My nephews asked me what I thought of events in Gaza over the past half year.
Retreating to satire, I paraphrased a scene from the film "Gandhi" as best I could:
"General Dyer, exactly how does a Palestinian child victim of a bombing raid apply for aid?"
If this is unclear to the reader, I suspect that there is much that is unclear.
General Dyer was the perpetrator of the Amritsar Massacre, also referred to as Jallianwalla Bagh, when the troops turned their rifles against the unarmed citizens in said Bagh, or Garden.
I achieve a certain level of clarity if I believe that 60 years ago someone decided that genocide should change its target from Jews to Palestinians. Truly, the Narrative of Blood Sacrifice is a scenario from which we cannot seem to escape. It has always been very potent and sacred, and we seem to relish it.
Therefore, we struggle within its grasp and change it every possible way we can, but it is still the same destructive way of viewing the world. The victims change; the perpetrators change; the onlookers change; but the underlying process does not.
The Intuition of future disaster - end of times or whatever - is an intuition that we cannot escape the Narrative of bloodletting, and Isaac or Ishmael must ceaselessly be sacrificed in an obsessively-compulsive ritual from which we find no exit.
What dark god compels us?
Monday, November 29, 2010
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