|
Destroyed Homes,
The Media and Public Knowledge
Liberty can not be preserved without general knowledge among
people' John Adams 1775
By David Halpin FRCS
11/02/087 "ICH"
-- -- The fires in California are dying now. Eighteen
hundred homes and businesses have been consumed. Many thousands
are homeless and a quarter of a million people were evacuated.
About one dozen people lost their lives but charred bodies of
Mexican immigrants who were camping in the canyons are being
discovered. The Federal Emergency Management Agency - FEMA had
its faked press conference with employees posing as reporters
and then ate humble American pie. But then Hollywood was down
the road. A resident star, John Travolta, 'admits he was forced
to fly his helicopter over the region to ensure his family were
safe'. Arnie, the Governor, visited the fires several times;
most recently he raised the likelihood of arson. He promised the
forces for right would hunt the perpetrators down. 'Smoking them
out' might have seemed tasteless.
This element of nature has been known in these hills for
millennia during drought and the sprawl of building into them
has risked this disaster. There was a time perhaps when fire was
used by the white colonist to drive the North American Indians
from their tepees and their caves. Gunfire, fire, smallpox and
other imported disease erased twenty million natives from the
land of open sky and prairie. The colonist's descendants and the
many late comers would not have dwelt on the justice of these
acts of God but instead heat gave rise to hyperbole.
Firefighters described scenes of devastation, with one pilot
battling fires in San Diego telling his commanders: "It looks
like an atom bomb is going off over there," the Los Angeles
Times reported. Another firefighter, Mitch Mendler, said the
area "was like Armageddon. It looked like the end of the world."
Good that a US citizen has had a glimpse of both.
The President, George W Bush, flew in and promised the wretched
' a better day'. Anyone whose building was not insured was
promised a low interest loan by him. Such magnanimity is yet to
be shown to the fifty million without health insurance but they
are poor and often black.
Another element carried by a storm surge breached the levees of
New Orleans as forecast. Homes and people were submerged in
filthy water and many drowned. At least several thousands died.
People in a nursing home were abandoned by its staff. It was a
difficult tragedy of the greatest proportions but FEMA was slow
and inadequate in its response. Guests who were stranded in a
luxury hotel were whisked away it was said. Unusually, BBC
reporters like Peter Marshall gave it straight. So straight that
Bush asked Blair to get the message blunted on the box. Many
felt that if the low lying areas had been occupied by the white
bourgeosie then the responses would have been quicker and more
competent. The social distress has been terrible with poor
families separated and re-building slow; some have returned to
their homes to find security firms barring entry. The US can
demolish Iraq from 4000 miles and install a 'missile defence
system' but capital reacts like capital where there is no clout.
Consider how the socialist country of Cuba responds as a nation
to the hurricanes which batter it.
In Palestine, peoples homes – in this case tin shacks belonging
to Bedouin – are being bulldozed right now in the Negev (Gush
Shalom)
Altogether eighteen thousand
Palestinian homes have been demolished since 1967. Fire or water
are not the agents. Instead D9 bulldozers, swing shovels with
demolition picks or engineers of the Israeli Occupation Force
are the tools. The latter set high explosive charges in the base
of these temples of the family. The main pretexts are the
absence of a building permit or a connection between the house
and a resistance fighter. Whilst he is tried in summary fashion
in a military prison and often tortured, collective punishment
is meted out to a grieving bitter family.1
The family is charged for the cost
of demolition whilst the Red Cross generously provides a tent if
there is no room in a relative's house. Not too many 'advanced
democracies' are demolishing houses with such abandon except for
the two main allies of Israel, those being the US and the UK.
These crimes are fully documented but there is almost total
silence amongst the nations of the world. Just hand out the
tents. The strategy if one can call it such, is to break the
spirit of the Palestinian and to drive him from his land. Mr
Olmert has recorded his vision. 2 If approximately 120,000 Druze
and Arabs were expelled from the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967
and their villages (134 in number) were completely demolished,
that makes about 20,000 more demolished homes, assuming six
people per family unit. 3 Then add the many thousands of homes
demolished during el nakba – the catastrophe of 1948 – or the
War of Independence as the Israelis call it. Symbolic of this
lawlessness and deepest cruelty is the case of Salim Shawamreh
of Anata. His home did not have a building permit. It has been
demolished thrice and rebuilt yet again by ICAHD volunteers and
money. How many people have seen the fires in southern
California on TV? At least a billion. How many know that
Palestinian homes have been demolished in very large numbers in
'48 and since '67 as at Emmaus. A few percent of the European
and US populations, and some of those remain mute.
Self-obsession and greater tolerance of the other's pain might
be barriers to awareness of such cruelty but the conscientious
human is bound to rely on the broadcast and print media. And
that is the rub. The media are determined to shield the
populations from the grotesque excesses of the Israeli state
(and the 'coalition of the willing in Iraq and Afghanistan'),
whilst they fill the screens and thus the minds with loss by
fire of eighteen hundred homes – by act of God. Evil is the act
of demolishing one home in the remnants of Palestine. Is it the
lesser evil for the western media to hide that?
Notes
1.http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=871239
2."I believed, and to this day still believe, in our people’s
eternal and historic right to this entire land." Ehud Olmert,
Israeli Prime Minister, to the US House of Representatives, June
2006
3.Israeli Committee Against House Demolition
http://www.icahd.org/eng/
Click on "comments" below to read or post comments
Comment Guidelines
Be succinct, constructive and
relevant to the story.
We encourage engaging, diverse
and meaningful commentary. Do not include
personal information such as names, addresses,
phone numbers and emails. Comments falling
outside our guidelines – those including
personal attacks and profanity – are not
permitted.
See our complete
Comment Policy
and
use this link to notify us if you have concerns
about a comment.
We’ll promptly review and remove any
inappropriate postings.
Send Page To a Friend
In accordance
with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational
purposes. Information Clearing House has no
affiliation whatsoever with the originator of
this article nor is Information ClearingHouse
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
|
