The Palestinians as a global socio-political entity...or at least the de facto leadership...have established a policy set that values "the cause" over their constituents, leaving the latter in harm's way to provide a sort of object lesson and propagandic centrepiece.
hmmm: to what degree do all governments do this? Valuing "cause" (profit) over "constituents" (people) is what a great deal of capitalism seems to be based on. Does it make a difference if it's a conscious strategy or not? For example, somce chemical corporations produce many known carcinogens in their factories and also profit from chemotherapy treatments needed to treat those cancers. Or they put their name all over cancer-charities--e.g., Lee jeans "National Denim Day" for breast cancer awareness... (check out Barbara Ehrenreich's extremely cynical article "Welcome to Cancerland") Here's the point I'd emphasize:
. . . by ignoring or underemphasizing the vexing issue of environmental causes, the breast-cancer cult turns women into dupes of what could be called the Cancer Industrial Complex: the multinational corporate enterprise that with the one hand doles out carcinogens and disease and, with the other, offers expensive, semi-toxic phar-maceutical treatments. Breast Cancer Awareness Month, for example, is sponsored by AstraZeneca(the manufacturer of tamoxifen), which, until a corporate reorganization in 2000, was a leadingproducer of pesticides, including acetochlor, clas-sified by the EPA as a "probable human carcinogen." This particularly nasty conjuncture of interests led the environmentally oriented Cancer Prevention Coalition (CPC) to condemn BreastCancer Awareness Month as "a public relationsinvention by a major polluter which puts womenin the position of being unwitting allies of thevery people who make them sick." Although As-traZeneca no longer manufactures pesticides, CPChas continued to criticize the breast-cancer crusade--and the American Cancer Society--for its unquestioning faith in screening mammogramsand careful avoidance of environmental issues.
It's not exactly the same, I grant you, but it does point to the issue of "othering" that so readily happens on all sides of the Palestinian/Israel question . . .
I still think that US-led multinational military/petroleum-industrial complex is using the ongoing, intractable nature of this conflict to extract much of the wealth out of the region at fire-sale prices. And, to make things even more profitable, the whole region keeps focused on building up military arsenals, which it also gets from . . . We wring our hands and quietly believe that these darker skinned people are just "naturally" hotheaded, and powerful people continue to make LOTS of money off the conflict. Carlyle group, anyone? |
