Do you really want to go on living like this? Living by the sword, war after war, one more unnecessary than the one before, all of them wars of choice, Israel’s choice, with no future and no purpose? This is the 17th operation in Gaza in 19 years. A war almost every year. Sometimes, like in 2004, even two wars. The last one was set to end Saturday night, the eve of its sixth day. A six-day war.
This was perhaps the most pointless and banal of them all. An aimless war, in which few took an interest. While it was going on, Tel Aviv enjoyed an Aviv Geffen concert in the park, and later they watched Eurovision. The war broke out because a detainee was intentionally allowed to die. Even the official reasons given for it have become insignificant. What happened next repeated itself with bloodcurdling precision, the beginning, the middle and the end, as in the previous round and the one before that. Only the amounts of blood and destruction have changed from war to war – the overwhelming majority of which is always Palestinian.
The appalling banality of this latest war makes it so dangerous. The Israelis got used to the idea that this is how it is – that there’s nothing to do about it. Rain in the winter and war in the summer. A war each year, with no cause, with nothing to gain, with no results, no winners and no losers, just periodic bloodletting, like a 10,000-kilometer checkup for your car. Do you really want to go on living like this? This question is more crucial than any other, including the judicial upheaval, and it doesn’t even come up for discussion.
Continuing to live like this means accepting the situation as a decree from heaven, or from hawkish and cynical politicians, with the enthusiastic encouragement of warmongering commentators and reporters, the cheerleaders of every Israeli war. There’s no opposition to the war in Israel, certainly not at its preliminary stages, and therefore no alternative is presented.
Do you really want to live like this? The answer is always “What choice do we have?” There’s an alternative, one that has never been tried, but it cannot even be offered. The spectrum of options presented to the Israelis ranges only between massacre and killing, between an airstrike and a ground operation. We’re at war. There’s nothing else.
Continuing to live like this means killing people in horrific numbers, including children and women; to satisfy the warlords, and occasionally also to get killed, and then, of course, playing the victim. It means to live in terror in the south and occasionally in the center of Israel and to ignore with appalling opacity the terrible terror in Gaza. It means to be enslaved by the media, which on most occasions doesn’t report the suffering in Gaza, and when it does, it would’ve been better if it hadn’t done so.
Again, there was no way to understand the extent of the horror of this little war without Al Jazeera. While the Israeli media were busy reporting about weddings being postponed and concerts being canceled, Al Jazeera showed the horror in Gaza. The world wasn’t interested this time. It’s tired. Let them bleed. A condemnation, yawn, pee and to bed.
When Israelis start asking themselves if they really want to continue living like this, alternatives will pop up. There are no miracle solutions and no guarantees of success. There’s only one thing for sure: The alternatives have never been tried. We never thought about acting with self-control and restraint. It’s for the weak. We never asked what’s the outcome of all the killings and the assassinations. We never probed whether these wars contributed anything to our security, or whether they only fractured it. Now the jihad is already coming at Tel Aviv, and from under siege. One day people will learn to appreciate the determination and courage of those who managed to establish such a resistance force while inside a cage, even if we continue to scream and scream “murderous organizations.”
Do we want to continue living like this? Yes. Without a doubt. If we wanted to live differently, we would have changed direction a long time ago, lifted the siege on Gaza and talked to its leaders about its future. If we haven’t tried yet, it’s a sign that we want to continue living like this.
Click the alert icon to follow topics:
"like this" - Google News
May 14, 2023 at 05:54AM
https://ift.tt/3EjNBx7
Do Israelis Really Want to Go on Living Like This? - Opinion - Haaretz
"like this" - Google News
https://ift.tt/DLh4r1G
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
No comments:
Post a Comment