{"id":4510,"date":"2009-01-03T22:04:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-03T20:04:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2024-12-14T19:07:16","modified_gmt":"2024-12-14T17:07:16","slug":"epalestine-experiment-in-provocation-by","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/2009\/01\/epalestine-experiment-in-provocation-by\/","title":{"rendered":"[ePalestine] An Experiment in Provocation (By BRIAN ENO)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Counterpunch  <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

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Weekend Edition<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

January 2 – 4, 2009<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

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An Experiment in Provocation<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

Stealing Gaza<\/strong><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

By BRIAN ENO<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

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It’s a tragedy that the Israelis – a people who must understand better than almost anybody the horrors of oppression – are now acting as oppressors. As the great Jewish writer Primo Levi once remarked "Everybody has their Jews, and for the Israelis it’s the Palestinians". By creating a middle Eastern version of the Warsaw ghetto they are recapitulating their own history as though they’ve forgotten it. And by trying to paint an equivalence between the Palestinians – with their homemade rockets and stone-throwing teenagers – and themselves – with one of the most sophisticated military machines in the world – they sacrifice all credibility.  <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

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The Israelis are a gifted and resourceful people who fully deserve the right to live in peace, but who seem intent on squandering every chance to allow that to happen. It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that this conflict serves the political and economic purposes of Israel so well that they have every interest in maintaining it. While there is fighting they can continue to build illegal settlements. While there is fighting they continue to receive huge quantities of military aid from the United States. And while there is fighting they can avoid looking candidly at themselves and the ruthlessness into which they are descending.  <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

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Gaza is now an experiment in provocation. Stuff one and a half million people into a tiny space, stifle their access to water, electricity, food and medical treatment, destroy their livelihoods, and humiliate them regularly…and, surprise, surprise – they turn hostile. Now why would you want to make that experiment?  <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

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Because the hostility you provoke is the whole point. Now ‘under attack’ you can cast yourself as the victim, and call out the helicopter gunships and the F16 attack fighters and the heavy tanks and the guided missiles, and destroy yet more of the pathetic remains of infrastructure that the Palestinian state still has left. And then you can point to it as a hopeless case, unfit to govern itself, a terrorist state, a state with which you couldn’t possibly reach an accommodation.  <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

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And then you can carry on with business as usual, quietly stealing their homeland.  <\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

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Brian Eno is a musician and music producer.  <\/em><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

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https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2009\/01\/06\/the-history-and-quot-morals-quot-of-ethnic-cleansing\/<\/a><\/p>\n

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epalestine-subscribe@lists.riseup.net<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Counterpunch  Weekend Edition January 2 – 4, 2009 An Experiment in Provocation Stealing Gaza By BRIAN ENO It’s a tragedy that the Israelis – a people who must understand better than almost anybody the horrors of oppression – are now acting as oppressors. As the great Jewish writer Primo Levi once remarked "Everybody has their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","iawp_total_views":3,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[936],"class_list":["post-4510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"authors":[{"term_id":936,"user_id":4,"is_guest":0,"slug":"sambahour","display_name":"Sam Bahour","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/bca109c333bf6d8ae807746dd512adde46265d37c923f6cd0fc4aab437f8e9aa?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"1","first_name":"Sam","last_name":"Bahour","user_url":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour","job_title":"","description":"Sam Bahour (\u0633\u0627\u0645 \u0628\u062d\u0648\u0631) resides in Al-Bireh\/Ramallah, Palestine. He does business consulting as Applied Information Management<\/a> (AIM), specializing in business development with a niche focus on the information technology sector and start-ups.\r\n\r\nBahour was instrumental in the establishment of two publicly traded firms: the Palestine Telecommunications Company (PALTEL) and the Arab Palestinian Shopping Centers (APSC). He is Co-founder & Emeritus Member of Americans for a Vibrant Palestinian Economy<\/a> (A4VPE) and until recently served as an independent Director at the Arab Islamic Bank P.L.C. and a board member at Just Vision<\/a>.\r\n\r\nHe writes frequently on Palestinian affairs and has been widely published in leading outlets. He is co-editor of HOMELAND: Oral History of Palestine and Palestinians<\/a><\/em> (Olive Branch Press, 1993), tweets at @SamBahour<\/a>, and blogs at epalestine.ps.<\/a>"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4510"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9088,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4510\/revisions\/9088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4510"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epalestine.ps\/sambahour\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=4510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}