Alone in Darkness
the night falls as if slain by the sun, cold and alone are we.
the understanding for which you pine
flares once, then dies,
smothered by a velvet ebon nothingness.
all hope must surely perish.
your passion throbs no more.
how could you hate me?
demons surround us, crying,
we have lost our light.
Image from Cute Overload, poem courtesy the Gothic Poem Generator
World Pride 2006 is underway in Jerusalem, even as the bombs continue to fall, and San Franscico’s gay organisations are calling for all gays to boycott the event:
QUIT! (Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism) condemns the decision by Jerusalem Open House and other promoters of World Pride Jerusalem to go ahead with the planned week of international pride events scheduled for August 6-12, despite Israel’s ongoing assault on civilian communities in Lebanon and Gaza. Israel, which killed 4 UN workers in Lebanon on July 26, has been accused by Human Rights Watch of using cluster bombs in civilian areas, in violation of international law. QUIT!, which is part of the newly formed “Break the Siege Coalition” which organized last Thursday’s large demonstration in San Francisco, calls for all LGBT people in the United States to protest our government’s complicity in the Israeli siege. [MORE]/
Martin and I headed out to the Pride canal parade here last week. We did some shopping beforehand, and when we stopped for lunch before going over to the parade it suddently hit me that I just couldn’t face it. In the light of current events it suddenly seemed to me to be such a hollow, self-indulgent exercise. For Jerusalem Pride that goes double. Celebrating diversity while bombing civilians? Oh, please.
It’s not for me to suggest what any LGBT person should do – I’m not gay, who am I to say? But there must be others who feel the same way as I do. I entirely understand the argument that if the world’ in flames, we might as well dance, but all the celebration rings hollow whilst death squads in Iraq openly torture and murder gays, and while there are no Palestinian gays dancing on the floats in Jerusalem.
The southern Beirut suburbs before and after the Israeli bombardment. Stills from a video animation, using satellite photography, available at the Electronic Intifada
And this is justified defence how, exactly?
[snip]
Lebanese officials said there were many reports of other casualties throughout southern Lebanon but rescue workers were not able to reach the sites because of continued Israeli airstrikes. Israel also threatened to attack UN peacekeepers if they attempted to repair bomb-damaged bridges in southern Lebanon. UN officials contacted the Israeli army to inform them that a team of Chinese military engineers attached to the UN force in Lebanon intended to repair the bridge on the Beirut to Tyre road to enable the transport of humanitarian supplies.
According to the UN, Israeli officials said the engineers would become a target if they attempted to repair the bridge.
Senior UN officials reacted angrily to the destruction of a temporary causeway over the Litani river overnight. “We must be able to have movement throughout the country to deliver supplies. At this point we can’t do that,” said David Shearer, the humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon. “The deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure is a violation of international law.”
International aid groups have blamed Israel for not providing security guarantees, thereby paralysing the delivery of aid to the south. Even when aid reaches Tyre, convoys have to apply on a case by case basis for permission to take it out to the villages. Most applications are refused.
Israel should be thrown out of the UN for this. Hell, they should be shunned permanently for it by any civilised person.
Israel seems to need bloodshed to validate its carefully nurtured Masadan self-myth. It’s an understandable and necessary national narrative for a people with a tragic history of persecution and genocide, that of the embattled outsiders holding together against all odds. But it’s turned into some sort of sick pathological national neurosis.
My opinion is that the 1948 settlement was tragically stupid and Zionism is a ridiculous idea when you pick it apart – but we have a fait accompli here, let’s try and make it work with the minimum of bloodshed. I wish no harm to any Israeli or Jew anywhere, except maybe that torture-enabling ghoul Alan Dershowitz.
But lately I find myself mentally saying ‘yes!’ at every Hezbollah victory. Does this mean I support Hezbollah and its aims? Fuck no – no sociialist or feminist could, they are the ‘Army of God’ after all; but, and it’s a big but, they’re the only force protecting the poor bloody Lebanese people from the calculated barbarity of the US/UK – supported Israel.
The US’ martial conflation of Hezbollah, Iran and Syria with the Iraq insurgency will continue to escalate the Lebanon war into a regional war. It’s almost an inevitability that it will go nuclear, if only because the US no longer has the troops capable of mounting any kind of ground war. Its army has been broken by the boy-king’s inept courtiers.
And so they’ll increasingly have to rely on bombing – then it’s only a matter of time before the Big One gets dropped. There are hawks in Washington creaming their pants as I type at the thought of mushroom clouds over Tehran . Because those clouds, (call them Armageddon if you like) are part of the US adminsitration’s own cherished myth. The end-times are nigh, and the Jews are an essential part of the narrative, a narrative Israel is happy to play along with while it suits it to do so.
This leads me to ask, does Israel have an actual national death-wish? You’d think so, by the way in which they’re deliberately escalating and spreading the violence, egged on by by the US, while declaring contempt for world opinion. It seems to be a deliberate provocation – ‘come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough’. Even the UN and the Red Cross are now enemies to be preemptively attacked .
Or are they cynically making use of the US administration’s own end-times delusions to advance their own regional political aims, piggybacking US policy, thinking to somehow avert disaster at the last moment? That’s a very dangerous game to play with an ill-educated, irrational former alcoholic and subtsance-abusing religious sociopath with his finger on the nuclear button.
It could be that Israel’s taking that internalised narrative of Masada to its natural conclusion and are preparing to throw themselves right off that metaphorical cliff. I hope not, for all our sakes.
Israel, Lebanon, US Middle-East Policy, End Times, Masada, Fundamentalism
“I would, for a price, go sit in a movie theater crowd and cue the flow of laughter on the subtler jokes. I would, for a price, eat in a restaurant and make slightly audible favorable comments about the menu and, with a co-worker, contribute a pleasant sound of conversation and even make up gossip about fictional characters to give the other diners something to eavesdrop on. Or maybe I should just start a business, designing jobs like this and selling businesses on the notion that they need fake patrons to improve the attitude of the real patrons.”
Can you imagine the tedious conversations you would overhear in a restaurant that took Althouse up on her offer? Not to mention the annoyance of watching a movie in any cinema she would be hired by? She would be laughing at exactly the wrong moments and her laugh would be so annoying you would not be able to ignore it… Best to leave her saafely at her blog, only read by wingnuts and people looking for easy jokes.
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