This is Entry 13 in the Mondo Awards end-of-year Inspire-us contest. Rick Burgess first posted this piece on his site on the day of the flotilla attack last spring.
This is the article I am sick of reading.
This is the article that will voice a reaction to the flotilla attack. It will detail a brief recap of events being careful to give room to the official Israeli narrative because a government is intrinsically more trustworthy than human rights activists or foreign accented reporters to a serious person.
This is the article that will talk about how this affects Israel, because the author unconsciously empathises more with the nice European like Israeli Jews than the swarthy mysterious uppity ‘other’ (just as the Ashkenazi elite are privileged above Middle Eastern Jews).
This is the article that will not make any comparisons to other sieges or acts of piracy because that would expose the utterly different responses of Western Governments and frighten the delicate sensibilities of the faux informed reader.
This is the article that will affect a vague world weary plague-upon-both-your-houses demeanour which appears as informed cynicism but is actually timidity and a laziness to do the research into the real situation.
This is the article that might ask where is the Palestinian Gandhi demonstrating the author’s ignorance of the many non violent activists Israel has murdered & imprisoned over the years and still does.
This is the article by someone who avoids the contemporary frontlines of discourse such as Electronic Intifada , Mondoweiss, Pulse , Jewish Voice for Peace , London Review of Books , Angry Arab , Jews San Frontieres. Consequently this article has unexamined belief in the good faith of the ‘peace process’ that every year it is claimed to be happening allows more heavily armed colonies to be built and more Palestinians to be dispossessed.
This is the article that although the US Congress voted 410-4 for more military aid to Israel does not want to get into that whole ‘Lobby’ thing.
This is the article that will note Hamas has an anti-semitic clause in their charter but will not so quickly note that Zionism is an exclusionary ideology that privileges Jews above others and has created an apartheid regime intent on ethnic cleansing.
This is the article that will not mention the majority of Jewish Israelis support restricting human rights organisations’ operations, that a garrison state with national military service has created a militarist population and political parties none of whom significantly dissent from hard line Zionism.
This is the article that will not mention the Shministim, the young people who are imprisoned for refusing to serve in the IDF.
This is the article that will note the Israeli peace movement and human rights organisations but not note how they are victimised by the authorities of all kinds.
This is the article that may support a ‘Jewish democracy’ while avoiding the reality it is code for expulsions, settlements and apartheid.
This is the article that will allow the reader to tut tut after each atrocity, but no more than that, thus enabling the next atrocity to unfold without consequence.
This is the article that whatever the death toll of Palestinians and internationals will note Gilad Shalit is still detained (and contrary to propaganda the flotilla did offer to deliver a letter) but probably will not mention the 6,831 Palestinians detained by Israel.
This is the article that will note injuries and dead on all sides but is wary of the proportions such as those of Operation Cast Lead where it was approximately 100:1 Palestinian to Israeli fatalities (150:1 if you discount IDF friendly fire deaths).
This is the article the New York Times might be daring to publish, or the BBC might report on but always ending with the number of rocket attacks into Israel and misleadingly -without context- say Hamas seized power in Gaza.
This is the article that will not mention the gas fields Israel is stealing from Palestinians, or the water or the land, because an even hand of condemnation must be maintained.
This is the article that is not comfortable with acknowledging the Nakba.
This is the article that waits for Leaders to Do Something, it will wait for as long as it is told to.
This is the article that is too cowardly and shallow to mention how a fighter against apartheid saw parallels in Israel, or to understand- ‘If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.’
This is the article that will appear on thousands of blogs, news & magazine sites and is a waste of everyone’s time and energy, it convinces readers to shrug ‘oh that pesky Middle East, what a cauldron of violence why can’t they all just get along’ and do nothing but keep chattering.
So instead…
Do Something
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
Protests
