Israel or the Arabians?

JURNALUL NATIONAL ^ | 07/18/2006 | Mircea Cartarescu

[mirici]

Israel or the Arabians?

18 Iulie 2006 | de Mircea Cartarescu

I will ask the readers to forgive my flippancy, but in our media-based world, where the real things are the ones seen on TV, the things might have been like this from the beginning: the Hezbollah group and the other protagonists in the Middle East have quietly waited for the end of the World Cup in Germany and started their own show, this resulting into the highest ratings. It looks like the famous Zidane head in the chest of Materazzi was the spark that fired the eternal powder barrel of this world. Accused of having named Zidane “terrorist”, the Italian tried to escape by saying he was a man without education, that he didn’t even know the meaning of the Islamic terrorism. Probably, Hamas and Hezbollah wanted to show the poor boy the real meaning…

I am kidding, of course, because, actually, the things that happen know on the eternally bloody religious territories are quite serious. However, in our world, seriousness easily mixes with pranks, with grotesque, with fantasy or with gratuitousness.

No matter how fundamentalist they are, the Arabian terrorists (or militants) are looking for publicity all the time. The main reason for which they kill high numbers of people is not cruelty, but revenge, the media impact, the access to CNN or BBC…

Therefore, another war in the Middle East. Again, one cannot tell who’s right and who’s wrong. Again, one cannot if this about oil or Allah. Again, one cannot tell whether the vents are spontaneous or planned. The entire world is again sitting aside and watching and it all ends up like it always does, in the same old apportionment in supporters of Israel and supporters of the Arabians, in pro-Americans and anti-Americans, because this is what is all about in fact.

I heard the theory saying this is all about oil. That Israel started the attack not for a poor kidnapped soldier, but to neutralize Syria, so that the Americans could start the war against Iran without any problem. This would happen not because they care about the Islamic fundamentalism, but because they need to be sure about their oil reserves, like all the other Arabian countries. The entire official speech about freedom and democracy is just fog for the eyes of the world. This is a typical left-oriented theory, the explanation of which is always economical. It convicts the American capitalism, the source of all the bad things on Earth, and tends to agree with the “poor and worthy” Arabian world, always explaining the crimes of the “militants”.

I have also heard the opposite theory, that everything is a “conflict of the civilizations”, that it is about faith, fanaticism or religious intolerance. The Arabians are the guilty ones, because they had started the Jihad against the entire world, trying to monopolize it religiously. Israel is an island of civilization in the middle of a sea of primitivism and barbarism that wants to destroy it. The civilization of the Western Europe and of North America is the stake here. The new barbarians, the terrorists, the immigrants and all the others for which democracy is still a dream, have started an attack against these countries. Of course, this is a right oriented ideology, which could lead to chauvinism or racism.

In a world made of pixels, the human sufferance, the only one that we cannot see on TV, is the only one that remains real.

Translated by Sorin Balan

[Theophilus]

one cannot tell who’s right and who’s wrong.

Maybe Sorin is an idiot, who can say?

[kenavi]

Darned if I can tell.

[JasonC]

I can tell. He is an idiot.