Learning to Communicate: Advice for Martyrs and Palestinians by risa
Below are a few quotes about the Gaza pullout, and then a draft of an attempt to put into words how terrorism is an ineffective tactic for interaction in the long term. All this is, really, is a difficult exploration of an impossibly difficult situation, and some thoughts about communication…
Abbas: “The credit for the evacuation is for you and for the martyrs who sacrificed themselves and gave their lives for the homeland” http://www.ghanaian-chronicle.com/thestory.asp?id=7499.
“So the Israelis launched the “crushing” attack early today in Gaza with deadly air strikes. The Israeli leaders gave last night a “license to kill” for their army (as if they need one). Of course, they are retaliating to Hamas militants firing 35 rockets at Israeli towns, which were in retaliation to Israeli massacre of Jabalya, which followed the militant firing rockets at Israeli towns, which was retaliation to Israeli killing three fighters from al-Quds Brigades early on Friday just hours after Israeli soldiers evacuated an army base. So it’s a cycle of violence. But who to blame? Yes, you know the answer… Palestinians.
No where in the MSM you will find the complete story. All what you will hear is that Israel retaliation to Hamas firing rockets on Israeli towns. But why Hamas did that, no body tells you. Why? Because you are not suppose to know. Because all what you need to know is that Palestinians are terrorists, and they are born to kill. Because Israelis are all angels. They just retaliate when these criminal Palestinians target their civilians. Because you should not know that Israel is the OCCUPATION.
Just another drop in the pro-Zionist media to brainwash the mass.”
“On ABC’s Nightline Monday night, a reporter interviewed a young, sympathetic Israeli woman from the largest Gaza settlement, Neve Dekalim – a girl with sincerity in her voice, holding back tears. (…)In the 5 years of Israel’s brutal suppression of the Palestinian uprising against the occupation, I never once saw or heard a segment as long and with as much sentimental, human detail as I did here; never once remember a reporter allowing a sympathetic young Palestinian woman, whose home was just bulldozed and who lost everything she owned, tell of her pain and sorrow, of her memories and her family’s memories; never got to listen to her reflect on where she would go now and how she would live. (…)Where were the cameramen in May 2004 in Rafah when refugees twice over lost their homes again in a single night’s raid, able to retrieve nothing of what they owned? Where were they when bulldozers and tanks tore up paved streets with steel blades, wrecked the sewage and water pipes, cut electricity lines, and demolished a park and a zoo; when snipers shot two children, a brother and sister, feeding their pigeons on the roof of their home? When the occupying army fired a tank shell into a group of peaceful demonstrators killing 14 of them including two children?”
(both quotes taken from Palestine Blogs)
Perhaps there is a rascism among some of the millions of different individuals with different religions and nationalities who have watched the long tragedy of the Middle East unfold. Certainly, in many ways we must be receiving a distorted portrayal of the people there, but Palestinians should be aware of what seems a fundamental factor in how they are portrayed (or why they are not portrayed) in the press. It is not an issue of race, or of good Israeli’s versus evil Palestinians, but is instead an issue of communication, and what the activites of ‘martyrs’ communicate in comparison to the activities of ‘states’.
I am not on either a “pro-zion” or “anti-zion” side. I don’t think dividing questions into simple adversaries ever helps unpack their moral complexity, much less move toward peace and conflict resolution. The descriptions of the attacks on refugee camps like Jabalya or Rafah reveal them to have been horrible cruelties, whatever the possible justifications. Personally, I think all violence is a tragedy- a wasted opportunity for more productive communication, and for the unfolding potential of exchange and insight and collaboration and innovation that successful communication can produce. The problem with terrorist attacks- martyrdoms that are encouraged by the religious and political elite, uncoordinated militia warfare- is that they seem to come from the blue. Their strategic strength is their long-term failing: they could come from anywhere, anyone, at any time. There is no clear body who tried to communicate publicly in a non-violent way, and no communicative acts that speak of a desire for peace. Even Abbas praises the ‘martyrs’. But martyrdom acheived with a suicide bomb makes no suggestion of how the perpetrators of these acts see themselves other then as weapons or soldiers, dying for a religous statehood that doesn’t seem as though it would allow the rest of us to exist, and go about our business, to have our own ideas about what god is like and what we are here to do. In fact, what Islamic terrorism, and I think, terrorism generally, communicates most forcefully is not a desire for land or peace or recognition but instead for the destruction of potentially anyone and everyone. There is no suggestion from terrorism that it would participate in a conversation about just war. So it becomes possible to believe that terrorists would train other terrorists in elementary schools, or convince lonely teenagers to blow themselves up rather then audition for Arab Idol, or whatever. All kinds of manipulation and distortion seem possible, and necessarily defended against, when attacks are coming in an uncoordinated, incommunicative way.
Terrorism (martyrdom) offers no theories about life after terrorism for those of us who remain here on earth, and nothing for the watching world to understand except violence and death. The Isreali state, while communicating with violence in all kinds of tragic ways, also makes other kinds of communicative gestures about what they want. The orchestration of the Gaza pullout is one example, and the wall is another. The more profound examples come in a wider layer of discourse in the history of the Israeli state, and on the International stage, about democracy, universities, poverty, about the right to practice any religion, or of freedom of expression, or for people of any gender to make any life choices they like on their own.
As a global civilization we must pay attention to the ways victimized people (jews, blacks, women, arabs) have successfully forced the world to see that they are human; successfully drawn media attention and money to their cause; the ways they behave to try and communicate their own worth. They do so by figuring out that the most pragmatic tactic is to communicate the worth of each unique human life no matter what gender, religion or race; and it is impossible to communicate this logical, protective bit of sense with a suicide bomb.
The whole world- but especially the current American administration, the Israeli administration, and the current leaders of the Arab world- should be seeking to learn lessons from successful acts of communication, rather then retaliating, blaming, torturing, punishing and generally perpetuating a coversation made of death and pain and sorrow and loss. Otherwise the time will come when people will reject their promises of differently flavoured utopias and chose different ways of interacting. Remember: Force is always on the side of the governed. (Hume) There are more of us, and though your stories are pretty, we will eventually see through you and come to want something better for ourselves and our kids.
If you know me, you know I would suggest that this other system “the governed” will choose, will be one that is collaboratively using the tools and spaces created by open source software.
But that’s another article.
peace all.
(ps- I do not put the word ‘martyrs’ in quotes to indicate any disrespect of these children, men and women who felt the greatest contribution they could make to humanity, the greatest use of their god given abilities, the greatest tribute they could make to His goodness, was their own death and the murder of others. I do not doubt the intensity of their faith, or of their desperation, and I know I could never fully imagine what it has been like to see what they have seen and to live as they have lived. In addition, I have no priviledged access to the thoughts and intentions of our creator, I have no way of knowing if there is such a being or what he or she would want. Perhaps fundamentalist Muslim interpetations of the Holy texts are correct, and terrorist martyrs will be rewarded in spite of all the writing about forgiveness and love in the good books. I put the word ‘martyr’ aside a bit because I think it’s worth suggesting that, though this may be how they are perceived to some, other messages are being communicated to other audiences by these same acts. And these messages are disordered and chaotic, their intentionality is widely various, not easily synthesized by a political theorist, let alone a journalist, and so their actions are difficult to sympathize with and their story is incredibly difficult to tell. )
October 12th, 2005 at 2:50 pm
just a quick additional note courtesy of the Jurist website: a UN official claims that Israel is depriving Palestinians of basic rights, and Israeli officials invite her to tour the occupied territories.
at least it feels like there might be some space here for communication. i guess we can look at this tidbit and either believe that people in power will always do what they like and then try and perform something publicly acceptable; or we can believe that the force of the public gaze can be focused by representative institutions like the UN (when they’re effective and, youknow, trying) and used to mobilize the evolution of systems and rhetorics towards equality.