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Friday, August 25, 2006

The Noble Palestinian Savage?

I've tried to stay out of the neverending mess in the Middle East, as it just seems so futile and useless to take a stance. Historically speaking, neither side is right or wrong, so no one has any clear claim on the territory, which at first glance seems to be at the heart of the struggle. The fact is that very few countries or nations can claim that they were not founded using force, slaughtering and displacing the previous inhabitants, who themselves often had massacred the previous inhabitants. Hence, the argument that Israel has no right to exist because it was founded upon violent displacement of previous inhabitants is as ridiculous as stating that America or Australia, et al., ad nauseam, have no right to exist because of their similar foundings. In other words - and I do not say this lightly, because I am no fan of "Zionism," whatever that term may mean - Israel has as much right to exist as does any other nation, based purely on the aggressive state of human history.

Now, I know well that it is quite fashionable in some quarters to champion the Palestinian cause, as, surprisingly, Jewish-owned or operated media around the world take the "bleeding heart liberal" perspective, which finds a ready audience in aging and vocal hippies. Don't get me wrong - I find all the violence and bloodshed to be despicable and abhorrent, to the point where, if I really inspected it, I would blow chow. It has always been my fervent wish that human beings would just stop fighting - in other words, cut it out already! It is for this reason that I continually stick my neck out and roundly criticize and condemn the diviseness of religion as so much deleterious dementia. As far as I am concerned, no religion is "the one and only truth," and most, in fact, border on retardation. For the purposes of this essay, however, I will not go into great detail about my criticisms of religion, as they can be found all over my website, my blog, my forum, my discussion groups and in my books.

All that having been said, with what I know about the Palestinian culture, which isn't a great deal but which is significant, I have to scratch my head at the rabid liberal perspective that demonizes the Israelis and angelizes the Palestians. In reality, both sides have behaved badly, and neither should be exonerated - which means that the Palestinian culture is not without its serious blemishes that need to be pointed out and condemned. Nay, "blemishes" is much too gentle a word. Horrors is more applicable, in fact. Well, what on Earth am I talking about? And why, if I am correct, are not more people bringing it up in the mainstream media? Why are women's groups in particular not harshly condemning these horrors? These are good questions that can only be answered by the fact of the basic human capacity for denial.

Murder by family

What I am talking about is the rampant honor killings of women and girls that come hand in hand with Palestinian culture, however that is defined. (There are those, of course, who claim that "Palestinian" is not actually a proper name, as these people are not really an ethnicity per se and the term is "manmade," but that argument is quite moot, because it could be applied to all ethnicities and cultures, as they are all manmade and not ordained from on high.) In any event, it is quite common in the Palestinian culture, and elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim world, for women and girls to be brutally murdered by their own relatives, such as brothers or fathers, when it has been determined that they have "brought shame" upon their families. This "shame" frequently comes in the form of the female daring to have sex but also if she is sexually abused or raped. In other words, if a girl or woman is victimized, it is she who is to blame and who is deemed worthy of murder. Because of this brutal and barbaric mentality, countless women and girls have been shot in the head, decapitated, or otherwise murdered simply because they were women whom men could abuse or rape. And, again, this vile practice is common in the Palestinian culture, where women apparently have little value, as dictated by the Koran and other Islamic traditions.

Let us give an example that may be useful in driving home the point that things in the Middle East are a bit more complicated than they appear. Although I do not see Israeli defenders raising these issues - but perhaps they should - according to one brutal honor killer who cut off his own daughter's head in 1997, and who happened to be the Palestinian National Authority attorney general, some 70% of all murders in Gaza and the West Bank were of women and girls, and constituted honor killings. This psychotic individual's assertions apparently have merit, as writer James Emery relates:
"In the Palestinian communities of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Israel, and Jordan, women are executed in their homes, in open fields, and occasionally in public, sometimes before crowds of cheering onlookers. Honor killings account for virtually all of the murders of Palestinian women in these areas."
"The murder of females in the Middle East is an ancient tradition."

In consideration of the facts that a woman being raped in these cultures is deemed "dishonor" brought by the victim, but cutting off her head, shooting her or otherwise murdering her is viewed as "honorable," is it possible that maybe, just maybe, the Israelis have their hands more full than the rest of the world suspects? If a woman's life holds so little value, and a people find it more honorable to murder a victim of violent crime than to punish her attacker, are we dealing with a rational mindset that is entirely exculpable from bringing on its own troubles? If the heartless "blame the victim" mentality in one culture can be so overlooked, why cannot it be likewise in another culture? In any case, it is clear that the "noble Palestinian savage" is but a myth. There is nothing "noble" about a culture that is engrained with, and avidly practices, so-called honor killings.

Sources:

Reputation is Everything: Honor Killing among the Palestinians
Honor killing demands global response

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, there is always this tendency to root for the underdog.

Perhaps war is the only way to really shake up stagnant cultures. Perhaps it really is a clash of civilizations - with oil as a convenient carrot.

JV

Anonymous said...

There is no free hydrogen on this planet. All of it is connected to carbon and/or oxygen. To get hydrogen fuel you have to separate it from something else. There is no free land on this planet. In order to make a "Homeland for the Jews" you have to separate homeland from somebody else.

Furthermore, there is no possible Homeland for the Jews where more than a few of them will ever go to live. The Jewish Diaspora is a permanent state of Judaism. The Jewish Diaspora doesn't need any more than a Vatican sized patch of Jerusalem for a homeland. There they could build a temple and Jewish pilgrims to their temple could help rebuild the Palestinian economy and pay for some of the damage they have caused.

I'm a Pagan. I don't favor any of them.
Resurrect Isis

Rene Scherger said...

Right on Acharya---two wrongs don't make a "right". All these cultures, nations, religons need the exposure of all their rotten cores, which to my view were intended only to set one peoples against another, divided and disorganised to act against the tiny group really responsible for choreographing this shameless lust for power and murderous greed. The only right thing to do is to keep pounding away at the lies from all directions, hoping to reach as many misguided and tired souls that will listen and think about it--furthermore to narrow it down to it's source. By the source I mean down to the real people behind the scenes who propogate all the insanities by which others are indoctrinated to be their unwitting tools.

I look at all peoples as being just people what ever the labels--however, foolish or prideful is their world-view--I see good people and bad people where ever they live, but mostly indoctrinated, misguided, manipulated by those in control of "the climate of opinion" in their respective "cultures". So in this world-view of mine, I have no deference for any particular nation, religon, culture etc. I do have it in for the criminal scum existing among all people and bashing them, wether they are the instigating leadership or the legions of criminalised egos serving them.

I try my best not to generalise--I would like to see us win people over, rather than beating them with the big fry pan all the time, but I know this is necessary to joggle the hard headed and absolutely required with relentless determination to eradicate the cockroaches that run the show. I really don't care who it may offend.

I can be found bashing "Jews" or "Iraelites" (blech), but this in no way implies that I sanction the actions of Palestinians, Muslims, Christians, or any other label-de-jour, nor that I do not care for the members of these groups as just people. I do not like that Palestinian children or Israeli children are killed in conflicts created by scum. I do not like that children of any label will be raised to think and believe "irrational" things, only later to become fanatical adults committing horrendous acts in the name and interests of the scum having cultivated them thus. So I find myself lovingly bashing all of them, whilst trying to get them to turn away from "scum-think" and against the scum.

For me, it is not so much the case to defend the underdog, as it is to bash the over-dog for whom the only label needed in my view is "evil-criminal-scum"--all other labels they claim to sail under being nothing but deceptive dressing to fool one and all. These people have NO right to exist, nor any of their stage-managed creations. If the puppets have to go down with them--so be it. I am with John Lennon--When the World Will Be As One (and not the ONE, the Evil Criminal Scum have been working toward). The world's people have to be the ones to make it so, by tossing all the bullshit issuing from the Criminal Evil Scum by refusing to comply with their religons, political-machinations etc. and shove them into the toilet where they came from. Can it be done? I don't know, because reaching a large enough people anywhere is a giant task.

Anonymous said...

I love this article. The Palestinians are wrong just as the Israelies are wrong. Until the notion that there is only one true path to God has been rejected by the people as a whole there will not be any peace in this world. Islam,like it's parents Christianity and Judiasm is an elitist religion of hate and intolerance and deserves absolutly NO respect. It's a mad man's religion and a religion of butchers and mysogynists!