Rest in peace, Bassem

Bassem Abu Rahme, alive (photo courtesy of Khatija)

I have just learned that the young man murdered by an Israeli soldier at last Friday's demonstration in Bil'in, Bassem Abu Rahme, was someone I had met on a visit to the village last year. Fatal shootings and maimings of Palestinians by the Israeli Occupying Force are a weekly, if not a daily, occurence but somehow, if it's the face or name of someone you know, it brings the tragedy home.

The fact that Bassem was wearing a luminous yellow shirt (making him an easy target) and was standing with a group of journalists on a small hill, apart from the demonstrators, made no difference to his killer. He was shot, from a mere 40 metres distance, with a high-velocity projectile. As I say, an easy target.

Devout Muslims recite this verse upon hearing of a death: "To God we belong, and to Him we shall return". Small comfort to Bassem's family, to his friends and to all of us who admired his bravery and persistence.

http://www.philipweiss.org/mondoweiss/2009/04/after-shooting-one-palestinian-demonstrator-israeli-soldiers-call-out-do-you-want-more-gas-.html

Resistance

Francisco Goya's painting, "The Third of May 1808" depicts the execution, at dawn on that date, of Spaniards who had resisted the occupation of their country by Napoleon's forces.  In Madrid, hundreds of citizens were rounded up and summarily shot. This powerful work is one of the archetypal images of the horrors of war.

In Bil'in yesterday a young man was shot in the chest and killed while protesting the ongoing theft of his village's lands. Once again, non-violent resistance to the Israeli military and colonial occupation has been met by deadly force. There will be no inquest, the killer will not be charged. Two hundred years have passed since the events which Goya depicted and what has changed?

http://palestinevideo.blogspot.com/2009/04/bilin-weekly-demo-17-april-2009-israel.html 

Guernica Revisited

The most famous anti-war image of modern times is Pablo Picasso's large mural, "Guernica".

It commemorates the 1937 bombing by German aircraft of Guernica, a small village in the Basque country of northern Spain, a bastion of Republican resistance to Franco's fascists. The raid targetted the civilian population, mostly women and children, gathered in the village centre on market day. The attack, which lasted for several hours, killed an estimated 250 to 1,600 as the warplanes repeatedly bombed and machine-gunned the defenceless population.

Hitler's forces carried out the raid in solidarity with their Spanish fascist allies and as an opportunity to test out new weapons. It may have been the first time that aerial warfare had been used to in an attempt to intimidate and demoralise a civilian population.

The lesson of Guernica has been well learned by the leaders of modern-day Israel. What else was the recent attack on Gaza for than to test out its arsenal of new weaponry and to bomb a defenceless population into submission? While it may have successfully tested the effect of white phosphorous, flechettes and new and horrifying munitions on human bodies, it failed utterly to demoralise a population of incredibly brave and resilient people. 

Massacre of the innocents

"The Massacre of the Innocents" by the great Flemish master, Peter Paul Rubens, is probably the best known of the many interpretations of this theme by European artists. In almost every painting the "innocents" are women and children. Occasionally, animals, particularly horses, are depicted as the innocent victims of warfare and armed aggression.

What a treasure trove of ghastly images awaits any artist who chooses to focus on the recent massacres in Gaza! While Israel attempted to hide the gory details of its blitzkrieg from the eyes of the world - by denying entry to the Western media - photographs, amateur videos and graphic first-hand accounts have since emerged from within that charnel-house. Unable to run, with nowhere to hide, women and children, teenagers, medical personnel and all the other innocent victims were gunned down, maimed and bombed in their scores, in their hundreds.

It would take a Goya to visually enshrine the suffering of the poor people of Gaza. Meanwhile, we have the photographs, and the knowledge.  Lest we forget.

We came, we saw, we destroyed.

A T-shirt with the image of a pregnant Muslim woman in the cross-hairs of a sniper's rifle and bearing the slogan "1 SHOT 2 KILLS".  Other shirts and caps, adorned with similar slogans, such as "WE CAME, WE SAW, WE DESTROYED". Such is the trophy clothing, boasting of rape, murder and destruction, printed and worn by members of various Israel Defence Force units.

Just another sign of the increasing callousness of those who make up "the most moral army in the world".

For the full story go to: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072466.html

Human Rights (for some)

Homeless refugees in Gaza shelter in the ruins of their home.

Debate goes on in Australia about the need for a Bill of Rights or Charter of Rights. Those for such a document argue that it would guarantee and enshrine the basic rights of all citizens, to be upheld in our courts of law. Those against maintain that our rights are best preserved through the workings of the federal parliament - claiming that our elected representatives, not unelected judges, should be the watchdogs of our freedom and rights.  Some assert that Australia is the only Western democracy without such a bill or charter.

As the "only democracy in the Middle East" Israel would, one imagines, assume responsibility for the basic rights of all its citizens and those living under its military occupation.  But of course it doesn't. Only its Jewish citizens are entitled to the full protection of Israeli laws. Its Arab citizens enjoy only a second-class status. The Palestinians under its protection as an occupying power (in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem) face the theft and destruction of their property, imprisonment without trial, restrictions of movement and beatings and killings by army personnel, with no meaningful recourse to law. Land thefts and extra-judicial killings by agents of the state continue to go unpunished.

Such a debate as we are having in Australia is irrelevant in the context of Israel. When laws are enacted for the benefit of some, and denied to others, then surely this earns Israel the definition of a racist state. While it continues on its present course Israel will increasingly be seen as a pariah nation by the rest of the world.

No more Holocaust movies

Last Sunday SBS television screened a Hungarian movie, "Fateless", about a Jewish boy's experiences in a World War 2 concentration camp. While I'm a fan of foreign-language movies on SBS, I couldn't bring myself to watch this one, though I had enjoyed a brilliant Israeli movie, "Sweet Mud", (about a boy growing up on a kibbutz in the 1970s) earlier in the week.

I have seen enough Holocaust movies to last me a lifetime, especially those of the Hollywood variety. There are many Jews, in Israel and worldwide, who are fed up with the incessant portrayal of Jews as victims. As the American academic Norman Finkelstein has argued in his book, "The Holocaust Industry", promoters of the Holocaust work to portray Israel as a victim state, thereby garnering it immunity to criticism of its horrendous human rights record.

Israel has, grotesquely, attempted to portray itself as the victim during the recent Gaza massacres. Meanwhile, it continues with the inexorable ethnic cleansing of the occupied West Bank. While it persists on its present path it can only fuel the fires of anti-Semitism worldwide.

I probably missed a really good movie, but until we start seeing similar treatments of the Palestinian Holocaust coming out of Hollywood and Europe then the subject is closed for me.