EXCESS CYNICISM: OUR BIGGEST CHALLENGE

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August 10, 2009 at 6:57 am (Complicity, Corrupt Politics, Current Affairs, Guest Post, Israel, Palestine, zionist harassment)

By Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD

Our biggest challenge in my opinion is not the Israeli occupation, corrupt politicians, the apartheid wall, the economic deprivation, the moral slide, or the environmental catastrophe unfolding. Our biggest challenge is excess and paralyzing cynicism. How can one not be cynical when even just the past week:

- Israeli courts ruled that any Jew can claim land supposedly owned even after 100 years (or 2000 years for collective ownership) evicting others whereas a “nonJew” has no similar rights. Palestinian refugees in East Jerusalem for example cannot reclaim their lawfully registered property in West Jerusalem but a Jew can claim property (rightly or wrongly) anywhere even with forged documents. Meanwhile evicted Jerusalemites sleep on the street outside their homes (see video )

- The Palestinian authority reported $1.5 billion deficit (it spends most of its budget on “security”). Some 75,000 “security” personnel are here to manage a presumed restless Palestinians living under Israeli brutal colonial occupation. The sad reality is that these are inmates ensuring other inmates do not act “irrationally” especially against the concentration camp guards.

- We commemorate the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the largest deliberate attack on civilian population in history but few bothered to evn ask how can we get rid of teh stockpiles of nuclear weapons in the US, Russia, England, Israel, and other countries. Instead, diversionary tactics are used ensuring we remain hostage to these ghorrible weapons.

- Hamas rulers reiterated they are willing to accept a state on the border of 1967 and that they can maintain law and order just as well as the next guy (to prove it, no rockets were fired on Israel for seven months). The Israeli jailors still not satisfied, they maintain the medieval siege of the concentration camp of Gaza. These war crimes and crimes against humanity are tolerated (nay abetted) by a supine Western World.

-Demand for refugee return is marginalized or even totally ignored by ruling factions and that is on the good days. On bad days, they wage outright war on this most simple of human rights: the right to go back home.

-There is still a lot of International effort to free the Israeli occupation soldier captured by Hamas but few seem to care about the horrible life of the 11,000 kidnapped Palestinian political prisoners.

-At the Fatah convention, Fatah activist delegates wanted accounting for the past 20 years especially financially since Fatah spent hundreds of millions and owned lots of properties around the world. The current leadership said it was sufficient to hear the oration of Mahmoud Abbas and that the new central committee can take up the issue of finance after the election (presumably because any such transparency could disrupt the election outcome)!

-Italian legislator and arch racist Fiamma Nirenstein wants to create a group of Israeli legislatures who would increase the hostility of Israelis toward Europe because the Israeli public “is not hostile enough when one considers how hateful some European institutions are of Israel.” She says she expects the members of the new body to come to European forums and “attack ferociously those who call to demonize Israel.” Apologetic tactics, she told Haaretz at her home in the colony of Gilo (built on occupied Palestinian land), won’t work: “You Israelis must have courage to say you are at war and how much it costs you”!!!

-The Israeli foreign minister lives in the colony of Nokdim (one of the dozens of colonies that reduced the Bethlehem district to 15% of its former size. This foreigner who became foreign minister “summoned for consultation a senior Israeli diplomat who in a confidential memo criticized the [Israeli] government for harming ties with the U.S. last week” according to Haaretz.

- The same fascist wants to promote more Israeli arms sales to countries in Latin America and Africa. Zionist elites have always made money by promoting conflicts, wars and oppression. Israel has a long history ranging from the close working relationships with apartheid South Africa to its training of the thugs of Somoza and other dictators around the world. The Israeli voices that ask for changing such long-term destructive policies are feeble.

- Bethlehem district lost over 80% of its lands to Israeli settlements (illegal under International law) and what is left of it has become a concentration camp with horrible environmental trends. The European Union and USAID continue to pump millions here and well-dressed local politicians meet with well-dressed donors pretending everything is normal (or on the way to normality). SUVs, dinners, security, and more give the illusion that we are a “state in the making”. Everyone pretends that current negotiations would lead to better conditions (or at least non-deterioration since there is the threat that all that is built up could be destroyed as happened in 2003 and 2004). Facts and population trends and ecological and environmental disasters in the making are ignored.

I could go on describing other examples but I am sure readers can come up with dozens more examples even from their own communities of items that could lead to increase in cynicism. If there are scales to measure cynicism, would we in the “Holy Land” break the record? How much cynicism exists among Israeli Jews? How much cynicism exists among Palestinians who number 11 million (70% being refugees or displaced people) and whose suffering has now exceeded 100 years? For decades, people have been murdered, dispossessed of their ancestral homes and lands, stabbed and backstabbed by “friend” and foe. Many feel abandoned by a (cynical?) world. Many know the history of how Arab “brothers” and their own “leaders” sold us out for narrow personal interests.

Cynicism is a pervasive temporally and spatially. In excess, it is corrosive and destructive. It is a monster which feeds on itself creating self-fulfilling prophesies and shaping its own fertile grounds. All countries and communities face the ravenous cynicism monster and are cowed in so many spheres of life. Look at how talk about global warming has been co-opted by corporations (even ones heavily contributing to it) and the average person becomes cynical of our ability to change it. One could also argue that those who do evil things and those who are corrupt are victims of uncontrolled cynicism.

What would have happened if cynicism is decreased through positive energy and hope in humanity? Would we even have Zionism or Nazism or environmental damage? Would we have corruption? Would we have individuals who sell themselves to the enemies of their people? Would we have wars? If your answers as I expect they are and if everyone knows the ills of rampant cynicism as an epidemiological disease, why not find cures or even vaccines?

First, we must realize that cynicism is a biologically useful defense mechanism that allows individuals to be wary of a treacherous environment, to prepare, to be ready for the unexpected. But cynicism in excess can lead to paranoia, delusions, destructive behaviors, and even suicide (personal or collective). So unlike a deadly biological disease, we do not hope to eliminate it but merely to make it manageable. When it is in excess we humans need to find at least some positives to balance in order to maintain a natural, manageable, and healthy cynicism. This is not an easy task. It starts within our own hearts by first forgiving ourselves for being negative/excessively cynical (after all we are human). We then need to deal with cynicism in our community by reminding ourselves that humans are highly adaptable species. That nothing is fixed. Even feudal societies evolve. Europe in the Middle Ages was not the same as Europe of the enlightenment. But change begins with us not on the outside. I am sure that if each of us makes a point to look for positive things in our own surrounding, we will find so many which will help create a more positive energy for change. Just in the past 48 hours I experienced:

+Two guys who have not seen each other for over 20 years reconnect and recollect shared experiences in an Israeli prison (during the late 1980s intifada).

+An Israeli woman tells of her six years experience witnessing at checkpoints, reducing abuse of Palestinians by simply being there and talking to Israeli soldiers.

+An American teach Palestinian children climb an artificial wall with harnesses and robes

+A French women and her daughter give support and love to children at Aida refugee camp.

+A US representative in Fatah convention work diligently to effect real positive change on the ground.

+Two other delegates take time to visit a cemetery at a refugee camp and read the Fatiha on the souls of those departed martyrs including dozens of children

+A gentle man belonging to DFLP (Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and another representing the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) genuinely engage (though separately) in discussing how the left has failed to provide a real third option outside of the Fatah-Hamas duopolies.

+A Palestinian worker in genetics matures to identify abnormalities in human chromosomes that a few months ago hardly anyone in Palestine would know anything about.

+Reading and seeing pictures of key people who participated in the Arab higher committee in the 1930 (a group in Palestine that gathered people of different political parties unified in their stance and hard work). I happened to read this at a day I communicated with colleagues in Gaza on joint projects.

+Jewish intellectual Uri Davis was nominated to Fatah revolutionary council. No matter where we are politically outside or within Fatah, that is a positive sign.

+A South African radio broadcaster reminds us (while interviewing me on Palestine) that work does not end at a particular historical moment (like when apartheid ended) but that life is a continuing struggle for doing things better, for justice, and for peace. I am reminded that which road and how we walk it is what matters not a particular goal.

These and hundreds more every week are what balances and keeps our excess cynicism in check. We feel lucky that we interact with so many people daily who show us what positive energy feels like. To these interactions, we owe so much. Sometimes friends need to point these things out to each other. So come where ever you are, let us visit together and walk around the streets of this troubled land and point out to each other all the great things that lift our spirits and keep our cynical side a bit more realistic :-)



Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
A Bedouin in cyberspace, a villager at home