Eyeless in Gaza

[bemildred]

Note the author.

The terrorist is history’s biggest coward. He does not wage war as a soldier but as a fanatic without conscience. His victims are always civilians, like those dying in Gaza and Israel, and shot down over Ukraine. According to a 2013 report by top terrorism-tracker, National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), over 15,500 civilians were killed in 8,500 terrorist attacks across Africa, Asia and the Middle East. START has so far codified over 104,000 terrorist attacks. Six of the seven most virulent terror outfits are al-Qaeda’s stepchildren, and most deaths occurred in Muslim-majority countries. The real numbers would be much more.

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The tragedy of Palestine and Israel is their blood-soaked geography of faith. The Hamas doesn’t recognise Israel’s right to exist, like so many of its Arab neighbours, after its formation in 1948. The Arabesque of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq vowed to drive Israel into the sea, but they were militarily humiliated by their intended victim. Ever since, the Palestinian state has become an Arab jihadi cause célèbre, claiming thousands of lives since the 1960s.

Hamas is engaged in a struggle for survival. Its logistical and financial support has dried up after Israel blockaded Gaza in 2007. After its main sponsor, the Muslim Brotherhood, was overthrown by the Egyptian military, smuggling tunnels and the main supply lifeline of the crucial Rafah crossing have been blocked. Starved of funds and isolated, experts believe Hamas launched rocket attacks to force Egypt to act against Israel. It is unlikely that Egypt would help the Muslim Brotherhood affiliate in Gaza.

The Jew and the Hindu are the only two faiths—apart from the Buddhists who were massacred by Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khilji in 1193—to have faced savage persecution from zealots and survived. The Moghuls tortured Sikh gurus. If India’s conscience is to be awakened by the rhetoric of religious protest, let it indeed cry out for justice—not for the Jew, the Palestinian or the Kurd, but for the Unknown Civilian, whose bones litter the eternal graveyard of history.

http://www.newindianexpress.com/columns/ravi_shankar/Eyeless-in-Gaza/2014/07/20/article2339028.ece

[sabbat hunter]

1. Fantastic

well written article by Ravi Shankar.

[bemildred]

2. I liked it.

It took me a while to figure out where he was going with it, but I quite agree with that last sentiment.

[azurnoir]

3. in the last paragraph he touched on a truth

it is the civilians much more than the combatants that suffer in war

[cali]

4. and note the reference to Huxley

[bemildred]

5. Oh yes.

Very good book, "Eyeless in Gaza", and an excellent metaphor too, Samson and all that. I've been fond of Huxley since my youth, both his novels and essays. Edit: I think I've read everything he wrote at one time or another, like Orwell.

I was impressed with Shankar's writing too, he is a bit florid, but shows a lot of "range". That was mainly why I posted it. But then Indians are more English than the English in some ways.

[cali]

6. I like it a great deal.

I was also impressed with Shankar's writing. I don't think I've ever read anything that he's written before this.

And just as a side note, my astrological chart was done at birth by Huxley's first wife. The woman I was named for, a relative, was one of his closest friends. I remember playing on the lawn at her house on Mandeville Canyon Rd while the adults- Huxley, the Manns and others in that set of European intellectuals, talked and talked and talked. Eva Herrmann was a fascinating woman who witnessed some very interesting history. She did a wonderful caricature of him:

http://www.unz.org/Pub/Bookman-1932may-00184

and rather a good one of Einstein, as well:

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwolfguenterthiel.blogspot.com%2F2014%2F02%2Feva-herrmann-artist-in-exiles-sanary.html&tbnid=2rjKEUvkYAI6TM:&docid=qKp5UrKl3m-8MM&h=677&w=800

[bemildred]

7. Ha ha ha. Those are good.

Now that is a social set I could get into. Although at the time I was still a just gleam in my father's eye, I think. Yes, he was analytical all the way, Huxley, none of that right-brain stuff. Like Orwell. And then he got into mescaline. I wish he had lived longer, he would have made a great old man.

My father ran around Hollywood in the thirties, owned a parking lot as I remember. He would kick himself periodically for selling it when I was a kid.

That is very cool that you have a connection.

[bemildred]

8. Link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyeless_in_Gaza

... Promise was that I
Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;
Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves ...