Monday, July 21, 2014

Krauthammer's Truth in a Kafkaesque Universe

This discussion is about an article written by Charles Krauthammer but I wish to start with something that may sound unrelated at first but actually has a connection, if tenuous, with the subject that Krauthammer is tackling in an article that came under the title: “The truth about Gaza” and the subtitle: “Rarely does international politics present a moment of such moral clarity.” It was published on July 18, 2014 in National Review Online.

It may have been a coincidence but it was under the Jimmy Carter Administration that America developed the neutron bomb – Carter being a nuclear physicist and also a pacifist. But these are the contradictions under which the world sometimes operates, a puzzle that is rendered all the more perplexing by the fact that the neutron bomb is a device which kills people but leaves all installations intact.

The connection between that reality and what happens in Gaza at this time is that America – which shoulders one hundred percent the responsibility of the horror that is committed there – is now urging the Israelis who are using American-made explosives and the means to deliver them, to do the reverse of what it would have done had a war erupted between NATO and the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War. America is now telling Israel it is okay to destroy the installations in Gaza but not kill the people.

There is a reason for this reversal, of course. It is that the standoff between the two camps during the Cold War was seen as one between equals whereas the current standoff between the Palestinians and the Israelis is seen more and more for what it really is; a struggle between the dispossessed people of Palestine on one side, and superpower America operating under the control of World Jewry conniving with the powerful Jewish lobby in America, on the other side.

And whereas the realities of the situation in Europe during the Cold War were to the effect that the Soviets were occupying Eastern Europe, the realities in the Middle East today are to the effect that the Zionists are occupying a good chunk of Palestine and looking forward to grabbing more of it. Thus, an America that could legitimately plot to kill Soviet troops while maintaining all installations intact for the indigenous people of Eastern Europe to retake what belonged to them; that same America could not make a similar claim today or help the Zionists add more to their criminal activities while standing on America's shoulders.

And this is why Charles Krauthammer who is as smart if not a little smarter than his peers has looked into the mud of international politics and thought he was seeing moral clarity. His problem in understanding what is happening in Palestine has many sides, and he expresses one of those sides this way: “Apologists for Hamas attribute the bloodlust to the Israeli occupation and blockade. Occupation? There is not a soldier, not a settler, not a single Israeli in Gaza.”

Yes, Charles, there are no Jews in Gaza since the Palestinians kicked them out of there. But Gaza alone is not all of Palestine. The truth is that the government that is in place in Gaza today was elected by all the people of Palestine and given the mandate to liberate every inch of the land … which includes the West Bank. And as long as there are soldiers, settlers or Israelis in the West Bank, the first duty of the government is to work for the liberation of all Palestine, and fight if necessary.

As to the blockade, Krauthammer says this: “Israel wanted this new Palestinian state to succeed. To help the Gaza economy, Israel gave the Palestinians its 3,000 greenhouses that had produced fruit and flowers for export.” The truth is that Gaza is a part of the land of milk and honey and a part of the Fertile Crescent, renowned since the beginning of time. And this is because the land is situated in the right place, producing the right kind of crops. It does not need greenhouses. The reason why the settlers built the greenhouses was to produce the kind of crops that would sell in Europe and the rich nations of Asia such as flowers and herbs. These being crops that the people of Gaza had no use for; they did not need the greenhouses. They took them apart to make use of the land on which they stood.

The government in Gaza had a better idea with regard to the economy it wanted to build. It was one that had the earmarks of a hybrid between Singapore and Dubai. And the rich Arab countries were preparing to finance this Palestinian dream when the Israelis understood it will cause a revolt among the inhabitants of the West Bank where they will demand to be free so as to become like Gaza. Thus, Israel started a program of periodically destroying what the Gazans were building, even instituted a blockade to prevent them from conducting commerce with the rest of the world.

Thus, starting with the wrong premise, Krauthammer put together a fantastic story about a “Kafkaesque ethical inversions [where] Hamas' depravity begins to make sense.” If he knew what he was talking about, he would have realized that the depravity belonged to the Israelis and not the Palestinians. And he would have understood why the world is standing on the side of Hamas via the auspices of the UN.