Cultural Psychoses
It isn't all that difficult to point to established cultural, ethnic, religious or political trends assumed for one reason or another that identify those who belong to that particular tribe, ethnic group or religion. In the case of Palestinians and the Arab community diverse as it is, it sometimes identifies as a mass psychosis. As though it has become Manifest Destiny to pursue a certain path, not deviating from it, even when experience teaches that it has become inimical to the well-being to the adherent.There seems to be a subliminal, tribal/cultural psychosis of an entire people unwilling to lift themselves out of a kind of deadly torpor represented visibly by a sense of victimhood leading to denial of responsibility then determination to avenge themselves and a deadly hatred settles in, an implacable resistance to facing reality. Tribal/cultural/religious revenge remains uppermost in mind, obscuring the need to secure a future for their children.
Devotion to a medieval mindset becomes construed as a search to restore the collective 'honour'. People become fatally devoted to their incorrigible and chosen path leading to self-destructive impulses. Impulses which render them deadly to themselves as well as to others toward whom their fatal enmity is directed. Impulses that leave them immune to reasonable introspection.
Intransigently determined in their beliefs, unprepared to co-habit as equal co-dwellers in an ancient landscape, clinging to outraged notions of victimhood and dreaming, forever dreaming of revenge. Is there any other group more wedded to victimhood and revenge? Little wonder: they're mercilessly victimized by their purported leaders, devoted to seeking their revenge upon the interloper, their perceived enemy, Israel.
Effectively marking the progress of civilization in the Middle East.
A loutish thug like the PLO's Arafat and his minions loot the PA treasury rather than implementing badly-needed civil infrastructure as a necessary prelude to forming an independent State. These are funds given to the Palestinian people and held in trust by the Palestinian Authority which agents felt perfectly free to dispose of them as they wished, transporting funds to personal Swiss bank accounts.
And though many Palestinians recognized the PA authorities for the uncaring, corrupt looters that they were, they had no one else to turn to. Enter Hamas, self-acknowledged Islamist hard-liners, but terrorist-inclined as they are, devoted to the cause of the Palestinians, they avowed. And began to prove their method by restraining their madness and channelling energy into establishing health clinics, schools, social support agencies for the people.
The Palestinians, more given to secular administration, saw themselves fit and ready to accept a more direct Islamic presence in their lives through Hamas' administration of the PA and in gratitude for their exhibition of values so unlike that of the Fatah-ruled PA, voted one into power, the other into limbo. So where are the real liberators of Palestinian impoverishment?
Are they represented by the futile and crooked efforts of Fatah, the so-called 'moderates' among the political elite, or the 'honest' Hamas, intransigently wedded to the destruction of the State of Israel? Some choice the Palestinians have, to accept the wholesale sacking of their acquired collective wealth from Western sources, or that of a jihadist-driven fundamentalist group eager to annihilate a neighbour.
The moral compass built into a peaceful version of Islam gone badly awry. Because the self-declared-and-fondly-embraced status of victimhood is justification for deadly brutality. Because destruction and mass murder is validation of grievance.
Labels: Middle East
posted by Pieface @ Monday, February 19, 2007
<< Home