Recently I had a kind’ve “breakthrough” in my feelings and overall understanding of the tragedy that is the Israel/Palestine/Gaza situation. It wasn’t that I discovered anything that hasn’t been touched on before. In short, after a few years of study that ranged in its level of profundity from a cursory examination to a pretty formidable deep dive, I found myself in a place that was authentically free of the compulsion to choose a “side”. By putting together a group of previously disconnected puzzle pieces, I made sense of what I used to consider an opaque jumble of irreconcilable elements. In a future article I’ll develop the ideas in this piece of writing further, with footnotes and all of that sorta stuff. For now though I’m going to just hit you with what I’ve got ready to hand. Anyway, with that caveat, here goes.
1) I followed Hamas’ activity on the ground in Gaza through multiple sources for almost a year. Hamas procedurally, strictly avoided harming medics, aid workers and journalists. As opposed to the Israeli army who tactically targeted children and murdered hundreds of aid workers, UN personnel and journalists who came from all over the world (some from the US).
2) Observe now, within yourself, the way decades of (quite often) calculatedly placed anti-Arab images in television programs and Hollywood films (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to the Future, True Lies, Black Hawk Down, Zero Dark Thirty, Beirut, etc.) have shaped your ideas about the photo that accompanies this post. Consider the possibility that our Western “mainstream” news and entertainment media, which are monetarily and ideologically aligned with a perpetual war and weapons sales based 21st century economy, have intentionally created a tendency in you to fear, distrust and dislike the faces of the men in the photo. Really take a moment right now, to observe the thoughts and corresponding feelings that arise in you as your eyes take in the different faces in the picture. Consider the possibility that you have, without realizing it, been propagandized for decades to despise Middle Eastern, Arab/Muslim men (and women to a lesser degree). Don’t judge yourself for any of this, just observe. Lastly, consider the fact that the US and the UK (who together have made up 95% of the invasion forces) have spent the last 23 years wrecking a large portion of the Middle East while killing over a million people in completely unjustified wars and invasions.
3) I’m not claiming that every Palestinian person is an angel. Nor am I claiming that I don’t recognize remnants of the same mechanisms of propaganda and prejudice within myself that I’ve asked you to observe within yourself. What I’m claiming is that Israel and its people have been used as a resource and wealth extracting proxy and a Middle Eastern military buffer/outpost by UK and US bankers/oligarchs, arguably since before the country’s officially recognized inception. To make this occupation, this theft of land and the slaughter of the Palestinian people possible, your cooperation was required. This was achieved via decades of targeted propaganda and the demonization of the region’s brown and often bearded male population.
4) The Palestinians/Hamas, like those who resisted Nazism in the Jewish ghettoes in Germany in the 1930s and 40s, are fighting for their lives and their freedom against genocidal occupiers. Whereas the UK, US and other multi-billionaire bankers and oligarchs have been duplicitously using others, in this case the Israeli population, as a proxy for 3/4 of a century in order to extract wealth and resources from the Middle East and the rest of this planet. Millions of people in dozens of countries all over the globe have been used in the same way, always with disastrous results for the human populations and massive profits for the aforementioned oligarchs. Ultimately, ironically, the people of Israel and the people of Palestine have both been duped. They have both been used by the same anti-human repressor/oppressor – a still largely UK/European based multi-trillion dollar banking system that is predatory and that knowingly uses death and destruction as a means to enable illegal occupations and mass theft. In the near future I’ll go into the details of how this completely immoral, illegal momentary system was constructed and the fact that it absolutely doesn’t need to be the way it is. In fact it could be changed/fixed at any time.
In Conclusion
The most important thing to take away from this art is related to one of twelve “Principles” that a philosopher and activist I greatly admire named Silo spoke of in a book he wrote a little over fifty years ago: “It doesn’t matter which faction events have placed you in. What matters is for you to comprehend that you have not chosen any faction.” The inhuman, predatory system that this piece of writing has pointed to is the underlying cause of the wars and destruction that continue to plague our human world. This system, which is rooted in violence, feeds off our allegiance to its apparent “givens” and our unquestioning adherence to its dictates, which exist to keep us divided and compliant.
As was mentioned earlier, this system could actually be changed fairly quickly. Whether or not we choose the evolutionary door, the door of converging diversity and transformation is up to us. In a future article we’ll go more deeply into this theme; the theme of humanizing the earth.
“Together We Stand (Divided We Fall)” – Marvin Gaye, 1964
