Meanwhile, in Gaza
While we are all preoccuped with Lebanon’s death by thousand cuts, the Israeli destruction of Gaza threatens “total breakdown of the fabric of society,” reports the Independent.
Those are snapshots of a day in Gaza where Israel is waging a hidden war, as the world looks the other way, focusing on Lebanon.
It is a war of containment and control that has turned the besieged Strip into a prison with no way in or out, and no protection from an fearsome battery of drones, precision missiles, tank shells and artillery rounds.
As of last night, 29 people had been killed in the most concentrated 48 hours of violence since an Israeli soldier was abducted by Palestinian militants just more than a month ago.
The operation is codenamed “Samson’s Pillars”, a collective punishment of the 1.4 million Gazans, subjecting them to a Lebanese-style offensive that has targeted the civilian infrastructure by destroying water mains, the main power station and bridges.
How grotesquely appropriate to name it “Samson’s Pillars.” Here’s what Samson, according to myth, accomplished in Gaza:
16:29 And Samson took hold of the two middle pillars upon which the house stood, and on which it was borne up, of the one with his right hand, and of the other with his left.
16:30 And Samson said, Let me die with the Philistines. And he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life.
Sounds like terrorism, no? Now, what pathological condition might have engendered such behavior?
Dr Eric Altschuler, from the University of California, in San Diego, claims that instead of being a hero, Samson was actually mentally ill.
In a report in the New Scientist, Dr Altschuler said that in today’s society Samson would be seen as “a bit of a thug”.
[snip]
Dr Altschuler said Samson routinely got into fights, killed 1,000 Philistines single-handedly and then gloated over it and showed no remorse.
He also showed a reckless regard for his own safety when he told Delilah, a woman who had already tried to kill him three times, the secret of his strength.
All these Dr Altschuler said point to Samson having an anti-social personality disorder (ASPD).
People diagnosed with ASPD exhibit at least three of seven specific behavioural traits such as being impulsive, reckless and habitually getting into fights.
[snip]
Kevin Gibson, a consultant clinical psychologist and head of adult psychology at Sunderland Hospitals Trust, said society would view Samson in a different light today.
“Today we would see his ruthlessness and exploitiveness as having a personality disorder,” he said.
Well, when it comes to the government of Israel, some of us do.
Perhaps counterintuitively, this post made me think of “To Any Would be Terrorists,” written by Naomi Shihab Nye, one of my favorite American poets:
http://www.arches.uga.edu/~godlas/shihabnye.html
Where is the Jewish American equivalent to Nye? Does one exist, and if one did and ventured to speak out, would it make one iota of difference? Or would the song be right:
“They would not listen, they’re not listening still.
Perhaps they never will… ”
As you can see, I’m not feeling very sanguine about conditions in the world, so I do what I always do in the saddest of times: I turn to poets and mystics in an effort to convince myself that there are still pockets of sanity left on this earth.
“It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.”
–William Carlos Williams
“Asphodel,That Greeny Flower”
Comment by Gal — August 5, 2006 @ 8:27 pm
Thanks for two more great poems! I think I’ll collect them all and publish them as a post.
To quote my late compatriot, the poet and professor in rhetoric Georg Johannessen: “In a sensible world it would be the other way around: Tu Fu [ancient Chinese poet] would be printed daily whereas Verdens Gang [trashy tabloid] only would come out at 1,200 year intervals.”
Comment by Sirocco — August 6, 2006 @ 1:19 pm
Here’s another Nye poem I like:
Blood
“A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,”
my father would say. And he’d prove it,
cupping the buzzer instantly
while the host with the swatter stared.
In the spring our palms peeled like snakes.
True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways.
I changed these to fit the occasion.
Years before, a girl knocked,
wanted to see the Arab.
I said we didn’t have one.
After that, my father told me who he was,
“Shihab”–”shooting star”–
a good name, borrowed from the sky.
Once I said, “When we die, we give it back?”
He said that’s what a true Arab would say.
Today the headlines clot in my blood.
A little Palestinian dangles a truck on the front page.
Homeless fig, this tragedy with a terrible root
is too big for us. What flag can we wave?
I wave the flag of stone and seed,
table mat stitched in blue.
I call my father, we talk around the news.
It is too much for him,
neither of his two languages can reach it.
I drive into the country to find sheep, cows,
to plead with the air:
Who calls anyone civilized?
Where can the crying heart graze?
What does a true Arab do now?
Naomi Shihab Nye
Comment by Gal — August 7, 2006 @ 6:39 pm
Thank you! That was an amazing, deeply moving piece.
Are you familiar with Muhammad al-Maghout, the Syrian?
There’s also Mahmoud Dervish, the Palestinian. I’ll do some poetry posts soon with some of your contributions, and maybe throw in something by these. But translations of poetry is always a delicate matter, as you know.
Comment by Sirocco — August 7, 2006 @ 9:41 pm