One of my Facebook friends pointed me to this article, Adam Curtis’s SAVE YOUR KISSES FOR ME – HOW THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, HAMAS AND THE ISRAELI RIGHT BECAME CO-DEPENDENTS IN AN ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP.

It’s very much worth a read.

Also, from a strictly formal perspective, I was intrigued by Adam Curtis’s insertion of vintage film and video footage, which made his text come alive. (I do wish he’d nail down the difference between “it’s” and “its,” though…)

Things I learned/ hadn’t thought about before:

• that Tel Aviv was modeled in some ways on Herzl’s Alt Neuland as well as on Bauhaus-style notions of progressive housing and urbanism;
• that Hannah Arendt’s trenchant insights on “the banality of evil” contributed to destabilizing Israel’s attachment to progress and progressive politics (the belief that politicians could fix things, that we really can do better);
• that early in the state’s history, Israelis were not entirely dissimilar to post-WWII Germans who also preferred not to rake over the immediate Nazi past (and that the Eichmann trial very vividly thrust that past into 1960s Israel, much to the eventual detriment of progressive politics – this is Curtis’s thesis, and it’s fascinating);
• that Rabin’s game (to deal with Arafat and the PLO in a bid to …well, what?, marginalize and neutralize Hamas?) backfired in the worst way (Hamas won out over the PLO and Rabin lost to Bibi – who, I didn’t know till reading this article, had lost his older brother at Entebbe);
• and that as a result (again, Curtis’s thesis), the Israeli right wing and Hamas are locked in a deadly, escalating, embrace.

I could go on, but it’s such a loaded topic that I think I better not.

I’ll just say that Hamas’s position is a disaster, and that any religious leader who advocates treating one’s enemies the same way as they have treated you (that is, it’s ok to kill their women and children and defenseless citizens because at some point they killed yours – never mind that on occasion you deliberately put your defenseless ones in harm’s way) is not representative of any kind of worthy religion. And any “religion” that teaches little children, daily, to hate and hate, and hate again day in and day out, deserves to go to hell. Prospects of peace with people who follow a religion like this are very dim indeed.

Regarding western hangers-on of the above, think again. As one of the German Revolutionary Cells terrorists who’s sorting Jews from non-Jews at Entebbe puts it, “I’m no Nazi – I’m an idealist.” My ass you’re an idealist. You’re an idiot and a tool.

Posted: 12|6|12 at 2:28 pm. Filed under: politics.

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