The Unspeakable
Mommy, what are you carrying in your arms instead of me?What, after all, can be said about an organization whose primary purpose is to extinguish another organized group through violent means, visiting death and destruction on that group for the purpose of elevating the destroying organization's position? Can any self-interest be excused from civilized behaviour because it feels its own position can only be attained through the destruction of another? To be sure, primitive life-forms which feed on other, more complex life-forms do gain their purpose in this manner, much as deadly bacteria can invade a living body and destroy its physical functions.
A toy or a present for me?...
Mommy Reem! Why did you put on your veil?
Are you going out, Mommy?...
Come back quickly, Mommy
I can't sleep without you, unless you tell me and Ubaydah a bedtime story.
My mother, my mother,
Me and Ubaydah are awake and waiting for you to come to put us to sleep.
Me and Ubaydah, oh Mommy, still need you to wipe our tears...
Instead of me you carried a bomb in your hands.
Only now, I know what was more precious than us...
May your steps be blessed, and may you be flawless for Jerusalem.
Me and Ubaydah wish we were there with you.
Send greetings to our Messenger [Muhammad] and tell him: 'Duha loves you'.
My love will not be [merely] words.
I am following Mommy in her steps.
Oh Mommy, oh Mommy.
We're not talking single-cell amoebas or epiphytes whose function is to live in a symbiotic relationship with a host body, but rather an evolved animal, homo sapiens, capable of complex thought and great achievements. Yet here is an organized group of human beings, fanatically determined to achieve their purpose through glorifying murderous acts and acting out inhuman waves of bloody strife on a grand scale, to eliminate what they perceive as an enemy.
These are human beings ostensibly gifted with the same instincts and needs, with similar physical characteristics and bodily requirements, endowed with a like mental process and intellectual capacity as all other human beings on this earth. Yet their interpretation of human dialogue and interaction for the purpose of achieving their end is rife with vilification of an adversary for the purpose of accounting for their determination to exterminate that adversary.
This is savage tribalism restored to the modern era in a form hitherto not envisaged. This demonstrates a murderously seething resentment that is not amenable to reason. The passion to enact revenge of the bloodiest kind against any and all who would forestall their purpose is undeniable. It would take a brave individual, a well-balanced mind, and an equally-determined intelligence to make an effort to counteract the deadly effects of tribal vengeance in favour of civilized intercourse.
The Islamist Hamas no longer feels it sufficient to radicalize and subvert normal human instinct in the young and impressionable young men and women who make up their prey in Palestinian population and who have been successfully primed to sacrifice themselves through willingly undertaking suicide missions for the purpose of murdering as many Israelis as they can manage. Hamas, through the media of a populist new television channel now seeks to fatally indoctrinate impressionable children toward a life of triumphant jihad.
At al-Aqsa TV, popularly named "Hamas TV", an avid and ever-growing population of Palestinians nursing a deadly grievance against Israel is receptively accepting of this new version of righting past wrongs. Not for them to question the morality of besmirching young lives and dragging children into deadly conflict with a neighbouring state. Just as it appears to be beyond the intellectual capacity of most Palestinians to question why it is that they are still awaiting the birth of their long-awaited Palestinian state and holding their legislators to some kind of partial responsibility for failing their aspirations to statehood thus far.
Rather than embracing the concept of embroiling pre-adolescent children in a viciously unremitting war against a country which could be a peaceful and helpful neighbour, Palestinians could rise against the tide of death-dealing that is Hamas's concept of the future and demand of their leaders a cessation of conflict and killing. Deprived Palestinians, weary and hopeless of the future could take a stand and assert their unwillingness to lend themselves to this continuing travesty, and demand instead that the normal human instinct to find solutions leading to compromise and acceptance be waged on their behalf.
Islamic extremism is a poisonous venom that conspires to exterminate all those who reject radical Islam. The exiled leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, has more than sufficient backing to bankroll this new and grotesquely mind-corrupting technique of persuading children that their duty lies in the kind of Islam that demands of them the ultimate sacrifice; their lives, their physical presence to be used as a human bomb to eradicate other human beings, portrayed as their enemies.
"We want to send a message of people under occupation to the world. And we want to do it in a professional manner", said Mohammed Shtaiwi, director of al-Aqsa's West Bank office. What can these people be thinking? This goes beyond delusional criminality; it is an offence against humanity, an unspeakable crime against young lives, to groom them to believe they owe it to Allah to become human incendiaries to be launched against innocent bystanders simply because they are not Muslim, but Jews.
The "occupying" Jews, those who represent the government of Israel which has seen fit to try to control the deadly activities of jihadists, anti-life, pro-death defamers of the Jewish right of existence, of statehood in the Middle East. A video portraying the deadly intent of a young mother, putting her two toddlers to bed for the night, then slipping away with an explosive device to blow herself and a handful of Israeli victims into nothingness. The six-year-old daughter, realizing it is her mother who has not returned, who is being shown on a newscast as a bomber, understands her mother's sacrifice and vows to follow in her footsteps.
This vile, volatile and unspeakable corruption of childhood and all the promises inherent in a young life has found favour in the eyes of its faithful viewers. "It talks about us. It talks about our suffering", said Hala Adwani, 40, a housewife who watches al-Aqsa every evening and most afternoons. This, then, is a mature woman who cannot find it in herself to find fault with the deliberate suborning of a child's mind, the determined structuring of a future jihadist, the unspeakable abduction of a child's future.
Yet there is hope. Iyad Barghouti, director of the Ramallah Human Rights Centre recognizes this tragedy for what it is: "It provides information and coverage in a religious and racist manner. Its message addresses emotions and most Palestinians are ready to listen to such a message", he said. The good news is his labelling the project for what it is; the bad news is his admission that the project can conceivably be accepted and found worthwhile by a broad segment of the Palestinian population.
That matters could come to such a hopelessly deviant turn within any population is beyond tragic.
Labels: Middle East
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, April 29, 2007
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