Among the astonishments of visiting Gaza are the ubiquitous portraits of martyrs in public places. Such pictures are, obviously, an essential expression of honor in Palestinian culture.
My response to these portraits was wholly aesthetic, and not moral. I don't know what any of these men and boys did, though some of them evidently died in the January slaughter.
Here (with apologies for the out-of-focus-where's-Waldo style of my photography, notwithstanding which, all these photos are copyright Phil Weiss) is my gallery:
For those interested, here is a brief history of Palestinian fine art, with fine examples: http://www.shammout.com/art-pale.htm Note they've tried to absorb modern western art modes and use them to express their vision within the reality they could not/can not use the modes used in the west since the early 2O th Century to protest politically against their situation.
This is like looking at the streets of South Lebanon which have lost so many (martyrs) when resisting against Israel. These kind of posters are usually displayed in the towns in which the martyr was born and raised in. If you were a leader who was martyred your photo will be displayed all over the place. Although martyrdom is not limited to only those who died fighting, as martyrdom is for all who were killed or died at the hands of the aggressors, for the most part the martyrs who died fighting are the ones who get displayed on these posters…
I think commemorating martyrs is "an essential expression of honor" in any culture, Phil, don't you? I mean, what are you trying to imply with that sentence — that "Palestinian culture" has a "primitive" fixation on "honor" that "we" don't have? Think about it.
Phil! Hold you camera level.
Thanks for that link, I didn't know about those artists.
"My response to these portraits was wholly aesthetic, and not moral." With all due respect, if that's the case you've missed the point entirely. The aesthetic aspect of these images is very much secondary to their functional roles in ritual mourning and expressing political solidarity.
This is an important point. I agree with Rowan. Somehow you seem to want to empathize with Palestinian suffering without giving legitimacy to the resistance. Honoring those who died fighting occupation- what a peculiar people!
Rowan, I respectfully suggest that you are being a bit prickly. Phil said that the pictures were an essential expression of honor in Palestinian culture. His verbiage does not imply that reverence for those fallen in defense of one's people is either uniquely Palestinian or primitive. We commemorate with statues and names chiseled into stone. I assume that Palestinians will build lasting memorials for their dead when they have a state and reasonable assurance that the Israelis won't bomb such structures into fragments.
Look at all the rituals of honor we provide to men and women who have taken part in America's extermination jamborees in Iraq or Southeast Asia. Bear in mind that none of our abominations could qualify as defense of homeland or a fight against occupation….they were pure, murderous aggression and nothing more. Who are the primitives?
These are fantastic shots, Phil!
…their functional roles in ritual mourning and expressing political solidarity. good call
H-O-N-O-R = D-I-G-N-I-T-Y
Getting down to details, I was able to make out several of the coats of arms. Obviously the Hamas coat of arms is prominent in many; Hamas' military arm, the Izz ad-Din al Qassam Brigades coat of arms made several appearances; even the Muslim Brotherhood logo shows itself on the large banner with Sheikh Yassin in the center (which also happens to have the other two aforementioned symbols). Another coat of arms appears frequently, and it looks like that of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but I can't be sure. There are a few more, and I'd be interested to know if they're the unit insignia of subordinate units to the al Qassam Brigades. Anyone else in the know on Hamas symbology?
let us, on this in between sabbath, not forget the murderers: NOTE: The following piece was published by Yedioth Ahronot on 21.12.2006 online. Stalin's Jews, By Sever Plocker We mustn't forget that some of greatest murderers of modern times were Jewish Here's a particularly forlorn historical date: Almost 90 years ago, between the 19th and 20th of December 1917, in the midst of the Bolshevik revolution and civil war, Lenin signed a decree calling for the establishment of The All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage, also known as Cheka.
cont. Within a short period of time, Cheka became the largest and cruelest state security organization. Its organizational structure was changed every few years, as were its names: From Cheka to GPU, later to NKVD, and later to KGB. We cannot know with certainty the number of deaths Cheka was responsible for in its various manifestations, but the number is surely at least 20 million, including victims of the forced collectivization, the hunger, large purges, expulsions, banishments, executions, and mass death at Gulags. Whole population strata were eliminated: Independent farmers, ethnic minorities, members of the bourgeoisie, senior officers, intellectuals, artists, labor movement activists, "opposition members" who were defined completely randomly, and countless members of the Communist party itself
Sorry, can't remember the last time our "rituals of honor" for soldiers included placing posters of them all over the neighborhood, claiming that their death was welcome and justified by god, or celebrating by handing out sweets to passers by once they managed to kill a certain number of non-Americans. Notice the amounts of ink spilled over the discussion of torture by the US. When was the last time there was a discussion of the morality of using violence as a means to an end in the Arab world? Who are the primitives?
carnas The American Nazis in Indochina were not given quotas of people to be murdered? That's interesting. Where does your history come from? The quotas certainly did exist and cheerfully were met by killing anything that moved–primarily civilians, and declaring the victims as "enemy combatants" a policy as consistent as it is loathsome (as we see in Iraq and Afghanistan). The American "people" absolutely DID celebrate, honor and sing the praises of Wm Calley after My Lai. I was around then. I remember. Were you? Of course, Calley was small potatoes when we consider the US program of mass extermination (that's EXACTLY what it was) in Laos. (See 'Voices from the Plain of Jars'…if you have a strong stomach, that is) Who are the primitives?
Who are the racists?
The ghastly people of Israel didn't celebrate the wanton destruction of Gaza? Not much. They stood along the border cheering the airstrikes Israel was carrying out against schools, hospitals, industries, zoos and so forth. "Primitive" is too diplomatic a term to be used in connection with the vermin of Israel.
RE: "Who are the primitives?" SEE: "IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot at Gaza Rescuers, Note Says" – by Amira Hass, 03/22/09 (excerpt) GAZA STRIP – "Rules of Engagement: Open fire also upon rescue," was handwritten in Hebrew on a sheet of paper found in one of the Palestinian homes the Israel Defense Forces took over during Operation Cast Lead. A reservist officer who did not take part in the Gaza offensive believes that the note is part of orders a low-level commander wrote before giving his soldiers their daily briefing. One of the main themes in news reports during the Gaza operation, and which appears in many testimonies, is that IDF soldiers shot at Palestinian and Red Cross rescuers, making it impossible to evacuate the wounded and dead. As a result, an unknown number of Palestinians bled to death as others cowered in their homes for days without medical treatment, waiting to be rescued…. ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/03/22-0
RE: "Who are the primitives?" SEE: "Pots of urine, feces on the walls – how IDF troops vandalized Gaza homes", by Amira Haas, 03/06/09 HAARETZ ARTICLE – http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1068989.html
Yes, I agree, Colin. I am pushing deliberately in the opposite direction to the common view that "they" are different from "us" — more primitive. I have a sort of political yoga which involves always assuming that "they" are exactly like "us" in all fundamental respects, and that only racist brainwashing has ever told us any different. So I push that perspective.
this statement by carnas is simply too hypocritical to be worth analysing.
I agree. Phil was not looking at the memorial art in aesthetic terms at all. I don't know why he so characterized his interest. Phil? There's a mote in in his eye in this respect. Are photos of American GIs dead in the newspaper or on TV of aesthetic interest? No. Phil really needs to look at why he characterized his interest so.
No, our MSM media on TV posted those faces, or did you forget? As did more numerous ones in aggregate in all the local print rags across the USA; they are still doing it although the MSM TV has stopped pretty much. We don't have to actually say their deaths were welcomed by God, justified by God–in the USA one merely refers to honoring those slain in our cause (fighting the war on terah, the American Way). Are we now using the Arab World (or Israeli World) re torture as our guiding light, our bright line? Good to know.
Yes, they did, and this is captured on YouTube. Reminded me of the privileged folks who lined the Battle Of Bull Run with parasols, delicately eating from their picnic baskets back in the day.
I agree. He's a mental midget and ignorant of history.
I lived through that era and there were no murals for Calley. Most Americans were against the war in Viet Nam. Try another lie.
He/she is a tweaker high on 'ziocaine'! Neocon logic: This statement is untrue. "We create reality" I'm so sad. I really miss analog. Those were the good old days. ERGO: D-I-G-I-T-A-L = S-A-T-A-N!
RE: "Phil! Hold you camera level." MY COMMENT: No! It is better to be a 'cockeyed optimist'.
"too hypocritical to be worth analysing" THE TURD REICH!
Although the 60-year onslaught against the Palestinians' very existence bears little resemblance to the one-day terror attacks of 9-11, the reaction of American families was very similar to that of Palestinians. I remember seeing news reports on TV of posters and photographs of missing Americans plastered all over ground zero, and memorials with flowers and teddy bears mourning the dead, for weeks if not months after the event. I think Rowan is right; the human reaction to life-shattering events is very similar and our differences are very superficial.
Still the wrong link, and I somehow can't edit: http://online.sfsu.edu/~amkerner/memory/yamamoto....
I don't think you can compare the mourning of death and the heroizing of the death. There are a number of features missing in the usual mourning of death. But it is also obvious that the situation creates such a cult. Must create. Their death needs to have a larger meaning, otherwise it in vain.
I also lived through that era. True, there were no murals of Calley (as there won't be for our GIs who engaged in torture worthy of a NAZI cartoon, copied from Israeli custom). However, most Americans were in favor of the Viet Nam war for quite some time before the MSM turned against it, and the privileged students afraid of the Draft. How short a memory, or selective one, you have. Our post Nam MSM certainly had no version of the Pentagon Papers; rather, they beat the drums for pretextual war, based on PNAC POV; they have not let up yet, hoping to steer Obama towards war on Iran, after a charade of "we tried."
Amen. Why don't the AIPAC & Israeli right-wingers see this? Same question re mass America? I'd say it is because they have an ideological blanket over them that they do not even feel.
As usual, very mature responses. "Electric Jesus" seems to be particularly intelligent. LeaNder, though, has it right – there is a difference between mourning and heroizing death. They're not the same, neither culturally nor morally, despite all the attempts to paint everything here with a broad stroke of moral equivalence. The incorrectness of this equivalence is, of course, exposed here inadvertently: Citizen points out that we should not be using the Arab world as our moral guiding light. Good to know someone here actually recognizes that women's rights, gay rights, free speech, etc. are actually signs of progress.
I have pointed out a number of times that random bombing of whole populations in the name of "gay and women's rights" is not the best conceivable way to advance them — rather the reverse, as any but very stupid gays and women should realise.
Looking forward to seeing the posters of the dolts who honor suicide bombers. There's a special place in hell for you, so why don't you drink a cup of gasoline and light your faces on fire, and just get on with it? Cowardly pigs.
How about we go one step further and say humans are ALL the same save for their circumstances. It's the belief that peoples are different "inside" that we all have to get past.
Let's hope that if someone murders Phil's parents he'll have the courage to take a strictly aesthetic interest in the murals made in the killer's honor. You can send the liberal hypocrite to Gaza, but you can't stop him from being a suburbanite. . .
Shammout rocks.AWESOME.Very mooving.
Hey carnas you have the right to mourn your civilized way,and I have the right to mourn my primitive way.Or even that the natives arn't entitled to?,
Remember that those who died on 9/11 were almost immediately eulogised as 'heroes' – Habermas was famously baffled. See, e.g., David Simpson, 9/11: The Culture of Commemoration, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2006.
Amen
Are we forgetting that there is an occupation and the "killers" are resistance fighters? We need to go a long way before we internalise the concept that "primitives" are as much entitled to (just) defensive war as we "civilised" are.
Don't think that aesthetics and morality are separate categories. They are very much the same. There is no Beauty without Good, no Good without Truth.
I respectfully disagree. Beauty is the whore of any refined eye or ear with a handy skill set.
Look, a Kantian among us.
they do it almost perfect, its a part of death industry in the name of Islam, its an ancient business, but revived by whom these days? you people can guess, they learned from the past not let the Muslims do there jihad spontaneously, so they had to be the godfather for extremers, in order to under control this craziness ……
Iranian Murals: Resistance, Hope, Transcendence By Nuremberg Law and hence International Law, blowing up Zionists is completely legitimate anywhere in Stolen or Occupied Palestine. We Americans should honor Palestinian martyrs for they are fighting a war against Zionists, who are also dominating and oppressing us here in the USA. Palestinians are fighting our battles, for Zionists are the enemies of the whole human race.
Well, actually, it's more lie a good looking shaggot or shiksa portrays the golden jews as victims fighting heroically for the underdog in the movies.
Aw shucks, they just want to survive at all costs to non-jews, so what's new?