The Alliance for Convenient Hostility
My hometown has been a case study of political, legal and economic absurds for the last thirty years. Some of it is almost entertaining in its banality. When McDonalds closed its doors in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it was a laughable matter because it had nothing to do with their revenue. Actually, it was better than I expected, with teenagers lining up for a Happy meal before heading to the cinema which was screening the new movie from whichever superhero franchise. There were parents with children who obviously thought burgers and supersize sodas was a good idea for a family lunch. Actually, what killed McDonald’s here was the propensity of the licence owner to invest in his private car park instead in his financial obligations. Curiously, in Russia it took a military invasion for the Golden Arches to leave. Here, it was spending money on a brand new Bentley.
Our little hub of American culture of junk both on screen and on their plate was a drug you could quickly succumb to. Before you know it, you’ve wasted two hours on the new Iron Man and a bucket of overpriced popcorn. When you go back to reality, judging by recent events in the Middle East, you’ll wish you stayed in the Marvel Universe. Especially when we analyze what’s been going on here. There was a protest of support for Palestine in a public square and on the other hand, a gesture of support for Israel on my university campus. Can such discrepancies exist in peaceful cohabitation at all? Whatever is going on, neither of those two extremes must be particularly moved by the bloodshed. Rather instigated and encouraged by the ruling ideology to create a yet another convenient rift. Because these ideological rifts are the cornerstone of their claim to power.
What we’re seeing here at the moment is just a drop in the petri dish of local political paralysis. Unlike a yoghurt, its expiration date is defined by the need for it. Once they see there’s no more milk in the tit if things stay the way they are, whatever inhibits necessary changes will slowly fade away and open the doors for alternative solutions. I’m by no means an expert on the history of the conflict between Palestine and Israel, but maybe you could say the same for that case. The closest I ever came to experiencing its side-effects was during a reading at an international literary festival in France, when Middle-Eastern authors took to the stage, while the Israeli poet Anat Zacharia was granted only a spotlight and a microphone while standing in a corner under a tree next to them.
It’s difficult to talk about all of this without being attacked for whataboutism, supporting the wrong side, ignorance or downright racism. This makes the position of those of us who write and publish in the public domain very difficult. Salman Rushdie now has to wear an eyepatch because a violent radical didn’t like whatever he was told to dislike about him. Slavoj Žižek’s recent speech in Frankfurt was condemned by the head of the Buchmesse though he tried to provide a less inflammatory perspective on the whole story. It was Hamas after all that lit the fuse leading to the explosion of the barrel, and the events ever since wouldn’t have taken place without it, or at least not to this extent. It also bears repeating that the dimwits at Queers for Palestine ignore the fact each of them would be probably gunned down if they took the protests to that place steeped knee-deep in homophobia and severe misogyny.
Now that major political players got involved, things are likely to escalate even further as if the body count wasn’t already too big to assess. Even one single casualty is one too many. The media is now taking a different, more personal approach by sharing individual stories of those affected by the conflict. It would be a mistake to think it will influence a change in public discourse because it’s like watching the abandoned sheep Fiona being saved by a Scottish farmer which propelled her to social media stardom. An another mistake would be to assume I’m an ignorant bigot for comparing victims of war to sheep. But you’re more likely to switch the channel when confronted by more news from the Gaza strip than a harmless testimony of how humans aren’t as screwed up as we seem to be right now. It’s easy to get pulled into a vortex of emotions. Getting out is harder.
Public platforms can be dangerous if you question the official narrative. I’ve seen enough people attacking authors for their convictions without having read any of their books aside from occasional opinion pieces. The comment section online can be a very violent place. It makes you rethink the idea of free speech and its limits. Socrates had certain doubts about democracy and he’s been proven right over and over again. More often than not it comes down to a mob that reduces a system that protects its weakest members to a merciless grind where the majority gets to decide who’s disposable. That, in turn, transforms it into a dictatorship where reason is replaced by fear. Which is exactly what’s currently going on in the Middle East: fear, desperation and violence. Surviving one’s formative years is hard enough as it is. If the world turns into a chain reaction of major conflicts, who knows where it will takes us. But wherever that is, I’m afraid we won’t like it and all of this blood will be spilled in vain.
Both Israel and Palestine share a history of painful compromises, conflicts and tragedies. But we shouldn’t let guns do the talking. Because when they do, there’s nothing but silence in the aftermath. There must be a different way out of this and if there’s anything that’s been accomplished by now, it’s the fact that Ukrainians were pushed out of the headlines which could be exactly what Putin hoped for. Each and every global leader will use this situation as an opportunity for extra attention. But do beware. It’s certainly not a lie that opinions are like assholes: everyone’s got one. And they sure as hell are going to flaunt it every chance they get. You better get ready for a whole lot of farts. While we can’t expect the this to stop, we can choose how to respond to it and find a sanctuary in the peace of an open mind.
