Category: 2014

This year is unhurriedly drawing to a close. I say that, because the agony and destruction that have occurred during these past several months seem to be oozing in a slow, tragic and mind-boggling motion, causing many more people on our planet to simply withdraw into their own immediate comfort zones and to forsake the melodramatic; it’s easier to let the dramas play out by themselves on the national and international stages than to try and understand the complicated conundrums.

Sadly, the wars, the killing, the greed, the lies, deceit and hypocrisy that we are all witnessing are nothing new. They have been going on for thousands of years, though never were they practiced so blatantly and diffused to so many across the world within a mere one seconds’ Tweet of their occurrence!

Nevertheless, and having been around for the past seven decades, there are still some events and behaviors that remain stubbornly unforgettable in my mind, and, sometimes, they drag me into reliving their occurrence all over again.

Last week, and as I was peacefully working on a crossword puzzle, Putin’s name came up as an answer to a clue. That immediately flashed the word: Kursk in my head. Does that conjure up any event in your memory? Here’s what my memory (and a news item that I had kept) recalled: August of the year 2000, a Russian nuclear submarine sinks with 118 crew members on board. They all perished. Putin was off vacationing somewhere. The mothers of the sailors were weeping and grieving. Glasnost and Perestroika had already happened, therefore, supposedly, this was the new, open Russia. Nadia Tylik, one of the angry, mourning mothers was shouting vociferously in the midst of a protesting crowd that was demanding an immediate investigation. On our television screens, as cameramen were filming away, a woman appeared behind her and gave her a hypodermic shot, after which she was limply carried off. Jaws dropped open! There were gasps uttered by viewers all over the world. Nadia’s image being given that sedating shot was splattered on the pages of multiple publications the next day. And then? Nothing! Nothing at all but a haunting image that remains in the memories of those of us who witnessed and recoiled at how Power chills, silences, incarcerates, tortures, kills!

And that’s how Power has been consolidating its grip on populations since the beginning of time. That Power has – with rare exceptions – historically proven itself to be malignant; it does not have the interests of the majority of citizens at heart; it does not seek the general good.

Some people say that when our dissent becomes threatening, and when Powers’ malfeasance begins catching up with it, it injects us with that same, silencing, fear-inducing, sedating syringe used on Nadia; if, on the other hand, we comply, it lulls us with seductive toys to buy and play with while it devours the Planets’ resources, corrupts its climate and manipulates its laws for its own advantages. Maybe?

Others say that our political and corporate leaders are made to think that they are in control, while the real player is that sinister clandestine government which is the real wicked operator on this planet and to whom all of us are merely marionettes and slaves. Perhaps?

Others yet say that, at this moment in history, there is no one really in command, and that the world is spinning out of control because the Information Age, this as yet Unknown Frontier, has totally unsettled all our known paradigms and thrown us fast and headlong into territory that we do not yet know how to navigate and are simply blundering through. Possibly?

I do not know which of these scenarios makes more sense, if any; perhaps all three of them? However, they all indicate to me that there is serious rot occurring up there at the top with all of our leaders and, unless we succeed in extracting that decay, it will continue to contaminate our whole world. This rottenness has caused a dangerous erosion of trust in all of our institutions and is inviting, more than ever before, total chaos.

What would have been the state of our world today, I often wonder, had Obama, in that Uber Perfect fearless and enlightened moment when he became President,  gone ahead with all his promises and turned things upside down and on their sorry heads, as we thought would occur?

He didn’t, though! To the contrary, it seems to me that the ghosts of 9/11 have been hovering over all his policy decisions to such an extent that they have totally paralyzed any rational or innovative thinking. These fears, whether real, imagined or manufactured have made the President, his administration and his military utter hostages to the thought of another appalling event.  In fact, it seems as if leadership everywhere is now merely reacting with pathetic knee-jerk reactions to events rather than choosing wise and sensible answers to our many world problems.

Therefore, we, the people, can continue to opt out from the world and remain ensconced in our comfort zones, and, if we do that, then No One has the right to ever complain or moan about Anything that is happening on our sorry Planet.

Or,

We can all become Nadia Tylik like those fearless souls who are demanding accountability, transparency and drastic change from Power, and are thus risking “sedation” (meaning, in this case, being watched, muzzled, threatened, incarcerated, exiled and, even, killed) in order to save us from ourselves. Examples:  the brave investigative journalists doggedly exposing and challenging the Powerful; the non-mainstream media outlets addressing topics that are kept hidden from ordinary people; the heroic children of Gaza and the rest of Occupied Palestine risking home demolishing and imprisonment while standing up to a brutal and vile enemy; the relentless mothers of the massacred students in Mexico not giving up or in until they have answers; same with the distraught Nigerian mothers whose daughters were kidnapped by criminals; mistreated agricultural farm workers in the US organizing for decent wages, fairness and dignity; those rightfully demanding justice in Ferguson and elsewhere; the thousands of courageous activists and civil rights organizations working diligently, and on and on with stories of people coming together for an immediate cause, but, really, expressing all of our discontent with the way things are and demanding accountability from Power. It might be Pollyanna-ish, but I like to think that, yes, it is possible and doable to aspire, to demand and to obtain real Hope and Change, rather than gutless Fear and Same Old governance concepts based on tired systems that cannot, and do not, apply anymore in this New Information Frontier.

So, we can remain willfully or obliviously blind, however, that won’t work for long because, the World will either continue to go where the malfeasance of Power leads it to; or, its strings will continue to be pulled by that evil clandestine government; or, fearful, inept and cowardly Power will let it all drift from one catastrophe to another until the calamities devour all of us – which seems to me to be what is happening now. Should we, therefore, maintain this sorry status quo, or open our minds, take a leap of faith and upturn that damn apple cart that has served us not? In other words, pull a Nadia Tylik and incur the risk of sedation, or perilously continue to blunder through as we now are? The choice is ours!

Quo Vadis, World?

Oh, Israel, what your latest (and continuous) carnage on Gaza has wrought upon you! It has opened a whole can of worms that I am pretty sure the Israeli Government never foresaw. For one, it has proven that no matter for how long and how adamantly one continues to fudge the truth and blatantly lie, somehow – somehow! – Truth eventually reveals itself. It just does! And the Truth that the Palestinian people have been talking about to nobody’s listening ears, and that has been suppressed for sixty years or so, has not only mushroomed across the Planet, but has found voices aplenty to echo its story and speak for it! Young Palestinian activists, their emotions fired up all the more after Gaza have been talking, orating, blogging, writing and, finally, people’s ears across the world are listening! Young Jewish activists, Israeli writers, thinkers and journalists, American and European Jews have also never been as vocal and as serious about their indignation at what the Israeli Government has been – and continues – doing. That European Governments are finally beginning to say, overtly and covertly: Enough is Enough, our support cannot be endless, upholding continuous occupation, colonization and expansion is not anti-Semitism, nor does it mean we are condemning the State of Israel, or throwing the Jewish people under the bus! It doesn’t! The whole world is, at last, realizing that we have to solve this intractable problem and, the Israeli and Jewish people have a very clear choice now more than ever: Solve this equitably, or wait for the whole region – and, perhaps, the world – to implode? And implode, it just might!

Patience, diligence, wisdom and perseverance are required from us now as at to no other time! However, even in our fast-paced twenty-first century, this unending tragedy will take quite a while yet before either an evenhanded resolution occurs, or . . . the melodramatic happens. Frankly, I am not placing any bets on this!

So, as all of this is unfolding in the midst of events in a Middle East that seems to be spiraling out of control, the pundits and thinkers, the writers and bloggers are abuzz with discussions of One State or Two? I feel like tossing a coin: Heads it’s One, Tails it’s Two! But that won’t work, would it?

In an ideal world One State would seem like a very logical outcome in an area that is quite geographically small to begin with. However, our world is not Shangri-La and utopian dreams, while inviting intellectually stimulating discussions, are not the reality.

After sixty-six years of a very savage and brutal occupation and colonization, the Palestinian people, having sacrificed and stood steadfast in the face of an aggression so egregious and ruthless, cannot be assuaged with being incorporated into a state that has a proven record of discrimination and ethnic cleansing as the Israeli government has been wont to do ever since its inception. The European Jews who were the founding fathers of the State of Israel looked down with utter disrespect upon the Palestinian inhabitants of that land – even on the Palestinian Jews who had been there for even longer than the Palestinian Christians and Muslims. They still do! Therefore, a One State that promises Equality and Justice for all is a pipe dream at this stage. That it is even remotely possible is something that the citizens of that land will have to decide in the far-reaching future. What will be in that future? Will it be One State, a Federation, Something? I don’t know. No one does. Anything and everything is possible. The human ingeniousness and innovation, when it is in a peaceful environment, can produce formulas of peaceful coexistence that we might not even be able to envisage at present.

At the moment, and with the situation as it is, the Palestinian people need and require a state of their own. It is the only solution that will vindicate their tragedy, that Nakba in which they are still living on a daily basis, the humongous sacrifices that they have been – and are still – going through. It is the one vindication that will heal that deep and ghastly wound. It is the one answer to the aspirations of all the Palestinian people: Christians and Muslims, Palestinians within Israel and those in the refugee camps, Palestinians in Gaza, in the West Bank and all the others strewn involuntarily across the world. It is the only solution that will bring on Justice. The Palestinian people are not asking for charity, they are not demanding a piece of land that belongs to someone else; they are not soliciting a land grab out of the blue. They are not requesting the return of all the land that was historical Palestine and on which they have lived for thousands of years; whose soil they had tilled; whose olives and oranges they had planted; whose history going back to Abraham they can trace with their long memories and lore. They are simply demanding what is rightfully and legally theirs. They have to have that Right and that Legality restored before they can ever begin to forgive Israel and the world that has marginalized and let them so painfully down! It is the least that they deserve in order to begin feeling whole once more.

At this juncture of history I, who was born a Palestinian in Jerusalem, and whose sense of Justice has been rudely affronted ever since my birth by the belligerence of the State of Israel and what that has inflicted on me, my family and the Palestinian people cannot accept any solution other than the Two State solution. It is the one – and only – resolution that will alleviate the tragic events since 1948. No other answer to this catastrophe will restore my, or the Palestinian people’s faith and trust in humanity and in a world that has chosen to be willfully blind to our misery and despair over these agonizingly long decades.

Amen!