Frozen In Confrontation
It's as though compassion and intelligence has been fixed in amber, drained from the apprehension of men utterly dedicated to the fixed notion that they must abandon all humanity for the greater purpose of destroying an enemy. That a hatred so horribly searing is capable of obliterating from human consciousness what they are accomplishing in the atrocious ruination of ordinary peoples' lives is hard to imagine.A cult of hatred, blame, grievance,and vengeance is capable of diminishing the human in the being. And this is so redolent of relationships throughout the culture of the Middle East. Tribal affiliations and suspicion and blame of others are paramount in the culture of clans and tribes incapable of drawing humane conclusions from their traditional clashes of bloody violence.
That there is no value seen in any sphere of human endeavour but first and foremost to mount constant and determined violent forays for the purpose of harming a perceived enemy represented by the presence of civilians in lieu of facing off against a uniformed militant and in the process once again exposing the vulnerable of their own society to deadly response bespeaks a deadly pathology.
What an odious, utterly benighted culture it is that produces such unconscionable, pitiless sociopaths, incapable of remorse, of compassion, of reasonableness. All the while that Hamas bargains for a truce with Israel through Egyptian intermediaries, their militias and other allied jihadists cannot restrain themselves from continued rocket attacks into Israel.
Hamas purports to have been amazed by the extent and determination of the Israel Defence Forces' response to their continued, unflagging rocket assaults into Israel. How much confrontation and provocation is enough? And having witnessed first hand the results of the aerial bombardments into Gaza that struck the vulnerable and the innocent, have they no vestige of common sense remaining to them?
They simply cannot find it in themselves to wean themselves away from provoking another response which will invariably bring harm not only to themselves, willing to die gloriously as martyrs, but to innocent civilians, women and children? Hamas and Hezbollah and their brethren in murder and mayhem are so fond of iterating how they embrace death, while the Israelis fear it.
Must they then embrace the idea of death for those whom they make vulnerable through their innocent presence? It doesn't take courage to bring harm to those unable to protect themselves. And it offends any belief in honour that such mentalities exist that believe it is to the greater good that they offer their own lives and those of the innocent for a horribly flawed cause.
Israelis value life, and they strive to protect it. Which is precisely why they have attempted in the past to forewarn those whose safety will be imperilled, to alert them to abandon that place which will be attacked. It is exactly why they will halt the negotiations for a truce they surely would like to accept - if only to forestall violence for another interregnum - to insist that Gilad Shalit be returned.
Cross-border violence is a blot on the humanity of both sides; those who initiate it and those who respond to it. Those who initiate it have the responsibility upon themselves for the violence that ensues in response. It degrades the humanity of the assailants and the respondents. That appears to be a matter of little consequence to Hamas.
But it is a matter of great and enduring sorrow to the defenders of humanity.
Labels: Middle East, Terrorism, Traditions
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, February 15, 2009
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