[Reader-list] APJ letter

[anupam chakravartty]

Here's a clear example of a Hindutva sponsored understanding of our armed
forces:

http://hindutva.org/nepal.html




On 5/13/09, Shuddhabrata Sengupta <shuddha at sarai.net> wrote:
>
> Dear All,
>
> I find the discussion on what the ex-president and weapons designer
> APJ Abdul Kalam said quite interesting. One of the things being
> remarked upon is his impression that the Indian media highlights
> negativity, as opposed, say to the media in Israel, which is always
> committed to a positive potrayal of what goes on in Israel.
>
> I do not know from where the ex-president got this impression, or
> whether it is part of the current fascination with all things Israeli
> amongst apologists of a strong state, because, from my cursory
> familiarity with the Israeli press and media, segments of it are as
> robustly critical of life in Israel, as anywhere else. So, sorry to
> disappoint those on this list (and APJ Kalam) who think that the
> media in Israel is a flat, uniform delivery mechanism for 'good news'
> arrived at by consensus.
>
> As an example, let me share below a text 'Hear the Other Side' by the
> Israeli journalist Avirama Golan from the mainstream Israeli
> newspaper Ha'aretz (this is from the English online edition) that I
> found particularly striking during the attacks on Gaza earlier this
> year.
>
> -------------------------------
> Hear the other side
> By Avirama Golan
> Tags: gaza, Israel news, Hamas
> http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1057370.html
>
> There's no doubt that the terrible tragedy of Dr. Ezzeldeen Abu al-
> Aish, who told Israeli television viewers in fluent Hebrew that he
> lost three daughters and a niece to an Israeli tank shell during the
> fighting in Gaza, has managed to finally penetrate the layer of cast
> lead that has sealed the ears of the Israeli public since the Gaza
> operation began. He made the killing suddenly appear tangible, close,
> shocking and threatening.
>
> It's Abu al-Aish's bad luck that he's "one of us" no less than "one
> of them." He's an educated and successful physician who was offered a
> job at a Canadian hospital after he worked and conducted research at
> Israel's Soroka and Sheba medical centers. Moreover, and perhaps more
> importantly, he speaks Hebrew and is proficient in the codes that
> govern Israeli thinking and behavior. At a press conference in which
> he pleaded for an end to the Gaza war - and to war in general - he
> unconsciously appealed to the agitated mix of familial dedication and
> longing for a peaceful life, the enlightened Western format that
> constitutes the Israeli self-image.
>
> Woe to Abu al-Aish; his efforts have come to nothing. While many
> television viewers who had previously followed only what had been
> presented to them as glorious military achievements shed a tear for
> his loss, a woman called Levana Stern - who was apparently granted
> blanket permission to speak abusively because of her status as mother
> of three soldiers - disrupted the press conference by shouting at the
> top of her voice: "I feel your pain, I'm totally with you, but who
> knows what was going on in your house!"
>        Advertisement
> People standing next to her, who were emboldened by her outburst,
> protested the audacity of the hospital where he spoke to the press
> for giving a platform to a Palestinian while Israeli soldiers were
> fighting in Gaza. One woman even passionately called him a "piece of
> trash." In despair, Abu al-Aish muttered, "They don't want to hear
> the other side."
>
> So much ink has been spilled on academic research about the voice of
> the other in post-colonial society, and so many conferences and
> articles have determined that Israeli society has long ago passed the
> melting-pot stage and is now a multicultural society that makes space
> for the voice of the other. Now Abu al-Aish has inadvertently
> revealed how false that is. The residents of Gaza don't exist at all
> in the Israeli consciousness, failing even to merit the status of
> "other." But because the Gaza doctor works in Israel and has many
> Israeli acquaintances, he was given a chance that thousands of others
> have not had: the chance to speak on prime time (though only after
> the blood of his daughters Bisan, Mayer and Aya was spilled in his
> home).
>
> Abu Al-Aish is not alone. Over the past years, Sderot residents have
> repeatedly been accused of failing to act responsibly when they stay
> there with their young children ("Why don't they evacuate them?"
> people ask). Even many reporters share the unfounded sentiment that
> everyone who could have left Sderot did so long ago, and only the
> unfortunates who have nowhere to go are still there.
>
> True, residents of the periphery are not a hated "other" like the
> Palestinians, but they too are faceless and voiceless. Now the
> residents of Sderot have become the beloved children for whose sake
> the war was waged, but they will pay dearly for that. Some opponents
> of the war see them as extreme right-wingers whose complaints are
> exaggerated, saying that no Israeli child was killed by a rocket
> during the war, while thousands were killed in Gaza. And some of the
> war's supporters refuse to understand that the ongoing suffering of
> Negev residents has made them angry, frustrated and full of hate -
> but that the historic friendly ties they used to have with Gazans and
> the mutual desire for normalization are just as authentic. Those
> supporters also have contempt for the demand of thousands of
> residents of the south, led by the "A Different Voice" group from
> Sderot, who urged the government to do all it can to reach an
> agreement rather than go to war.
>
> The warped logic that prevails on the left as well as the right means
> that whoever has not fled from Gaza to Canada is an impoverished
> laggard at best, and a Hamas supporter at worst, and whoever has not
> moved from Sderot to Tel Aviv's Rothschild Boulevard is an uneducated
> and irresponsible Likud voter who brought this bad situation upon
> himself. This is how the so-called "others" are used to defining the
> Israeli consensus - an opaque and hate-filled consensus that denies
> the complex reality in favor of intensifying frightened entrenchment.
>
>
> Shuddhabrata Sengupta
> The Sarai Programme at CSDS
> Raqs Media Collective
> shuddha at sarai.net
> www.sarai.net
> www.raqsmediacollective.net
>
>
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