It was a body-language message.
Climate activists used body language at the Metropolitan Opera last week. No one was killed, and it was a nuisance, not mass murder, but there is a point of commonality: We have a cause and we will do outrageous things to make our point.
Climate activists from the group Extinction Rebellion, NYC stood up and screamed during an opening night performance of Tannhäuser on Thursday. Protesters shouted that the audience should "wake up" to the climate emergency.
The stream is polluted! The stream is tainted! The stream is poison! This is a climate emergency! This is a climate emergency! There will be no opera on a dead planet!
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The best summary of the Metropolitan Opera outrage was sent to me by a college classmate in an email titled: "How to sabotage your efforts at climate change." I agree. The action was counter-productive. It defines climate activists as unreasonable whack-job vandals, not as protectors of the earth. The immediacy of the protest in the middle of an opera performance is disconnected from the cause of pollution and CO2 levels. Green solutions require more social order, not less. The polarity of the message is backwards.
Hamas' goal was not to protect Gaza's citizens from Israel. The placement of military facilities amidst citizen targets is astonishingly cynical and cruel. Hamas's own leader says he welcomes the death and injury to Palestinians.
The blood of the women, children and elderly […] we are the ones who need this blood, so it awakens within us the revolutionary spirit, so it awakens with us resolve."
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It is a shocking admission.
The strategy is disgusting and cynical -- but it is not stupid. Indeed, it is likely working about as they hoped, in the short run. They put Israel into a dilemma. Israel asserts that Palestinian victims are incidental and unintentional. In recent years Israel under Netanyahu lost some of its presumption of innocence and legitimacy as a state seeking long-term peace and co-existence. Israel's policy on settlements in the West Bank and its blockade of Gaza has consequences.
Israel will continue to create sympathetic victims in their effort to remove Hamas. Perhaps, in time, the people of Gaza will do what needs to be done, a civic uprising to replace their leaders. The message of Hamas' cynical cruelty in the placement of military targets is not a secret to the Palestinians. People tire of bad government and eventually revolt. In the long run, like the protesters at the Opera, Hamas has the polarity backwards.
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10 comments:
“The placement of military facilities amidst citizen targets is astonishingly cynical and cruel.”
What’s unfortunate is the Israeli Defense Forces knew Hamas had done this, but instead of proving themselves up to the challenge of singling out the terrorists, Israel played right into their hands. After the Hamas attack, Israel had the sympathy and support of the civilized world, much as we had after 9/11 before we squandered it. But they lost it by bombing a crowded city of millions while depriving the people of food, water and health care. Not good optics.
Whew! Using climate activism, which may annoy the goldfish, equivalent to HAMAS?
Shouting "Fire" in a crowded theater is perfectly acceptable when there is actually a fire!
Peter said:
People tire of bad government and eventually revolt. In the long run.
Well, maybe. I present North Korea has a counter example.
Hamas is an existential threat to Israel that must be removed from the playing field. Their tactic of hiding behind human shields no longer works. Israel will be creative and clever about minimizing the damage to Hamas’ human shields, but the bottom line is the elimination of Hamas.
Hamas, like the PLO before it, has adopted the tactic that worked so well for the Algerians against the French: a campaign of terrorism so brutal that the colonizers decide it’s not worth it anymore and go back to their country. Here’s the problem with that: Israeli Jews are not colonizers, and they have nowhere to go back to. They will never respond the way the French colonizers of Algeria did.
Hamas has left Israel with no choice; it’s kill or be killed. And I know who is going to end up dead.
And a million or so dead non supporters of Hamas are a small price to pay ? Israel may eventually kill the Political leadership of Hamas, but will need to go the Emirates or Quatar to find those leaders, because they are surely not in Gaza; Much like Republikans, leading from behind.
Israel eventually killed every single terrorist who had a hand in murdering their team at the 1972 Olympics. I expect no less of Israel this time.
Those dead human shields are not a “a small price to pay.“ They are a huge but necessary price to pay, and their deaths are the fault of Hamas, who chose to hide behind them. Attacking from behind human shields is a war crime; harm caused to those human shields in response to those attacks is not a war crime..
Government as in “good” or “bad” is an utterly different analysis when governance is also a shared function of a fundamentalist, theocratic, death-lionizing version of religion which the vast majority of its constituents either approve of or at least will not dream of challenging, specifically on religious grounds.
Zionists would do well to remember that Republicans don’t support Israel because they’re so enamored of Jews, but because they have a fundamentalist Christian base who believe Israel is necessary for the Second Coming. The process, however, involves the Jews converting to Christianity and those who don’t being killed. I am not making this up:
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1121&context=pretrib_arch
Sounds like Inquisition redux, or déjà vu all over again.
Mike is correct in his description of the motives behind some evangelicals’ support for Israel. But as long as the Messiah doesn’t actually show up, who cares?
And if he does show up for real, maybe we Jews will convert this time. Or maybe not… ✡️😀
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