"They Were Like Locusts"
Those were the words of an Egyptian man who turned against the human tide, himself bicycling into Gaza while Gazans in the hundreds of thousands, descended upon his town to buy up anything and everything resembling food, electronics, fuel, motorbikes, cigarettes, livestock. "I need to buy bread for my children", said Ashraf el-Sayyid. "The Palestinians left us with nothing. It's true, they are dear to us, but today they were like locusts."Living in the west, in an industrialized advanced and wealthy country like Canada, one can accept and recognize the allusion. It's exactly the impression we get when watching news coverage of people in our cities and towns exercising their rights as rigorous consumers of unneeded products, post-Christmas, when all manner of "Boxing Day" sales are advertised ad nauseum, enticing exhausted shoppers to indulge in yet more hysteria, to "save money".
The all-too-human trait of acquisitiveness readily tips over into an ungovernable state of pure, unadulterated greed evinced throughout human history. When enough is never seen to suffice. Particularly when people panic, seeing themselves cut off from opportunities to acquire, their situations setting them apart from conceived normalcy, and they are deprived of their natural inclination to shop.
This is, of course, different to some degree from those whose circumstances have afforded them great wealth, whose instincts yet continue to propel them toward greater sums of worldly riches. They derive no comfort from what has been attained, and strive mightily through whatever means possible, to expand their material holdings. The basic human instinct is the same.
For those deprived by circumstances of endemic poverty a hapless rage surmounts acceptance of deprivation. And when they see themselves even further removed from the availability of the little they have, a panic of desperation descends. They will attempt anything to deliver themselves from want, in demonstration of obeying the most basic and emotional instincts for survival.
In the instance of the Palestinians from Gaza, so long sequestered - albeit somewhat complicit in the conditions which led to their isolation - they flowed in uncountable numbers through the destroyed barrier between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, to descend "like locusts" on the shops and stores and stalls to scoop up whatever they could, to forestall the spectre of deprivation.
And having assured themselves of acquiring basic needs, attention inevitably turned to satisfying the craving for non-essentials. Surrendering common sense and logic to the emotional need to acquire goods and objects of irrational desire. Freedom to roam, to surge past boundaries, to unite with others across the barrier.
From an emotionally needful perspective to be re-united, however briefly, with relatives and friends with whom contact has of necessity of vile and clumsy politics been impossible. The longing to see familiar and dear faces, to clasp hands and embrace momentarily fulfilled, before lapsing again into the condition of enforced separation.
The mixed spectacle of the poor seeking basic sustenance while those for whom basic necessities is no issue, join the hordes to secure motorcycles, televisions, electronic gadgetry. This is Hamas buying credit with their charges. Having imposed upon them a prison of their devising, they deliver a shopping spree to relax tensions and highlight their power.
While celebrating temporary release, already contemplating the reality of returning to the dreadful burden of living apart, surrounded, tentative. But devoted to the promises given them by those who claim to support their battle against the 'oppressors'. From whom the provision of water and energy is sourced, while their protectors seek to bomb the very sources of those given necessities.
We in North America also know how soul-debilitating it is to be deprived of energy sources to power our way of life; our cars, our homes and appliances. What misery it is to live without light in the evening, without heat or air conditioning, without fuel for our vehicles, worrying that the foodstuffs in refrigerators and freezers will spoil. We have lived through these blighted incidents, and we know.
Illogic? That is the response of the desperate, and the demagogic.
Labels: Middle East, That's Life, Troublespots
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, January 24, 2008
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