity or compassion. These are the values which not only define us but which
also hold out the possibility of the survival of our species. On the other
hand if the values of Mrs Fendel and the Zionist state were to become the
norm then humanity would perish in a tide of the deepest slaughter.

So it is then through a realisation of the isolation of the Zionists that I
think one can come to understand why they have turned to such a level of
dreadful savagery.  The deep sense of shock and disbelief that I felt as I
watched even the carefully censored footage, has morphed into a realisation
how Israel cannot survive because it has turned its back decisively on all
that is best about humanity.  There was very clear from the press conference
given by Olmert, Barak and Livni.  Barack is simply a militaristic butcher
but Olmert and Livini looked strangely despondent and visibly squirmed
throughout.  That is what happens when one turns one's back on what it is to
be human.

As I write this, it would seem that it is the survival of Palestine that
would appear to be the most threatened. However while I in no way wish to
lessen a realisation of the terrible suffering of Palestinians, it is that
very suffering which will guarantee that long after the passing of the
abomination and aberration that is Israel, there will be a Palestine. The
reason for this is quite simple.  It is the Palestinian people who most
represent the best strivings of humanity and these will always triumph over
the like of Mrs Fendel.

comradely regards

Gary
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