Reworked Prose: I Blame Herzl

In January 2009, I wrote a prose post entitled "I blame Herzl." It was a lame attempt to engage.  I decided that I ought to do the same, having advanced so much these past four years, but now in poetry.  Pristine logic, plus, this time, there's food. The remarkable painting is by Erez Vaxman.

Sunday Chowder: I Blame Herzl

 

I made fish chowder

and then we said

these things:

 

"Do the right wing bigots

really think that leftist assholes

cannot distinguish between Hamas

and the deserving

-- overarching --

Question of Palestine?"

 

I wouldn't deign to waste

time proposing an inanity

such as Israel

not having the right

to self-determination,

or to exist.

 

Israel is the King

of de facto

everything,

particularly

of annexation,

so what would be

 

the point?

 

Haddock and cod.

Five Idaho potatoes.

Four celery stalks.

 

Israel is,

de facto.

May Palestine eventually be,

de jure.

 

I blame those peacenik

Ottomans, those opium-toking

he-went-that-a-way Turks.

And the oh-so-benign,

not-to-mention secret

Sykes-Picot

 

incestuous

annexations.

 

I blame the Lame League.

 

A nutty garlic butter roux.

Six carrots.

One huge onion.

 

I would link up 

with some of these right

wing bigoted commentaries,

but then I would have to pretend

to want

to debate. 

 

("Typical left-wing amour propre!"

 

"Yeah, well, still better

than their queer robes

of purple armor.")

 

Beware such winning

and unconsidered repartee!

I gotta stop smoking

that wacky tobacky.

 

Corn, golden, sweet.

Okra, properly done.

Dried slices of poblano peppers.

 

These are tragic times.

 

Those of us not being bombed

or doing the bombing,

let's not subvert the causes

of deserving peoples

because we lack the mental

 

agility to dissect the issues,

 

that is, if we even understand them.

 

I sure don't.

 

Kosher salt.                 (Taste, taste, taste!)

Cayenne.

Huge amounts of fresh ground pepper.

 

I am swayed by the passions

of individual Israelis and Palestinians

and want to planify discrepancy.

 

I belong in a home for the feeble-mindedly optimistic.

 

It should be my job to wash and dress the dead,

then bury them -- in accordance to the prevailing customs.

Winds. Incoming missiles. Available space, and clergy.

 

Fresh dill.

Cream (not much).

Milk.

 

Obviously, competing intransigence

is a waste of the world's time --

backing one or the other

 

purely smacks.

 

We all know the answer lies

in the two-state solution --

in which Hamas can play no role.

So am I to support the occupation

of Gaza in the hopes that when the bullets cease,

Hamas will {poof} be gone?

 

If not Hamas, who will see

to the trapped 1.5 million Gazans? 

 

Your knife skills are key:

Small, even dices.

Be more generous when cubing the fish.

 

The desperation of the Gazans does not resonate in the breast of Mahmoud Abbas.

 

When the League of Nations

had the brilliant idea to divide

 

Palestine,

 

and to screw the Palestinians

by means of that ever-buggering British Rule

 

-- the Mandatory Power that was to be

provisory, transitory,

and every other meaningful -ory --

 

the world chose not to take notice.

 

When we deigned to glance        

around,

we saw Arafat in fatigues,

sporting a weapon

before the United

 

Nations.

 

It was all rather confusing.

 

A light fish stock.

Thai fish sauce (but don't tell anyone).

Organic bitter baby greens at the last minute.

 

And so we have see-sawed back 

and forth through the decades.

The one thing that I have learned

in my in-depth, spirited

study of world

 

conflicts? 

 

There has to be someone to blame.

 

As always, the mise en place is key.

Build the flavors; Do not forget to taste, taste, taste.

Finish with one tablespoon of butter.

 

I blame Theodor Herzl for not having settled on Brazil.

© 2013 L. Ryan

My Leftist Easy Answers... USAmerica Can No Longer Afford to Be Stupid

I can do nothing but write honestly this morning.  Part of that is that my computer demands it.  My S-key and my T-key are sticking, a plot to make me slow down.

Listening to "Up With Chris (Hayes)" as I was trying to convince myself that getting out of the bed that I had just urinated on was worth it, there came a segment on the "current" heightening of conflict between Israel and Gaza.  I was quickly reminded of how dumb-downed I've allowed myself to become, not just on this topic -- but on most topics.

I've gotten by as an academic by choosing sides, which makes any even mildly querulous arguments easy.  The stalking away from the fine wooden table, covered with coffee cups or long-necked beer bottles, the sardonic smile, the "I would expect no more, no less of an argument from you,"  the cutting last word.  That stuff.

Never trust an academic -- even one purportedly limited to the teaching of a foreign language and its culture, history, literature -- who has not spent much time in the targeted countries where that language lives.  And trust most those who make it a point to return yearly, or as often as conditions will allow.  "Conditions" meaning states of war, states of peace, visa availability, and a salary that encourages travel, meaning, of course, a university unafraid of the results.  I am thinking of several of my friends, world-class [insert a Ross Perot twang] academics driven by... what was that thing I used to have?  Started with a P. Ah.  Passion.  And underneath the passion?  Love of common humankind.

They're delusional, of course, but they are also the only thing we've got going on, beyond short TV segments aimed at their already established partisanship.  Maybe 2 out of a class of 30 will "get it," and one prays that both of those students are gregarious, insightful, maybe future teachers, themselves.

Who can "explain" -- in language that does not cause hair to bristle and the heart harden, the head freeze -- the conflict between the Palestinian people (in Gaza and their other vast land holdings) and the country of Israel?  People who don't dumb it down, people who can present the history with most of its nuance intact.

How do USAmericans, who have trouble remembering their own history in its varied and various contexts, approach this tragic neighborhood without choosing to be dumbed down?  Look at what the extreme wings of our two pitiful political parties choose to claim to believe -- ridiculous, stupid, obviously untrue things.  With straight faces, Jindal -- an expert in medical management -- can approach the truth and still offer creationism an honored spot in the curriculum of Louisiana's children.  The left can defend Petraeus, defend the White House handling of the Benghazi terrorist assassinations, and deny a blatant threat to national security on the part of the CIA.

I am an extremist, except when I am not.  I believe that my socialist beliefs are very comfortable here, because they have no chance at messy realization.  I have also become intellectually lazy, which make extremism the easiest route to take when wanting to look and sound... well, you know.

Part of the terror is how urban this continual war is.  How the Gazans have no where to go, how Israel controls even the water, much less whether a person can walk freely from here to there.  Yet politician Netanyahu is right -- were 1/5 of any country being bombarded by rockets, no matter how weak, no matter the Iron Dome, that country necessarily defend itself.

But don't you wish to cry out:  But no matter the history?  No matter that Israel's most recent extrajudicial execution of a Hamas leader was the killing of Netanyahu's only real partner in de-escalating the rocket attacks?

Does none of it matter when Israel gets ready to mow the grass?

Israeli hardliners joke about the periodic need to decimate each new generation of Palestinian militants as “mowing the grass,” a process underway again in new bombardments of Gaza. This ugly metaphor has also penetrated the think-tank world of Official Washington, as ex-CIA analyst Elizabeth Murray learned. 

In early 2010, one of Washington DC’s most prestigious think tanks was holding a seminar on the Middle East which included a discussion of Israel’s December 2008-January 2009 assault on Gaza which killed about 1,300 Palestinians. When the death toll was mentioned, one expert on the panel smiled enigmatically and intoned: “It’s unfortunate, but every once in a while you have to mow the lawn.” 

The remark, which likened killing hundreds of men, women and children – many of them noncombatants – with trimming the grass, was greeted with a light tittering around the room, which was filled with some of Washington’s most elite, highly educated and well-paid Middle East experts. Not a single one objected to the panelist’s black humor. 

On the contrary, several analysts and experts were grinning at the reference to Israel’s strategy of mounting periodic attacks on the Palestinians to cull each new generation of militants. Such is the nonchalance of Washington’s policy-advising cognoscenti toward the ongoing and systematic genocide of Gaza’s oppressed population. 

The cavalier language is symptomatic of the policymaking community’s increasingly pervasive tendency to disregard and disparage the humanity of Palestinian victims of Israeli attacks, which are often waged by Israel’s high-tech drones and U.S.-supplied F-16’s. There is also a tendency to ignore or downplay Israeli war crimes. 

This dangerously sociopathic attitude is prevalent whether cloaked in a cheap joke or reflected in the failure by the State Department spokesman to condemn or even acknowledge the criminality of Israel’s latest aerial and sea-based bombardment of Palestinian civilians, at least 18 of whom have been killed in the past 48 hours. Three Israelis also have died in retaliatory rocket fire. 

After the latest attacks, the State Department’s statement justified Israel’s bombardment of Gaza as Israel’s “right to defend itself” against the launching of relatively primitive rockets, mostly by radical groups, from inside Gaza. Yet, while the State Department urged both sides to avoid civilian casualties, nowhere was there mention of the Palestinians’ right to defend themselves from various attacks by Israel. Apparently only one side is granted that privilege, according to the U.S. statement. 

The relegation of Palestinians to a less-than-human status by Israel and the United States – especially the inhabitants of Gaza who are perpetually locked into an open-air prison and subject to an Israeli blockade – was noted by MIT professor Noam Chomsky after a visit to Gaza to attend an academic conference. In comments broadcast by “Democracy Now” on Nov. 14, Chomsky remarked: 

“It’s kind of amazing … and inspiring to see people managing somehow to survive … as essentially caged animals subject to constant, random, sadistic punishment – only to humiliate them – no pretext. They [the Palestinians] would like to have dignified lives, but the standard Israeli position is that they shouldn’t raise their heads.” 

Instead of a serious effort to reach a peace acceptable to both sides, Israel seems to prefer a state of endless conflict with the Palestinians. After all, the prospect of peace might require the Israeli government to treat their neighbors as equals and withdraw from territory occupied since 1967. 

So, rather than making meaningful concessions, some Israeli hardliners simply promote the idea of periodically “mowing the grass,” i.e. killing the latest generation of Palestinian militants who sprout up from the injustice all around them. Perhaps that is why Israel broke an informal ceasefire on Wednesday by assassinating Hamas military commander Ahmed Jabari in an air strike. -- from "Likening Palestinians to Blades of Grass," Saturday, 17 November 2012 10:59
By Elizabeth Murray, Consortium News | News Analysis from Truth-Out.org

Anyway, I do have opinions on this matter but am blessed not to be living smack-dab in the middle of the facts.  Half of the population of Gaza in under 18.  The Israelis are surrounded by governments and tribes that wish for its annihilation.  Gaza is a concentration camp.  Israel is trapped by long history, as well as the short view.

A rocket is a rocket is a rocket.  An air strike is an air strike is an air strike.  But what is a drone?

I'm sorry, but I am tired now.  And I think of those who have never had that luxury.  Later, I'll come back and, hopefully, add the segments from the Chris Hayes show that woke a small part of my atrophied brain and challenged my nose-in-the-air leftist easy answers.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

We don't need no stinkin' humanitarians

I am a fan of Thomson Reuters Foundation AlertNet -- "Alerting humanitarians to emergencies." That last part makes me feel strange, very strange, as almost all of what they report seems to me to be hard news, meant to be read by hard people, not namby-pamby* humanitarians. I go elsewhere for my gardening tips, Tom Cruise insanities, and Genuine Ginsu Knives pricing updates. I ain't no freakin' humanitarian**! (Profound apologies to the "stinking badges" of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre)

Or maybe I am. Aren't we all?

Apparently not.

ICRC says Israel broke international law in Gaza
08 Jan 2009 14:57:48 GMT
Source: Reuters
(Adds remarks by senior ICRC official)

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Relief workers found four starving children sitting next to their dead mothers and other corpses in a house in a part of Gaza City bombed by Israeli forces, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday.

The ICRC accused Israel of delaying ambulance access to the hit area and demanded it grant safe access for Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances to return to evacuate more wounded.

"This is a shocking incident," said Pierre Wettach, ICRC chief for Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

"The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestinian Red Crescent to assist the wounded," he said.

In unusually strong terms, the neutral agency said it believed Israel had breached international humanitarian law in the incident.

In a written response, the Israeli army said it works in coordination with international aid bodies assist civilians and that it "in no way intentionally targets civilians".

The Israeli offensive launched in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip on Dec. 27 to end rocket attacks by Islamic militants has drawn increasing international criticism over mounting civilian casualties.

Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances and ICRC officials managed to reach several houses in the Zeitoun area of Gaza City on Wednesday after seeking access from Israeli military forces since last weekend, the ICRC statement said.

The rescue team "found four small children next to their dead mothers in one of the houses", the ICRC said.

"They were too weak to stand up on their own. One man was also found alive, too weak to stand up. In all there were at least 12 corpses lying on mattresses," it said.

In another house, the team found 15 survivors of Israeli shelling including several wounded, it said. Israeli soldiers posted some 80 meters (yards) away ordered the rescue team to leave the area which they refused to do, it said.

The ICRC said it had been informed that there were more wounded sheltering in other destroyed houses in the area.

"The ICRC believes that in this instance the Israeli military failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuated the wounded. It considers the delay in allowing rescue services access unacceptable," it said.

In all, it evacuated 18 wounded and 12 others who were exhausted, including the children, by donkey cart. This was because large earth walls erected by the Israeli army had made it impossible to bring ambulances into the immediate area.

Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, warring parties are obliged to do everything possible to search for, collect and evacuate the wounded and sick without delay, it said.

Dominik Stillhart, ICRC deputy director of operations, declined to say explicitly whether the Israeli inaction constituted a war crime.

"Clearly, it is (for) the International Criminal Court -- not for the ICRC -- to say whether this is or is not a war crime," he said, referring to the Hague tribunal.

Ambulances must be given "round-the-clock" access to the wounded throughout Gaza, Stillhart told a news briefing. "We cannot wait for the next suspension of hostilities for the wounded to be evacuated and brought to hospital."

The Israeli army said any serious allegations would need to be investigated properly after a formal complaint was received, "within the constraints of the military operation taking place". (Additional reporting by Adam Entous in Jerusalem) (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Jonathan Lynn)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

*We are being very literary when we call someone a namby-pamby, a word derived from the name of Ambrose Philips, a little-known 18th-century poet whose verse incurred the sharp ridicule of his contemporaries Alexander Pope and Henry Carey. Their ridicule, inspired by political differences and literary rivalry, had little to do with the quality of Philips's poetry. In poking fun at some children's verse written by Philips, Carey used the nickname Namby Pamby: “So the Nurses get by Heart Namby Pamby's Little Rhimes.” Pope then used the name in the 1733 edition of his satirical epic The Dunciad. The first part of Carey's coinage came from Amby, or Ambrose. Pamby repeated the sound and form but added the initial of Philips's name. Such a process of repetition is called reduplication. After being popularized by Pope, namby-pamby went on to be used generally for people or things that are insipid, sentimental, or weak.

**The original quotation comes from the 1948 film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre with Humphrey Bogart. In one of the scenes in the movie a Mexican bandit leader (Gold Hat played by Alfonso Bedoya) is trying to convince Fred C Dobbs (played by Bogart) and company that they are the Federales.

Dobbs: 'If you're the police where are your badges?'
Gold Hat: 'Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges!'[1]

This in turn was adapted from B Traven's 1927 novel upon which the movie was based:

"All right," Curtain shouted back. "If you are the police, where are your badges? Let's see them."
"Badges, to god-damned hell with badges! We have no badges. In fact, we don't need badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges, you god-damned cabrón and ching' tu madre! Come out from that shit-hole of yours. I have to speak to you."

Footnotes
1 Popularly misquoted as "Badges? We don't need no stinking badges!", most likely from Blazing Saddles in which the line was so worded.

[Retired Educator here. I am infamous for my inability to quote quotes and pronounce proverbs, and, above all, to absolutely slay idiomatic expressions, especially in translation.]

I Blame Herzl

Do the right wing bigots really think that leftist assholes, such as myself, cannot distinguish between Hamas and the deserving -- overarching -- Question of Palestine? I wouldn't deign to waste time proposing an inanity such as Israel not having the right to self-determination, or to exist. Israel is the king of de facto everything, particularly of annexation, so what would be the point?

Israel is, de facto.
May Palestine eventually be, de jure.

I blame those peacenik Ottomans, those opium-toking he-went-that-a-way Turks. And the oh-so-benign-not-to-mention-secret Sykes-Picot incestuous annexations. I blame the Lame League.

I would link up with some of these right wing bigotted commentaries, but then I would have to pretend to want to debate (typical leftwing amour propre -- still better than their queer robes of purple armor).

Beware such winning and unconsidered repartee!

But really... did it not at least make you pause when a whole swiftboat class of answers presented itself in the form of one ever-manic Cynthia McKinney, Pippi Longstocking of the Closed Military Zone on the High Seas. We all start whistling and slipsliding backward at her sight, at her sound. I confess to a moment of admiration. She was actually doing something and it was consistent with her long-professed beliefs.

I gotta stop smoking that wacky tobacky. Anyway, the Israelis accidently rammed Cynthia's boat. A de facto ramming, if you will. She was, is, and always will be, an idiot -- but I've a soft spot for her now -- out there on the water, sans doute pissing herself and dissing the Jews, so reliably stupid. She comes by her anti-semitism honestly.

These are tragic times. Those of us not being bombed or doing the bombing, let's not subvert the causes of deserving peoples because we lack the mental agility to dissect the issues, that is, if we even understand them. I sure don't. I am swayed by the passions of individual Israelis and Palestinians and want to planify discrepancy. I belong in a home for the feeble-mindedly optimistic. It should be my job to wash and dress the dead, then bury them -- in accordance to the prevailing customs. Winds. Incoming missiles. Available space, and clergy.

Obviously, competing intransigeance is a waste of the world's time -- backing one or the other purely smacks.

We all know the answer lies in the two-state solution -- in which Hamas can play no role. So am I to support the occupation of Gaza in the hopes that when the bullets cease, Hamas will {*poof*} be gone?

It begs the huge question -- if not Hamas, then who else will see to the trapped 1.5 million Gazans? It has only been a few years since Israeli settlers and soldiers were withdrawn from Gaza -- is it Permanent Occupation Time again?

To claim that there is the least hope for Mahmoud Abbas in Gaza is ridiculous. The desperation of the Gazans does not resonate in his breast; Fatah would never ever be welcome if swept into power there in the wake of the Israeli war machines. One thinks of Pétain and of Gaza as the new Vichy...

More likely? Ghettos. The rising apolitical desperation of the trapped and hungry defeated Palestinians will be legitimized as an easy rallying cry for militant Islamist terrorists. Only a pawn in their game, indeed.

When the League of Nations had the brilliant idea to divide Palestine, and to screw the Palestinians by means of that ever-buggering British Rule -- the Mandatory Power that was to be provisory, transitory, and every other meaningful -ory -- the world chose not to take notice.

When we deigned to glance around, we saw Arafat in fatigues and sporting a weapon before the United Nations. It was all rather confusing.

And so we have see-sawed back and forth through the decades. The one thing that I have learned in my in-depth, spirited studies of world conflicts? There has to be someone to blame.

I blame Theodor Herzl for not having settled on Brazil.

painting by Erez Vaxman