Israel replaying the Wild West theme
From: GHIFARI AL MUKHTAR (TRINI)
THE deteriorating situation in Palestine today is beyond belief, and yet the world community seems paralysed and unable to act in any decisive way. While Israel ups the ante in the war of words that has now turned into an all-out war between troops and civilians. The international community has been held hostage by the glib rhetoric of Israeli politicians who have managed to turn the tables around and tip the odds in their favour.
Acts of violence on the part of Israel are dubbed acts of "self-defence", while Arab children armed with sticks and stones are summarily condemned as "fanatical terrorists" instead.
This morally lopsided situation reminds one of the Wild West movies that were all the rage in the 1950s and 1960s. As a student in an all-boys school, I, like thousands of other boys, was given the special treat of watching a John Wayne movie at the end of the final term of each year. More often than not the movie in question would be The Dirty Dozen or some Wild West flick about how the "good" cowboys would fight against the "bad" native American Indians.
At that age, most of us hadn't a clue about the facts of American history, or the historical context within which the settlement of north America took place. We happily accepted the view that the cowboys were the good guys and the Indians were the nasty ones. Whenever John Wayne shot dead an Indian or two, the boys would cheer like malevolent little lunatics (a sad reminder of how politically incorrect education for boys was then).
But by now most of us have come to realise that John Wayne and his butch cowboy pals were not the real heroes. They were the gunmen who forced the natives off their land and it was they who performed the real atrocities against the Indians whose lands they had stolen.
The only "wild" thing about the Wild West was the so-called civilised Europeans who had come to settle there and to domesticate the natives.
The Indians who were snipping at the cowboys and settlers were doing the only thing that they could do by that stage - to defend their land and property against a foreign invader whose military might was overwhelming and unstoppable.
Worse still, the native Americans were doubly disadvantaged by the fact that they could not win the war of words and the battle to write the country's history. Up to the 1950s at least, they would be labelled the bad guys in a country that was once theirs.
In many ways the Palestinians have been dealt the same fate. They too have had their lands and properties stolen or destroyed in the aftermath of the disastrous 1967 war.
But the brunt of the burden has been borne by ordinary Palestinians - men, women and children - whose only wish was to live in peace and to survive on a daily basis.
But their lives have been disrupted by the vicissitudes of war and the conflict between governments instead. To aggravate their situation further they also have to listen to the hollow platitudes of the Western powers that claim to want to promote human rights the world over, while the collective rights of the Palestinians as a nation are trampled underfoot.
The situation in the occupied territories today really mirrors the skewered moral logic of the Wild West movies of the past. Israel insists on allowing the settlement of the territories taken by it during the earlier conflict, which in effect means forcing Arabs off their lands and giving the much-needed territories to settlers from Israel, America or Europe instead.
The Israeli settlers themselves insist that they are merely exercising their right to live there, in the same way that European settlers who colonised north America and Australasia claimed that they were fulfilling some higher moral purpose or manifest destiny by taking over these lands and "civilising" them in the process.
The fact that these lands have been occupied before by other people who had a culture, history and civilisation of their own is conveniently left out of the picture altogether.
The justification of the acts of violence committed by Israel against the Arabs is also reminiscent of the macho discourse favoured by such gung-ho characters played by John Wayne and co. The logic of "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" seems to be at work in the terrorist attacks by Israel against Palestinian targets.
Even when cases of blatant use of excessive force are recorded and reported by the world Press, Israel merely shrugs it off as collateral damage done to Arabs who should not have been there in the first place.
The same logic animates discussion on the conflict and the use of violence by Israeli troops in the disputed territories. When Israel unilaterally attacks Palestinian targets without provocation, we are told that these are cases of "pre-emptive" strikes to ensure that the enemy does not get to strike first.
When Israel uses excessive force in its counter attacks, we are told that this is intended to contain the enemy threat and to prevent the escalation of violence.
Either way, Israel manages to claim for itself a tactical victory thanks to its mastery of a political discourse which always frames its Arab and Palestinian neighbours as the aggressors, savage fanatics or militant fundamentalists.
So now that Israel wants to end the conflict and to declare peace with the Palestinians, does it come as any surprise that the latter refuses? Having learnt the hard and painful way that dialogue is not possible with an opponent who twists and turns the language of conflict to suit their own ends, the Palestinians no longer believe that dialogue is possible at all.
At best, it would merely give a veneer of respectability to an aggressor that has continually demonstrated his willingness to break the rules and to resort to violence and deception. At worse, it would serve as a delaying tactic while Israel continues to open up new territories for settlement at the cost of the Palestinians themselves.
The saddest thing about the situation in Palestine today is that the option for genuine dialogue between pacifists and well-wishers on both sides has been foreclosed.
Thanks to the monochromatic discourse which pits Israelis against Arabs in terms of "good" versus "bad", there is no way for either side to concede.
One fact remains, though. In the same way that we no longer believe that John Wayne is a hero or that the native Americans were the bad guys, there will also come a time when the generations of the future will view the events of the present in a different light, and realise that all the while it was the Palestinians who were the real victims of the disaster of 1948.
But sadly for them, as it was for the native American Indians, the past would have been irrevocable by then.
Please continue to enlighten my so-called christian Trinis
My ancestors: African/Arawak. Arima,Trinidad.
Pof; Photojournalist.
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