I’ve been holding back on writing about Hamas and Benjamin Netanyahu’s populist handling of the fragile situation with the Palestinians and Gaza because it hurts my brain. It’s a complicated thing, this decades-old Israel-Palestine conflict. It sprung from colonialism, with the British meddling with Middle Eastern affairs—a case of colonizers making pawns of everyone. Then it spiraled down from there.
I read one opinion piece that boldly declared that Netanyahu has to go. Another news article said that an ex-Israeli prime minister has openly criticized Netanyahu, who has ultimately delivered the Israelis onto Hamas’ hands with his kind of leadership.
“On one level, Israelis are paying the price for years of hubris, during which our governments and many ordinary Israelis felt we were so much stronger than the Palestinians, that we could just ignore them. There is much to criticize about the way Israel has abandoned the attempt to make peace with the Palestinians and has held for decades millions of Palestinians under occupation…”
Yuval Noah Harari for the Washington Post
What hurts my brain here is that I have a good friend who is a…let’s say a Zionist Christian zealot who exults Israel so much, not taking into consideration that whatever is happening in that part of the world is political in nature, not religious in the sense “it is what God wants” kind of situation. If I were younger, I would have engaged her in an intellectual tussle over this. But age and wisdom told me not to waste my breath.
“The real explanation for Israel’s dysfunction is populism rather than any alleged immorality. For many years, Israel has been governed by a populist strongman, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is a public-relations genius but an incompetent prime minister. He has repeatedly preferred his personal interests over the national interest and has built his career on dividing the nation against itself…”
Harari for the Washington Post
This, however, does not justify what Hamas has done and what Hamas is doing. They’re no different from al-Qaida, Abu Sayyaf and the Taliban. Terrorists are terrorists.
But destroying Palestinians out of existence is not self-defense. It’s genocide, not much different from what the Nazi did to the Jews in Europe.
Look at what US has done to Iraq in the guise of ridding the world of weapons of mass destruction. Now that part of the world is overrun by extremists. Look at what US did to Afghanistan. Netanyahu’s invasion of Gaza is not that different.
Violence to counter violence will cause the world to implode. We are still trying to contain the fires in Ukraine and here we are, inflaming another war.
“The government was repeatedly warned by its own security forces and by numerous experts that its policies were endangering Israel and eroding Israeli deterrence at a time of mounting external threats…”
Harari, The Washington Post
Always, it’s the ordinary citizens who are the losers in this game of chess among megalomaniacs.
Beauty fades, lust dampens and what will be left?
Nothing.
What if you settled (i.e. get married) with somebody just because you don’t want to be alone but don’t have anything in common, like a shared love for something like poetry or if you don’t talk about ideas or have genuine friendship and the only thing that binds you to this person is sex? You’ll be stuck forever with someone whom you cannot talk to for days on end. All your life. To the end of your days…
This has been one thing that my friends and I were not able to tackle during our dinner last week. Fairy gaymother K has a bf who is 15 years his junior. There’s this huge generation gap and it becomes apparent when his bf sends him memes (and the bf can spend hours just scrolling through memes) and K couldn’t understand the humor in it, the bf gets upset. Our generation didn’t grow up with memes, hence, our lack of appreciation for such. Heck, our TVs then didn’t have remote controls and we physically turn the external antenna outside our homes to get good reception!
Both of them are now in Singapore for business (for fairy gaymother K) and leisure (the bf). It’s the bf’s first trip abroad so he wants to go to 1) Universal Studios, 2) Singapore Zoo, 3) Night Safari, 4) Merlion etc etc. Just thinking about it makes K exhausted. We told him he has to accommodate his bf’s wishes however distasteful or exhausting it is for him. “You’ve got to give him that. You’re the more mature one,” one friend said.
Our generation or our circle of friends, if we were to take a trip together, we would be 1) going to museums and discuss the latest exhibit; 2) backpacking our way by train from Thailand to Laos/Cambodia (which K and B did a few years ago); 3) attending a jazz music-fest or watching a dance performance; 4) enroll in one-time pottery-making class just for the heck of it; 5) sneak in a class in some university just for kicks.
We were talking about M’s online course about public policy with Harvard U; Mama K’s last marathon in Germany (her next one is NY or Boston Marathon); fairy gaymother K’s dance classes; and my plan to take up data analytics courses. We couldn’t stop talking; we only had to stop because the restaurant was already closing down.
This just illustrates that wavelengths matter in relationships. Beauty and lust die, what are left are the conversations and the friendship. If I don’t have that, better I remain single than settle for somebody substandard who could not even speak the same language as I do, metaphorically. Or literally, like writing or posting on social media using jejemon language. 🤦🏻♀️