Why do we hate
them?
By Gilad Atzmon
07/04/07 "ICH"
-- --- When I came over to Britain some thirteen years
ago, I found a very tolerant place. I was amazed to see so
many people of so many colours, not just living together in
peace, but living in full harmony. At Essex University, the
institute where I was doing my postgraduate studies,
everyone was enthusiastic about post-colonialism. The Brits,
so it seemed to me at the time, were repenting over their
embarrassing colonial past. I was mildly impressed but not
totally overwhelmed. At the end of the day, it isn’t that
difficult to denounce your grandfather’s crimes.
I was amazed to see Turks and Cypriots running grocery shops
side by side in Green Lane. My first roommate was a
Palestinian M.A. student from Beit Sahour, it all felt
natural. It didn’t take long before I fell in love with the
town and decided to make it into my permanent home.
At the time, Britain was very different from the place I
came from. In my homeland the human landscape was officially
reduced into two types. In a manner of crude binary
opposition there was always a clear division between the
‘Good’ and the ‘Bad’, the ‘us’ and the ‘them’, the ‘West’
and the ‘East’ or just the ‘Jews’ and the ‘Arabs’. In the
place I came from, peace couldn’t even be seen on the
horizon. But in the London of the 1990s, there was no such
dichotomy. Painfully enough, this has changed. On a daily
basis our media outlets repeat the idiotic question: “Why do
they hate us so much?” By now it is rather clear, the binary
opposition between ‘us’ and ‘them’ has made it into an
integral part of the British discourse as well.
When I moved over in the early 1990s, British politics was
very boring. John Major was in power. But then, not before
long, a young, dynamic, visionary politician removed him
from office. This politician is a man who has managed in
just ten years to demolish one of the most harmonious
societies in the West. Tony Blair, the great new Labour
promise, had been running the country for a decade; he
managed to drag this country into every possible conflict,
and to escalate minor conflict to crisis levels. He has
managed to lie repeatedly to his people, his parliament and
his cabinet, he has launched an illegal war that cost over
700,000 innocent civilian lives. He obviously failed to see
the impact those wars may have on his multi-ethnic society
at home.
Blair has just left the PM office, thank God for that,
however, this country is now on the brink of moral collapse.
Its civil rights system is under severe threat. Politicians
of all parties are calling for tougher detention laws. The
possibility of mass deportation of new immigrants doesn’t
look like a remote nightmare. Yet, most worrying is the role
of the ‘free’ media in this country. The leading papers and
TV are succumbing quite willingly to the official Government
line of thinking. It’s something that reminds me too much of
the recruited media in my doomed homeland, the place I left
thirteen years ago.
I find myself wondering, how dare the media ask ‘why do they
hate us?’ Don’t they know the answer? Don’t we know the
answer? Weren’t we the ones who demolished Iraq? Wasn’t it
our PM, Tony Blair, who gave a green light to the Israelis
to flatten Lebanon? Wasn’t it Tony Blair’s government who
dismissed the democratically elected Hamas in Palestine?
Wasn’t it Blair who allowed the Israelis to starve Gaza?
For those who still fail to realise, to kill is rather
simple, to turn towns into piles of rubble isn’t that
complicated either. Yet, to raise a child may take a few
years, to build a city takes hundreds of years and to
establish harmony between human beings takes thousand of
years. We should stop lying to others and to ourselves. We
know perfectly well why they hate us, they have some good
reasons, as things stand momentarily, we are the ones who
are killing them en mass. It is us who demolish their towns
and kill their kids.
Thus, rather than raising the pathetic question, ‘why do
they hate us?’ we’d better evade our self-righteous mode,
and ask ourselves, ‘why do we hate them so much?’ or even,
‘why do we hate so much?’ in general.
To bring peace to London, Glasgow, Britain and the West is
to look in the mirror, to look into our severe and
devastating wrongdoings, to repair the damage made by Blair,
Bush and company, to revise the dream of ecumenical Western
society. It is possible. It is within our capacity. We have
been just there not that long ago. I remember it very well,
it was only thirteen years ago, I felt it when I landed in
Britain.Gilad
Atzmon was born in Israel in 1963 and had his musical
training at the Rubin Academy of Music, Jerusalem
(Composition and Jazz) A multi-instrumentalist he plays
Soprano, Alto, Tenor and Baritone Saxes, Clarinet, Sol,
Zurna and Flutes. Also a prolific and often controversial
writer, Atzmon's essays are widely published his novel
'Guide to the perplexed' and 'My One And Only Love' have
been translated into 24 languages all together. Visit his
website
http://www.gilad.co.uk/
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