insignificance

[click image]

Here you have a particularly vivid account of both the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza and the insignificance of the efforts to free them. You are going to take exception to the term "insignificance" here, but I am speaking from the vantage point of effectiveness. Those engaged so selflessly and courageously in these efforts are beautiful, and numerous, and a number maybe some scholar might eventually be able to estimate are dead... with the oppression and genocide only worsening over all these heroic and way too often lethal efforts. These would-be liberators of Palestine must content themselves with knowing they have not wasted their lives in front of the boob tube tsking, that they have done things, even given their lives, continually risk their lives, invite the depredations of the Holocaust Industry, the deathless Shoa Business and its legions of mindless ninnies dedicated to echoing its tripe. This is the payoff for activism in this matter. You get to know you are virtuous. You get to hope your sacrifices can someday inspire enough people that the problem can somehow be solved. You get to hold up the fantasy of South Africa's victory as the beacon of the possibility of eventual success.

This video is the perfect antidote to the appalling nuances of Goldstone's interview with Moyers that made me wish I could reach through my monitor to pour bleach on both men at that table... kill the sophistry like I kill the molds perpetually seeking to establish themselves on window sills, toilet bowls, the North side of my house.

But it is still just prize-winning insignificance.

Norman Finkelstein had a vision. He is someone who has sacrificed so much for Palestine, whose whole life has been about freeing Palestine, about doggedly and brilliantly insisting on sense at every turn, who has never stooped to the sickening sophistries on display at Moyers' table last night. I fancy his close attention to Gandhi's journals drove his mind up into the air where the power of significance is significant. He saw a door open a crack, that exalted opening of conditions for the true manifestation of positive intent, he saw how to break the siege for real, break it in the sense that it is broken for good, not just momentarily breached. The demons of delusion closed and locked that door.

It could not contain a drop of vengeance. It could not be the Palestinians scoring on Israel. Israel and the United States are unbreakably defended against those. Anything done with a whiff of either is doomed. Barring space aliens landing to arm them with weaponry that devastates ours, PALESTINE CANNOT FREE ITSELF. That has been made increasingly clear over the course of sixty-one years, and beyond any doubt for the last forty-two.

Every generation to hurl itself against this wall fails utterly to comprehend the meaning of this amount of time daily proving the imperviousness of the malign intent at work against the people of Palestine. They don't care if you blow yourself up. They don't care if the whole world sees your baby shot point blank by an Israeli soldier. They don't care if you wail so you can be heard in the Betelgeuse sector of the galaxy over the beautiful girl whose body was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer because she stood between it and the Palestinian home she was determined to save. It doesn't matter. It is insignificant. They are NOT turned from their purpose. You get to pick between thinking well of yourself, sacrificing all your energies in bottomless negativity, and martyrdom... none of them significant.

Norman was the first person to transcend this stupid waste of human life, catch a gander at precisely what could prevail, but I guess he's just not charismatic enough to have commanded your uncomprehending devotion so that your uncomprehending delusion couldn't ruin it.

*******************************************************************************

As if to put the seal on my words, my first foray out into today's solar system of news outlets on the tubes rendered up this poisoned tidbit:

Support for Netanyahu and Likud growing, Israeli poll shows
Middle East News | Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Oct 23, 2009, 9:34 GMT

Tel Aviv - Support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ruling Likud party has grown since he took office over six months ago, according to an opinion poll published Friday.

If elections were held today, the Likud would get six more mandates to become the largest party in the Israeli parliament, said the survey by the Dahaf polling institute, commissioned by Israel's biggest-selling daily, Yediot Ahronot.

The hardline but mainstream party, which in February elections won 27 of the 120 seats in the Knesset, would get 33 if a new ballot were held today, it indicated.

The centrist Kadima party of former foreign minister Tzipi Livni, now in the opposition, would stay the same with 28 Knesset seats.

Livni's Kadima technically beat Likud in the last elections, by a margin of just one mandate. But she stood no chance of forming a government, as the bloc of right-wing parties headed by Netanyahu's Likud had become a combined majority in the House.

Netanyahu rejected Livni's call for power-sharing, and on March 31 formed a government with the 15-seat far-right Israel Beiteinu party of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, the 13-seat left-to-centre Labour Party of Defence Minister Ehud Barak and a number of other right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties.

According to Friday's poll, support for Barak's Labour Party has further nose-dived and it would get only seven mandates if elections were held today.

Netanyahu's personal popularity was high, with 41 per cent of those asked saying he was the most suited to be prime minister, compared to 31 per cent who chose Livni and 7 per cent who opted for Barak.

The Dahaf Institute questioned a sample of 500 adult Israelis this week and the poll had a margin of error of 4.5 per cent.

Yes, yes, I know there are actual Israelis in Israel who are body and soul against this heinousness in charge, but, well, they're not exactly polling well over the last year or so, now are they?