Monday, December 27, 2010

There is so much of truth

There is so much of truth; out there, there is no lack of it. Rather, it is awash in a sea of lies.

There is so much of information.

Mark reading Laurie Arbeiter's account of the Gogosian gallery incident at Anselm Keifer's "Next Year in Jerusalem" show, job hunting, nature shows, young Israeli women telling of their recent period of servitude in the armies of occupation. All of us riding on the information stream.

One young woman saw a burned and beaten boy in IDF custody; then she was ordered to carry back the request that the truthful report of the incident be changed.

Which it was. Now we know the truth about that.

What difference does it make -- is it enough to know, or do we have to do something? (Like I am doing by sharing the video with you here.)

Do we need to tip the balance from lies out there to truth out there, and how could that even be done? With good creative? Or the right opportunity? 15 minutes of fame devoted to truth. As if fame were not a central untruth itself. The false cult of personification; celebrity spokesman for truth sounds like an oxymoron.

Still, we are inspired by examples. Rob paints truthtellers with their own words by their faces.

What signs shall we hold up, and where, to truly witness for truth? Another female IDF vet:

"It's part of what I carry with me." She remembers wanting to comfort a screaming baby. It was her 20th birthday and the IDF was blowing up Palestinian houses. The mother of the crying child appeared, and looked at her with pure hatred. She says:
“I realized that I was in deep trouble. There was no way back. I thought that I had a solid outlook on life but here everything falls apart ... You get used to it. You can't feel so much all the time."
Another who stayed drunk for a time after she got out wonders, “How in the hell did I ever think I'd be able to forget about it?” Then the film presents a jingle, "La la la you're getting out of the service, and next year you'll be fine."

And that's an order.

The absurdly overprotective Jewish parent stereotype of U.S. culture was explained a response to the Holocaust, and pogroms of the past.

In Breaking the Silence, we find firsthand reports of a dystopian Zionist culture that eats its own young along with the young of its prey.

Bullets for shepherds, and PTSD all round. A policy containing the seeds of its own resistance.

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