Immolating, By Fire, For Cause

"IMMOLATION" is defined as a ritual sacrifice, usually but not necessarily by burning, usually for religious purposes, usually to appease the appetite of a presumed meat eating god. Ancient Chinese kings immolated untold numbers of animals. The pre Columbian civilizations of central and south America immolated animals and human female virgins atop pyramidal pyres in deference to the perceived preferences of their numerous and various gods. Some they burned, others they hacked to death. The hacking provided a more tangible display of blood letting, more satisfying to the masters of immolation, possibly preferred by meat eating gods, including the biblical Judeo-Christian deity. The hungry anthropomopphic Judeo-christian God, a being of prodigious appetite, demanded and consumed no fewer than fifteen thousand immolated animals of various sorts, with a special taste for sheep, in the Old Testament alone. (His own only begotten son served essentially the same purpsoe in the revised edition "New Tetament" addition). When one douses one's self with a highly flammable liquid, gasoline or other, by pouring it on one's head, sets one's self aflame, one has "self-immolated". To satisfy the precise definition of self immmolation, the act must be performed out of political protest or for religious based reasons. After the fact, after the fire, the living swoop in like intellectual vultures,giving opinions. The message has been sent, and received. Those who agree with the noble underlying cause describe the act of martyrdom as heroic.They often insist that the same purpose could have and maybe should been accomplished by different, less self destructive means. They have a point. Those who do not embrace the noble cause causing the immolation ascribe it to mental illness, or misguidance. Perhaps there is truth in both interpretations. As always, personal perspective and opinion prevail. The young American airman who self immolated in public in Washingotn D.C. reportedly shouted "free Palestine!" as he met his self inflicted demise. He made his underlying cause quite clear, as self immolaters almost invariably do. And,as is usually the case with self inflicted martyrs, the young man had a point shared by many others. This is also almost always the case. The point is that the Israeli response to the October terrorist attack by Hamas has been and continues, arguably, to be overly harsh, overly brutal, often being described as "genocide". If indeed it is genocide it has not proceeded very far, yet. Of the roughly two point four million non Jewish Palestinians, approximately thirty thousand of them have been killed, and counting, by the Israeli "defense forces". That's a start, but, at least numerically, not an impressive one. Genocide requires complete elimination of an ethnic or racial group to satisfy its definition. Another, perhaps even more fundamentally salient point merits mention. It is this:that the modern nstate of Israel was established under such haphazard, chaotic, poorly planned circumstances, and so spontaneously violently, that its peaceful emergence was doomed from the beginning,destined to result in decades of unending confrontation,violence, and wars. Zionism was well underway in Europe by the eighteen seventies. Jews were flocking to the "holy land" from all across Europe.Thus, many of the "original" Hebrew inhabitants of Palestine were westerners. Modern Israel was born as an act of western imperialism, a last breath of a dying British empire. The "Balfour declaration", in which the British government formally expressed support for the establishment of a Jewish national homeland, was issued in November of 1917, expediently, just as the shrinking Ottoman Empire was surrendering, by force, its control of Palestine. The declaration was vague, and mentioned vaguely that the political and religious safety and rights of the non Jewish Palestian people must be safeguarded. But it included no specific arrangements for the establishment of a Palestinian homeland,a formally recognized nation. Surely, between 1870 and 1948 there had been ample time to do this. This, considering that prior to the violent, unplanned, chaotic establishment of the nation of Israel Jews and non Jews had for decades lived in relative peace and harmony in what both considered to be their natural, God given homeland. Maybe it should have remained that way.