I hate feeling like I can't say what's on my mind through whatever media I have access to. At this point, because Israel and the official treatment of the Palestinian people still seems like a taboo topic in a lot of spaces, I don't even know if I can make my outgoing status message really reflect what I'm feeling: that the prevailing official Israeli position on Palestine and the value of Arab lives both within and outside of its borders must end if there's to be any semblance of peace in that area.
I know that there are many who just don't agree with the violence and anti-humanitarianism of the state's actions, but there has not been a safe way for people who dissent to fully voice their opposition and still feel like they can fully assert their belief that Israel deserves to exist at all. If there were some third path, some way that would give the moral majority the ability to take the country and steer it from the edge of totalitarianism - killing indiscriminately just to ensure its own place on the map (or so the radical set rationalizes, at least).
It's just that when people have so closely linked the state's existence with their own existence and history as a persecuted people, and then accept the agents of the state - diplomatic and military - as inevitable extensions of that existence, rather than evils that have formed around radical ideology, well how do you deal with that? And how do you get Americans to give a shit that they are complicit in our complacency?
Jan 4, 2009
Gaza
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2 comments:
the way that i've maintained some semblance of hope in the middle of this carnage -- and god, it's been difficult -- is by actively seeking out dissenting voices among israelis/american jews. i need to know that your third paragraph isn't true for everyone who has a vested interest in israel's existence. i need to know that there are people who maintain that israel has a right to exist, without sacrificing basic moral precepts for that existence.
and the thing is, there are people who believe these things. ultimately, these are the people who i think will need to do the most work to get the tide to turn; they're the ones who can provide the 'third way' seeing as how they live it. what i can do to help them is give them more exposure, which in turn gives other people like us hope. -- and therefore, the courage to state our own opinions openly
Fathima - thank you for dropping by. I feel what you're saying, and I guess I have to find some people to talk to, because that may be the only way out of feeling a deep bitterness and resentment at the world community for creating this conundrum in the way that they "created" Israel in the first place.
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