Who shot first?
What transpired second?
How many civilians were killed? Or how many peoples’ lives were devastated?
How many Hamas targets were hit?
It seems that both the Palestinians (and their supporters) and the Israelis (and their friends—mostly in the White House--) are only concerned with numbers in determining who is at fault and who is damaging the other.
For example, just today, I heard in a BBC radio interview with the Israeli Ambassador in Washington. In the interviewer the Ambassador was rightfully called to task for worrying about the numbers of missiles fired by Hamas in the last year—even while the numbers of Palestinians killed in three days outnumbers the number of Israelis killed by Hamas territory based missiles over the past 4 years.
The Israel Ambassador did not have to respond logically because dealing with real numbers have never been that important to him. Hyperbolic usage of numbers is enough.
(Admittedly, too many Arabs and Palestinians—as well as the Bush Administration—prefer hyperbolic usage of numbers and stats over facts on the ground, too.)
All this gamesmanship and keeping-score is getting no one any closer to peace or justice.
WHAT WOULD LEVI SAY TODAY?
I’m sure Primo Levi, if he were alive today, would write a poem about the similarity of the chemical elements making up the hostile social and political environment of Israel and Palestine. He would likely be able to compare it to the one in Europe under NAZI hegemony.
Levi could certainly, as a chemist, notate the similarity between Walls and barbed wire and the chemical compounds used to build prisons and walls in Dachau and in the construction of the separation barrier of Israel-Palestine paid with by US taxpayer largess.
However, such number crunching and elemental analysis gets no one any closer to the real issues of hate and memory in Israel-Palestine.
Neither numerical number crunching nor study of numbers and sizes of fences and measurements of destruction (or ruins and numbers of lives destroyed) encapsulate the issues that need to be discussed in 2008, 2009, and beyond, i.e. to make the Middle East (or planet Earth) a healthier place in ours and our children’s lives.
In short, STOP COUNTING and stop bombing people and elements they live in into smithereens!!!!
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