Dont Believe the TV! [Archives:2000/47/Focus]

COMMON SENSE
By: Hassan Al-Haifi
Arrogance is often accompanied by mischief, if mischief cannot be said to be the driving force of those who insist that there are just no common denominators between them and the rest of humanity. Sometimes, arrogance can become so blinding on those who rely on it to maintain their onerous perspectives of themselves and the world around them. So much so, that every effort is exerted to belittle any other non-condescending outlooks or observations that others may perceive in light of the facts on the ground and the moral implications of the situations under scrutiny.
It is said that power oftentimes also breeds arrogance, but in a volatile and tumultuous part of the world, which the Middle East has proven to be, time and again, power is no guarantee for endurance and abrupt and sudden shifts of power are a common characteristic of the region, almost like the shifting dunes of the desert. On many occasions, power has shifted to those who, perhaps occupied the remotest areas of the minds, and soon enough a once prevailing power becomes overtaken and evaporates into the annals of chroniclers and historians, leaving behind archeological ruins and inscriptions that tell of their once unchallenged mastery of the land and its inhabitants. Perhaps no region in the world has seen so many powers trod on its soil, only to find it an unwelcome haven and a graveyard for the most glorious of their masters and masterminds. It is also common to discover that those powers that prevailed in the region by sheer might, yet possessing weak dogmatic foundations and a poor association with the region, ethnically and culturally, were those that, relatively, had the shortest life span in the area. The Crusaders, the Mongols, the European powers, during different stretches of the Age of Imperialism, just to name a few of the recent fly by night invaders of the region, have come and gone as fast as the monsoons, leaving behind nothing except the havoc and destruction they caused to a land that is blessed with a rich moral and cultural heritage and is honored with the reception of many of the missions of deliverance sent by the Almighty for all of humanity.
Mind you, all these past powers enjoyed their own autonomous elements of power, yet the best of them could not sustain a presence in the region beyond a century and half of the human time scale. Before these nations, the Roman did experience some recurrence of their presence in the region, but it was the Eastern Roman Empire the Byzantines thanks to their more relative cultural refinements to those of the region, they sustained a longer presence than most other occupiers of the region, partly fostered by their early institutionalization of Christianity. However, even the Emperors of Constantinople and their Orthodox Patriarchs were confronted with contestants all along the duration of their reign. First, the Persians challenged their omnipotence in the region, during the Pre-Islamic Era, then the Arabs, who knocked on the gates of Constantinople on several occasions, then the Seljuk Turks until, finally, the Ottomans came and rooted them out of their very own domicile, carrying the banner of Islam to its farthest Northern and Western stretches. Yet, even with all the autonomous elements of power all these great nations enjoyed, they neither relished their presence nor sustained it for long.
But now, we have an invading power – Israel – that has proven to be of a far more arrogant and alien nature to the region than any other one that preceded it, because it seeks, not to occupy the region, as a greater expansion of its original domain, but seeks to establish that domain in the heart of the Middle East, relying on unfounded claims of a historical reign in the region and horrendous distortions of the manifestations of the will of the Almighty, without any possession of a mandate from the latter, nor a universal mission of deliverance while only ascribing to a heinous chauvinistic ideology that the Almighty is completely innocent of, and could never condone as part of a universal theological order that submits to His Omnipotence and the universality of man.
It would be worthwhile for the Israelis, then, to really have a more in-depth understanding of the history of the Middle East, to realize that no matter how much might is at their disposal now and no matter how much senseless bloodshed they can unleash against the indigenous population of their homeland and the surrounding countries, their demise is inevitable. Notwithstanding their claim to belonging to the region historically, or mythically, to be more accurate, they must bear in mind that their hostile nature and contempt for any moral and ethical standards, which the region has always evoked and set, not just for its inhabitants, but for the world at large, is bound to be countered by a force that will never be brought to submission to such chauvinistic contempt for the will of God. The Israelis must also remember that what ever favor they had with the Lord had been forfeited long ago, when they refused to adhere to deliverers from the true Hebrews of the past, who relished in the killing of their own deliverers and any other prophets, who sought, in vain to challenge the will of God, for themselves and for the universe at large, and accordingly lost any hope of ever carrying on as the Lords agents on Earth.
Israel is very remote to the region, culturally, dogmatically and even ethnically. Their claim to being returnees to a long lost homeland is justified by neither religious decree nor national affiliation. Notwithstanding the Ashkenazi minority in Israel, who might be said to mold into the various oriental cultures they come from, for all good and intents, Israel is a mutation to the region, with cancerous traits that could never hope to gain acceptance, not because of the hostility of the long-standing indigenous populations of the area, but because of its reliance on an archaic chauvinistic philosophy that defies the foundations of the very source of the spiritual roots of their claims to existence. Their spiritual claims to the region, or even to Gods favor, have been denied a long time ago, even by the Al-Mighty himself, who sent their forebears wandering throughout the world carrying the damnation of the Lord, because of their refusal to recognize Gods deliverers from their very own true Hebrew blood. On the other hand, the application of their chauvinistic aspirations raise a lot of doubt as to their inability to be compatible to a region that has dissolved itself of even lesser chauvinistic forces in the past, that at least saw no reason to uproot the indigenous populations of the area, though they were not the greatest of practitioners of tolerance, and which had their own autonomous claims to power and greatness.
Israel is a fictitious power that relies on other powers to provide it the muscle behind its destructive war machine. In fact, Israel has yet to show that it was set up by its own organizers, let alone prove that it can sustain itself for any length of time, without the umbilical cord that ties it to the United States. Moreover, Israel (as well as the Arabs) must realize that this umbilical cord is in itself delicate and lends itself to easy breakage. The existence of this umbilical cord is based on a false impression of the Americans of the philosophy and motives of the Israeli regime and the romantic image projected of the pioneering spirit of the Israeli settlers, which was engrained in the American psyche by a tireless misleading media campaign, unleashed by a misguided propaganda apparatus that is unchallenged by any corresponding counterpart channel to project the truths that belie the fallacies that the American people and Government have been spoon fed for more than a century by the Israeli Zionist lobby in the United States.
That is why, Ehud Barak, had to come and tell the press last week that what is being seen on television by the whole world every day should not be believed, when he tried to insist that the Palestiare responsible for all the violence in Palestine over the last two months, but realized that for the first time, just because the Israelis say it, it is not always the God sent truth, most people will find believable anymore, since the world press is showing who is firing the shots in the Holy Land, who is doing the killing and who is doing the burying. All he could then say was: Dont believe the TV. It is not enough that the Israelis are also injuring members of the press, but to also call them liars, that is really hard to swallow. Then, arrogance can also be blinding.

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