The Crashing Of Symbols

We are inundated with protestations by people who shout incendiary phrases without a clue as to what they really mean. When it comes to Israel, the world is filled with cries about "international law"--generally by those who have no knowledge of the law but enjoy the implications.

Thus we hear about "occupation" and "disproportionate force" as if there were no scholarly opinions written that defend Israel's position.

Now we hear cries about "illegal blockades," "international waters" and "piracy" and when the law is clear on the legal rights of countries to have such blockades, defends their right to go into international waters to defend such a blockade and explains why exercising that right is not piracy at all.

But why bother with words when you can create a media sensation, when you can put together a flotilla declare that you are doing nothing more than following in the footsteps of  the ship The Exodus. If one picture is worth a thousand words, imagine how much it is worth to appear on the evening news.

Yet here, once again, we have people--some innocently, others purposely--twisting the symoblism afforded by the flotilla.

French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy writes:

For a man like me, someone who takes pride in having helped to conceive, with others, this kind of symbolic action ‏(the boat for Vietnam; the march for the survival of Cambodia in 1979; various and sundry anti-totalitarian boycotts and, more recently, the deliberate violation of the Sudan border to break the blockade hiding the perpetration of massacres in Darfur‏) − in other words, for a militant of humanitarian interference and all the media fuss that goes with it, this pathetic saga has something of a caricature to it, a gloomy grimace of destiny.

But this is all the more reason not to give in. All the more reason to reject this confusing of genres, this inversion of values. All the more reason to resist this hijacking of meaning, that places the very spirit of a policy conceived to counter the intent of barbarians at their service.

Destitution of the anti-totalitarian dialectic, its imitations and its reversals. Confusion of an era when we combat democracies as if they were dictatorships or fascist states. This maelstrom of hatred and madness is about Israel. But it also concerns, as we should be well aware, some of the most precious things established in the movement of ideas in the last 30 years, especially on the left, and these are thus imperiled. A word to the wise is sufficient.

We live in a time when confusion reigns and the enemies of democracy create and exploit this opportunity.

Technorati Tag: Bernard-Henri Lévy and Gaza Flotilla.