Smoking Marlboros In Palestine

a lit cigarette - by Tomasz Sienicki - Creative Commons

         "Apparently you knock first, with various “knock on the roof” bombs dropped  
          around the hospital before dropping the big kaboom on top of the hospital itself.
          You also send a text telling the people in the hospital to leave the hospital
          because you plan to bomb the hospital, which of course the people can't do 
          because they are "in the hospital".  -- Rob Lewis, How to Bomb a Hospital

I’ve been watching the televised version of Democracy Now! for many years now, but lately I find it very difficult to watch. It overwhelms me — emotionally and otherwise. Especially the reporting on the presently unfolding Israel / Palestine catastrophe. The images and words are just too much to bear. Children, bloody, buried under rubble and dust. Just Too Much.

A headline from a couple of days ago: State Department Official Resigns, Says Israel Is Using U.S. Arms to Massacre Civilians in Gaza. Good on him.

When president Biden was on the air, recently, hugging Netanyahu and repeating what I regard as rather obvious Israeli propaganda about who was responsible for the bomb which exploded at the hospital I thought again “I am not an American.”

That is, I’m not part of the “we” who say “We did this.” I didn’t supply that bomb. I wouldn’t have. I’d refuse to!

It was America which supplied the bombs to Israel, in the name of “security”.

I was simply born here on Turtle Island. I don’t even own a flag. Yes, I pledged allegiance to the stars and stripes a thousand times in elementary school, hand over heart as required. But I was just an ignorant child at the time. No, I’ve not officially denounced and legally withdrawn my citizenship. But I do not love this country — or any country. (The land and waters of the world I love.) They—states, generally— sicken me. Biden sickens me. Trump sickens me. Bush (both of them) sickened me. Even Obama sickened me sometimes.

I’m told the claim that Israel’s current government is an apartheid state is a “highly controversial claim”. Why is this a controversial claim? What about the overwhelming mountain of evidence? Are we blind to the evidence?

The crime of apartheid is defined by the 2002 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as inhumane acts of a character similar to other crimes against humanity "committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime". — Wikipedia

Hmm. “Racial group”. Race has turned out to be a fiction, not a fact. It doesn’t even exist as a biological category. (Ask any qualified biologist.) It’s an illusion, at best. Perhaps they should have called it “ethnic group”. (Or, maybe more to the point, “religious group — or just “different kinds of people”) That, at least, has more facticity. (I honestly don’t believe the term ‘race’ refers to anything factually real. Nor do biologists who specialize in genetics. Race was a human invention of the political imagination, and noting more.) ¹

Palestine Recognition Map - By Night w, CC BY-SA 3.0

Does Palestine exist as a “state”? Well, it appears that the world’s states don’t all agree on this matter. Most states have accepted Palestine as a member of the Planetary State Club (PSC International). But something is perhaps a little fishy about the ones who have not “recognized” Palestine’s statehood. Are they all former (or current) British colonies who have grown up to be part of some sort of Anglo-American global empire? Something like that—, perhaps? Heck, even the criminal oligarchical state of Russia has signed on as supporting Palestine’s statehood. Weird.

Presumably, a principal feature of statehood is internal self-determination of a people dwelling within the geographical boundaries of any given state — which isn’t something which Palestine has had since the state of Israel was formed by the Official Dominion Decree of Those Who Have Appointed Themselves As Sole Grand Masters of Planetary State-formation Authority. That’s part of the reason Israel has been defined by sensible, sane, reasonable people as an apartheid state engaged in numerous particular crimes against humanity.

To be an apartheid state is to engage in what most of the world has agreed is a crime against humanity. To arm and provide political cover for an apartheid state is to be complicit in crimes against humanity. The USA is guilty of crimes against humanity. President Joe Biden is guilty of crimes against humanity.

Hello?

By not acknowledging Palestine’s statehood, the states marked in grey in the above map are refusing to acknowledge the right of political self-determination of Palestinians. That club is led by the USA, which provides the weapons which Israel has been using against Palestine. It also leads the world in providing political cover for Israel, an apartheid state.

What this means is that the USA sanctions and supports apartheid and crimes against humanity. It supports them with political cover, billions of dollars and the most sophisticated weaponry in the world.

Durban (South Africa) sign - photo taken and donated by Guinnog, Creative Commons

When I began writing this “piece,” intended perhaps to become an “essay,” I was prepared to explain why, were I in Palestine just now, I’d light up a Marlboro cigarette … and open a good bottle of Kentucky whiskey and….

I was going to say that I had beside me a copy of the book Trust Us, We’re Experts, written by the same author team as Toxic Sludge Is Good For You.

I was going to crop the photo immediately above, footnote the authors of those two books and explain how my title actually makes sense in light of how popular media decides now what too many of us regard as “truth” and “fact”. I’d link you to this video, so you can see how lying sacks of suit-and-tie-wearing excrement spread bovine feces if it pays well…. But those who are ready to know it already know it, I suppose.

Instead, I’ll conclude by mentioning that this was intended to be a continuation of the theme of my last article here, Painting By Numbers. I wanted to say something about how narratives shape our discourses, and how those with money and power (two facets of one thing in the current world Machine) shape our narratives. But I suspect it may be a little late for all of that. Those who don’t know it are not likely to be persuaded by the likes of me — an obvious anti-Semite and eco-fascist.

I’m just hurt. Deeply hurt. Wounded to the core, and smoking Marlboros in Palestine. But not literally. I’m doing it figuratively, in solidarity.

And now for some gin. I haven’t smoked more than one or two cigarettes in several months.

Pray for my soul.

1. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization)#Defining_race