Looking into a sky filled by soot, cries and the booms of yet another rocket, bullets, grenades and the splatter of blood. This does not make for a well adapted society. Generations will carry forth a mass induced shell shock, dynamite strapped against their waist - because that is how you expect differences to be solved. By weapon, not with useless words hitting dumb ears.
Jostein Gaarder, you know, the dude that wrote Sophies World, have caused quite a storm here in Norway by his poetic, nearly prophetic style, condemning the state of Israel in its current form. Dagbladet, a leading tabloid, printed a satiric drawing of Olhmert as Goeth in Shindlers List, standing with a view to an extermination camp. That made some people a tiny bit mad.
So, what is the point? Only that I find nothing controversial about expressing a view, however upset you might be. Critique of Israel, their current politics, ties to the USA and abhorrent behaviour in a senseless war - does not make antisemitism. As we would critizise any state or organisation, we have every reason to shout words of condemntation at actors willingly, easily and that with no regret target civilians. What likenesses there might be to the nazi period, where jews were targeted and condemned to inhuman torture, death and betrayal of everything holy are easy to see, exactly because it has happened to one of the involved parties in this current crisis.
I think it is shell shock. When six million of your fellow beings walks as ghost in the machine, you are doomed to have a hundred years of solitude. It is not possible to look away from this past and be reminded of what can happen if you do not, or cannot, stand up and oppose those that wish you harm. It is not strange that Israel every since the war has developed a tendency to behave as its worst enemy. Bitterness fades slowly and sometimes sorrow finds anger and focus it towards your neighbour in a form that we that stand outside cannot understand as anything other than apartheid, slaughter of innocence, xenophobia, rage, animal behaviour.
This is not about jews, it is about how a state carry forth. Religion is a backdrop, as is history and the amalgam of culture everything is. Israel is so much more that the religion of jews. You don't have to be jewish to be an Israeli. But it does seem a prerequisite to be an orthodox jew if you have a tendency to occupy Palestinian soil. As it is a prerequisite to be a fundamental muslim if you want to die the death of martyrs. And I who thought that was the priviledge of sexually frustrated catholic monks. Better leave religion out of it. But if you do that, what else is left of the Middle East? Oil? Oranges? Nuclear weapons? (How come they are called wmds in the hands of terrorist states like Iran, while in the hands of Israel they are necessary if never admitted??
Go fuck yourselves, all you who thinks caricature, critique and flaming words are antisemitism. Go fuck yourselves, all you who thinks caricature, critique and flaming words are worth a jihad.
