This week’s grim events, capped by the air force bombing of Gaza on Thursday night, substantiate the suspicion that the Israeli descent into irrational, medieval nihilism is getting perilously close to its nadir. Far from being the sober, measured response of a responsible democracy, Israel’s knee-jerk rebound into overkill (air and artillery bombardments, mass arrests of lawmakers, escalatory flights over Damascus) testifies only to the impoverishment of military-political thinking in the country. Decades of feudal contempt for the Palestinians and tit-for-tat responses to violence have stultified our strategic judgment. We have no options, other than greater force.
That’s the good news. The other alternative is that the capture of an Israeli soldier is being deliberately exploited by the country’s leadership to demolish any semblance of Palestinian statehood and thus neutralize the danger of a political settlement, which, even according to the prime minister, would entail substantial withdrawal from the occupied territories.
Whatever the ultimate fate of the unfortunate Gilad Shalit, it is undeniable that the events of the past week have further curtailed the already slim prospects for peaceful coexistence between Israel and the Palestinians and elevated the entire region to a new plateau of distrust and hatred. At a time when the majority of Israelis seem to have internalized the need for the occupation to end, the country’s leaders show every sign of willfully plunging the region into a new spasm of bloodletting, precisely in order to preempt any such accommodation.
In the first place, there is essentially no difference between the capture of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian fighters during a raid on a military outpost and the almost nightly detentions of Palestinians carried out by the Israeli army in Palestinian territory. To describe, as we do, one as an abduction and the other as an arrest – one as a terrorist action (pigua) and the other as a military action – is to deliberately distort the reality of the ongoing struggle between the two sides.
It is tendentious for the government to argue that, following the withdrawal from Gaza, there is no longer any justification for Palestinian resistance emanating from that benighted spot and that every action is therefore, by definition, terrorism. As if they acknowledged the justification for resistance before the withdrawal. The fight for an independent Palestine is indivisible, even if the land itself is fractured. So long as the occupation over all the Palestinian territories persists and a solution to the national aspirations of the Palestinian people is not found, Gaza will continue to be a launching pad for offensive operations.
Israel has no grounds for its arrogant presumption that the capture of an Israeli soldier is of any greater import than the detention of tens of thousands of Palestinians, never mind that it justifies the wholesale abrogation of Palestinian sovereignty (such as it is) that has occurred in recent days.
And even if a forceful response was justified, it wasn’t smart. Knee-jerk reactions seldom are. Laying siege to a civilian population and firing artillery shells into residential areas have the inevitable effect of creating martyrs and solidifying hatred. Even if the military action does bring about the release of Gilad Shalit (which is unclear at the time of writing,) the repercussions of the onslaught on Gaza will haunt us for a long time to come.
Acknowledgement of the necessity to end the occupation (something which Prime Minister Olmert does with such facility when conferring with Bush, Blair and Chirac) and negotiating in good faith for the release of prisoners could have provided the necessary human dimension for the start of dialogue. But neither Olmert nor his generals are capable of such suppleness. Too many years at the political or military helm have atrophied their mental agility. Talking to Bush about talking with the Palestinians is one thing; actually talking with the Palestinians is another thing entirely. Israeli officials are unable to relate to Palestinians who do not assume the bended-knee posture of the vassal.
Israelis, and foremost amongst them the media, would do well to drop the language of terrorism, terror attacks and kidnappings. Such language is both smug and self-deluding. Like a baby’s pacifier, it gives the illusion of contentment and keeps the harsh world at bay. The sooner we acknowledge that the occupation and its attendant disdain for the Palestinians is at the heart of the conflict, the sooner we will begin to realize the options for its solution.
Opting for the use of force is the fool’s solution. Unfortunately, it has become the Israeli norm. We have boxed ourselves into a corner.
Friday, June 30, 2006
Thursday, June 01, 2006
Coelho's navel gazing
The Zahir, Paul Coelho, translated by Margaret Jull Costa. Harper Collins, 2005
The Zahir is the first book by Paul Coelho that I have read. I’ve seen his name often enough on the bookshelves but never felt the need to know more. Perhaps that had something to do with the off-putting esoteric nature of the titles – The Alchemist, The Valkyries and so on. But this book was given to me by a dear friend and I had a long flight home from Beijing, so . . .
Let me put it bluntly. This is also the last Paul Coelho book that I will read, unless either he or I undergoes a radical transformation - and I can’t see that happening. Paul Coelho’s philosophy, if one can call it that, or his spiritual quest is as far from my tastes as bacon from a synagogue. The Zahir is a search for love gone wrong and a paean to a variety of rituals, which somehow are meant to amount to a comprehensive spiritual world view. To me it amounted to a pretentious bore.
Throughout my reading of the Zahir I had a nagging feeling that it reminded me of something but I couldn’t put my finger on it. In his author’s note at the end of the book, Coelho was kind enough to solve the riddle for me, attributing one of the rituals in the book to Carlos Castaneda’s Journey to Ixtlan. Carlos Castaneda! The name hadn’t entered my head for over 30 years. Does any one still read Carlos Castaneda, let along mention him in an author’s note?
Sure, I’d been hot and bothered about Castaneda in my late teens and early twenties but I soon got over it. Even then I had been unable to finish his books and his importance was more as a provider of a rationale for taking huge quantities of hallucinogenic drugs than as a spiritual teacher. As addled as my brain undoubtedly was, I couldn’t take his stuff seriously.
But Paul Coelho clearly does; very seriously. Enough said. And I wonder to myself: in a world of Auschwitz, Rwanda and Srebrenica, is not Coelho’s agonizing about love and getting rid of his personal history the mental masturbation of the rich and famous (both Coelho and his protagonist?) Had the Jews, the Tutsis and the Bosnian Muslims being a bit more diligent about getting rid of their personal histories, would Hitler, the Hutus and Milosevic have said “Well now, they’re getting their shit together. I think I’ll let them live?”
Of course that’s not a fair comment to make. Writers are free – must be free – to write about whatever they want. But I can’t escape the feeling that The Zahir is not only trivial and boring, it’s also nasty.
In the positive column, the writing is clear and precise, though almost totally lacking in metaphor, irony or just a little wit. It is also more a tract than a novel; the story line is a very thin covering for the spiritual points which Coelho wants to get across.
No doubt there are many people who thrive on this sort of stuff. For myself, I haven’t disliked a book as much in many years.
The Zahir is the first book by Paul Coelho that I have read. I’ve seen his name often enough on the bookshelves but never felt the need to know more. Perhaps that had something to do with the off-putting esoteric nature of the titles – The Alchemist, The Valkyries and so on. But this book was given to me by a dear friend and I had a long flight home from Beijing, so . . .
Let me put it bluntly. This is also the last Paul Coelho book that I will read, unless either he or I undergoes a radical transformation - and I can’t see that happening. Paul Coelho’s philosophy, if one can call it that, or his spiritual quest is as far from my tastes as bacon from a synagogue. The Zahir is a search for love gone wrong and a paean to a variety of rituals, which somehow are meant to amount to a comprehensive spiritual world view. To me it amounted to a pretentious bore.
Throughout my reading of the Zahir I had a nagging feeling that it reminded me of something but I couldn’t put my finger on it. In his author’s note at the end of the book, Coelho was kind enough to solve the riddle for me, attributing one of the rituals in the book to Carlos Castaneda’s Journey to Ixtlan. Carlos Castaneda! The name hadn’t entered my head for over 30 years. Does any one still read Carlos Castaneda, let along mention him in an author’s note?
Sure, I’d been hot and bothered about Castaneda in my late teens and early twenties but I soon got over it. Even then I had been unable to finish his books and his importance was more as a provider of a rationale for taking huge quantities of hallucinogenic drugs than as a spiritual teacher. As addled as my brain undoubtedly was, I couldn’t take his stuff seriously.
But Paul Coelho clearly does; very seriously. Enough said. And I wonder to myself: in a world of Auschwitz, Rwanda and Srebrenica, is not Coelho’s agonizing about love and getting rid of his personal history the mental masturbation of the rich and famous (both Coelho and his protagonist?) Had the Jews, the Tutsis and the Bosnian Muslims being a bit more diligent about getting rid of their personal histories, would Hitler, the Hutus and Milosevic have said “Well now, they’re getting their shit together. I think I’ll let them live?”
Of course that’s not a fair comment to make. Writers are free – must be free – to write about whatever they want. But I can’t escape the feeling that The Zahir is not only trivial and boring, it’s also nasty.
In the positive column, the writing is clear and precise, though almost totally lacking in metaphor, irony or just a little wit. It is also more a tract than a novel; the story line is a very thin covering for the spiritual points which Coelho wants to get across.
No doubt there are many people who thrive on this sort of stuff. For myself, I haven’t disliked a book as much in many years.
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