Why I can't shut up about Israel's behaviour

[kevyn]

"I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."
   -- Elie Wiesel, 1986 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech

The Palestinian people now endure suffering and humiliation, at the hands of the Israeli Defense Forces. This makes me very sad, because the Israelis, of all people, should remember what it is like to be abused, torn from their homes, forced to flee into little enclaves and caged in ghettos, oppressed for their religious beliefs, subjected to pogroms, and indiscriminately killed by superior military forces.

How has this happened? How have the abused stepchildren of Adolph Hitler grown up to become abusers themselves?

What's going on in Gaza right now feels like a betrayal, a betrayal of the very things that earned Jews the sympathy of the world. A betrayal of the lessons that the Holocaust taught the world, lessons which seem to have been forgotten.

Furthermore, this Israeli oppression of the Palestinians is taking place on my dime. As an American, my taxes pay for the weapons that the IDF is using to kill innocents. That makes me very, very angry.

I am compelled to speak out, against Israel's behaviour, because so many others will not, or cannot.

Never again. Never forget.

Comments

the sad extrapolation of the "on my dime" concept

[teledildonix.livejournal.com]

As much as i agree with your feelings and actions, i must say i have a somewhat negative attitude concerning the possibilities for our individual contributions to the collective good to somehow avoid being used for evil.

I guess my attitude is: it probably doesn't work in 'the big picture'. I say this because i, too, have attempted for years (a couple decades) to be concerned and exercise control over where my money flows (no matter how little money i have) but i think a lot of the concern is futile. Even if we have some kind of net-positive influence on the politicians and spenders of the taxpayers' money, we are so unlikely (in our lifetime) to ever eliminate the whole setup of this Military Industrial Complex which rules our world. Even if you could exercise lots of control over the destiny of your tax dollars, we would still be living in a world with all of these huge corporations whose very existence depends upon perpetuation of continuous warfare in regions throughout the world. The American economy is all focused around the creation, maintenance, and continuous justification of the ongoing existence of huge armies and invasion forces, as well as a worldwide network of weaponry, 'defense-related' goods and services, 'security' (armies, gunmen, guards and forces to watch over the treasuries when they're not out invading the neighbors') and, of course, all of the 'intelligence' (i spit when i use the word that way!) upon which these massively complex Violence Industries thrive.

Until we rid the world of armies and guns, and rid the world of the social conditioning which encourages people to love armies and guns and killer soldiers, i don't think we'll see much change in any particular situation of any region or locality. How can we hope for things such as 'peace in the Middle East' or 'peace in South Asia' or 'peace in Africa' as long as we continue to live in countries whose industries and economies are built on the foundation of that War Machine, countries whose financial livelihoods depend on building Death Devices and then selling them to places where they will be used on our fellow humans.

And never forget, we do NOT live in a truly democratic society, we live in a nation whose government and political structures and social structures and economic structures are completely and totally at the mercy of much larger powers (i.e., the military and the industries which are all part-and-parcel of that military mindset.) Never forget that our 'government' and our 'economy' are actually subserviant to our military, and as ordinary citizens (who are not members of the military-industrial-plutocrat-warrior elite) we have no way to stop the monstrously huge and powerful military from completely running the show in our politics and economics.

It's kind of a fantasy, a happy but unrealistic fantasy, to daydream about a world without warriors and weapons and factories which build bombs. Unfortunately, humankind has only ever lived in an opposite sort of world, a world also based primarily on fantasies, but sadly not those happy sorts of fantasies.

Sorry to speak so negatively on your journal, but i guess those attitudes and thoughts have been festering uncomfortably in me for a long time, and whenever i hear about the crimes against Palestinians or any other people, i just can't stop feeling horribly disgusted by that bigger picture-- the picture in which the innocent peace-loving people of the world are held hostage for the durations of their entire lives by a society which does not respect their love of Peace. I say 'hostage' because i don't think we're likely to survive long enough to escape.