In defence of "desultory unsystematic endeavours..."

I’ve been treading a narrow path, lately and may, once or twice, have ended up on the grass verge.  I refer, by use of this creaking metaphor, to my vocal support for the Palestinians of Gaza, which has, I’m afraid, cost me a number of online chums and possibly damaged my book sales.

There are a number of things that the world throws up, on occasions, which will always trigger in me something that has dogged me since my youth: the desire to see injustice exposed at the very least and overcome, if at all possible.

I am the signer of petitions; the participant in demonstrations; the undertaker of fasts and vigils; the door-to-door collector and even the door-to-door campaigner.  I have painted houses to shelter the homeless and have packed food parcels for the poor.  I am, if you want, the sucker for a sob-story.

However, I am also the world’s most cynical human being: one of my internet alter-egos is “Antisthenes” - disciple of Socrates and the founder of the Cynic school of Philosophy and who never fell for anything. How do I reconcile these two aspects of my character?  Well, it isn’t as difficult as all that.

You have only to appreciate that those in power will do and say anything that will maintain them in that state (Antisthenian) and that they don’t care who they run roughshod over (Humanitarian).

What’s that, you say? “Twas ever thus”?  Of course, you’re right but the status quo, apart from being a crap band, is very likely to be a crap state of affairs as well.  I simply cannot ignore the injustices of the world.  Edmund Burke is often credited with the adage that for evil to triumph, it requires only that good men do nothing; what he actually wrote and what has been refined over the years into that phrase, was this:

No man, who is not inflamed by vain-glory into enthusiasm, can flatter himself that his single, unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavours are of power to defeat the subtle designs and united Cabals of ambitious citizens. When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

In other words, Unite and Fight.  My problem is that I don’t stop to unite before I start to fight and my “unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavours” stand out as cries in the wilderness.

Lately, the situation in Gaza has inflamed my enthusiasm once again.  As one who has followed the travails of the Palestinians for many years, I felt that the world was dealing here with a no-brainer: Israeli aggression at its worst.   It was with some surprise that I discovered (perhaps because I am relatively new to social media) the extent to which people opposed my own view on this.

I remember, as a schoolboy, watching images of Israelis storming through Syria and Lebanon during the Six Day War and being moved by the fact that the Jewish people had managed to recover their dignity to such an extent that they could mount such an attack, saddened only that it had taken centuries of suffering culminating in the horrors of the death camps to see the Jews restored to their homeland. Then, in 1973, during the Yom Kippur War, watching Israeli jets out-perform the Egyptian and Syrian air-forces, I remember being pleased that they had mounted such a great defence. Of course, I had no real idea of what the conflict was about and no-one seemed able to explain terribly well; so I looked it up.  Oh my.

What I learned changed my view of the Israelis entirely.  Hitherto, their struggle for a homeland had seemed heroic and I was astonished to learn what had really happened.  Israel commanded an occupying army.  By the time of the massacres in the camps at Sabra and Shatila – where the Israelis not only stood by and watched refugees murdered by Christian militia but, as it turned out, actively assisted them in doing so, I had begun to see Mossad and the IDF as the real perpetrators of terror in the Middle East.

Over the years, I met a number of people - among them Jewish and Israelis as well as Palestinians and European aid workers - who were all, it seemed, telling the same story:  Palestinians and Arabs (also, let it not be forgotten, Semitic people) had been subjugated, stolen from, abused and interned by Israel to an extent which even I had hitherto not known.  I heard testimony of teachers in Jerusalem who would lead their Palestinian pupils to and from school over the rooftops to avoid Israeli snipers; of Palestinian homes being bulldozed because one of the inhabitants, usually a child, had thrown a stone at an Israeli tank; of Palestinian water cisterns being used as target practice by the IDF; of Palestinian olive groves uprooted following a report of a “militant” having been seen in one; and many, many more everyday indignities and injustices.

The oppressed are now well and truly the oppressors but it seems that much of the world is only just beginning to realize this.  Is it because of people like me posting and sharing stuff on the internet?  I doubt it; but certainly the universal control exercised by governments over the media has begun to slip in the wake of citizen journalism.

I know that I’ve alienated some of my friends in my support for the Palestinian cause and probably chucked way some book sales into the bargain but I can’t control my injustice muscles any more now than I ever could.  And whilst I maintain only my “unsupported, desultory, unsystematic endeavours”, at least my conscience is a little clearer than it would have been had I not said anything.

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