Terrorism prevails in
war against it
Mary Carradine
Media coverage during the past several
months has been absolutely saturated with news on the Sept. 11 attacks,
the current U.S.-led war
against Al-Qaida, and the collapse of
Enron. Even before that, we spent the entire summer reading about Gary
Condit's affair with a missing D.C.
intern just because the American press
was that desperate for stories.
Meanwhile, it has been Sept. 11 nearly
twice a week for the people of Israel. This past week saw three terrorist
attacks on innocent Israeli
citizens. Bat mitzvahs and typical teen-age
hangouts such as nightclubs and pizzerias have even been targeted in past
violence. Yet we all sleep
soundly at night and turn a blind eye
to the constant news of "five dead" or "12 wounded."
How have we managed to detach ourselves
from this terrorism? Why does loss have to be our own before we notice
its impact?
Admittedly, it's hard to find unbiased
news sources regarding the current Middle Eastern conflict. But hypothetically,
survey five of your friends
and see if any of them know why the Israelis
and Palestinians are even fighting.
Most of them won't, because the social
norm has never been to care about the violence in the Middle East. We grew
up thousands of miles away,
assuming that our culture was correct
in labeling the fighting parties as foolish and crazy fanatics —unworthy
of our interest and concern.
We are exact reflections of this country's
lax policy on the Middle Eastern crisis. We don't know about it because
our administration is too
self-absorbed to address it.
At best, President Bush will verbally condemn
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as we slide money and weaponry under the
table to the Israelis.
He'll call our current war a "war on terrorism"
but that couldn't be further from the truth.
Terrorism struck three times this past
week, and this administration has done nothing but verbally warn Yasser
Arafat in that same feigned
melancholic tone it has used in the past.
Our current government remains stagnant
in any hopeful effort to transform the idea of peace into a reality for
the Middle East.
The American media doesn't want to get
its hands dirty either. Our government is obviously pro-Israeli, but is
it worth stirring up the beast that is
public opinion? We'd rather talk about
Enron, where the real tragedy is 5,000 Americans with job skills currently
out of work. Sure, they're not
getting paychecks, but they certainly
aren't dead.
We don't have to remain uneducated. Not
to even attempt to understand why the Israelis and the Palestinians are
fighting is sheer vanity.
We will mourn and honor the people who
lost their lives on Sept. 11, but why? Because they were U.S. citizens?
Human life and death should recognize no
citizenry. We do not wave national flags in this hopeful afterlife.
