Three Fragments

7 thoughts on “Three Fragments”

1. Israel the war state, expressing its own sovereignty through the destruction of others. These guys have painted themselves into the corner and up the wall. I hope they are ready for the kind of future they are creating for themselves.

2. From a Robert Fisk piece, leading both on the Independent’s site at the moment as well as the early ed. of the NZ Herald, where I saw it quoted on the front page:
   “The child whose dead body lies like a rag doll beside the cars which were supposedly taking her and her family to safety is a symbol of the latest Lebanon war; she was hurled from the vehicle in which she and her family were travelling in southern Lebanon as they fled their village – on Israel’s own instructions. Because her parents were apparently killed in the same Israeli air attack, her name is still unknown. Not an unknown warrior, but an unknown child.”
   “on Israel’s own instructions” – so much for pamphlet drops.
   d3vo says: “I hope they are ready for the kind of future they are creating for themselves.”
   Probably no more ready than they were 100 generations or more ago, at whatever genesis can be claimed for what now takes place in the Middle East.
   It’s a situation with that kind of scope; where partisan interests are so intimately linked with the idea of blood, both in terms of descent and conflict, that it demands of those in any kind of remove from the situation a willingness to balance the claims of both parties. Not to deny the reality of perpetrators and victims, but to ensure that the humanity of all those involved is preserved in the eyes of the rest of the world so that, even after those at the epicentre may have had cause to forget or feel that it has been taken from them by force, there will be witnesses still able to see and remember on their behalf.
   To me ‘fragment one’ is a picture of cowardice. That individuals can use the relative safety of a distant, peaceful country to anonymously represent so parochial a perspective, fueling a fire that they can face with no fear of being burnt themselves, is reprehensible.
   I came by ‘fragment one’ outside the front door of my work and the Fisk quote on the cover of the Herald at a cafe just up the road. The world is getting smaller and ideas travel quickly. Individuals like the anonymous pamphleteer may not be as far from the flames as they seem.
   Recent world events may be seen as putting the lie to models of reality based on blood, whether political or religious, in the ‘Middle East’ or in ‘the West’. I experience a world less static than that, a body of opinion being more sensibly permeable than it’s flesh and blood counterpart. And if a human being, rather than being bound to any one person or people, can be characterised instead as the child of his own mind, due caution needs be exercised in the disposition of ideas.

3. Fragment 1: surely if you wanted to save the lives of innocent civilians, the first step would be to not kill them. I’d also like to point out the weird doublespeak where if Israel drops a piece of paper it’s a pamphlet, but if Hezbolish drops a piece of paper it’s a missile.
   Fragment 2: are the pamphlets that fragment 1 refers to also written on the end of shells? That would kill two birds with one bomb. I think that girl’s mom should tell her there are better ways to get pen-pals.
   Fragment 3: even if 1 Israeli is worth 10 Lebanese, Israel wins this particular video game. Which is about as seriously as many people seem to be taking this particular slaughter.
   Is this the future?

4. Maybe if Hizbollah had billions of dollars of funding from America like Israel does, they’d be able to afford the fancy bombs that drop pamphlets, instead of regular bombs.

5. So… so…
   [anger].
   Words fail.

6. I call bullshit.
   What really churned my stomach was an article I read the other day. A US official said that the US was not going to intervene for another week, to give Israel a chance to weaken Hezbollah. Meanwhile, the civilian deathtoll rises. If those were American citizens dying, the US wouldn’t be waiting a week.
   I’ll try and find a link to the article I’m referring to.

7. The article I was referring to is:
   http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/07/19/mideast.diplomacy/index.html
   The parts that irk me a bit are:
   “Israel needs time to ‘defang Hezbollah,’ said one of the officials, who asked not to be named in light of the ongoing diplomacy.
   Major strikes will end depending, in part, on when Israel believes the job is done”
   Yeah lets just stand back and let Israel bomb the fuck out of them, until they’re happy that they’ve eliminated Hezbollah.
   It’s all fucked up.

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