Thursday, November 09, 2006

To uproot ...



Mukul Kesavan has written in today’s The Telegraph about the appointment of a racist Israeli politician, Avigdor Lieberman, as deputy prime minister of that country. I am moved to reproduce much of that below. This is very much in line with something a close friend had told me:

Zionism in its present form - is an enemy of civilisation. The so-called sense of insecurity about homeland of Israeli Jews - is a bizarre pathology that is allowed to inflict damage and destruction to others.

I am reminded of Simone Weil's words (in her book The Need for Roots):

"Uprootedness is by far the most dangerous malady to which human societies are exposed, for it is a self-propagating one. For people who are really uprooted there remain only two possible sorts of behaviour: either to fall into a spiritual lethargy resembling death ... or to hurl themselves into some form of activity necessarily designed to uproot, often by the most violent methods, those who are not yet uprooted, or only partly so ... Whoever is uprooted himself uproots others."


Cartoon: Sharon trying to uproot the Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation, by Amjad Rasmi, Arab News.

2 comments:

Sadiq said...

it is sad indeed

Bonita said...

Interesting, the options for dealing with uprootedness.

When I left my native Montana, a land of exquisite beauty, and came to live in a city in Washington state, I felt a deep sadness, for a very long time. It really felt like a large part of me had died. One day, my husband took me on a drive in the country. I saw canoers on the far end of a beautiful lake, and I wanted to be where they were. So, I bought a canoe, and we've spent 7 years exploring water, every weekend. Estuaries held so many secrets. The slow rivers, lakes, marshes - all of them welcomed me with birdcalls, aquatic plants, enchanting cabins and people waving greetings along the way. I lost my sadness, and now Puget Sound is my home.

When one must leave home, one must find the courage to 'replant' with care, and not become a burden or a nuiscence.