The Culture of Palestine

There is an unbelievable amount of misunderstanding about the Palestinian people in the West, particularly in the United States, where Palestinians have been reduced to a stereotype in the minds of many, an ugly, deadly stereotype of sub-human, fanatic mad-bombers who deserve what they get from Israel and its allies.

But nothing could be farther from the truth, and this giant demonization of an entire people reeks of the same kind of hatred and vindictiveness that the Nazis perpetrated against the Jews in Europe, in a word, anti-Semitism. And where there is hatred, violence is not far behind.

But how can you call this anti-Semitism if is employed against Arabs? They are not Jewish.

Quite easily, because ethnically, the Arabs are also considered a Semitic people, just like the Jews. They all came out of the same cutural cauldron of southwestern Asia. The term Semite refers to any member of the various ancient and modern peoples originating in that area, including the Akkadians, Canaanites, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs. Of course, even the term Arab, when applied to the Palestinians, is a cliche when applied to all of them, because there were Persian, Greek, Norman and Frank, Turkish and later British cultural influences, not to mention intermarriage. The bottom line is that they are humans made in the image of God (and Goddess).

So it is ironic that even some Jews fall into the trap today of demonizing the Palestinians, their Semitic brothers and sisters. But this is what power politics, propaganda and violence do. They turn brother against brother.

But here is a brief video to challenge this god-forsaken stereotype, one that shows us the historical cultural, even physical beauty of the Palestinian people, a culture that the world should both be proud of and want to see flourish again.

The Joys of the Bush Paradigm in Iraq

What have we wrought?














Outside a morgue in Baquba, Iraq, family members cry near the body of a 17-year-old girl killed during a raid by Iraqi forces. It has been five years since the authorization of US military force in Iraq.
(Photo: Reuters) (source: Truthout.org)

The Buddha said over two thousand years ago that hatred will never vanquish hatred. Only love can vanquish hatred. This is an immutable law of the universe.

America, collectively, went into Iraq with hatred and racism in its heart. Underneath all the fine rhetoric was a deep lust to strike out and punish, if not destroy, a people we have never had any real awareness of, substituting instead decades of Hollywood stereotypes about evil, violent, thieving, lascivious Arabs. These stereotypes, although more subtle than the Nazis' fragrant stereotypes against the Jews, have been every bit as deadly. America has actually transferred this traditional Western and Germanic/Anglo-Saxon anti-Semitism against Jewish peoples, dating back hundreds of years, for a self-righteous anti-Semitism against the Arabs, because, if you even know, Arabs and Jews are both considered Semitic peoples. They were both cut from the same cloth geographically and ethnically. Moslems and Jews even share the same ancestral "grandfather", Abraham.

So if educated Americans have ever wondered how in the world the sophisticated German people could have gone along with the Nazi agenda, with the massive crimes against humanity, with the endless passion for war, violence and torture, all we have to do is look at ourselves for the last six years and how we have leisurely walked down the seductively negative path of fear, violence and loathing. We have now perpetuated a Holocaust in Iraq, with anywhere from half a million to over a million dead, with some two million plus Iraqis in external exile, another two million in internal exile. Hundreds of thousands are sick, wounded, depressed, deranged, unemployed or in prisons, overt or covert, some of which still practice torture beyond prying eyes.

This is America's self-expression in the world today, massive death and suffering, compliments of the traditional Right-wing, the corporate Merchants of Death, and the Trotskyite-style Neocon fanatics. They will inevitably say in their alienated, sophistic ways, "So what, who cares, they're sub-human, and enemies of Christ or Jehovah or the American Century anyway."

But it does matter, because now this is their and our Karma. And what goes around comes around. So how will America work its way out of such terrible crimes? Is this even possible, to offer contrition at this point and try to make amends?

Even worse, America has made itself less and less human by dehumanizing others, so cruelty and inhumanity will follow us home, so to speak. Our social and political interactions within America will coarsen and harden, indeed they already have. The faux Social Darwinism of the 19th Century has returned with a flourish - the survival of the fittest, the richest, best armed and most unscrupulous.

And then we have the walking wounded. For those who have literally shot and killed or tortured Iraqis, particularly women and children, they now have their demons and ghosts inside of them permanently, no matter how they try to repress this black hole through liquor and drugs and self-denial. And we have thousands of GIs or ex-GIs carrying this burden.

This is why I don't go and beat my neighbor and burn his house down in a fit of paranoia or sadism, because I know it will all come back on me, sooner or later, no matter how invincible I think I might be. The human ego, no matter how arrogant it is, is not running the Universe. A God of Truth and Justice is. And it isn't any different for nations.

Pity the nation.