Part 2: DISTORTION
Confucius, was once asked, "What one thing, if it could be accomplished, would benefit society most?" The sage is said to have answered, "The rectification of names." ("Calling things what they really are.').
Yours truly believes another expression has come to need clarification: Years ago, before money became so important a consideration in career choice, we would often hear of people being "called' to a profession and dedication, to have felt "chosen' by God or destiny to be a musician, doctor, engineer, etc. When we heard that Jews thought of themselves as a 'Chosen people,' it sounded impressive, self-confident in dedication to be good, do good things, build hospitals, make discoveries to benefit everyone, play and write masterpieces in music, literature, the graphic and performing arts for all society to enjoy. "Chosen people' never sounded like "Master race' which brings to mind arrogance, contemptuous superiority, apartheid and brutality. "Chosen people' reminds one of the amazingly great number of revered and beloved inspiring heroes of great accomplishment for all Mankind throughout history, wise world citizens and Jewish.
Then there is that biblical excuse for oppression, 'God gave us the Land,' that needs rectification. It correlates somewhat with that "Lebensraum" excuse of another superiorly armed people who once caused Jews (among other peoples) untold suffering.
"God gave the land' in primitive times under primitive conditions and circumstances and the Jews took this same land from others and left no one alive in Jericho. Would God want the land retaken three thousand years later in the age of instant communication and abundance? Surely, a good amount of sacred ancient places could be purchased or designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
In the space age, one need not own the land to enjoy it with others. Territorial imperative would seem to be a throw back to less learned times.
In the 1930s, fellow Europeans expelled the Jews from their homes. In the new millennium, a fellow Semitic people continue to expel Arabs from their homes. What a bizarre twist of fate.
Also, that concocted phrase used by imperialists to divide and conquer, "these two peoples just can't get along" needs to be debunked. Palestinian Arabs look up over the wall at their keepers and try to remember how it was to be free, come and go as one pleased. Israelis look down on the Palestinians and remember how it was like being walled in, despised, dispossess, exiled, poor, hungry and threatened, and they say to themselves "never again." Desperation on both sides.
Upon detailed investigation, this desperation is for someone else's benefit. Outside forces, have been inciting misunderstanding suspicion, enmity, fear, confrontation, violence and war between these two ancient peoples since before the end of WW II. First, the non-socialist Greater Israel Zionists made life difficult for the Zionist majority and the indigenous Jews of Palestine, convincing, frightened and provoking Jews and Arabs into unbridgeable mistrust. Partition did the trick of creating a war which U.S. policies have sought stoke violence and keep war smoldering until now. And always with the cover story "these people just cannot get along with each other."
How many dozen civil wars in the third world has the U.S. empire been purposefully involved in between the Korean and today's Libyan, its corporate mass media building support for intervention with the most preposterous of lies, disinformation and half-truths? No, if not for the intentions of dominating outside investment interests, Arabs and Jews and all the other peoples could "get along fine."
In our time, Confucius would have suggested 'terror' is a word that if rectified, would be of great benefit to society.
Those who fire rockets targeting randomly at whomsoever, or suicide themselves in in order to take "enemy,' civilian if not military, along, are certainly intending to terrorize a whole population including the innocent children of the enemy. What drives this calculated insanity?
The answer is an initial insanity! The insanity of being willing to kill anyone in the area of one's target. Collateral death over and over again is no longer accidental. It becomes intentional collateral killing. It is also random in nature. One may take care to "kill as few (collaterally) as possible', as opposed to the "as many as possible' of your enemy, but it is still terrorizing a whole population.
If over years, nine or ten times more people are killed collaterally than the other side kills intentionally, confusion arises over which is the greater crime, especially if those resorting to killing intentionally have not the weapons to kill collaterally, nor are able to defend themselves from the enemy that does have them and is using them.
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