On Sun, 4 May 2003 11:29:34 +0100 James Heartfield
<Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk> writes:
> The WEEK
> ending 4 May 2003
>
> TESTING PILGRIMAGES IN THE HOLY LAND
>
> Two Pakistanis from Derby in England, Mohammed Hanif and Sharif
> Khan,
> went as human bombs to Israel - the first killed himself and three
> Israelis, the second is still on the run after his bomb failed. In
> Britain there has been media soul-searching over the unprecedented
> recruitment of British Muslims as Palestinian suicide-bombers. But
> the
> truth is that there is nothing unprecedented about westerners
> traveling
> to the Holy Land to test their consciences. Indeed Palestine, and
> the
> Middle East in general, suffer from an overload of people on a
> modern
> pilgrimage to discover the true measure of their belief.
But don't you think that there is a significant difference between people like T.E. Lawrence, St. John Philby, or even Tony Blair and folk like the late Rachel Corrie or the suicide bombers from Derby. The first group of people might have been interested in testing their consciences in the Middle East but they did so in the service of British imperialism, whereas the latter group of people were concerned with combatting imperialism and colonialism. Yes, both the oppressors and the oppressed might be united in the attempt at testing their own consciences but it is that distinction between the two groups, in terms of either fighting to preserve a system of exploitation or oppression on the one hand versus another group that is attempting to overthrow that very oppressive system, that seems of paramount importance here.
After all taking the American Civil War as an example, one could just as well say that both the abolitionists who signed up with the Union Army and Southerners like General "Stonewall" Jackson who lead the Confederate Army, were both driven to test their consciences on the battlefield. And that was certainly the case for both of these groups. Nevertheless, the distinction that we draw between the first group which fought in the war to destroy slavery, and the second group which fought to preserve the "Southern way of life" which just so happened to include slavery, would seem to be of greater importance for understanding the war.
Jim F.
>
> Since the days of Empire, figures like T.E Lawrence and St.John
> Philby
> saw the Middle East as a backdrop to their own tortuous voyages of
> self-discovery. Nowadays their numbers are swelled by Zionists, like
> New
> Yorker Baruch Goldstein, a medical doctor who opened fire in a
> mosque in
> Hebron in 1994, killing 29 Palestinians. More recently
> liberal-minded
> American and European students have joined the International
> Solidarity
> Movement (ISM) to try and prevent Israeli Defence Force (IDF)
> atrocities
> against Palestinians in the occupied territories. One of these,
> Rachel
> Corrie, was crushed by an IDF bulldozer as she tried to prevent the
> destruction of Palestinian homes in March. Mohammed Hanif and Sharif
>
> Khan were amongst the mourners at Rachel Corrie's memorial service.
>
> Whether courageous or just unbalanced, the common feature of all of
> these Western atrocity tourists is the elevated importance that the
> law
> of conscience has for them. All in their own way are responding to
> the
> frustrating failures of the ordinary political process to attain
> results. Instead they put their own lives - and the lives of others
> - in
> the firing line in an attempt to side-step the difficulties of
> building
> a political alternative amongst the populace. In the end, the cause
> itself falls into insignificance, while the sacrifice of the
> martyred
> individual becomes the test of the rightness of his or her actions.
>
> If the people involved were rendered impotent by poverty or
> oppression
> one might understand their recourse to desperate measures, but for
> the
> most part the modern-day pilgrims are relatively prosperous, with
> many
> opportunities. None more so, of course than the prince of tortured
> souls, British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Blair told Times editor
> Peter
> Stothard about his anxieties over the war against Iraq that 'it
> really
> gets to you'. He is, he says, ready 'to meet my maker' and answer
> for
> 'those who have died or have been horribly maimed as a result of my
> decisions' (3 May 2003). When even elected leaders see the Middle
> East
> as a backdrop to the exploration of their own consciences, and see
> Arabs
> as expendable extras in a modern-day pilgrimage, it is little wonder
>
> that individuals follow suit.
>
> JAMES HEARTFIELD'S ADDRESS BOOK
>
> James Heartfield's e-mail address book file was corrupted. Anyone
> wishing to keep in touch should drop him a line at
> James at heartfield.demon.co.uk
>
> --
> James Heartfield
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>
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