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Seeing Evil

Posted December 29th, 2015 by Lesley Hazleton

In end-of-the-year phone calls from friends near and far, many express despair at the state of the world. I fully understand why, but I don’t accept their despair. In fact I can make a strong argument against it. Because what has changed is not so much the world itself, but our awareness of it.

drowned boyA single click on the screen you’re looking at right now will bring you to visceral images from thousands of miles away. A Syrian boy’s body washed up on the shore of a Greek island. A young woman beaten to death and set on fire in Afghanistan after a malicious rumor that she had burned a Quran (which leads me to ask “and even if she had…?”). Crazed Israeli settlers celebrating a wedding by cheering the arson murder of a Palestinian baby. A white cop shooting a fleeing black man in the back. We focus on such images, and ask what the world has come to.

We forget where it has come from.

When Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature came out a few years ago, I bristled at the pseudo-religious sentimentality of the title. (Okay, I still do.) But the book has stayed with me, along with its subtitle: “why violence has declined.” Yes, you read that right.

Pinker is no cock-eyed optimist: he’s an empiricist, and he spends close to 700 pages proving his point with data . “We can see our world as a nightmare of crime, terrorism, genocide, and war,” he writes, “or as a period that, by the standards of history, is blessed by unprecedented levels of peaceful coexistence.”

Now, it’s true “the standards of history” are pretty low, and that as Pinker himself notes, to make such a case in a century that began with 9/11, Darfur, and Iraq could well be seen as hallucinatory, even obscene. But it’s also true that despite what we see on the news, more people live more safely than ever before.

The difference is that now we know about violence. News spreads almost instantaneously. Cellphones are everywhere. Images are captured in real time, and seen in real time. And it’s only human to focus on these images.

So how do we deal with so much knowledge? How do we go about our lives with this awareness?

Outrage, shock, and even despair all seem to me healthy reactions. Because they are reactions, and not so long ago, there were none.  White cops once shot unarmed black men as a matter of routine. Refugees have drowned and starved in far greater numbers in the past. Women were once set on fire in Massachusetts as well as in Afghanistan. And massacres were by the thousands, even without the aid of guns. But all of this was hidden from immediate consciousness. Such events once passed for the most part unnoticed, unreported, unremarked upon until far later.

And more important, we didn’t see the violence. We didn’t have the evidence of our eyes. Now we do, and it encourages me that we are shocked. That we are outraged. That we do condemn. That we do care.

Evil can no longer take place under the cloak of silence.  We hear it, and we see it. And we speak up against it. We are all witnesses now. And as witnesses, we will step forward.

And yes, despite the evidence of our eyes, this is progress.

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File under: sanity, technology, ugliness, war | Tagged: Tags: Afghanistan, cellphones, Israel, Palestine, Refugees, Steven Pinker, Syria, The Better Angels of Our Nature, violence | 15 Comments
  1. Candace Moore Hill says:
    December 29, 2015 at 10:28 am

    Dear Lesley, you and I are in complete agreement, but no one was burned at the stake in the Salem witch trials. Lynchings around the country maybe, but not as capital punishment.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      December 29, 2015 at 11:03 am

      Just checked, and you’re right: they were hung. In Denmark, they were burned.

      • Candace Moore Hill says:
        December 29, 2015 at 11:34 am

        Lots of burning in England as well. Which is an interesting question to ask, burning at the stake did not happen in the United States as a public execution, why was that? Lynching is another matter.

  2. Rachel Cowan says:
    December 29, 2015 at 11:41 am

    Thanks Leslie,
    I needed this reminder. I read articles about his book when it came out, and I hold to the anti-despair position, but sometimes my attention sags, and despair creeps in.

  3. Robin Bissiri-Lewis says:
    December 29, 2015 at 12:18 pm

    Yes.
    Various societies can allow the weight of knowledge, pertaining to worldwide human suffering, to crush the spirit of hope and resolve OR motivate all of us to collectively seek ways to relieve and prevent that which afflicts others.
    Positioning ourselves like the 3 chimps with hands over eyes, ears and mouths is a common impulse but we CAN and must overcome this!

  4. Anne says:
    December 29, 2015 at 12:49 pm

    Maybe “evil can no longer take place under the cloak of silence”, but evil seems to be doing just fine in the light of day. As of a few days ago, it appears that sentences in Farkhunda’s murder are being commuted and it is uncertain what the disposition of the case will be.
    Video of a “A white cop shooting a fleeing black man in the back” didn’t seem to deter the shooting of a white man (and the subsequent murder of his autistic 6 year old son, Jeremy Mardis), allegedly by black officers. All of the visibility and condemnation of the drug-related violence in Mexico hasn’t lessened the horror. It would seem that the determination of what is evil (or the degree of evil and whether to punish, or how severely to punish) is pretty much in the culture’s (those in power in the culture) eye.

    We know evil, we see it within a few hours, we condemn it, but now what?

  5. Pat Davis says:
    December 29, 2015 at 1:02 pm

    And it was not just “women” murdered in Salem, one was my great grandfather X6, Samuel Wardwell, hung on the gallows. He was an architect and builder of the House of Seven Gables (now the Salem museum.) His crime: a bachelor who scooped up the best looking widow in the area..

  6. John Odum says:
    December 29, 2015 at 1:11 pm

    Thanks for your optimism. Progress has always been a messy, “three-steps-forward-two-steps-back” business. When you’re in the midst of it, it’s hard to tell how to measure a step (or to have any clear sense of where you are in the process). It gets hard to avoid drowning in the gloom sometimes, but as you say – onward and upward. Of course these days we also have the complication of whether or not the rate of degrading planetary habitability is compatible with our process/pace of improvement as a species (yikes).

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      December 29, 2015 at 1:46 pm

      Yes, measuring the size of steps is tricky business, as is figuring out which way you’re going on them. Do they go up or do they go down, or are we all in the middle of an Escher drawing? (or stuck on one of those weird gym machines). Plus, I wonder if there’s a link between the violence we do to the planet and the violence we do to each other…

  7. jveeds says:
    December 29, 2015 at 3:17 pm

    As an anonymous would-be philosophe once said: “A bigger window always reveals more scenery…but not always the scene you want.”

    (Ok, that was me who said that).

  8. Dr Mansour Malik says:
    December 29, 2015 at 9:45 pm

    Our world is in a mess. I agree with you we must keep our hope and positive way for a better peaceful world

  9. Life's backpacker says:
    December 30, 2015 at 3:18 am

    Hi Leslie, very insightful and yes something that has come to my mind too. Thanks for putting the right words together (wish they could come as easily to me). Which brings me to my next question; is war/violence/death an auto-immune response by God/nature/whatever-you-choose-to-call-that-power, to the burgeoning population of this planet?

  10. Fran Love says:
    December 30, 2015 at 5:44 pm

    Leslie thank you for this reminder that all the current atrocities are actual improvements to previous times. I certainly was not looking at it that way so your point of view, and Pinker’s. is an important reminder for us all.

  11. lynnrosengiordano says:
    December 30, 2015 at 11:42 pm

    As Fran says, you’ve opened some eyes on world perspective and the actual progression of human kindness Thanks for the reminder.

  12. De Lise Hartzell says:
    December 31, 2015 at 8:54 am

    Your blog brings up a very good point. Going to read the book you mentioned.
    I have wondered and debated the same question.

    Awareness precedes action.

A Hard Choice? Really?

Posted October 1st, 2015 by Lesley Hazleton

The right-wing is trying like hell to do a number on the minds of American women. You know that thing about abortion being the hardest choice a woman will ever have to make, or the one she most regrets? Bullshit.

90_percentIn fact 90% of all American women who’ve had an abortion are either glad or simply relieved they did (click here for the research.)  And for every woman I know who’s had an abortion (that’s half the women I know, and quite possibly half the women you know too), a safe, routine, minimally invasive procedure was far from the hardest decision of their lives. For many, like me, it was the simple, sane choice. The only hard part was finding the money to pay for it.

You want a hard decision? What about marriage? Or divorce? Taking on a mortgage? Choosing a cancer treatment? Allowing a terminally ill spouse to die with dignity? What about the multitude of hard decisions we all have to make in the course of our lives, men and women?

But right-wingers don’t think women capable of rational decision-making at all.  It’s apparently especially hard for us delicate souls, which is presumably why they think we agonize over it and decide wrong.  How very Victorian of them. They’re apparently white knights in shining armor, out to save every woman from her own distressingly poor judgment.  In their ideal world, no woman would be “allowed” to make a decision without prior permission from the Republican caucus.  Certainly not any woman with an income under a million a year.

But it’s not our decision-making that stinks, it’s theirs.  Because not only is it morally and ethically bankrupt, it’s full of lies — deliberate lies.

— Like Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina pretending to be near tears as she talked about watching a video that didn’t exist and never had.

— Or the head of the House Oversight Committee trying to play gotcha with the head of Planned Parenthood by using a bogus chart created by an anti-abortion group.

— Or abortion opponents pretending there’s no such thing as an embryo.  They’d have us think that every abortion is that of a full-term viable fetus, when none are.  The vast majority of abortions are embryonic, medically defined as up to eight weeks from conception.  But hey, you can’t see an embryo on a sonogram, let alone wave photographs of it in an attempt to guilt-trip women.  So lie, baby, lie — and screw the lives you mess up in the process.

It’s clear by now that nobody cares about facts in the fantasy world of today’s Republicans.  Real facts, that is, as opposed to imaginary ones.

Those of us who live in the real world know for a fact that imaginary facts are dangerous.  Remember those non-existent weapons of mass destruction used as the reason to invade Iraq?  Or those non-existent scientists asserting with great authority that there was no such thing as climate change?

Forget hard decisions for the moment.  Here’s an easy one:  A year from now, do all you can to make sure we send this gang of women-hating, war-mongering, planet-polluting liars back to whatever slime pit they crawled out of.

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File under: feminism, US politics, war, women | Tagged: Tags: abortion, Carly Fiorina, embryo, imaginary facts, Planned Parenthood, Republicans | 7 Comments
  1. Amna says:
    October 1, 2015 at 11:36 am

    Right on Lesley!
    But I am afraid that this whole country is blinded with madness and hatred and stepping away from humanity, humility and humanitarianism …The way things are going we could have the republican president representing this country next year and that will be the beginning of dark ages,once again… All my reasons for coming to this country in hope of finding equality, prosperity and freedom will be wiped away… there is less and less concern in this country for minorities, women and suffering of people in other parts of the world. America will turn the corner for worse and will never be the same….

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      October 1, 2015 at 12:00 pm

      Not the whole country, Amna. Nowhere near. But a warning that we can never take sanity and progress for granted. We always need to stand up and be counted, speak out, and call the bluff of ignorance and bigotry. Each in our own small way.
      Here’s Margaret Mead: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.”

  2. jveeds says:
    October 1, 2015 at 5:42 pm

    Not to change the subject…well, OK, to change the subject…do you have any thoughts on the Pope’s personal audience with the Kentucky county clerk, Kim Davis? I read Andy Borowitz’s satire on it and thought he was making that part up. But it really happened. But the weird thing is, no one from the Pontiff’s team seems to be willing to say why the abominable Davis was invited, what they talked about and there’s even some speculation that the Heir to the Chair wasn’t entirely aware that the meeting was being set up. That’s pretty hard to believe and maybe by the time you get to pontificalizing on this yourself we’ll have more info.

    But in the meantime, I’d love to get your take on this. Maybe His Petership was calling her in to say “STFU,” albeit in more popely terms.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      October 2, 2015 at 9:40 am

      Oh yes, it’s a weird kind of fun to watch Vatican spokesmen trying to spin this! The rationalizations are fascinatingly torturous. Yesterday: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/01/us/pope-francis-kim-davis-kentucky-clerk-washington-same-sex-marriage.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 and then today: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/03/world/europe/pope-francis-kim-davis-meeting.html
      Me? No pontif(f)icating for now. I’m just continually amazed at the screwed-up stance of orthodox religion on anything to do with sex (viz abortion, women clergy, gay marriage, contraception, priestly celibacy, pederasty).

  3. jveeds says:
    October 2, 2015 at 10:41 am

    Either way, I’d say this was a monumental failure of the Pope and his handlers, an epic miscue whereby either the Pope was under-informed, or misled, or simply had no conception of the political implications of having this notorious and divisive evangelical yahoo anywhere near his midst.

    It’s hard to believe that the papal PR machine allowed this to happen. In my view, it spoils much of the goodwill that the entire visit to America had gathered. So so sooooo stupid to let something this obviously misguided to happen.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      October 2, 2015 at 11:10 am

      Agreed. A ton of secular goodwill went out the door the moment Kim Davis entered it. Or maybe it was just a sudden jolt of reality.

  4. chakaoc says:
    October 9, 2015 at 5:34 pm

    Go, Lesley – morons and liars all. Their investigation into PP found nothing but there will be no exoneration because….well, it served their purpose. The slime pit beckons – hope they heed the call.

The Rubble-Bucket Challenge

Posted August 26th, 2014 by Lesley Hazleton

If you happen to live in Gaza, the one problem with accepting the ice-bucket challenge is that it requires a plentiful supply of ice. After seven weeks of bombardment, water is in short supply in Gaza, and electricity is scarce, so there’s no way to make ice. As journalist Ayman al-Aloul noted, however, what Gaza has in abundance is rubble. In fact thanks to the Israel Defense Forces, it has whole neighborhoods of it. Thus: the rubble-bucket challenge, which I accepted this afternoon halfway round the world in Seattle.  Please consider this an open invitation to take the challenge too:

rubble_compo

(The rubble I used came, either ironically or appropriately, from a building site.)

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File under: Middle East, war | Tagged: Tags: Gaza | 6 Comments
  1. Nuzhat says:
    August 26, 2014 at 8:32 pm

    Too much of a chicken….for both, ice and rubble!
    Instead, we have a rice bucket challenge started in India yesterday. A great cause here too.
    We just got to take a pail of cooked rice to the nearest poor locality. Not too difficult for us, surrounded by starving fellow beings that we encounter each day. A practical and humanitarian move!
    Nuzhat.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      August 27, 2014 at 10:56 am

      Totally love the rice-bucket challenge, which actually makes a difference: kudos!
      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/26/india-rice-bucket-challenge_n_5710481.html

  2. Guy de la Rupelle says:
    August 27, 2014 at 2:17 am

    Brilliant!

  3. amin tan says:
    August 27, 2014 at 5:21 am

    Dear Lesley Hazleton,
    You have been polite and assuage their ego that you use a passive or docile description of Israel armed forces as Israel Defence Forces. By doing so you are encouraging or embolden the Israel soldiers that their killing, destruction and bombing are strictly defensive in nature.
    I think it is grossly a misnomer.
    There is no such thing as Defence Forces. The prevailing fighting strategy is always attack as the best form of defence or the American calls it pre-emptive strikes.
    It would do humanity, goodwill and human welfare a lot of good if israeli is sincere by uplifting the blockade and removing all the road blocks and other humiliating treatment of human race in Palestine. What is the point of Israel continue to impose atrocities upon the Arabs of Palestine on the daily basis and at the same time they are shouting to the world that they are the vIctims.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      August 27, 2014 at 10:53 am

      There is an irony in the affairs of men…

  4. Zmurrad says:
    August 28, 2014 at 3:56 am

    I think it is really ‘cool’. May be we can all help rebuild Gaza bucket by bucket through this challenge. Where will they begin? Overwhelming!

Aron Kader’s War Against War

Posted July 30th, 2014 by Lesley Hazleton

aron kaderI am going to wage peace upon everyone who disagrees with me. It will be an aggressive, offensive and hostile strike that will continue until I inflict the final death blow to misunderstandings and conflict. I will gather all my available resources & weapons for this assault. I will never surrender until the foes of harmony surrender. I declare war on war. I will inflict peace on everyone and occupy your fear with understanding. You will suffer under my brutal campaign of tranquility. The enemy will endure the horrors of justice, tolerance, compassion and freedom. I will indoctrinate the aggressors with acceptance until the resistance is futile. I will show no mercy for hate. If you are not with me you are against warmth, love and little furry baby animals.

This brief manifesto was posted on Facebook earlier today by Palestinian-American stand-up comedian Aron Kader, followed by this update:

My war against war begins tomorrow. I will be on CNN tomorrow on the Brooke Baldwin program to talk about the murder of my cousin Mohammed Abu Khdeir and the police beating of Tariq Abu Khdeir. Also my plea for ceasefire in Gaza and how you will never convince me we cannot have peace.

To say I’m an instant fan doesn’t begin to cover it.  Finally, a war I can support!

 

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File under: Middle East, sanity, war | Tagged: Tags: Aron Kader, Gaza, Israel, Mohammad abu Khdeir, waging peace, war on war | 9 Comments
  1. Nuzhat says:
    July 30, 2014 at 10:35 pm

    I would join this war whole-heartedly….let’s do it instantly, it’s unbearable out there. Pleas and prayers in support….
    Nuzhat

  2. Khaled Hakim says:
    July 30, 2014 at 10:41 pm

    I think, Leslie, that true (and I know how much you hate the word Truth with a capital T, but this true could be capitalized and I’m sure you’d still be on board) martyrs are the ones that die fighting this kind of war.

    I support this war too.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      July 31, 2014 at 9:39 am

      Enough martyrs, Khaled. Let’s declare the age of martyrs well and truly over, no matter what the cause.

      • Khaled Hakim says:
        August 1, 2014 at 1:49 am

        I can accept that, blindly.

  3. Anita Sloan says:
    July 30, 2014 at 11:16 pm

    This is the only war worth supporting… we must save the children from their suffering; I weep when I see the fear in their eyes. Sending my prayers and support . God bless. Anita

  4. joezias says:
    July 31, 2014 at 3:34 am

    On the other hand, Israeli frnd who lives near the Jerusalem Forest where the body was found, erected with others in the village, a monument in memory of the 16 year old who was beaten and burned to death. That evening it was destroyed by right wing activists, they rebuilt it , the next day and again in the morning it had been destroyed. When the Arab families whose sons killed in cold blood, the three young teenagers who were hitchhiking in the West Bank I may have a change of heart vis a vis the present conflict. Meanwhile it’s time to sent Hamas, ISIS, Islamic Jihad and their supporters, back to the Stone Age.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      July 31, 2014 at 9:26 am

      The point is this: In the spirit of your friend who helped erect and then rebuild that monument — and who I hope will continue to rebuild it every time it gets pulled down — let’s get beyond sending anyone at all “back to the Stone Age.”

  5. pah says:
    July 31, 2014 at 9:34 am

    let’s fight a peace war, and stop the weeping of all the mothers….let;s fight a peace war in the name of all children, regardless of origin.

  6. joezias says:
    July 31, 2014 at 11:03 am

    Several yrs ago when i was much younger I had been asked by a local Rabbi, to come to a synagogue, something which I never do here in Israel, to maintain along with others a strong physical presence when things would ‘get out of hand’, which they did. The speaker was a Palestinian living in the US who was in favor of a non-violent confrontation with the on going situation, a Palestinian Martin Luther King like figure.

    Kahanist like males were scattered through out the the audience and interrupted his presentation, time and time again and each time they interrupted young guys, wearing kippas physically tossed them out of the synagogue. At times it was a bit violent.

    His presentation was impressive and spoke to us Israelis, Peace Now, Meretz types, however when I spoke with my Arab friends, no one had ever heard of him.

Gaza City

Posted July 27th, 2014 by Lesley Hazleton

And now…?

gaza city

Photo:  Wissam Nasser for the New York Times

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File under: Middle East, war | Tagged: Tags: destruction | 20 Comments
  1. Niloufer gupta says:
    July 27, 2014 at 11:20 pm

    If jehova and allah will ,the morgue will be cleared !
    Jehovah and Allah are not so full of anger that innocents are constantly destroyed.

  2. AJ says:
    July 28, 2014 at 1:38 am

    I see my post deleted.
    Israel is the litmus test….all the champion of freedom n freedom of speech are helpless with highest degree of hypocrisy.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      July 28, 2014 at 8:51 am

      Your comment was deleted because it was not a response to the question “And now?” Name-calling rhetoric may be a gratifying form of self-expression, but it gets everyone nowhere.

  3. paul skillman says:
    July 28, 2014 at 8:01 am

    I guess the Palestineans will never get over the idea that the Zionist have taken over their land. They will fight for the land until the last one is dead. A stiff necked people

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      July 28, 2014 at 9:05 am

      Your comment was written, I’m assuming, as an ironic play on the meme of Jews as a stiff-necked people. But Hamas is not “the Palestinians.” and given half a chance, the vast majority of Palestinians would reject its repressive, ultra-conservative, militant fundamentalism.

      • AJ says:
        July 28, 2014 at 9:58 am

        I am afraid one’s terrorist other man freedom fighter….it all started when Islamists(I personally don’t agree with them) won in Algeria were not accepted by so called civilized hypocrites of world and puppets were installed as installed all over the Arab world….those whose rights were denied become freedom fighter for their cause n terrorist for the rest of world.
        Similarly Hammas won land slide but were denied power so is Mursi of Egypt.
        Interestingly Hammas did not turn into terrorist instead their victory brought out a hidden terrorist in Israel.

        Lezley u wrote

        “But Hamas is not “the Palestinians.” and given half a chance, the vast majority of Palestinians would reject its repressive”

        Just think n think and think again what u wrote….what give u right to judge over other ppl.
        Are u by birth custodian of world or u got some certified Degree in passing such judgements..

        • Lesley Hazleton says:
          July 28, 2014 at 12:32 pm

          Freedom fighters? Hammas instituted a regime of intense repression of freedom: of speech, of dissent, of education, of women, of the Gazan population as a whole. Indeed Hammas has killed more Palestinians than it has Israelis. It’s ironic, to put it extremely mildly, that you conflate Hammas with Palestine, since to do so is to condemn Palestinians to an ISIS/Taliban type of dictatorship. And I know that is not your vision of the future.
          Re judgment, why would you assume that I have a perfect right to judge the Israeli government’s irredentist stance, but no right to judge that of Hammas? I would expect the same of you: that you be capable of looking with clarity at both, or at least try to do so.

          • tonosanchezreig says:
            July 28, 2014 at 3:27 pm

            The ironic part is, that Hamas is to ISIS same as Al-Nusra or Al-Qaeda are… that is… targets. In fact Hamas are stil tonight letting doors open to acknowledge the existance of Israel if Palestinians can have their land. They also renounced to taking power when they united with Fatah before all this hell started. In short words… Hamas decided to move aside.Especially because they have lost all popular support in Gaza, and they know that real enemy are the salafis and IS-like beardies… But a prospect for peace was too much for Netanyahu and his guys. Peace means the end for Samaria and Judea, and the Greater Israel. It means toi get back to 1967 and give back all settlements and the resources they took. And that’s why we are watchiung this hell. It’s not Hamas, this time, who started. Even Gazatis hate Hamas almost as much as they hate Israel.

          • AJ says:
            July 28, 2014 at 5:46 pm

            I am speechless…..Hammas instituted a regime of intense repression of freedom where theres no life allowed by Israelis….freedom is enjoyed where theres a life……and dissenting education of women….under strong Israeli suppression theres no education at all.
            Hammas has nothing in common with Taliban and other so called jihadiz pl fix ur confusion.
            Hammas lives among oppressed n occupied ppl n representing them….u must have learn all ur confusions from CNN and BBC…I thought ur open minded.

            I am appalled at the conjecture when Hammas is equated with Israel and one sided human massacre is shown as guilt vs guilt.

            For the sake of argument lets say Hammas is guilty on all counts u alleges…give me one account of killing a baby or kidz even Israeli’s.
            If u can not come up with single evidence then at least feel some shame n guilt on what u said.

            Finding faults with Hammas is not even handedness its diffusing Israeli crimes….its like “I know X has killed hundreds of kidz but make no mistake Y is not short of throwing stones n few rockets whenever get a chance”

            IMO Israel is less guilty than those who provide her moral support by hypocritical remarks like….”we strongly urge both sides to show restrains”

            For God’s sake we are talking here about loss of innocent human lives and innocent kidz and we are contend with urging both sides to show restrains….shame on us and shame on our hypocrisy.

          • Lesley Hazleton says:
            July 28, 2014 at 7:34 pm

            Apparently not so speechless. And not so informed as to the history of Hamas either. You might start with its battle against Fatah in 2007. And its long-time use and advocacy of suicide bombing against civilians. You accuse me of presuming to have judgment? That’s an accusation that could only come from someone who has none.

  4. AJ says:
    July 28, 2014 at 10:11 pm

    Just a fraction of what Gaza strip suffer in normal conditions.

    1. Electricity is available for only 8 hours per day, and not even regularly as it depends on the availability of diesel fuel which is controlled by the Israelis.

    2. 90% of the water found in the Gaza Strip is unpotable and unfit for human use such as bathing, washing etc …

    3. Sanitation and water treatment are nonexistent so waste water is routed directly to the sea, so the beach has been closed because it’s become unfit for swimming. This is the only choice for the population as supplies and equipment are controlled by the Israelis.

    4. The problem of fuel and gas … it’s not available in most cases and when it’s available the price is exorbitant so it’s become the most expensive gas in the world at $2.20 per liter for petrol. It is also causing a problem with cooking as there isn’t propane, and if it is available again it is very expensive.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      July 29, 2014 at 9:37 am

      I know. The seven-year blockade is collective punishment. It’s abominable, and it has to be lifted. ASAP. That is merely the first of a very long series of steps. I only wish I could see them.

  5. Lesley Hazleton says:
    July 29, 2014 at 9:23 am

    July 29, and the answer to my question from Israel: it gets worse. This report from 972 Magazine: http://972mag.com/not-about-tunnels-israeli-tanks-take-aim-at-central-gaza/94582/
    Has Israel totally lost its mind?

  6. Zmurrad says:
    July 30, 2014 at 2:10 pm

    And Now ….,,,, the world needs to bring big machines such as bulldozers and construction materials to start rebuilding Gaza.
    That’s the least we can do to help.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      July 30, 2014 at 3:06 pm

      Absolutely.

      • tonosanchezreig says:
        July 30, 2014 at 3:10 pm

        Now at least I hope Caterpillar and those companies involved in occupation are discarded!! … And a petition must be sent to UN asking for intervention against such an abuse on human rights!

        • Lesley Hazleton says:
          July 30, 2014 at 3:26 pm

          In an ideal world, Tono, the UN might actually be effective…

  7. Khalil says:
    July 30, 2014 at 10:52 pm

    To israel supporters,
    I’m a 50 year old American so please hear me out. I was born and raised in the United States and the Israel and Palestine conflict has really caught my attention. The future depends on young people like myself and we sure don’t want to see a future filled with deaths and turmoil. In order to have peace, you grown ups (who we look up to) need to grow up and stop bickering about religion. Israeli supporters, you need to see Palestinians as humans first. What would you do if you were in there shoes instead?

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      July 31, 2014 at 9:34 am

      Khalil — I’m assuming from the context that you are 15, not 50.
      I have edited out the rest of this very lengthy comment for three reasons:
      A. there is a 250-word limit in comments on this blog
      B. you attached an unattributed post from elsewhere
      C. readers of this blog, as you would know if you actually read it, are already well acquainted with the facts of the situation.

  8. fatmakalkan says:
    July 30, 2014 at 11:23 pm

    Terrible ! This is pure evil. Nerve raking. I pray for peace and justice at holy land. Now both sides must understand that neither of them going to leave that land. And both sides must get rid of its current governments. They don’t want peace, they want war. This war is tearing not only them a part. It is tearing all of us a part all over Earth. No one is benefiting from it. Israeli gov. is wrong to think that they are winning . They are losing greatly. Anybody has a merciful hearth now turning against Israel and Jews. Hamas is losing too. Since they came to power at Gazza situation became bad, grim and worse. They must go as well as Israeli extra vicious Natanyahu gov. They are comiting war crimes just like Milasovich did at Bosnia before.

Gaza Morgue

Posted July 20th, 2014 by Lesley Hazleton

I still have no words that I trust.  Only this photo of a doctor weeping in the overflowing morgue of Shifa hospital in Gaza:

Gaza doctor

(photographer: Oliver Weiken, for the New York Times).

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File under: Middle East, war | Tagged: Tags: deaths, doctor, Gaza, Israel, morgue | 5 Comments
  1. Niloufer Gupta says:
    July 21, 2014 at 2:57 am

    Yes the throat chokes at the sights i have experienced thru al jazeera! I thought there would be a breakthru today- it has nt .

    Niloufer gupta

  2. Aijaz A. Mahesar says:
    July 21, 2014 at 3:26 am

    A picture speaks a thousand words, unspoken words, that do not even require to be remembered. They go deeper in hearts, deeper than we mortals know – they write themselves in our DNAs – for eternity.

  3. Rabab Maher (^_^) رباب ماهر says:
    July 21, 2014 at 1:24 pm

    The incessant ethnic cleansing of Palestine renders one speechless and anger and shame take the place of (unspoken) words (-_-).

  4. Lisa Kane says:
    July 21, 2014 at 6:35 pm

    Heartbreaking. When will this madness end?

  5. Zmurrad says:
    July 21, 2014 at 7:56 pm

    We are all ‘ DEAD’ people walking on earth. We have no humanity left. We are not moved by anything as if we are stones. Where is the power of collective conscience of human beings?

Gaza Beach

Posted July 16th, 2014 by Lesley Hazleton

My disgust with the Israeli government is so deep that I don’t trust myself with words.

But really, two articles in today’s New York Times say it all.

In the first, foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman is quoted advocating the Israeli invasion of Gaza in order to ensure “a normal summer vacation for our kids”  (the quote is way down in the 14th paragraph of the story).

In the second, we see what appears to be Lieberman’s idea of a kids’ summer vacation in Gaza:  four boys, ages 9, 10, and 11, killed by Israeli bombs while playing soccer on the beach.  It’s accompanied by this photo by the award-winning Tyler Hicks:

gaza beach

Reports from eyewitness foreign journalists here.

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File under: Middle East, war | Tagged: Tags: "summer vacation", bombing, four boys, Gaza, Israel, Palestine | 5 Comments
  1. Guy de la Rupelle says:
    July 16, 2014 at 5:07 pm

    This is really too, too sad. There’s a silly movie called “Groundhog Day” whereby the main actor (Bill Murray) wakes up to the same day, again and again and again, and it becomes a nightmare. Every few years I wake up to see almost the same news, the same hatred, the same anger, the same rockets, the same out-of-proportion Israeli response with high-tech militaria, hundreds of homes demolished in the Gaza strip, and the photos…of limp bodies of children, tear-streaked faces of Palestinian women grieving, smug-looking Israeli tanks commanders and also the frightened faces of Israeli conscripts who would rather be in their homes in Tel Aviv or elsewhere…
    And I think to myself, Will there ever be peace in that part of the world? (sigh..)

  2. Cory says:
    July 17, 2014 at 11:49 am

    This reminds me of Tom Friedman’s recent column on arsonists vs firefighters. The thrust was that the leadership in Mid-East countries are the arsonists, fanning the flames for short term political gain. If left alone, however, the general populace is quite capable of living peacefully with various factions intermingled. But I begin to wonder whether there are any “firefighters” among Israelies and Palestinians.

    Do you find any reason for hope in this dysfunctional place? Any chance of a grass roots uprising? A growing chorus of “Enough”?

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      July 17, 2014 at 1:42 pm

      Reason for hope? I hate to say it, but no, not right now. After the massacre of kindergarteners in Sandy Hook, Long Island, for instance, I thought “maybe now” there’d finally be a move toward serious gun control in the US. I mean, a whole room of five-year-olds gunned down? How much worse could it get? But no. After seeing these boys blown up in Gaza, it’s tempting to again think “maybe now,” but everything tells me not. After 47 years, the ugly mentality of occupation is deeply institutionalized, and the thuggish dehumanization and demonization of the “other” seems only to be worsening, from the top on down.
      Do I hope nonetheless? Clearly, despite everything, and reason be damned. The fact that I cannot see something happening does not mean that it can’t happen. Human beings may be infinitely manipulable, but we can also be defiantly unpredictable.
      Re “firefighters,” they’re there, of course, but we hear little about most of them because as always with the news, the adage is “flames lead.” They need support more now than ever. Inflammatory leadership and biased reporting on both sides means that those who advocate dialogue instead of violence are branded “traitors” and then attacked by thuggish extremists on “their own side” as “worse than the enemy.” I have huge admiration for all those, Palestinian and Israeli, who continue this advocacy nonetheless. It takes no courage to speak out against violence from afar; it takes real courage to do so when you know that a death threat awaits you and your family.

      • Lesley Hazleton says:
        July 17, 2014 at 1:53 pm

        And I should add this from Nick Kristof in today’s NYT, starting with the families of both Naftali Fraenkel and Muhammad abu Khdeir calling for an end to violence, but to no avail — as I wrote the reply above, the ground invasion of Gaza began.
        http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/opinion/nicholas-kristof-leadership-israel-gaza.html?smid=tw-share

  3. fatmakalkan says:
    July 18, 2014 at 4:55 pm

    Since Israel started bombardment of Gazza I became unhappiest person on the earth, their arrogance, justifying their aggressions, not caring about safety of Plastenian women, children, elderly, sick, not respecting their life’s and property is despicable. Their heart became like a stone, no mercy, no compassion left in their hearts. If Moses was alive he would be a shamed by Israeli government and he would help Palestinians because they are oppressed by Israel. He would lead them to freedom. Instead of searching the murderer of 3 Jewish boys at West Bank they are bombing 2 million people at Gazza. They needed an excuse to attact Gazza and used this crime. It is Ramadan and they ruined 1,8 Billion Muslims Ramadan with their attack. We can no longer watch news, read news. We are fed up with them. Since US behind them all muslim world is afraid and helpless:(

June 28, 1914

Posted June 28th, 2014 by Lesley Hazleton

In Flanders Field the poppies grow

Between the crosses, row on row.

World War I began a hundred years ago today.  In the next four and a half years, seven million civilians and eight and a half million soldiers were killed, and twenty million were severely wounded.  And 25 years later, World War II began.

Here’s one of the northern France killing fields today:

red poppies

And here’s one of the cemeteries.  Most of the headstones are inscribed “A Soldier of the Great War, Known Only Unto God.”  There are not enough red poppies in the world for this:

mil cemetery

(Photos are from “A Conflict That Shaped the World” in today’s NYT.)

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File under: war | Tagged: Tags: centenary, Flanders Field, military cemeteries, red poppies, World War I | 8 Comments
  1. fatmakalkan says:
    June 28, 2014 at 11:31 am

    How ironic those red blood color flowers are growing on battle field.

    Fatma Kalkan

    >

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      June 28, 2014 at 12:18 pm

      That’s why they’re the flower of World War I remembrance in the UK: they’re the first things that grow back after the devastation.

      • Karen says:
        June 28, 2014 at 7:01 pm

        My Mom and I were in London one year on Remembrance Day and we saved the paper poppies that were given to us. She used to place them on the Christmas tree and I have carried on the tradition.

  2. pah says:
    June 28, 2014 at 12:55 pm

    perhaps God sent the poppies to remind us of the beauty of life, and how we humans chose war over peace…

  3. Judith says:
    June 28, 2014 at 4:25 pm

    All war is an illusion. Nobody really wins – somebody declares themselves a winner . Peace is developmental. You can only have peace when you are ready. You can not expect a tribal people to embrace democracy as you cannot expect a 2 month old baby to drive a car. They are not ready. We lie to our soldiers, destroy thier lives and bodies and give them a parade. How obsene.

    • Zmurrad says:
      June 29, 2014 at 8:46 pm

      By the way, democracy is not the only answer to all the problems of the world. Lack of respect for the dignity of the ‘ other’ is the reason that leads to bigger conflicts. Let us all learn the ‘GOLDEN RULE.’

  4. Hugh McCauley says:
    June 29, 2014 at 2:39 pm

    It seems that there will always be wars and rumors of wars. It has been that way since the first two tribes in unrecorded ancient times began to covet, invade, enslave and kill. We don’t know why this is still the way of the world and yet civilized peace is not really so rare.

  5. Joe Ransel says:
    July 8, 2014 at 7:44 pm

    Keep writing your blog. I’m going to read them all.

The Antidote

Posted June 9th, 2014 by Lesley Hazleton

The video is chaotic.  It shows a woman being stripped, tossed around, hit, kicked, held down, penetrated, beaten into unconsciousness by a mob in Cairo.  It’s described in this New York Times report, which avoids any link to the video itself.  In fact the original YouTube upload has been deleted.  Deleting it, however, is just another way of trying to cover it up.  As I write, this one is still active.  And yes, you are warned, it’s brutal.  As all rape is.

I know that those who read this blog, men and women alike, will be incapable of watching these couple of minutes with anything but horror.  But I also know that part of the reason it went viral when first posted is that there are men out there who are turned on by it.

Just the thought of that makes me want to gag.  As does the boys-will-be-boys response to it from an Egyptian TV host, who said, with a stupid giggle:  “They are happy.  The people are having fun.”

This isn’t “just” an Egyptian problem.  Or a Nigerian or Somali or Brazilian or Turkish or Italian or Swedish or Indian or Pakistani one.  My first association was with last year’s photo of an unconscious near-naked girl being lugged around by wrists and ankles, like a carcass, by high-school rapists in apple-pie Steubenville, Ohio.

This sickness infects some men, but affects every woman.  Yes, all women.  The Twitter hashtag #YesAllWomen took off in response to the misogynistic shooting rampage in Santa Barbara, California two weeks ago, and here’s the formidably intelligent Rebecca Solnit on what it means.

Solnit was in Seattle last week talking about her new book, Men Explain Things To Me, and when she mentioned her unease at finding herself alone on an elevator at night with a strange man, there was a lone weird laugh from a man behind me in the audience.  It wasn’t clear what he found so funny.  Perhaps he simply couldn’t understand this kind of unease.  But every woman can.  It’s the year 2014, and yet it’s still not “wise” for a woman to go down a dark street at night, or ride in an empty subway car, or walk in the woods.  What was most remarkable about Wild, Cheryl Strayed’s account of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, was not the length or the difficulty of the hike, but the fact that she was a woman walking alone.  If she had been male, there would have been no book to be written.

It’s absurd that the onus is still on women to avoid being subjected to violence.  One way and another, we are told to avoid this, avoid that, take care, take karate classes, be on the alert, be afraid.  Don’t go out at night, say some.  Stay home, lock yourselves in, adopt the behavioral equivalent of a chador.  (Don’t go out at night?  An equally rational ‘solution’ would instead be to tell men not to go out at night.)

But there’s an antidote.  And it comes from men — men who really do respect women, and who know that to remain silent in the face of woman-hatred is only to give it free rein.  As former president Jimmy Carter put it in A Call to Action, violence against women is not only a woman’s issue;  it affects us all, and the only way to win this battle is to work together.  I take heart from this photo that artist D.K.Pan posted on his Facebook page after the Santa Barbara massacre.  Women are finally speaking out;  we need more men like Jimmy Carter and D.K.Pan to speak out with us.

dkpan-yesallmen

 

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File under: ugliness, war, women | Tagged: Tags: #YesAllMen, #YesAllWomen, Cairo, Cheryl Strayed, D.K.Pan, Jimmy Carter, rape, Rebecca Solnit, USBC, YouTube | 6 Comments
  1. lavrans123 says:
    June 9, 2014 at 7:13 pm

    I don’t know where to go with this sort of behavior. I see it celebrated in so many ways- our entire sport culture (anti-culture?) promotes it with the objects. Music videos.

    I stopped to get coffee and was taken aback to find the barrista wearing nothing but lingerie.

    All the power structures in the world celebrate their ascension to the rank of power as being elevated to a place where others are objects.

    And that’s what it comes down to, that’s where the trickle winds up- at the point where that is no longer a person, but an object. That’s the same method that we use to teach our children to torture and kill people; make those people an “other” that isn’t human, or that one should do these things to. The “other” is central to all the religions, and is how they maintain their long-lasting violence.

    The mere existence of police forces creates violence. They promote rape as directly as the judges do; by taking the responsibility from people to act human, and making it a law and then placing anyone who breaks the law (or pushes it, or bends it) in an “other” category.

    So, we know that the rapes in Egypt have nothing to do with any collapse in police forces and everything to do with collapses in social cohesion. We know that religious fanaticism makes rape a victimless crime that has no accountable person but the woman.

    I just don’t see it happening without removing the governments and the police and the judges and religious certainty… But maybe I’m just upset.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      June 9, 2014 at 7:32 pm

      Thanks for the touch of irony at the end there, Lavrans! Appreciated. Yes indeed, women had enough of men telling us we’re “just upset.” Good to see some men have had enough of it too. — L.

  2. Nuzhat says:
    June 9, 2014 at 9:05 pm

    Here in India the onslaught of rape news is increasing with staggering regularity, making its acceptance with apathy, a chilling reality among the young. This has sadly become a case of “crying wolf” once too many a times.
    Outrage, protests, and then just ‘throwing up hands’ in an act of helplessness by authorities, has made these gruesome news items into momentary coverages in papers and television.
    Wonder if rapid capital punishment in such cases will deter the rest of the perpetrators. There has to be a stopping of this carnage with the help of males, whose actions against their fellow “evil” males should at least deter this unforgivable trait of disrespect towards women. Men should hold talks, men should garner support of their own, and yes! men can help in restoring the dignity of women throughout the world.
    Show your brawn and worth in the right place Man!!

    Nuzhat

  3. fatmakalkan says:
    June 10, 2014 at 9:17 am

    Dear Lesley, there are millions of women all over the world who are raped, beaten up, yet this horrible actions of man is not subject to capital punishment in man- made laws!
    Isn’t it?
    But if God made law of Torah or Quran was in effect in that countries this rapist would get capital punishment. There is a dark side of some evil man! It is a reality! And who created mankind knows how violent some evildoers can get towards women and girls. To prevent that God orders this evildoers to be punished maximum dose so other evil man that sold their soul to Satin ( Shaitan ) will be scared to harm women or children. God’s law looks harsh at first side but it discourage evildoers, prevents this violance get out of hand all over the world. One evil man gets killed because of his rape, murder yet millions of innocent women and girls, boys, being saved!

  4. Niloufer Gupta says:
    June 11, 2014 at 5:14 am

    Did you read about the two teenage girls who were raped ,after they were returning home from their local field ,in badaun ,U P , India , defecating- they did not have a loo in their village home-then lynched and tied upside down on the branches of a tree. The patriarchal repressed mindset has to be changed. But how ? Niloufer gupta india

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      June 11, 2014 at 8:09 am

      Yes, that was reported here, as was the building outrage that ensued. I hope it continues to build. And that many more men join women in expressing their outrage at it. After all, that perverse mindset is not only a danger to all women, but a deep insult to all good men.

An Extraordinary Submergence

Posted March 18th, 2014 by Lesley Hazleton

Submergence-356x535I don’t remember ordering J.M.Ledgard’s novel Submergence from the library.  I do remember getting the email that it had arrived, and wondering what it was. Then picking it up a couple of days later, looking at the cover — “huh?” — and asking myself if I even wanted to read it.

I still know nothing about Ledgard aside from the capsule bio on  the back cover:  Born in Scotland, lives in Africa, political and war correspondent for The Economist.  Nothing, that is, but the fact that he’s written an astonishingly ambitious, beautiful, and haunting novel.  So much so that the moment I finished it — and I mean the precise moment, with no hesitation — I turned back to the first page and began reading it again, with even greater admiration.

The ‘plot’ is simple enough:  a man and a woman meet in a French hotel, have a brief affair, and continue thinking of each other as they go on with their separate lives.  He is an intelligence agent gathering information on militant extremists in Somalia.  She is a deep-ocean scientist obsessed with the strange life forms in the deep-water fissures of the earth’s mantle.  He is captured by jihadist fighters, badly beaten, held hostage.  She dives in a submersible 3,000 meters under the north Atlantic.  Separate lives indeed, yet somehow, and with extraordinary grace, Ledgard pulls them together into a magnificent evocation of the complexity of life on earth, human and otherwise.  And of its intense fragility.

Life in the deep turns out to be extraordinarily stable.  Life on the surface, terrifyingly unstable.  The hardship of Somalia comes as alive here as the shimmering life forms (I had to look up ‘salp’ on Wikipedia) in the hadopelagic — ‘hado’ from Hades, the deepest depths.  The jihadist captors are drawn with rare understanding even as there’s no stinting on their cruelty (including an all-too-vivid scene in which a young teenage girl who has been raped is stoned to death for adultery).

Here’s an extract from toward the end:

We cannot talk with definition about our souls, but it is certain that we will decompose… What is likely is that sooner or later, carried in the wind and in rivers, or your graveyard engulfed in the sea, a portion of each of us will be given new life in the cracks, vents, or pools of molten sulphur on which the tonguefish skate.

You will be in Hades, the staying place of the spirits of the dead.  You will be drowned in obliviion, the River Lethe, swallowing water to erase all memory.  It will not be the nourishing womb you began your life in.  It will be a submergence.  You will take your place in the boiling-hot fissures, among the teeming hordes of nameless microorganisms that mimic no forms because they are the foundation of all forms.  In your reanimation you will be aware only that you are a fragment of what once was, and are no longer dead.  Sometimes this will be an electric feeling, sometimes a sensation of the acid you eat, or the furnace under you.  You will burgle and rape other cells in the dark for a seeming eternity, but nothing will come of it.  Hades is evolved to the highest state of simplicity.  It is stable.  Whereas you are a tottering tower, so young in evolutionary terms, and addicted to consciousness.

And as an eerie footnote to this, here’s Ledgard in an interview last year on the blog of The New Yorker.  The novel “juxtaposes land with ocean and enlightenment with fanaticism,” he acknowledged. “I felt impelled to write it in this way, but it is odd, I can see that. But sometimes life is even odder. It was the strangest moment for me when Osama bin Laden was killed and buried at sea. Everything came together in the abyss. I have often thought about it since, not just bin Laden’s weighted corpse sinking down to the sea floor, but also the processes done on his body, the creatures, the crushing dark, and that’s what I am talking about — there is another world in our world.”

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A Picasso for Jezebel

Posted November 25th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

The come-on, in a brief item in the New York Times arts section:  “A Picasso for $135?  There’s a Chance.”

Yeah, sure.  I would have ignored the headline except that it ran under a photo of a run-down street somewhere in the Middle East.  Tyre, as it turns out.

The $135 is for a raffle ticket, and the raffle is a fund-raising project run by the International Association to Save Tyre.  How exactly the intended arts center and research institute could save this war-battered town on the coast of south Lebanon is not at all clear, but the organizers sure know how to get attention.  Apparently reckoning that international big spenders wouldn’t know Tyre from Timbuktu, they came up with a splashy prize:  a gouache said to be worth a million dollars.

tyre-picassoThe most I’ve ever spent on a lottery ticket before is $2.  Yet it wasn’t Picasso that made me go here and drop 67.5 times as much.  Nor the absurd idea of a million dollars hanging on the wall of my houseboat.  In fact much as I admire Picasso (there’s a bronze head of his in the Tate Modern right now that I could stroke all day if they wouldn’t throw me out at first touch), this piece, Man With Opera Hat, doesn’t really do much for me.  Perhaps because I’m just not that into men in opera hats (men in fedoras would be something else…).

No, what inspired my extravagance was Tyre itself.  Or rather, Tyre’s most infamous princess, Jezebel, who was born when it was at its most splendid, three thousand years ago.  The same magnificent Phoenician princess who married the king of a small mountain kingdom called Israel, challenged the fierce prophet Elijah and sent him packing, died one of the most gruesome deaths in a book not known for eschewing grue, and and was branded a harlot for her trouble by the men who wrote the two biblical books of Kings.  I wrote a biography of her some years back, and I’m still half in love with her.

Even her sworn enemies, the Hebrew prophets, were half in love with her.  Maybe more than half.  Here’s Ezekiel delighting in the splendor of her home city even as he savored its eventual fall:

You were an exemplar of perfection.  Full of wisdom, perfect in beauty.  You were in Eden, in the garden of God, and a thousand gems formed your mantle.  Sard, topaz, diamond, chrysolite, onyx, jasper, sapphire, ruby, emerald, the gold of your flutes and tambourines – all were prepared on the day of your creation.

So you might think the New York Times would ask the organizers what happened to Tyre, and how come the most sophisticated civilization of its time was reduced to battle-scarred poverty, its run-down buildings overlooking the archeological remains of what once was.  Instead, they asked this:  “What would Picasso have made of the raffle?”

Pfah!  They could at least have asked what Jezebel would have made of it.

“A tiny little gouache?” I can hear her saying.  “That’s it?  With all the wars fought and blood shed since I was alive here, wouldn’t Guernica have been more fitting?”

guernica3

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File under: art, Middle East, war | Tagged: Tags: Guernica, Jezebel, Phoenicia, Picasso, Tyre | 4 Comments
  1. Laura says:
    November 25, 2013 at 6:36 pm

    It was great to hear you speak about the Jezebel book a few weeks ago at the temple in Bellevue. You made biblical history come alive in a way I had not heard before. Thank you for sharing,

  2. Lesley Hazleton says:
    November 26, 2013 at 11:04 am

    Thanks, Laura — this post was definitely connected to that evening, which brought Jezebel alive again for me too!

  3. Karen Parano says:
    November 27, 2013 at 9:15 am

    For Jezebel’s honor and for so many other reasons, I hope you win! And that Mr. Picasso presents the gouache to you in person.

  4. Gwen Parker says:
    December 31, 2013 at 12:46 pm

    Guernica definitely fills the bill! Thanks for the thought!

Sign Here, Syria (and Israel, and Egypt)

Posted September 9th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

In the whole debate on whether to deploy a missile strike against Syria for the use of sarin gas, my mind has been (appropriately?) like the many-handed Hindu goddess of darkness and death, Kali.

— On the one hand, what exactly would a US missile strike achieve, especially since President Obama has so carefully described it as limited in scope and intent?

— But then am I really so callous as to say we should not move when chemical weapons are deployed, especially against sleeping civilians?

— Then again, the level of the debate has sickened me (all the talk about maintaining America’s credibility, for example, as though that were more important that what’s actually happening in Syria — or the talk about how we can’t let Assad “get away with it,” as though he were merely a schoolboy who’d broken the rules).

— But does that really mean we just sit back and do nothing?

— Though that’s exactly what we’ve been doing as an average of 5,000 Syrians have been killed each month.

— But is military action really the only option?

—  And isn’t the idea of a surgical strike another of those military oxymorons created for armchair warriors thrilling to missile-mounted cameras as though war were a video game?

—  And shouldn’t the US have intervened to prevent chemical weapons being used, instead of as a gesture of disapproval after their use?

All this, and I haven’t even gotten to the question of who would actually gain from such a strike.  And without even mentioning Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and…

Kali needs more than eight hands.

But today’s diplomatic developments seem to me immensely hopeful.

All I know at this moment is what you do:  Russia has publicly proposed that Syria give up its stockpiles of chemical weapons.  And since Russia has so openly supported the Assad regime (and been a major supplier of the ingredients for those weapons), and since Assad has so publicly claimed his regime did not use chemical weapons (all evidence to the contrary), the demand that he give them up to avoid a US-led missile strike may be an excellent example of his bluff being expertly called.

So I have a modest proposal that might sweeten the deal — for all of the Middle East.  It’s as follows:

Seven countries have held out on the international treaty against the use and manufacture of chemical weapons, aka the Chemical Weapons Convention.  Those countries are Syria, Israel, Egypt, Angola, Myanmar, South Sudan, and North Korea.  (Two of these — Israel and Myanmar — have signed, but so far, have not yet ratified it.)

So if we’re really serious about banning chemical weapons, and if we’re really serious about the search for some nascent form of Middle East peace (two big ‘ifs,’ but bear with me), we should demand not only that Syria give up its chemical weapons and sign and ratify the treaty, but that at least Israel and Egypt both step up to the plate too.

We should seize the moment and say “Sign here, Mssrs Assad, Netanyahu, and Sisi.”

And we should do it right now.  Before we forget about chemical weapons until the next time they’re used.  Before we leave Assad to keep killing Syrians with conventional weapons.  And before the American public again retreats into its normal state of apathy about anything that happens in countries where the majority are not apple-pie white and Christian.

At least let something good come out of all this horror.

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File under: Middle East, US politics, war | Tagged: Tags: chemical weapons, Egypt, Israel, Russia, Syria, treaty, United States | 6 Comments
  1. Irene says:
    September 9, 2013 at 11:15 pm

    Thanks Lesley!!!!! This is the best I have read and heard on this topic so far. I am with you. Completely.

  2. Dora Hasen says:
    September 9, 2013 at 11:26 pm

    By jove, I think you have got it! The time is definitely now and I appreciate your truthful comment about American public.

  3. nuzhat fakih says:
    September 10, 2013 at 12:01 am

    how TRUE Lesley……on every word said here….oh, what a disgruntled feel it is, to be a helpless observer to this insolent crime being flaunted for the rest of humanity to see…..misguidedly in the name of religion or politics or power.
    Our hearts and prayers remain with each innocent sufferer of this holocaust.
    had been waiting for your comment on this issue from you, and was expectedly rewarded with these enlightened views.

    Nuzhat.

  4. Chad says:
    September 10, 2013 at 4:31 am

    Me Like!

  5. Lesley Hazleton says:
    September 11, 2013 at 10:37 am

    But how? Per today’s NYT, finding let alone destroying Syria’s chemical arsenal may be all but impossible:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/11/world/middleeast/Syria-Chemical-Disarmament.html?hp

  6. Adil Rasheed says:
    September 19, 2013 at 7:00 am

    Lezley, I would like to bring to your kind attention that it is not only Sisi, Netanyahu and Assad who need to sign and ratify the treaty but even the US and Russia should be told to observe the CWC which required them to destroy their stockpile of chemical weapons before a final deadline required by the CWC, which elapsed in April 2012. So much for those who like drawing red lines.

Burning Man v. Zaatari

Posted August 6th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

zaatari camp 2Burning Man campPoet and writer Tamam Kahn had the wit to contrast these two aerial photos of temporary cities — the Zaatari camp for Syrian refugees in northern Jordan, and the Burning Man encampment in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada.  The desperate on the left, the Dionysiac on the right (below).

She also had the fortitude to use the Zaatari one as her screen saver for the past two weeks.

Zaatari, she writes on her blog, is “miles of boxed lives,” with each box a caravan, a prefab shelter, or by now simply a tent.  By last month, the population of the two-year-old camp was 115,000, including 60,000 children.  It is now Jordan’s fourth-largest ‘city.’

Tamam quotes Angelina Jolie on the Syrian refugee crisis, speaking in June: “1.6 million people have poured out of Syria with nothing but the clothes on their back, and more than half of them are children… Every 14 seconds someone crosses Syria’s border and becomes a refugee.”

And she ends her post with this:  “I’m struck with the surreal thought that this is the time Burning Man begins to come together as a desert city — half the size of Zaatari — a celebration of life, way out in the Nevada desert. Two cities: one a sudden city of survival, the other — an enormous party of freedom and excess. Hold them both! I tell myself. May all beings have what they need. May all have shelter, food and clean water, be well, safe, and happy.”

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File under: existence, Middle East, war | Tagged: Tags: Angelina Jolie, Complete Word, Jordan, Nevada, refugee camp, Syria, Tamam Kahn | 4 Comments
  1. mary scriver says:
    August 6, 2013 at 2:58 pm

    I wonder what the Rainbow Family encampment would look like from the air. It is dis-assembled and the site restored afterwards. I’m curious to know what the average income for Zataari is, compared to the average income for Burning Man and the Rainbow Family. It would be fascinating to convene a panel of representatives.

    Prairie Mary

  2. fatmakalkan says:
    August 6, 2013 at 4:57 pm

    Hi Lesley, Forgive my ignorance about this event. First time I heard about it. Why 50.000 people goes to middle of the dessert in hot August? Syrian are fleeing from Brutal Assad Regime to save their life’s. Obviously, Burning Man participants life’s are not in danger. They live in a best country in the world for many categories. If they are paying for this event they are not poor. How they spend their week at that camp? Is it religious gathering? Is it social event? Or they don’t have any serious problems, they are bored, just looking for adventure? Or nudity, drugs, etc. living crazy life with no moral code is provided at that camp. Sincerely

    Fatma Kalkan

    • tamam Kahn says:
      August 6, 2013 at 7:14 pm

      Burningman is an amazing experiment in communal living. Aside from the initial cost, there is generally no money exchanged there. I went several times, took an old RV and was part of a group camping there. One evening a bicycle rider brought our camp a hot pizza in a box, delicious and free. Our neighbor hooked up a bicycle to an ice-cream maker and gave out cold treats. The infrastructure is admirable in that a responsible number of people hold the energy for 50,000 people to celebrate and visit the art and music that is available 24/7. On one level it is a “party” but on another it is so much more. Ritual actions — like honoring the dead of the last year and writing their names on a beautiful sculptural temple for 5 days, then celebrating the “burn” as it goes back to dust. And the clean-up takes a month or more until nothing is left in that pristine desert. You bring in what you need and leave with it all. It is so colorful that everyday life — when you return— seems in black and white. It was started by the dot com-ers back in the 90’s. I went just after that. Everyone I brought there had a memorable time. The “wildness” is just a small part of the picture.

      Someone just suggested that Burningman could contribute to the refugee camp — helping purchase water. I think that’s a great idea!
      Tamam Kahn

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      August 7, 2013 at 8:50 am

      Fatma — There are so many ‘compare-and-contrasts’ involved here. So many ironies I don’t think I can count them all. A few:
      East v. West. Wealth v. poverty. Choice v. no-choice. Freedom v. no-freedom. Indulgence v. necessity. One week v. indeterminate time. Desperation v. partying. Survival v. art. Danger v. safety.
      These multiple ironies are what made the twinned photos so powerful for me.

Killer Robots: Who Profits?

Posted June 3rd, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

movierobotI don’t know why this took me by surprise. Maybe because I’m not a big sci-fi reader — with exceptions made for the likes of Isaac Asimov and Philip K. Dick and Stanislaw Lem and William Gibson. And Robert Heinlein and Mary Shelley and H.G.Wells and Ray Bradbury. And Margaret Atwood and Neil Stephenson. And how could I have not led with one of my literary heroes, Jorge Luis Borges? But still, you get my point (I think), which is that I don’t usually think in terms of science fiction becoming applied science.

More fool I.

Last week, Christof Heyns, the man burdened with the unenviable title of “United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions,” called for a global moratorium on the testing, production, and use of armed robots that can select and kill targets without human command.

They are known as “lethal autonomous robots.” And yes, this is indeed a nightmarish killer-robot movie come marching off the screen and into all too non-virtual reality.

Yet the report of Heyns’s call didn’t even make the front page of America’s “newspaper of record.” Soothingly buried on an inside page of the New York Times, and calmingly including the reassurance that such robots weren’t “yet” in production, it elicited little comment. It seems our alarm systems have been lulled by the use of drones, so conveniently deployed halfway round the world in all sorts of places most Americans can’t even find on a map.

Drones, it’s now clear, are only the warm-up stage. Think of lethal autonomous robots as drones with minds of their own. Just program them and set them loose, secure in the knowledge that nothing can possibly go wrong. No way their electronics will go haywire. No way they’ll become just a little bit too autonomous. With the kind of fail-safe electronics that exist only in android dreams, humans can sleep secure. So long as they’re not the targets.

But wait just a moment: who gets to say who the targets are? Who’s going to program the robots? And according to what criteria? Will they be programmed to search out “suspicious behavior,” as human drone operators do? But then what makes behavior suspicious? The skin color of the person doing the behaving? Anyone with a beard? Anyone moving too fast, or maybe too slow? In too large a group or suspiciously alone? Animal, vegetable, or mineral?

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are all over this, leading a new coalition of groups in the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, officially launched just two weeks ago.

But it seems to me that an important question to ask here is this: Who is going to be raking in the billions on these robots? Who exactly is doing the research and testing, and will presumably get the huge military contracts? Consider this report last year from San Diego public radio station KPBS on who’s profiting from the $12 billion drone industry (yes, you read the last five words correctly — that’s for the years 2005 to 2011). The top three? How could you possibly not guess? Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrup Grumman. It’s enough to make me ashamed of ever having gotten my pilot’s wings.

And then consider the lengthy, detailed report on the military robot market (mind-numbingly referred to as “Military Ground Robot Mobile Platform Systems of Engagement”) prepared by an outfit called WinterGreen Research. Here, in the kind of mangled grammar that seems to accompany lip-smacking anticipation, is a short extract from the press release:

Even as the US presence in Iraq and Afghanistan winds down, automated process implemented as mobile platform systems of engagement are being used to fight terrorists and protect human life. These robots are a new core technology in which all governments must invest. Military ground robot market growth comes from the device marketing experts inventing a new role as technology poised to be effective at the forefront of fighting terrorism. Markets at $4.5 billion in 2013 reach $12.0 billion by 2019. Growth is based on the adoption of automated process by military organizations worldwide.

Twelve billion a year by 2019? Counter-terrorism is huge business. And so long as influential news outlets like the New York Times play that down, the chances of killing that business — killing the killer robots — are not good.
But if the killer robots can’t be killed, they can at least be hacked.
Anybody know some really good hacktivists?
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File under: war | Tagged: Tags: Amnesty International, Boeing, drones, Human Rights Watch, killer military robots, KPBS San Diego, lethal autonomous robots, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, The New York Times, United Nations | 2 Comments
  1. John Sterns says:
    June 5, 2013 at 4:28 pm

    I disagree that defense contractor greed is the main force driving the change to UAVs, although they certainly don’t want to be left out of the new market.

    Unmanned systems are being driven by a very compelling dynamic – they allow the “War on Terror” to proceed, even as our troop strength is drawn down and finances become more constrained. No need for tough decisions containing medical care costs for the Armed Forces. No need for system procurement reform to prevent over priced, overly complex manned systems like the F-22 or F-35. Congress can cut the defense procurements overall, while still specifying pet programs and bases be kept open over the DoD planners’ objections.

    Consider the 2012 allocations in http://comptroller.defense.gov/defbudget/fy2012/FY2012_Weapons.pdf, for example. It shows $2.9B for the V-22 Osprey, which has had numerous safety issues during development, and $9.5B for the F-35. These are much higher “average sales price” items than the UAVs, the 2012 allocations for these two programs equal the $12B UAV market cap in 2019. The “profit motive” of Defense Companies would dictate more of these high priced, high margin systems, not the lower priced UAVs whose new technologies and smaller investments make the entrance of new competition possible.

    No, I don’t think Defense Contractor greed is driving the change, as you imply,

    It’s Congress, who can avoid making policy changes on national defense, can avoid reforming defense procurement, can avoid making budget changes for sustainable medical care of our troops, and still rely on the President to order drone killings to advance the War on Terror. They can claim to their constituents they are being kept safe and they’re supporting the troops, while doing nothing in legislation to actually help the troops or make us any safer.

    “If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.” H.L. Mencken

    In this case, every UAV approved by Congress is that much money saved on equipment and personnel costs, so they can continue to serve their constituents the “payola” of bases and production lines not wanted the Armed Forces. They can prosecute war through drones and have none of the policy brakes that come with body bags and wounded warriors. Their voters are happy, because American “greatness” is projected globally. Meanwhile, all the downsides of war have been “outsourced” to Pakistani, Yemini and Afghan civilians.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      June 5, 2013 at 5:01 pm

      Thanks John — you argue your points so well that I agree with your disagreement. When it comes to political decision-making, any remnant of rationality seems to go out the window as soon as the word ‘terrorism’ is uttered. We’re still stuck in the George W. Bush era.
      Meanwhile, I’m struck by how little comment there’s been (here and elsewhere) on this issue. Heyns issues a wake-up call, and nearly everyone hits the snooze button. It’s as though we can’t quite grasp what autonomous drones are (in fact most of us don’t really grasp what the guided ones currently in use are). Either that, or we just don’t care so long as they don’t turn on us. Which of course, one way or another, they will.

“For The Greater Good”

Posted May 18th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

This came in as a comment from someone called Bob.  It seems to be a response primarily to my previous post, Guilt By Drone, and the earlier Armed to the Eyeballs.  I’m running it as a separate post with a kind of wondering bemusement at its rather low level of literacy and humanity, and its rather high one of piety and righteousness.  Am particularly intrigued by his saying “too many guns and killing of children by drones, and all I see are complaints,” and by the almost delightful non sequitur of his concluding with “thank you and God bless.”

I read some of the posts like guilty by drone and armed to the eyeballs and I thought, wow are these people serious, to much of an military to many guns and the killing of children by drones and all I saw we’re complaints. Well if your not happy with the free, great country America than why don’t you leave I mean come on your lucky to have such a dedicated military like ours and truly I don’t know if you’ve realized this but the only way to gain peace is through war I’m sorry but that’s basically how no doubt about it. Our military keeps this country safe and under our lord and savior and keeps us the nation we are. No ones perfect and we can’t make everyone happy in this world sorry, and what are we just gonna sit back and watch our country get attacked like 9/11 saying o please don’t hurt us let’s make peace well wake up not everyone wants that and the reason we send drones and kids die is because unfortunately that’s how it has to be why I don’t know and neither do you but each decision we make has a impact and is for the greater good so give thanks to who we are and how great of a military we have and how much you and I have. Thank you and God bless

————————————————————

Later:  novelist Michael Gruber posted a brief but cogent analysis of Bob’s thinking on my Facebook page.  Here it is:

“The statement arises naturally from the characterization of 9/11 (which we owe to Mr Bush) as an act of existential evil, rather than as a political act with its own logic. The man’s premises are that the USA is an exceptional nation under the special protection of Christ, and thus any attack against it is not a political act but a move in a cosmic contest, in which an apocalyptic response by the American military is not only justified, but required.

“The logic moves from the legitimate desire to punish the organizers of the attack, to the desire to punish those who are “like” the attackers, which results in killing those associated with those who are like the attackers, to, ultimately, the punishment of the societies who produce those who are like the attackers.

“A similar progression characterized WW2, in which the world was shocked when the fascist nations bombed cities, after which it was considered legitimate to bomb the cities of the fascists into rubble. This at least had the amoral logic of tit for tat. But in the present situation, some militants kill their own people in pursuit of sectarian triumph, and we drone kill the militants and their kin, so that . . . And here we lose the last scraps of logical policy. At some level we [I’m assuming he means US policy-makers — LH] sort of agree with this bozo.”

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File under: absurd, Christianity, US politics, war | Tagged: Tags: drones, God, gun control, Michael Gruber, US military | 6 Comments
  1. Abdulrazak Ibrahim says:
    May 18, 2013 at 2:17 pm

    Wow! What could make a person think and write like this?

  2. sohail says:
    May 18, 2013 at 6:51 pm

    It is really sad that Bob has a vote in the American elections.

  3. zummard. says:
    May 19, 2013 at 5:16 am

    A little too drunk and no ‘speech writers’ on hand. I am glad some important people from the past read your posts too. It reminds me of what Shakespeare said so well.
    “LIFE IS A TALE TOLD BY AN IDIOT, FULL OF SOUND AND FURY, SIGNIFYING NOTHING.”
    I am left with the thought – everyone in the world needs education, not just those on the other side of the fence. Let’s start from ‘home’. Keep up your mission, Lesley.

  4. Nasir Khan says:
    May 19, 2013 at 7:31 am

    Ah, what to say! Suffice it may be that the 9/11 was an inside job. Buildings dont come down like that and debris dont melt away and vanish, unless there is an inside job…

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      May 19, 2013 at 12:33 pm

      Any New Yorker who detests Bush, Rove, Rumsfeld etc far more than you do can tell you that this is just conspiracy-theory nonsense. Kindly keep it off this blog.

  5. Gustav Hellthaler says:
    May 19, 2013 at 12:42 pm

    And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
    The way to dusty death

    Mr Khan,
    Take a cubic foot of molten aluminum and pour it into a cubic foot of water as Alcoa did many years ago, and watch your laboratory disappear. Take an hundred tons of molten aluminum and have it flow down stairwells to where the sprinklers are working and watch several floors disappear with a lot of intact building above. The impact of the falling upper floor would make the base structure buckle. No conspiracy necessary.

    Gus Hellthaler

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