Saturday, December 26, 2009

An eye for an eye, turning the other cheek, people and subhumans and breaking resistance

Haaretz' reported on the 25th of December that "Hundreds of mourners gathered in Jerusalem on Friday morning to bury Rabbi Meir Hai, a father of seven who was shot dead by Palestinians near his home in the West Bank a day before." The newspaper then goes on to say that Hai's 16-year-old son Eliyahu urged mourners not to consider seeking revenge for the attack., saying that, "The difference between us and them is that we are people, Jews, holy." What piffle and, of course, if the father couldn't tell right from wrong, it is hardly to be expected that his children can. Still, this rubbish oozes through and there is a collective amnesia down in 'Zionistan' when it comes to the fact that these are illegal settlers on illegally occupied land.


Still, the son's eulogy cannot be totally condemned and, while his gobblydegook God is in fact that "eye for an eye" wrathful God of the 'Old Testament', there is, at least here, a suggestion of turning the other cheek here, even if that suggestion is tainted by an arrogance of the sort that is par for the course in any society that is dominated by a racist ideology; Palestinians are not people, I take it. Or have I somehow misinterpretated the bit about "we are people, Jews, holy?"


Anyway, despite the holy boy telling his holy people not to seek revenge on the "non-people", today's 'Haaretz'e informs us that the IDF has killed the Palestinians behind the murder. In total six Palestinians were killed today. At 6-1 we might hope that they are ready to call it quits. Of course, whether any of those were actually involved in the murder of the "human being", Rabbi Meir Hai, we will never know. After all, they won't be going to court, will they? No, down in occupied Palestine it is not a case of an eye for an eye as far as the Israelis are concerned but rather another case of extrajudicial executions. Oh, and while we are talking about eyes, maybe young Eliyahu will open his and see that the difference between his "people" and "them" is not too unlike the difference between the perpetrators of the massacre at Lidice on June 10th, 1942 and the Czech partisans who assassinated the "Reichsprotektor" Reinard Heydrich in Prague a couple of weeks earlier. And if that comparison seems a little bit over the top, we can at least be sure that the motivation behind the IDFs actions today and those of the SS in June 1942 was essentially the same. Namely, to demonstrate to an occupied people that any resistance has a price not worth paying.

1 comment:

calgacus said...

Excellent post. People are slowly beginning to realise that the majority of Israeli politicians are nationalist or religious extremists who, unlike their Hamas or Fatah equivalents, actually have the military power to carry their plans out at a high cost in lives.

During the Gaza offensive the head of Israeli intelligence was quoted briefing the cabinet on 'Judaea and Samaria' - they still use the Biblical term for the West Bank as if the Bible gives them a claim to the land.

The chief military judge in the occupied territories said in October that the occupied territories were "given to us by the Bible"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/26/west-bank-jews-army-judge

So extreme fundamentalism is clearly not something exclusive to Palestinian groups

I did a few posts on it at the time of 'Operation Cast Lead'
http://inplaceoffear.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html