"You don't need to be Muslim to be shocked and outraged at what is going on in #Gaza, you simply need to be human!" - (read on a post online) And I will add to that an Aime Cesaire quote from his famous "Discourse on Colonialism" - written 50+ years ago, but still relevant today : "What I’m driving at? At this idea: no one colonizes innocently, that no one colonizes with impunity either; that a nation which colonizes, that a civilization which justifies colonization – and therefore force – is already a sick civilization , a civilization which is morally diseased, which irresistibly, progressing from one consequence to another, one denial to another, calls for its Hitler, I mean its punishment. I think that these heads of men, these collections of ears, these burned houses, these Gothic invasions, this steaming blood, these cities that evaporate at the edge of the sword, are not to be so easily disposed of. They prove that colonization, I repeat, dehumanizes even the most civilized man.
That the colonizer, who in order to ease his conscience gets into the habit of seeing the other man as an animal, accustoms himself to treating him like an animal ,and tends objectively to transform himself into an animal. 41"
His call to a universal humanity, what the South Africans call #Ubuntu - "I'm only human because of your humanity," - is a call all nations need to hear today, as we undermine and rationalize the sufferings of the unpriviledge and marginalized people around the world. We shut consciousness to the injustices that are being done around us, and in the world : It may be our Palestinian brothers and sisters, the young girls in brothels in Bangladesh or Pakistan, the women in Ethiopia or Somali with obstetric fistulas, the young girls in North & SouthWest Cameroon with their genitals mutillated, the women in Congo, being gang raped by soldiers... We choose,individually, but mostly collectively, to "not see, not hear, not tell", like 3 blind, deaf, dumb monkeys! Dr. Cornel West might just be right when he states, "We live in an Ice Age era : An era when it has become fashionable to be indifferent to other people's suffering." But this can be reversed.
- American John Steward deploring what is happening: http://mic.com/articles/93660/jon-stewart-rips-apart-how-the-media-covers-the-violence-in-gaza?utm_source=policymicFB&utm_medium=main&utm_campaign=social
- French TV deporing what is happening in Gaza : http://videos.tf1.fr/jt-20h/2014/enfants-tues-a-gaza-le-bombardement-filme-par-une-equipe-de-tf1-8453439.html
- South Africa ain't shy to take position on Gaza : http://ow.ly/zdIwP
- Read the New York Times story here: Read the The New York Times story here: http://nyti.ms/1r4Dcgc
- Read more about Aime Cesaire's "Discourse on Colnialism" here: http://oliviamukam.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/academic-rush-pt-2-it-is-not-head-of.html
(Image: Tyler Hicks/NYT)
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