Obviously I do not think Abbas is a hero. His doctoral thesis alone qualifies him as an asshole. But even worse are the murderers, kidnappers, rapists, arsonists, thieves who are being hailed as heroes by people who would not ordinarily praise murderers, kidnappers, rapists, arsonists, thieves. If they murder a Palestinian child to buy drugs then they are bad. But if they murder a Palestinian child in an effort to kill Israel then they are heroes. This kind of thinking is inhuman, antiMuslim and should be antiPalestinian.
Her Whole Darkness In Motion
Venom of Asps
Fortnight in the Philippines
IDF Operations after Typhoon Haiyan
Letters To Friends
You know you want to buy a few copies
4 comments:
I thank you for taking the time to cite these many names. I have seen too many of these lists of jewish names. In europe mainly but also in Jerusalem where I heard the names read at a monument there. I doubt if the reader will ever reach the end of the list.
A hero for me is a man like Charles Barkley. You may not know him, but he was a half decent basketball player back in the day. He had a famous mouth.
He lectured parents one day by saying, why make me the hero. I am just a man who plays ball. Find someone you know, your folks, your friends. Not me.
Steve Jobs is a hero because I suppose he did something and there is a great debate going on right now in the united states about the medal of honour, about how one guy got the medal for throwing himself on a grenade and another man, of latino descent did not for throwing himself on a grenade.
My hero has always been the founder of the red cross who died in poverty by choice in a poor folks shelter in Switzerland. He did not see himself as a hero.
Is Shalit a hero. Why not. the kid needs a break.
Is Abbas a hero. No but his life is not over yet and who knows. he is surely a hero worshipper.
I have no idea why you cannot post a comment on my site. I dont know how those things work so I will read up some and see if i could correct the issue. I obviously will not get much traffic if there is something wrong in the posting department. Vanity tells me that there might be some folks out there that read this thing. I have no way of knowing without having comments and i was starting to lose my vigour as far as blog writing goes.
Mia,
My hero, since a very early age, was henry dunant. The real founder of the red cross although everyone thinks that it was clare barton. I developed a sense of this man by reading at a very early age a book called Heidi. I would often eat with wooden spoons because the grandfather used these. I had i suppose an infatuation and through my interest in things swiss, fell upon dunant while reading about Boridino (ok mia, what is the right way to spell that). Borodino was a battle in italy in napoleonic times. It has another name but i forgot it for the moment.
I eventually moved to switzerland, freud are you noting this, married a swiss girl and oddly enough acquired my first apartment on rue henri dunant in fribourg.
Dunant was a brave man with a singleness of purpose. THis was to help. to pity. to put oneself outside of the immediate needs of a human psyche even in deadly situations or when everyone and everything says no. dont do that. you will be hurt. altruism perhaps but more i think. a hero needs a singleness of purpose. It is but one criterion. the application of the will as some german philosopher would have it. In the face of adversity or challenge. It should be grand and momentous. or so private and unknowable as to be forever obscure. read brown on resolution, a wonderful book by forester, the writer of hornblower. I studied heroes in university as part of my degree. classics it was called all about herakles and the type. the heroic tradition and i suppose i could write a definition that might make wiki. But no
I think that those anonymous firemen who went up into the twin towers and dying were heroes. to me all firemen are heroes because they chose a life of help over a life of kill. There has to be a moral compass you see. at least to me. a soldier gets killed and is buried and that is that. a soldier gets killed rescuing someone else and he could be a hero. Audie murphy was the most decorated solider in world war two and got the medal of honour for holding out in a burning tank for hours halting the attack of a company of german soldiers single handedly. This did not make him a hero, but the fact that in doing so, he saved his own unit from sure anhilation (ok mia, how do you spell this) had the germans attackers not been stopped that day in alsace lorraine.
Henry dunant was one of these and he died in a poor peoples home near the place where the book Heidi was set. He refused a fancy funeral and simply wanted to be buried as a poor man. He was. There has to be this, this aspect of selflessness. and i think a large degree of human dignity. a dog can be heroic though so it is not necessary i suppose to be human. dogs even get medals you know.
It is odd, but there is a debate right now in your land, or the land where you are currently located. the usa. It is about two soldiers who both did heroic things. One threw himself on a grenade to save his fellows and he received a medal of honour. the other threw himself on a grenade to save his fellows and he received the navy medal, the next highest medal in the marine corps to the medal of honour.
The second man was the son of illegal immigrants and hispanic.
So about shalit. My feeling is, let him be a hero. the boy needs a break. My take is that the entire state of israel was heroic here and perhaps shalit is a good place to pin this title on behalf of all of his people. For the nation of israel to do this thing at all is honourable especially in the face of immense anger, flawed justice and inhumanity. This too is heroic. Shalit represents this to me.
A hero could even be someone who manages to learn chinese in only sixteen years. it seems a very difficult thing to do since at my age, i have trouble even seeing the symbols.
cheers.
I don't understand why the government of Israel performed this swap. The numbers are ridiculous. What are the odds of the releasing hundreds of killers without at least ONE of them returning to repeat their awful work some more? The very basic most important thing we ask of our governments is protection, and they have failed in such an utterly mind numbing manner with this event.
I can understand why. I just don't agree with it.
Garry, do you mean the Battle of Solferino?
Post a Comment