The Untermensch Syndrome: Israel's Moral Decay
By Manuel Valenzuela
07/20/06 "Information
Clearing House" -- -- The labeling as anti-Semitic of anyone critical
of the state of Israel's policies in the continued destruction of
Palestinian identity, and now Lebanese society and infrastructure,
and the increasing domination into American foreign policy no longer
has the sting of threat or intimidation it once mastered. For too
long this masquerade has been used to silence those opposing
anything Israel, shouted at anyone disseminating truth and seeking
justice. Like the boy who cried wolf, this charade has lost its
power or hypnotic control, and today only serves to breed more anger
and resentment against the apologists and smear mongers protecting
the cancerous tentacles of Zionism and the crimes against humanity
it spawns.
A once powerful marketing tool used to sequester valid criticism and
deny truth to millions has been eroded thanks to its overlords'
continued over abuse and labeling of the term 'anti-Semite' to
anyone even remotely critical of anything associated with Israel and
the tentacles of Zionism. To criticize Christianity does not make
one anti-Christian. To criticize Islam does not make one anti-Muslim
or anti-Arab, just as uncovering truths about the Bush
administration does not make one anti-American or unpatriotic. To
speak truth about any government in the world does not make us
racist or xenophobic to the people of that nation. Why then should
criticism of Israeli and/or Sharon's policies subject us to false
labeling and acts of intimidation whose only purpose is to silence
truth into submission and hijacking justice from ever emerging and
being served?
The time has come to stop bending over to the dictates of
intimidation and scare tactics used by Israel's protectors,
defenders and apologists. The time has come to say "Never Again" to
such fictional libel and slander whose only purpose is the continued
subjugation of truth and awakening. The labeling of "anti-Semite"
does not bother us, nor does it stop us from writing truth to
justice and reality to intimidation because we refuse to be
frightened into submission and silenced into acquiescence by a
mechanism we know to be false.
Our convictions, search for truth and want for justice supercedes
the trash invented to protect the malfeasance ruining humanity and
the crimes perpetrated against our fellow human beings. The time has
come to stand up and be heard, refusing to believe the smears and
the labels, instead living life in truth, devoid of veiled threats
and intimidation tactics whose power over us continues to erode
thanks to its incessant overuse and abuse. So smear if you must,
defenders, appeasers and apologists of human wickedness, continue to
blindly believe in the majesty of a fiction you know to be false,
ensuring your daily complicity in the crimes against humanity being
committed by those you protect and defend.
We are above your labels, above your intimidation and smear tactics,
following the path of truth in the voice of our writings and in the
convictions of humanity. If pursuing truth, fighting criminality and
awakening justice makes us anti-Semites, then guilty we are. If
seeing the dehumanization, exploitation and utter destruction of the
Palestinian people makes the voices of reason anti-Semitic, then
guilty we stand. To defend the humanity of other Semitic people is
to defend humanity itself. To speak out against injustice and
dehumanization makes us human, to defend it makes you complicit.
An Unbearable Likeness of Being
Here we are, living in the first decade of the 21st century, and
still the violent animal in the human condition exists, thriving
inside our carnal passions and still primitive mammalian brains,
oozing out of humanity to release the demons of evil that only homo
sapiens are capable of wielding.
Persisting in our primate selves as it has for millions of years,
the greatest symptom of our disease remains uncontrolled, dominating
the far reaches of man's Earth, turning barren once fertile soil and
forever despoiling the utter beauty our civilization possesses. Man
killing man, erupting violence upon our fellow humans, destroying
what our own hands create, decimating energy and beauty, life and
opportunity, this is the story of what our species has become.
Through tribal affiliation and identity, which the nation state now
is, (a tribe on steroids) the potency of violence and ill-treatment
against others seen as different or alien is manifested.
The human condition dictates that auras of superiority appear with
every tribe. What is nationalism today but a belief that our tribe
is the best in the world, that the group of humans we are attached
to in unity, be it of ethnic, racial, religious or regional (nation
state) parameters, is the preeminent assembly of all humanity?
Beliefs of supremacy of one's tribe and inferiority of others have
marked man from the very first cluster of family clans. In order to
achieve this most human psychological need, other subgroups have to
be considered lower in stature, considered third-world, savages,
barbarians and lesser humans, while others must be conquered and
subjugated.
In the minds of those groups seeking to invade, conquer, pilfer and
exploit, the invaded and conquered must be seen as sub-human,
creatures not worthy of protection or life. The human mind, in order
to justify the ruthlessness it will inflict on less able peoples,
creates the impression that those now controlled are sub-humans and
therefore not immune to the restrictions of human morality.
Sub-humans are not humans, after all, and can be treated like
animals or worse, like dirt.
The Nazi ideology of placing its Aryan blood above all others,
believing its Germanic peoples the pinnacle of civilization,
reflects a perverted mass psychosis brought on by a malevolent
leader and a hypnotized tribe - namely Germany. In the delusional
world of the Nazis, Jews, Gypsies and Slavs were considered
inferior. These peoples were labeled 'untermensch,' the German word
for sub-human. As such, labels became reality and reality became a
holocaust, resulting in millions of deaths and untold levels of
suffering. When a group of people like the Nazis begin to believe in
the sub-human label they propel, the group afflicted becomes the
equivalent of animals, free to be killed, tortured and dehumanized,
free to be robbed of freedom, opportunity and happiness.
The Nazis, however, are not alone in exacerbating this phenomenon.
On the contrary, it has been as pronounced in human history as
advancements in technology. As long as there have been competing
tribes the concept of untermensch has existed, released over and
over through centuries and millennia. No nation or culture is
immune; no epoch is innocent. With every war, invasion, occupation,
domination, enslavement, oppression, exploitation, genocide and
ethnic cleansing that has marked human time on Earth untermensch has
been implemented, used by the powerful to justify the crimes, rapes,
murders and dehumanization inflicted upon innocent fellow human
beings. Untermensch is the tool used by the human brain that grants
man the power to destroy humanity and all its virtues while
inflicting untold levels of misery onto men, women and children
without the interference or burden of human guilt, laws, theology,
morality or righteousness getting in the way.
Yet our minds cannot fathom the long reaches of a history marked by
incessant war, death and violence. Understanding the constructs of
time and space are not talents we have evolved. Grasping the
enormity of the passage of time, with the rise and fall of tribes,
clans, city states and empires, the evolution of human society and
spirituality from cave to metropolis, the genetic altering and
evolution of diversity coming together and adding to the human
spectrum, and the conquests, genocides and environmental changes
created by our ancestors is not a skill endowed into our primate
brains, and thus the enormous jigsaw puzzle that is human history
remains a mystery. We can barely put together the pieces of our own
eighty year existence on the planet, even as it is a puzzle that we
experience first hand. How then are we to fathom hundreds of
thousands of years of modern human existence, generation upon
generation, century after century?
In an existence estimated at five million years, from primates
living in trees to the dawn of living in one-hundred story
skyscrapers, man has not deviated from our mammal selves. Our
passions, emotions and behaviors yield to the animal inside us, and
throughout our existence it has come out again and again to unleash
terror on our unsuspecting species. For millions of years our
species has consisted of one continuous epoch of aggression against
each other, with periods of calm in between, - controlled at the
individual level but becoming an unleashed monster at the tribal -
destroying all we have achieved and the beauty inherent in our
existence. Mammals we are, and mammals we will remain, yet the ego
of our existence and the theology of our beliefs will not let us
awake to our greatest truth.
Humankind's greatest demon is also our greatest threat, condemning
us to continue a long history of self-inflicted war, death,
suffering and subjugation. In this quandary we find ourselves
trapped in, much like every generation that has come before, and, if
we fail to learn and evolve, every generation that has yet to come.
The worst of humanity opens the books of history once more, and in
Iraq and Palestine we find what has been, what is, and what will
become. The Reign of Terror upon ourselves continues the slow
erosion of our existence along the inevitable path of
self-destruction we traverse.
Is it any wonder that the virus attached to us since we left the
jungles of east Africa keeps reappearing again and again, stomping
its seal of death, violence and misery on the face of human
civilization, especially when we punish our own kind with the tools
of despair, suffering and dehumanization? Can we expect the
microscopic reign of modern man to purge an evil that primitive man
could not exorcise in hundreds of thousands of years?
Untermensch is part of the disease we possess, or rather possesses
us, attached to the constructs of fear and hatred, ignorance and
superiority, emboldened by the tribe or nation state. The
mega-tribes of today only serve to strengthen and release the fury
of human evil onto those less fortunate. It is a syndrome that,
until now, has yet to be contained. Its vicious mechanisms erode the
basic foundations of humankind, birthing suffering and human
destruction, both in spirit and in life, rendering all six billion
of us less human every day. Into the depths we descend, living the
misery of Iraqis and Palestinians, feeling the pain that the
powerful inflict on the weak, losing energy with each drop of blood
that is shed and cowering in shame with each act of decaying
dehumanization.
The Untermensch Syndrome is alive and well, resilient as ever,
surviving as long as humans exist, thriving off our own
shortcomings, evolving with each passing generation and festering
once more to infect yet one more amalgam of human tribes from which
enlightenment seems never to arrive.
Unholy Land
In the land claimed holy and promised the madness of humankind
persists, extending the perpetual violence and oppression of the
weak by the powerful. Palestine today tells a story of human evils
past and present, of the worst actions capable of being manifested
by the human phenomenon. Lands ancient and strategic, crossroads and
focal points of man's brief history, once more seem engulfed by
competing claims and boiling hatreds.
Malevolent crimes against humanity, those activities that repulse
and anger, are methodically being perpetrated against peoples who
have been raped of all their ancestors once possessed. Atrocities
and dehumanization on an unparalleled scale are being committed,
becoming the present reincarnation of the past's dreaded evils.
In no other place on Earth is the suffering of our brothers and
sisters so prevalent. In no other region is the tyranny and
wickedness of humanity so present. For the lands holy and promised
have been cursed by archaic fables, beliefs and myths, by fictional
claims of days long extinct, condemning its native inhabitants to
the bowels of Hades and the desolate realities from which loud cries
go unheard.
To be Palestinian Arab in the land usurped by European Jews is to be
considered untermensch in the territory your forefathers once called
home. The devastation fifty-five years of invasion, occupation and
state terrorism has had on both people and land has created the
conditions by which Gaza and the West Bank can today be called Hell
on Earth, pockets of destitute emptiness where opportunity is
extinct and any relevant future is a but a hollow fantasy.
Unearthed from the colon of the planet Palestinians dwell, the
squalor in the occupied territories is beyond compare, instituted
and exacerbated by the state of Israel in acts of unhindered and
systemic malevolence. The intent of such inflictions of emotional
distress and incessant pain and suffering is the breaking point of
millions of Palestinians, the realization that it is better to leave
the land you know and love rather than live in perpetual
imprisonment of spirit and humanity.
The desire to expand borders and territory, an addiction to greed
and the aspiration to cleanse Palestine of Arabs manufactures in the
Israeli government a policy of wicked objectives bursting with cold
and calculated cruelty. Thus, the ill-treatment of Palestinians by
Israel makes life so unbearable, so hard and depressing that it is a
triumph of the human spirit that so many remain, unwavering and
strong, even as the weight of utter wickedness is enforced
generation to generation.
Living in the occupied territories is like living in Warsaw ghettos
of the 1930's and South African Bantustans. It is akin to dwelling
in Indian reservations, those cesspools of nothingness in the lands
of America from where millions rotted away their once vibrant
existence. Gaza and the West Bank are squalors of humanity acting as
giant prisons, where dense refugee camps are considered cities,
their perimeters encircled by fences, walls, Israeli tanks and the
ever watchful eyes of trigger-friendly snipers. Enormous prisons
within occupied lands, preventing contiguity, freedom of movement
and any semblance of a sovereign state are the true definition of
the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
To live inside these vast prisons and internment camps is to
struggle with the daily existence of Israeli suffocation and
dehumanization that you know is purposeful as it is deliberate. It
is to feel Israeli claws strangulating your esophagus, denying you
of the air to breathe and the sustenance you need to survive. Life
under Israel's merciless rule means that sixty to seventy percent of
your people are unemployed, unable to provide for their families, as
commerce is almost non-existent and access to Israeli business
almost impossible. It is to live in worlds of child undernourishment
and lack of healthcare, as Israel's policies make indigent millions
of families who desperately need to feed and treat their children.
To be Palestinian is to be trapped in a vicious circle that refuses
to let you escape. From birth your undernourishment outmaneuvers
your development, stunting your growth, making your immune system
weak and altering your ability to learn. Lack of nutrients and
perpetual levels of stress make your environmental upbringing unlike
anything on Earth, a constant battle being lost by both your body
and mind.
Psychological behaviors associated with extreme levels of stress and
dangerous levels of undernourishment affect hundreds of thousands of
your fellow brothers and sisters. Feelings of imprisonment and
virtual subjugation, not to mention the extreme hatred of anything
Israel your environment forces upon you creates unsurpassed hatred
in your mind. Education is limited, resources to tap the oasis
inside you is but a dream and the talents and abilities ingrained in
your being get eroded more and more with each passing year.
You see the vanishing energies of neighbors, acquaintances and
family that die at the hands of the IDF and the Israeli government's
callous disregard for your people. After all, to them you are
nothing but untermensch, lower to or on equal par with animals. From
an early age you realize that, since you are seen as sub-human, IDF
soldiers treat you with impunity, allowing themselves the pleasure
of taunting your friends, shooting your cousins, demolishing your
home and dehumanizing your mother, all done knowing that
accountability does not exist.
Growing up Palestinian is to see with one's eyes the hatred boiling
inside the cities you live in, where the fruitless throwing of rocks
towards tanks by dozens of youth is the only vent from where their
bursting fumes can be released. Later on in life, these youngsters
will become members of the resistance, graduating to Kalashnikovs
and home-made bombs, lurking at night to defend their ever
disappearing homeland. In this society, death at the hands of the
Israelis is so commonplace that it is celebrated, becoming both a
rallying cry and mechanism of strength. Martyrs are elevated to the
skies above, becoming the role models of the very young and the
heroes of the populace, their faces plastered on posters lining
streets and walls.
In this society, born of occupation and seething hatred, the only
way to keep living is to keep dying, and the sadness of such reality
is that just as our children wish to become pilots and firemen,
theirs strive for nothing more than martyrdom. It is this that
Israel's policy of untermensch has created, a mechanism where every
day creates new resistance fighters and revolutionaries seeking the
triumph of the human spirit and the dawn of independent freedom.
Collective punishment upon millions of Palestinians goes hand in
hand with the Untermensch Syndrome, where the acts of a few result
in the decimation of the many. When millions of Arabs are considered
sub-human, long living in lands claimed by false divinity and
thousand year old fables of peoples primitive and unenlightened,
their death, destruction and prolonged suffering is inconsequential.
It is state sponsored terrorism that has lasted more than eighty
years in a pre-emptive attempt to ethnically cleanse by subjugation,
dehumanization and cold and calculated suffering.
Breeding of fear by the intimidation of army incursions, tank
deployments, sniper killings, Apache helicopter missiles and fighter
jet low altitude flyovers is state sponsored terror, stressing out
millions and making life under occupation an unbearable existence.
Imprisoning millions and subjecting them to perpetual indigence,
without ability to traverse their own lands or go one day breathing
tranquil airs of calm and freedom is collective terror upon a
populace. Not knowing if your home is next to be demolished by
monstrous Caterpillar bulldozers, usually with a few minutes warning
by the IDF is state terrorism, robbing families of their homes and
their belongings, leaving thousands without the only dignity they
ever possessed.
Treating Palestinians as untermensch allows young Israeli soldiers,
most of whom are born hating Palestinians, to walk over innocent
people only trying to survive day to day. Stinging verbal abuse,
humiliating body searches, purposeful closures and damning delays at
checkpoints, where the Untermensch Syndrome can be seen in full
bloom, exhibits the wicked treatment of the powerful over the weak.
Selected closures that can last days that in effect prevent
Palestinians from getting to work, indiscriminate authority to
harass and stop anyone from passing, the apartheid mechanism of
different license plates for Jewish settlers - with unhindered
passage through checkpoints - and Palestinians - who oftentimes wait
hours in line before being allowed through - are all symptoms of the
sub-human treatment and collective punishment of Palestinians.
Even ambulances, oftentimes transporting gravely injured or sick
people, many of them pregnant women on the verge of giving birth,
are forced to endure long hours waiting at IDF checkpoints, with the
full knowledge of soldiers. Many of these people, not unexpectedly,
end up dying while waiting, as precious time is squandered and
criminally left to pass. If this is not terror, then what is? If
this is not collective punishment and a symptom of the Untermensch
Syndrome, then where has our humanity gone?
When an occupying power gives carte blanche to its military to treat
the occupied as sub-human, crimes against humanity are not too far
behind and the moral fabric of those imposing the will of the
powerful through the barrel of a gun quickly vanishes. In Palestine,
and as has become quite apparent in Iraq, indiscriminate and
methodical dehumanization, without regard for human rights, has
flourished through the aura of ethnic, state and cultural
superiority and the invincibility of modern military might.
Pitting rock throwers against Apache helicopters and Abrams tanks is
nobody's idea of a fair fight, and in this unequal capacity to wage
war we can see how the Untermensch Syndrome is furthered. One side
seeks independence using only the weapons their dwindling land
provides while the other is provided with the most sophisticated and
lethal technology known to man. It is a battle of primitive versus
modern, the Arab animals versus the Israeli westerner. And so, in
order to try evening out the fight, suicide bombers, with the
desperation, hate, thirst for vengeance and hopelessness ingrained
in their atrocious actions, compete with the state sponsored
terrorism of guided missiles raining down from the sky, artillery
from tanks and incursions by an infantry trained and supplied with
the best equipment American money can buy.
The equation of occupied and occupier has been the same for time
immemorial, with the subjugated resorting to the creations of the
human imagination and the resources at their disposal for weapons
while the conqueror uses rationales of untermensch to deceive its
own morality and unleash the fires of human hell with the grand
weapons of war that riches provide onto the people invaded.
In Palestine, untermensch has meant the demolition of thousands of
homes without regard for human life. It has meant the dehumanizing
conditions by which millions live under, usually in poverty and
lacking meaningful education, healthcare, infrastructure,
opportunity and future. Israel's treatment of an entire race of
people has destroyed the fabric of society and the aspirations of
its citizens. The Untermensch Syndrome has resulted in centuries old
olive trees bulldozed for no reason other than to make miserable the
lives of the farmers who owned them. It has categorized Palestinian
as inferior to Jew, marginalizing millions who are expropriated of
their land and homes.
Because of the Untermensch Syndrome Palestine has been carved up
into dozens of enclaves, separated by walls or fences, imprisoning
people in their towns and refugee camps. Traveling from town to town
is virtually impossible. Children have been separated from their
schools, university students from their colleges, workers from their
jobs, families from each other and farmers from their fields. This
has been accomplished by Israel systematically and without remorse,
serving no purpose other than to dehumanize and make unlivable the
daily lives of millions.
Lands with higher ground are routinely expropriated, as are those
with fertile soil and abundant water aquifers. These stolen lands
are then granted to the swell of settlers rushing into once
Palestinian lands and farms. In other instances, Palestinian land is
taken for bypass road construction that now dissects the West Bank
into easily controllable blocks. Of course these roads can only be
used by Israelis and Jewish settlers, while the Palestinians, whose
land is now covered by asphalt, can only watch as Jewish cars
circumvent the last vestiges of a land they once flourished in.
In the course of the present intifadah 3000 Palestinians have died
compared to 1000 Israelis. The terrorism has been mutual, one modern
and technological, the other born out of hatred and desperation.
Palestinians see their native contiguously- inhabited land being
gobbled up by Israel and the never-ending stream of European and
American settlers. Their water is being taken, their crops
destroyed, their livelihoods eviscerated. An enormous apartheid wall
is being built, separating camp from camp, robbing them of still
more land as it snakes deep into occupied territory, making the West
Bank an amalgam of Bantustan-style reservations and internment
camps. The Untermensch Syndrome has been unleashed by an Israel that
is intent on 'transferring' out an entire race of people.
Like a Virus the Syndrome Spreads
Like an enormous wave crashing on shore, the Untermensch Syndrome is
devastating everything in its path. In order to maintain a Jewish
majority, which demographics tells us is impossible if Arabs remain,
Israel is making the life of Palestinians a virtual dungeon of
misery from where air and light are squeezed out of the dark, damp
caves where Palestinians now dwell. The goal is as simple as it is
macabre: the ethnic cleansing of Arabs from the 'Promised Land' by
means of starving millions of a life worth living and through the
self-exodus of Palestinians who cannot take the severe punishment
and dehumanization any more. This clandestine maneuver would thus be
seen as self-inflicted and as an independent move by the
Palestinians, yet it is Israel pushing them off the cliff through
its criminal acts against humanity.
Much is said of physical torture, yet it is the mental kind that
truly kills and maims, condemning the millions of Palestinians to a
life unbearable at best and cruel at worst. For many decades now
Israel has waged collective war against the native inhabitants of
Palestine, slowly but surely implementing the means by which it can
achieve its ends. Mental torture is a crime against humanity, in
direct contradiction to universal principles of humanity. It has
been persistent, incessant and coldly calculated. If the treatment
of the Palestinian people by the state of Israel is not terrorist in
nature and evil in substance, then we have vanished underneath a
rock of shamelessness and barbarity, becoming that which we most
loathe.
What is occurring in Palestine today is nothing short of criminal,
reminiscent of the Nazi treatment of Jews and all other untermensch
during 1930's Germany. It reminds us of the extermination and
subsequent incarceration of Native Americans by a fledgling US
government riding the coattails of Manifest Destiny. Reservations
are today a sad reminder of the cruelty and inhumanity by which the
American government methodically eliminated the indigenous peoples
from the birth of a new nation. Parallels with the South African
Apartheid Bantustans are being made as more truth emerges from the
cages of the West Bank. The worst in humanity is now compared to the
Israeli treatment of the Palestinian people, and not without merit.
The Nazi ghettos and treatment of all untermensch in 1930's Europe
during the reign of human malevolence, which caused untold levels of
suffering, anguish and mental torture, lasted about a decade. The
Palestinian ghettos, Bantustans, reservations, cantons, prisons,
gulags or enclaves, - however you wish to call them - on the other
hand, have withstood the sands of time for several decades now.
Under virtual imprisonment, unable to move freely, without rights,
liberties and freedoms and increasingly under a state of siege and
apartheid, Palestinians find themselves struggling to survive and
remain living in the lands they have continuously inhabited for
thousands of years. Their very existence is being threatened; their
society is being imploded. Mental torture has become their way of
life, like an unrelenting leash controlling their lives, ceaseless
in time and devastating in magnitude.
They are, if you will, an endangered species, considered sub-human
by their occupiers and the Israeli puppets in the White House and
the Congress, who, even after the International Court of Justice
overwhelmingly condemned the Apartheid Wall as illegal under
international law, voted overwhelmingly to support Israel and
condemn the Court, also pressuring the cowardly UN to prevent the
imposition of sanctions on Israel. If our elected leaders in
Washington show such solidarity with the state of Israel in its
inhuman acts of criminality, do they think of Palestinians as
untermensch as well? The implication sure makes it seem that way, as
does their treatment of the Iraqi people.
Those who were once called untermensch are today subjugating those
they consider untermensch. The sub-humans of decades past have
become the subjugators and exploiters, spreading the disease that
once tormented their ancestors. Those who once suffered enormously
are today inflicting untold levels of suffering onto an entire group
of human beings. As if committing human evil on those it considers
sub-humans will exorcise the demons of horrors past, Israel's
treatment of the Palestinians serves no possible purpose other than
to devastate millions who are rotting away their existence in sewers
of hopelessness, hoping an entire people will simply disappear or
pack up and leave, thereby springing forth a final solution to the
Palestinian question.
The Untermensch has become the Übermensch, the Nazi word for
overlord, or supermen. The cleansed have become the ones doing the
cleansing, and those upon whom human evil once enveloped are today
reincarnating that same malice onto a world trying to never again
repeat the errors of past generations. Yet the Untermensch Syndrome
refuses to be laid to rest, living like rats among humans, forever
to follow in our footsteps, feeding off our crumbs and forever
destined to haunt our inner demons. If those it was once inflicted
upon are today its conductors and proliferators, does there exist
hope for the human race?
As long as we let it control us, the Untermensch Syndrome will
linger, separating us from each other, seeing ourselves as superior
and others as sub-human. The situation in Iraq is a truth to this
reality, it simply repeats itself, no matter how enlightened we
think we are and no matter how modern we claim to be. If the pattern
persists throughout our existence, is there reason to hope for its
demise?
What makes us human is not our ability to kill and destroy each
other but our vast potential to bring goodness to our fellow beings.
Killing, maiming and inflicting misery onto ourselves is nothing
new. It is rather easy for humans to do this. Just look back at
history. What is hard, and what makes us human, differentiating us
from the animal world, is the ability to turn the other cheek, see
each other as equals, accept our incredible diversity and stop the
madness before we all end up smoldering from the fiery hell we have
contained in silos and missiles. If we can create nuclear
technology, enough to destroy this planet thousands of times over,
can we not put our heads together and get along?
What is happening to the Palestinian people is a travesty, one more
black mark on an already bruised human society. It is up to the
Other Superpower to seek change, helping to bring an oasis of
humanity to a suddenly barren strip of earth. Our elected leaders
will not act, and neither will world organizations. It is up to us,
the people of the world, to stand tall and shout with one united
voice from deep within our bodies that we are in solidarity with
those considered as untermensch, that if Palestinians are sub-human,
then so are we, because they are human just like you and me,
deserving of a life lived in happiness and opportunity, free of
occupation and tyranny.
For the moral high ground cannot be usurped as easily as Israel robs
Palestinian lands bearing higher ground, strategic locations, water
aquifers and fertile land. The moral high ground in this battle is
on the side of the occupied and subjugated, of justice and humanity,
of those resisting and fighting for land they once possessed and
freedom once enjoyed. It is void and non-existent in the grip of the
occupiers, exploiters and criminals who produce life unbearable and
dehumanizing. For this battle they cannot win because the travesty
of the Palestinians is the reality billions of eyes and minds now
see. Is it any wonder why the rise in anti-Semitism worldwide
coincides with the escalating campaign to destroy the Palestinian
people? Can we not see why Israel is considered the most hated
nation on Earth, from opinions resulting in the last few years, and
why its policies are endangering innocent and peace loving people of
Jewish faith worldwide who only want to live free of the hatreds of
the past and in full acceptance of the happiness of the years to
come?
Never Again, Never Again
The time to boycott Israeli products has arrived. Let the sanctions
imposed by the Other Superpower begin, unleashing the economic might
of billions to punish those few who care nothing for international
law or the universal declarations of human rights. May the cancer
spreading dehumanization and misery on our fellow human beings stop
being spread by the power and medicine of the people of the world.
We succeeded once before, halting the destructive forces of
apartheid South Africa, now a nation evolving forward in time, not
regressing backwards in history. We will once more quash wrongness,
wickedness and human evil. It is the echoes of justice and human
rights emanated by the voices of truth that will tear down yet
another wall of shame being built to imprison and condemn.
Let us punish American and multinational corporations that help arm
the IDF, those that help bulldoze homes and lives, those that profit
from human misery and those that through their instruments of death
and destruction contribute to the murder and slaughter of innocents.
Let us pressure our so-called representatives to stand for human
rights, dignity and justice, not tyranny, misery and subjugation.
What is transpiring in the Holy Land is anathema to human
civilization; it is an embarrassment to six billion people who are
good, decent human beings. If our governments refuse to act, then so
we must, for the sake of innocent and peaceful Palestinian and
Israeli people, for the sake of human decency and for the sake of
our future generations. Walls and fences that imprison and
dehumanize cannot stand, for they help set mankind back in time to
days dark and repressive, unenlightened and barbaric. Together,
united as one we can become the massive tremor that helps bring
walls and tyranny down.
"Never Again" should not just be a catchy slogan, an artifact at
museums, a banner espoused but never practiced or a phrase attached
to nostalgia. It should mean what it says, and, as the Other
Superpower, we should interpret it literally, enforcing it upon
those whose crimes against humanity make us all less human by the
day.
In numbers we find strength; in conviction, reason to exist. Those
seeking freedom can never be defeated; the triumph of the human
spirit can never be erased. The seeds of justice have been planted,
let us reap its bountiful reward. Let us once more make a beautiful
oasis of a land both holy and promised, devoid of barren intentions
and evil inclinations. Let olive trees grow anew, let children play
and laugh, may the light of day return and once more bring forth
skies of blue.
This essay, first published in August 2004, is dedicated to the over
3000 Palestinian and 1000 Israeli dead, who, in the last five years,
have perished thanks to the sickness of human nature, as well as to
the hundreds of Lebanese civilians and tens of northern Israelis
slaughtered by the latest wave of Middle East violence. This essay
is also dedicated to the thousands of injured on both sides, the
thousands more who have lost loved ones, and the peace-loving,
tolerance-striving, justice-seeking peoples of the Holy Land, all of
whom have suffered enormously for the last four years. May you have
the strength to put an end to madness and the worst in the human
condition. May your troubled land find the peace you and the world
desperately needs.
Authors Bio: Manuel Valenzuela is a social critic and commentator,
international affairs analyst and Internet columnist. His articles
as well as his archive can be found at his blog,
http://www.valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com as well as at
other alternative news websites from around the globe. Mr.
Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at
manuel@valenzuelas.net.
Mr. Valenzuela is also author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel made
available at most online book sellers.
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