"The purely righteous do not complain about evil, rather they add justice.They do not complain about heresy, rather they add faith.They do not complain about ignorance, rather they add wisdom." From the pages of Arpilei Tohar.
Heinrich Heine
"Where books are burned, in the end people will be burned." -- From Almansor: A Tragedy (1823).
Simon Wiesenthal
Remark Made in the Ballroom of the Imperial Hotel, Vienna, Austria on the occasion of His 90th Birthday: "The Nazis are no more, but we are still here, singing and dancing."
Maimonides
"Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it."
Douglas Adams
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
Epigram appearing in the dedication of Richard Dawkins' The GOD Delusion.
Thucydides
"The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools."
Milan Kundera
"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."
Notes
Care to Read What I Read?
I've embarked on a great reduction in privacy by bookmarking my web-based reading on the "delicious.com" utility. It may tip my hand as to what I have in mind for blogging, but the same may help friends and frenemies alike track my thinking: here is the URL:
Shabbat Shalom. May our arguments be resolved through perceptive words and good deeds only; may we live another week helpful to one another in relative peace.
Photography: Prints & Services
A gentle reminder: I'm in business as a producer of fine art prints and as a provider of shoot-for-fee services, including portraiture and weddings plus assigned photojournalism. My general location: intersection of I-70 and I-81; core camera system: Nikon; transportation: Mustang.
Effort in print-on-demand will not offset the production nor value of signed, limited edition prints made under my own hand. However, for very good convenience, price, and quality, print-on-demand may work out well for many fans and patrons.
Research Services
If you're engaged in funded research in conflict analysis or other areas that may be addressed here and wish to engage my mind in your project, feel welcome to drop me a note at [email protected].
Gentleman: this decade is about the web-enabled appearance and development of a democratized global intelligentsia patched together by affinities in interests and outlooks and, probably, soon to become bonded as that aggregating influence feeds back through events, outputs in media, including e-publications -- the emerging pamphlets of our age -- and, ultimately, policy-informing consensus responding to this still emerging online smorgasbord. View the video -->
Noticing that pretty pictures on my Wordpress blogs drew (colorfully presented) "Likes" from fellow bloggers and Wordpress readers, I thought I'd try carving the "Conflict, Culture, Language, Psychology" category in which I've indulged here into a new blog.
Well, "Backchannels" has drawn a little bit of interest, but, probably, to be honest . . . same writer, same material -- same results.
So I'm going to pick up here where I've put up about 950 posts (plus a deliciously warm logo).
I'm not much these days about headlining with my name. I started this blog, Oppenheim Arts & Letters, as a showcase for fine art: photographs, poems, short stories.
Along the way, the ambition to become the next Ian Fleming turned into a convenient overview of what I today call the "Islamic Small Wars", and that pleasant diversion morphed into reporting from the "second row seat to history", essentially, plugging away with news aggregation and analysis, which from there moved on to or fed back to a Facebook account devoloped around and devoted to foreign affairs, and from their to Backchannels.
I'll keep Backchannels, which I want to grow within the area of political psychology, for about a year but may cross-post and otherwise keep both going.
I do like the idea of being a little more compartmented as regards business (as constituted, but that needs to change as I spend most of my days either at the desktop involved with chatyping and releated research in league with my many Facebook buddies), personal public journal keeping (that now has its own blog), and this new thing that the Facebook application "Klout" represents -- global social and political influence.
To my dismay -- this shares a class with my few age spots and, um, middle-aged paunch -- I've about run out of energy for reinvention.
Note: there was a video here, and it appears to have been removed by the conflicted powers that be in multiple dimensions. It's nulled presence had been crashing my Chrome, so here I've left the note but not the vid, which address (already sunk it) will have to remain a mystery, even to me.
As a "newsie", I am stunned.
Responding to the search string, "Syria refugees July 30", YouTube reported the above published two hours ago.
I have to ask: was the YT counter not working?
Have the world's "listening posts" been distracted by, say, the Olympics?
The day has been like this for a few hours now where I do what any might do: look online for the latest footage from the field.
Al Jazeera's lede on this story: "A mentally unstable homeless man was beaten to death before his body was set on fire for allegedly burning pages from the Quran in central Pakistan, police said." [1]
Above (I'm assuming you've clicked on the link): does that look like a man "beaten to death" to you?
The tip for this story came from a Pakistani Facebook acquaintance (now friended), and it appears the more accurate description and interpretation came from a Catholic news source, Spero, which covers Catholic interests worldwide. Here is the lede from that source:
"A man accused of blasphemy, according to Islamic religious law, was extra-judicially killed in Pakistan outside a police station in the Chani Ghoth area of theBahawalpur region in the Punjab." [2]
At least the framework moved from "beating" to "killing".
Note on the photograph: I was not able to find IPTC creator and copyright information, but added to the jpeg file the Spero News link. It's as compelling a photo as war photography ever serves and may be further scrutinized (technically) for authenticity.
Always my first complaint and secret relief as regards my own blog: I'm "reporting" from the second row seat to history!
Thank God.
But however I may feel about my fringe journalism career, it's not the "front row seat to history" and that creates some problems for vetting the details of dramatic imagery and news.
In any case, according to Spero News, " . . . mobs surrounded the police station baying for the life of the alleged blasphemer. The mob blocked the main highway through the town and broke down the gates of the police station, attacking the officers and injuring Station House Officer Ghulam Mohudin Gajjar along with four guards. Superintendent Ahmedpur also sustained injuries. All told, some 15 officers were injured in the melee and are now in hospital."
Nothing like the completely unjust lynching of an innocent ("mentally ill" -- the two stories agree on that) for trivial cause, the burning of a few pages of a book, never a good thing -- my people don't burn books -- but weight the "who" against the "what" and "what happened next".
Islam's clerical, news, and security communities must take ownership of this not-so-godly primitive insanity that they themselves have been instrumental in installing and encouraging to the point where it has the power -- as at Lal Masjid not too many years ago -- to eat them alive.
Not that being beaten to death would have been better, AJ, but why not report this death for what it was -- an unwell man, Ghulam Abbas, God rest his soul, wrested from police protection (and held for a thing so small on a pretense so stupid I don't even wish to type about it), soaked with kerosene, and set on fire to burn alive?
Of course, only say so if that's the truth.
This is all I have:
Photographer: unknown.
Victim: Ghulam Abbas
Location: police station, Chani Ghoth, Pakistan.
Date: around July 6, 2012
POC: Deputy Superintendent of Police Ahmedpur.
Veracity: Experience plus a Google-based search suggests the story is making the rounds via Facebook and the Blogosphere.
My contact's complaint: where is Big Media on this?
For my part, I'm less worried about Big Media missing the story and more concerned with the special interest Catholic and Islamic (and other) press concocting, promoting, modifying, painting whatever has happened Out There -- even in Pakistan, this is Out There -- to suit agendas revolving around their own legitimacy and growth.
To my Muslims friends on Facebook and elsewhere: I am sorry, but God has put you on the frontier in humanity. The Jews and Israel are old establishment: we've been working on this business (you know the analog: " . . . God favors those who restrain themselves") for a few thousand years. What's going on in Chani Ghoth is the edge, and it should not be confused with anyone's future.
"At this time, we know that more than twenty thousand Indigenous are walking directed to a small town called Chunchi, enter the Highlands of Chimborazo province, the heart of the mountains, walking during the day and night, with cold and rain, this is the largest indigenous protest of the history and the beginning of a civil war in Ecuador."
As I type this before midnight, March 14, 2012, it's about 60-deg.F. and raining in Chunchi, Chimborazo Province, Ecuador.
In relation to the above quoted statement, that's about how much I can get from the web.
Through my correspondent, I have photographs of the recent march supporting the interests of Ecuador's indigenous and criticizing the state's projects to mine without ample environmental protection, but nothing more than Hollywood would create "for atmosphere" by way of crowds and signage, not that they're not real, but in the same set from a kind of frontline, I don't have the newsies gift of digitally captured altercations, guns, or wreckage.
While the Catholic Church may expect it has a Catholic country in Ecuador and urban Ecuadorans may expect their rural counterparts to mirror their own political sentiments (and that may be, but who knows?), my correspondent as well as the maps leave much room for conflict, the former by complaining about the unconverted pagan, the latter by telling of yet a sprawling natural frontier far from anchored by high speed highways, strip malls, and, perhaps, military and police barracks.
The State of Ecuador has presence throughout Ecuador, no doubt -- that's how poppy fields fall into the hands of those whose duty it is to destroy them -- but it may lack for the omnipresent control and security so completed and smoothly adjusted in North America and Europe as to go largely unnoticed and unremarked except as a do-good benefit praised for fighting crime, roping in assorted crackpots on the far left and right who manage to make war plans and arm themselves, and sleuthing out the shadows creeping from beneath the dark robes the Muslim Brotherhood has woven into of a broadly distributed and poisonous language program with "realpolitik" ends.
Rafael Correa's state-that-would-be-99-percent-good-in-all-things would have to be much smaller to be so, and so it may be so with its cities, international trade, and good enough infrastructure to function where the same has been concentrated, but as much may leave for unsavory incursion whole regions of semi-autonomous and as yet unsettled -- and not altogether Christian -- space.
Just as there now a historic mistake in trying to blame all Indigenous people for trying to provoke a coup state in Ecuador and to support FARC army, are the religious leaders, who studied in the Soviet Union and they are atheists, but they use these religious traditions indigenous to try to manipulate indigenous people, they have clay pots filled with water, earth and fruit to offer the gods, capture Christian churches and do ceremonies and rituals of worship fake gods and nature within the churches of the village and cities that fall under your [SIC] control, then, the indigenous people remember your [SIC] old traditions and practice again and they far away of the Christians faith.
Many of my fellow Americans would say to my correspondent, "So?"
But then too the funk of darker forces might drift in to bother the night air.
So how much may one unfunded communicator know -- or gather -- from how distant a chair, even one comfortably "connected with the world" via broadband?
I want to know what is going on this Thursday, March 15, 2012, from midnight to midnight, in Chunchi, Chimborozo Province, Ecuador.
I want the photographs captioned and a Skype connection to the photographer offered; I want to see the video, perhaps time stamped, and, say, somewhere between four minutes and four hours away from the event recorded.
That day is coming.
Big Media will see it -- is seeing it -- first.
I'm certain little media -- my kind of media -- will experience something like the same (but different) soon enough.
Call it a lie, a mistake, wishful thinking, whatever, the words were simply not true. In fact, the IDF soldier had come to rescue the bloodied young man, a Jewish student then visiting Israel, from an Arab mob in a town north of the Old City known as Wadi al-Joz.
While the truth remained dark, other media picked up on the story and some Arab groups appropriated the photograph and its misrepresentation for their own purposes. For example, it appeared in this advertisement calling for the boycott of Coca Cola:
After weathering a flurry of honest letters, The New York Times reportedly issued a retraction and, unusual for a major newspaper, republished the picture with a somewhat corrected caption and accompanying article.
This comes from Honest Reporting's account of the incident about a month after it occured:
In response, the New York Times published a half-hearted correction which identified Tuvia Grossman as "an American student in Israel" -- not as a Jew who was beaten by Arabs. The "correction" also noted that "Mr. Grossman was wounded" in "Jerusalem's Old City" -- although the beating actually occurred in the Arab neighborhood of Wadi al Joz, not in the Old City.
In response to public outrage at the original error and the inadequate correction, The New York Times reprinted Tuvia Grossman's picture -- this time with the proper caption -- along with a full article detailing his near-lynching at the hands of Palestinians rioters. [3]
All political and religious violence occuring within Islam and affecting its edges has been predicated on lying in its several forms: deceit and deception; fabrication; inversion, projection, and reflection; obfuscation; omission.
No Palestinian liberation movement can go forward without lies about Jews and the accompaniment of extensive deception and wrongdoing within its own camps; no violent Jihad effort has yet launched without casting aspersions on all who are not enfolded in its own cruel and dismal cloaks; even the complex anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist effluvia dribbling from errant Jewish pens belies numerous sins of omission, some starting with the denail of an ancient established Israel, others merely picking up with what might be called the "myth of 1948" that would establish the Middle East Conflict and regard all that precedes it as trivial.
So here is the above depicted "Arab victim of IDF aggression," that is, Tuvia Grossman, ten years ago a Jewish boy from Chicago, today an Israeli citizen and father, and he's about to meet the also depicted Israeli soldier that rescued him, Gidon Tzefadi, a Druze from up north in the country [4,5]
Source: YouTube poster "HonestReportingVideo". "Exclusive Video: Tuvia Grossman Meets the Soldier Who Saved His Life." Posted August 30, 2010: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_6m06YoSaI [1]
It was the eve of Rosh Hashana, and I hailed a taxi with two of my friends to go visit the Western Wall. Along the way, the driver took a shortcut through one of the Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem. We turned a corner and suddenly there were about 40 Palestinians surrounding the car. Before we knew it, huge rocks had smashed all the windows of the taxi.
Some of the Palestinians pulled open the door and dragged me from the vehicle. About 10 attackers jumped on top of me, punching and kicking me. I crouched to the ground, and tried to cover my face to protect myself as much as possible. All I could see were a flurry of sneakers kicking me in the face. [7]
The funny thing about the truth is that it doesn't change.
Cited Reference
Notes: Perhaps sparing the rookie, perhaps not, sourcing the photograph back to the Associated Press and the photographer who took it may be more than a two-click job (and here I have already missed lunch, lol). The Committee for Acuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) had this to say in its write-up at the time [6]:
Why the Associated Press failed to identify Tuvia accurately is not a mystery; they simply assumed any victim would be Arab. The likelihood is that in the wake of this fiasco, photographers and editors will now exercise more care.
Newspapers that rely on the AP cannot be faulted for trusting the wire service description of the image, but their action to redress the damage of the error often came only in the wake of intense public protest. Nevertheless, a number took unusual measures to try to offset the damage done and to respond to strong public concerns.
" . . . Started it all" refers to the event providing the impetus for the development of the Honest Reporting organization and its mission.
As expected, the retelling of Tuvia Grossman's story has been smoothed by time, but the same may be sourced on the web back to the immediate period in which it took place [7], and in the details of the early telling in print, it becomes what it really was and remains in essence: a personal war story.
7. Grossman, Tuvia. "Victim of the Media War: Palestinians tried to lynch me, highlighting the power of the media to influence public opinion." AISH, November 4, 2000: http://www.aish.com/jw/id/48890577.html
During this same period of Flotilla Face-Offs with the IDF, Pakistan, my nation of matrilineal and patrimonial heritage has witnessed the extraordinary massacre of 120 moderate, pacifist Muslims, followers of the Ahmadiyyah movement that subscribes to peaceful, pluralistic Islam. Specifically, they embrace non-violence, condemning violent jihad. They were massacred, in cold blood, in worship, by fellow citizens, fellow Pakistanis, fellow Muslims. Most of the murdered were elderly, and male. Hundreds more were injured, some of whom are still dying this week. Emergency services did not arrive for over two hours. Pakistani police stood back, apparently allowing the carnage to occur, supposedly too afraid to engage. Awaiting special operations commandos to intervene, in their uncertainty, perhaps their tacit tolerance, Pakistani police became silent accomplices to the massacre. Many of the pacifist Muslim worshipers died of uncomplicated hemorrhagic shock within mere minutes of advanced medical care.
Where has been the subsequent national and international outrage at the death of these Muslims? Where is the Muslim world now? Where are the Muslims calling for War Crimes to be investigated within the inert and increasingly fractious Pakistani 'leadership'? We, the Muslims find ourselves suddenly voiceless, tongue tied, jaded and unmoved, yet somehow Gaza stokes our bald fury.
The sustained blockade that has been enforced in and around the Gaza Strip has had significant repercussions for the people of Gaza. They have been deprived of adequate supplies of essentials such as food and fuel. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) says that a large proportion of families lack the means to purchase even the most basic items, including food, soap, school materials and clean drinking water. According to Amnesty International, the overall blockade on Gaza has led to mass unemployment, extreme poverty and food price rises caused by shortages. Eighty percent of the population remains dependent on humanitarian aid, but the UN says that as a result of the blockade, only one quarter of the necessary aid is able to reach those who need it. [1]
After reviewing the "law of armed conflict" into which fit Israel's operations to maintain its sea blockade of Gaza, researcher Katherine Iliopoulos moves on to the effects of the blockade on Gaza's residents. The above paragraph, as with much rhetoric on the subject on the web, bears close reading. In fact, take it sentence by sentence:
1. The sustained blockade that has been enforced in and around the Gaza Strip has had significant repercussions for the people of Gaza.
A fair topic sentence, it includes the possibility of forestalling the development of Gaza as a forward operating base for Iran and the strip's transformation again into an active combat zone.
2. They have been deprived of adequate supplies of essentials such as food and fuel.
Israel's overland throughput of constructive goods and consumer supplies has been as substantial as it has been relentless.
In addition, one may find on the web photographs of swelling market stalls and productive agricultural business as well as the lively and modern "Roots Nighclub" video. [3]
By the numbers, Gaza would seem awash in food and fuel aplenty.
3. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) says that a large proportion of families lack the means to purchase even the most basic items, including food, soap, school materials and clean drinking water.
" . . . lack the means to purchase . . . ." -- that should signal the presence within Gaza of a distributive economic issue. No less than in, say, Somalia, aid may flow into a country by the thousands of tons, but once in may not reach its intended recipients or reach them in optimal ways.
4. According to Amnesty International, the overall blockade on Gaza has led to mass unemployment, extreme poverty and food price rises caused by shortages.
It's understood that with the exception of fishing, the seaport cannot operate, but the emphasis on missing imaginary port operations and jobs as a panacea for what ails Gaza obscures economic potential elsewhere in the society, both in terms of gross earnings as well as in the social structure undergirding the distribution of proceeds.
Focusing on the sea blockade scratches a certain itch, usually anti-Semitic or knee-jerk monkey-see-and-do, but the body would seem larger than the one irritant and worth separate independent study within the discipline or practice of economic development.
5. Eighty percent of the population remains dependent on humanitarian aid, but the UN says that as a result of the blockade, only one quarter of the necessary aid is able to reach those who need it.
The UN has been saying a lot of things about Israel for years, much of it similarly unreasoned.
I've mentioned this to Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and others in the information trade: I want "clear, accurate, and complete" factual data--photographs, reports, videos--on such as Gaza, scrupulously authenticated and captioned, so that it may be seen through other than the prismatic slits of Internationalist and Islamist ideology as well as state interest.
Moreoever, I wish to see--to obtain and collect--multiply sourced and redundant primary information, so that one's impression, which may when relayed contribute to public impression, becomes corroborated, tested, and increasingly valid and reliable as well as properly interpreted, by which I mean empirically grounded and thoughtful and reasoned in every aspect.
That life may well be uncomfortable for most in Gaza--I don't doubt it: however, what part of domestic economic and social discomfort lies with Hamas and its administration would seem an as yet unasked, unanswered, and particularly unexamined question.
What we know is Israel's sea blockade helps minimize the presence of war materiel in Gaza and consequently forestalls its progress as a platform from which to attack Israel:
This past week intermittent rocket fire from the Gaza Strip continued targeting the western Negev. Six rocket hits were identified in Israeli territory, three on May 31 and three on June 1. All the rockets fell in open areas. There were no casualties and no damage was done. The Popular Resistance Committees and Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the rocket fire, claiming they were in response to the events surrounding the flotilla.
On June 1 an anti-tank missile was fired at an IDF force engaged in routine security activity near the border fence in the southern Gaza Strip. The force returned fire (IDF Spokesman, June 1, 2010). The military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the missile (PIJ website, June 1, 2010. [2]
The Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center report, from which the above has been copied, includes charts illustrating both the quantity of material lobbed into Israel from Gaza and its distrubtion across time in the post-Cast Lead period.
My appeal to my fellows is general: we know the lingo pertaining to standards in journalism and social science research--may we with greater curiosity, diligence, honesty, and integrity look into claims made in passing.
About the following: I may owe Anwaar Hussein of the Truth Spring blog an apology for not sending him a complaint ahead of a conclusion. In this instance, my comment's links and perhaps length were (as suspected further on in the text) enough to derail the whole as spam by the target blog's automated programming, so I have heard from Anwaar via e-mail (the post appears in full there now, as intended).
My impression was that of having been baited in a comment thread and then blocked from posting.
What to do when a robot, a computer program, has done the blocking: Retract here? Repost over there?
In that what follows is the story of a story as perceived when written, I'm going to let it stand but with this preface and a note: what follows may have to do with one drive and two behaviors--1) the delegitimization of Israel, which, unfortunately for the world at large, continues to patronize, Arab Muslim sentiment around the world, 2) habitual refusal to acknowledge culpability for actions others may take in their own defense, and 3) quite shared, the aggressive tone of two strident writers thrown together on one page, a macrocosmic analog that works always from attitudes expressed in language outward toward combative political action.
* * * * *
Admin Says:
Hmmmm!
If I was sure what Oppenheim is saying, it would have been easier to respond to. In the absence of that I can only guess the following;
a. He has confused the whole point of the article. He has missed that the scribe is highlighting the super power approved international thuggery of one nation. And that this article is not about religious fanaticism per se.
b. Oppenheim has not confused the argument in the article but sincerely feels that highlighting the criminal offenses of a rogue nation is tantamount to giving tacit approval to religious fanaticism. And that this must not be done.
c. Oppenheim supports such murders by states and would not mind if the spooks of Iraq, North Korea and Iran–the ‘axis of evil’ countries–got together with those from Afghanistan and Libya and dispatched one or some of his previous presidents to kingdom come. These states, after all, have enough grudge to justify the act.
Now which one of the above is true? Perhaps Oppenheim would come back to explain or maybe someone else would take up the cudgels on his/her behalf.
Waiting………
I haven't encountered this sort of online behavior until this past Sunday. The "Admin": Anwaar Hussein of Truth Spring, which journal I've had listed for some time in the left-hand column of this blog.
The article implied and to which I responded was this one:
Recounting the murder in Dubai of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who had been suspected of shuttling between Hamas and Iran's Revolutionary Guard for weapons procurement, Hussain convicts Israel out of hand and ends with an unfortunate but familiar enough gem to any who swim in the waters of Middle East peace discussions:
Many eyes, some dead some still alive, now look to Zion and its patron to explain how one country can act as an international thug, take another people’s land, kill them when they struggle to get a piece of it back, stop at virtually nothing, and, this time, draw five other countries into the bloody games of espionage that it plays and gets not a rap on the knuckles where a sledge hammer is long due.
And here, in response, is what prompted the administrator's remarks:
Oppenheim Says:
“In the 1970’s, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, and in the 1980’s, he was reported to have been involved in sabotaging coffee shops where gambling was taking place.”
How difficult it must be to decry fanaticism in one instance and tacitly approve of it with silence in the next.
Mahmoud, whose death has brought Egyptian and Jordanian operations under scrutiny as well as those of Israel, seems to have acted as a linchpin between those who wish to blow themselves up (and take all the others they can with them) and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, of whom hundreds of thousands of Iranians seem to have tired.
One may wonder which Islam finds favor here.
The above posted beneath the article on Thursday, March 4, and I left it awaiting moderator approval.
A fellow blogger who more conscientously visits the Truth Spring blog (slogan: "Truth exists, falsehood has to be invented") let me know the following Sunday that, indeed, the note had posted and drawn a response.
My Sunday afternoon response to that response in a moment, but here I note it is Tuesday, plain old "ages" in cybertime, and the same has not posted while the impression that I would demur, to put it politely, has been sustained.
Here is that timely if perhaps too chummy response:
Anwaar -- I have kept the Sabbath, that is all.
Efforts to delegitimize and demonize Israel have been generally so passionate as to prove little more than presumptuous.
As with the altogether dismissible Goldstone report, this now out of Dubai may and probably will melt into confusion.
Such as Mahmoud al-Mabhouh make enemies, so much so they become fugitive for some(before his murder, al-Mabhouh had in pursuit the states of Egypt and Jordan as well as Israel) and for untrustworthy others candidates for false flag operations.
In this now muddled affair, two Palestinians, Ahmad Hasnin and Anwar Shekhaiber, have been dragged behind Israel for allegedly providing logistical support for the murder while the most strident of accusing voices remains that of Hamas, and in the arena of extrajudicial killing, Hamas has done so much so well for so long in Gaza as to have no credible rivals for the practice in the region.
Last month, the BBC noted, "The Jerusalem Post reported suspicions voiced across the region that the Palestinian Authority, run by Hamas's rival organisation Fatah, might have had a hand in the attack" before going on to indulge its own penchant for a good spook story:
"All this leads to another question: Does the hit team's detailed knowledge of his itinerary, the lack of bodyguards and the possibility he was comfortable travelling on his own identity, paint a scenario where Mr Mabhouh was served up to his assassins in Dubai by people he trusted?"
Let's talk about this rhetoric " . . . super power approved international thuggery of one nation."
Honestly, I don't know how Iran gets away with what it does to its own people and with its meddling in the region.
One might hope a "superpower" would intervene, but none has yet, at least not visibly.
Of course, away from the ambitiously hijacked old Persia, admissions of culpability on the Arab Muslim side of the familiar bickering seldom surface.
Should we now "Google" Abdel Wael Zwaiter, Ghassan Kanafani, Wadie Haddad, et al., we may find, at least online, the same ambiguous notes--and notes of ambiguous notes--while something like the truth continues to reside in investigator notes, court records, and in unpublished jottings by journalists, all of which do no one much good kept dark. Until we have peace enough to bring to light state secrets all around, we may speculate endlessly on behalf of one agenda or another.
On this web page, " . . . approved international thuggery of one nation" says more about rhetoric than it does factual reality, and in doing so, it leaves out the better part of the story, which here would seem to revolve around the perception of al-Mabhouh's threat to regional security, not merely that of Israel alone, and detection of the social engineering and reach of the Islamic Revolution in Iran.
We may move on to " . . . highlighting the criminal offense of a rogue nation . . . ." another passionate condemnation having for its basis the sound of itself.
Egypt, Jordan, and Israel, among others, have each the obligation of securing their own citizen's defense, and a man who, allegedly but perhaps less allegedly and more truly than others, trades in arms to promote the viability of war in the region draws their attention.
As mentioned, al-Mabhouh was a pursued man, and that not by Israel alone.
As regards the statement on the "Axis of Evil" states--Iraq, North Korea, Iran--Iraquis of late have braved polls threatened by other than Americans (or Egyptians, Jordanians, Israelis, Danish cartoonists, etc.) while Iranians, quite familiar with the ways of their regime, its record of serial murders, and the suppression of public protest, have been fighting gamely for a less medieval and ungodly governance (reference, any given day: http://www.iranhumanrights.org/).
North Korea, way outside Islam and distinctly idolatrous as regards its leadership, would seem the odd rogue out here for having for its threat profile the will of a mere family, an army, and its head, Kim Jong II, a 68-year-old figure who has most recently sought "bear gall bladder, rhinoceros horn and musk" for what ails him, all healthy alternatives, so anyone sane may suppose, to the pleasures taken by the dictator in the contemplated launching of nukes against the south. (Reference quoted for the remedies: http://www.chinapost.com.tw/asia/korea/2010/02/16/244952/Questions-about.htm).
Perhaps I had exceded my word limit (that's a real possibility).
I don't know, but I do know I returned to Truth Spring and posted the above the day after Sabbath, a quite different act from my implied disappearance from the fray altogether.
Standing for little other than murder, al-Mabhouh's name will float away on the litter of historical footnotes--who seems already to have become of far less interest than whodunit--but efforts to delegitimize and demonize Israel (and the Jews) will persist for some time, for such have their roots in fabrication heavily fertilized by indignance, jealousy, hate, and vanity, and for all those most human ills little cure has been found.
For any inclined to books, I may recommend the following:
Meir-Levi, David. History Upside Down: The Roots of Palestinian Fascism and the Myth of Israeli Aggression. New York: Encounter Books, 2007.
Morris, Benny. 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008.
Shepherd, Robin. A State Beyond the Pale: Europe's Problem with Israel. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009.
David Meir-Levi drums up the usual suspect rhetoric and demolishes it; Benny Morris, who may answer to God and history and not much else between, recounts in factual terms the construction and populating of Israel through the period prior to statehood as well as submitting data from the war; Robin Shepherd lays out the broad political architecture undergirding attitudes and related stances taken toward the Jewish state.
For robust and at times ingenious online conversation across the tender divides, I may recommend a visit to http://www.mepeace.org/; for fact-checking and independent but not disinterested ombudsmanship, many organizations listed to the left may be helpful, but CAMERA and Honest Reporting might take first clicks for engaging media smears.
Walsh mentions Balloon Boy and "Sarah Palin's death panels" and goes that extra mile to report the "Top Bogus Stories of 2009": http://www.salon.com/news/bogus_stories_2009/. On the list: "Death Panels", "Cheney Attacks Obama", "The Twitter Revolution", "ACORN", "Slightly less than one million tea partiers", "the Heene family debacle", "Sympathy for Roman Polanski", "Obama bows", "Unreleased photos show Abu Ghraib rape", "Going Gaga", "The Climategate e-mails".
Best: the expansion of the Internet's penetration or reach and the continuing development of Google Translator.
Worst: not the emergence of optimism about a globalized cultural or social future for mankind but the appearance and in some quarters prevelance of the wearing of rose colored glasses.
I have visited peace groups this year for whom, perhaps, the covenants of the Hamas Charter or the activities of a still lingering Palestinian Liberation Organization would seem not to exist for the want of peace; in the Islamic Small Wars, there seems as much confusion and denial on the part of many over the actions of Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood and the potency of the intellectually informing across-the-Internet waves of Jihadi Islam and of the inherent architecture in Islamic thought and clericism unable to with reason temper issues crystalized over loyalty and the sword.
In 2009, we published, surfed, and skimmed with abandon.
Perhaps in 2010, we will again learn how to focus, dig, reflect, and report accurately, completely, and in depth.
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