|
powerclown...
thanks for the post above.
i don't buy it. you present a compelling argument with the information that you include, but only with the information you include. what about the occupation? what about the settlement program? what about the political consequences of the legitmation of extreme rightwing political organizations via coalition? remember, it was someone from one of these far right groups that shot peres.
what your narrative does is to stage both jews and palestinians as if they were objects, like rocks of tables, closed systems in abstract environments that simply repeat their characteristics. what your narrative does is writes your view of the contemporary situation backward into a long-term, very general "history" that leads back to it's startig point so that the entire argument becomes circular and traces the essence, like a rock of a table---repetition of the same stretched out in time is a map of characteristics performed. so a rock is inevitably a rock if you start out with the object and collapse the past onto it. so tables are inevitably tables--you might as well talk about table-like trees that express their inner being by being worked into their true table form.
most of your story is a story about the dynamics put into motion by occupation that pretends occupation is not a strong factor. most of your story erases the simple fact that this dynamic has degraded both sides by living under it, by enforcing it, by accomodation of it. this dynamic follows from particular choices made within particular ideological contexts by particular people who were in positions of control over particular institutions.
you want this dynamic to follow from a necessary and eternal conflict. that is fantasy.
the ideological context is important obviously because, no matter how irrational in itself the dominant elements and/or stories may be, it nonetheless shapes the policy logic which in turn shapes collective actions and reactions.
and that dyamic explains the generalized pathology which has resulted. if you want a template for thinking out the connection between colonial domination and pathology, check out fanons "wretched of the earth" sometime. it tells another story, one that you obviously do not know or do not want to think about, but which is nonetheless necessary if stories which are not simply self-legitimating parables are of any interest.
no doubt stories like yours, and their mirror images in other stories told by other groups that you did not write down, which are similar but not exactly to yours, were significant elements within the ideological context that made occupation through brutalization of the palestinian people a sensible choice, that rationalized the settlement programs--and legitimated various modes of reaction to those choices, which in turn rationalized further occupation choices, which in turn...on and on.
no doubt stories like yours, and their mirror images in other stories told by other groups that you did not write down, which are similar but not exactly to yours, remain significant elements in keeping these dynamics in place, along with their consequences.
__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
|