Friday, May 25, 2007

Torturous Silence

What? No humiliating body searches by women or the disrepectful handling of Korans?

what on earth do we call gouging people's eyes out?

Answer: we call it nothing. My fearless prediction is that not a single human rights organization will seriously take the matter up.

Harry's Place notices that groups -- like the International Solidarity Movment or RESPECT -- which claim to be concerned about the welfare of Palestinians don't even acknowledge the deaths of 200 Palestinians in recent internecine warfare in Gaza. "It is as if these Palestinians have not died at all, or that their deaths are simply unimportant and not worthy of note." And the indifference, the quiet that you hear is a very special sort of silence. It is not the reserve of diplomacy, nor the reticience of wisdom. It is the emptiness of a slaughterhouse. The palpable peace of problems we have left to solve themselves. That's the kind of intellectual silence that it is. The silence of the lambs.