Bennbell's Journals

The Wrestler

I went to see the wrestler. Mickey Rourke, who has always been one of my favorite actors, put in a truly remarkable performance as the Ram. A used up piece of meat who deserves to be alone but somehow makes a comeback in the ring. Marisa Tomei, also put in an extraordinary performance as a stripper who has seen her better days. Torme displays a lot of guts and skin in her portrayal of the stripper. Itâ�™s her pole work I admire. Asbury Park makes an appearance in the scene by the sea as another metaphor for the down and out that has had its glory days in a bygone era but is making a comeback of its own. And the title song, â�œThe Wrestlerâ� by Bruce Springsteen who we know hails from Asbury Park is the icing on the cake. There is much to recommend in The Wrestler. Go see it. You wonâ�™t be sorry.

Strangulation of Palestinians

The Gaza Strip is rapidly becoming one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world. Israel has cordoned off the entire area, home to some 1.4 million Palestinians, blocking commercial goods, food, fuel and even humanitarian aid. At least 36 people have been killed in Israeli strikes since Tuesday and many more wounded. Hamas, which took control of Gaza in June, has launched about 200 rockets into southern Israel in the same period in retaliation, injuring more than 10 people. Israel announced the draconian closure and collective punishment Thursday in order to halt the rocket attacks, begun on Tuesday, when 18 Palestinians, including the son of a Hamas leader, were killed by Israeli forces.

This is not another typical spat between Israelis and Palestinians. This is the final, collective strangulation of the Palestinians in Gaza. The decision to block shipments of food by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency means that two-thirds of the Palestinians who rely on relief aid will no longer be able to eat when U.N. stockpiles in Gaza run out. Reports from inside Gaza speak of gasoline stations out of fuel, hospitals that lack basic medicine and a shortage of clean water. Whole neighborhoods were plunged into darkness when Israel cut off its supply of fuel to Gaza's only power plant. The level of malnutrition in Gaza is now equal to that in the poorest sub-Saharan nations.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert uses words like war to describe the fight to subdue and control Gaza. But it is not war. The Palestinians have little more than old pipes fashioned into primitive rocket launchers, AK-47s and human bombs with which to counter the assault by one of the best-equipped militaries in the world. Palestinian resistance is largely symbolic. The rocket attacks are paltry, especially when pitted against Israeli jet fighters, attack helicopters, unmanned drones and the mechanized units that make regular incursions into Gaza. A total of 12 Israelis have been killed over the past six years in rocket attacks. Suicide bombings, which once rocked Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, have diminished, and the last one inside Israel that was claimed by Hamas took place in 2005. Since the current uprising began in September 2000, 1,033 Israelis and 4,437 Palestinians have died in the violence, according to the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem. B'Tselem noted in a December 2007 report that the dead included 119 Israeli children and 971 Palestinian children.

The failure on the part of Israel to grasp that this kind of brutal force is deeply counterproductive is perhaps understandable given the demonization of Arabs, and especially Palestinians, in Israeli society. The failure of Washington to intervene -- especially after President Bush's hollow words about peace days before the new fighting began -- is baffling. Collective abuse is the most potent recruiting tool in the hands of radicals, as we saw after the indiscriminate Israeli bombing of Lebanon and the American occupation of Iraq. The death of innocents and collective humiliation are used to justify callous acts of indiscriminate violence and revenge. It is how our own radicals, in the wake of 9/11, lured us into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Israel has been attempting to isolate and punish Gaza since June when Hamas took control after days of street fighting against its political rival Fatah. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, a Fatah leader, dissolved the unity government. His party, ousted from Gaza, has been displaced to the Israeli-controlled West Bank. The isolation of Hamas has been accompanied by a delicate dance between Israel and Fatah. Israel hopes to turn Fatah into a Vichy-style government to administer the Palestinian territories on its behalf, a move that has sapped support for Fatah among Palestinians and across the Arab world. Hamas' stature rises with each act of resistance.

I knew the Hamas leader Dr. Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, who was assassinated by Israel in April of 2004. Rantissi took over Hamas after its founder, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, was assassinated by the Israelis in March of that year. Rantissi was born in what is now Israel and driven from his home in 1948 during the war that established the Jewish state. He, along with more than 700,000 other Palestinian refugees, grew up in squalid camps. As a small boy he watched the Israeli army enter and occupy the camp of Khan Younis in 1956 when Israel invaded Gaza. The Israeli soldiers lined up dozens of men and boys, including some of Rantissi's relatives, and executed them. The memory of the executions marked his life. It fed his lifelong refusal to trust Israel and stoked the rage and collective humiliation that drove him into the arms of the Muslim Brotherhood and later Hamas. He was not alone. Several of those who founded the most militant Palestinian organizations witnessed the executions in Gaza carried out by Israel in 1956 that left hundreds dead.

Rantissi was a militant. But he was also brilliant. He studied pediatric medicine and genetics at Egypt's Alexandria University and graduated first in his class. He was articulate and well read and never used in my presence the crude, racist taunts attributed to him by his Israeli enemies. He reminded me that Hamas did not target Israeli civilians until Feb. 25, 1994, when Dr. Baruch Goldstein, dressed in his Israeli army uniform, entered a room in the Cave of the Patriarchs, which served as a mosque, and opened fire on Palestinian worshipers. Goldstein killed 29 unarmed people and wounded 150. Goldstein was rushed by the survivors and beaten to death.

"When Israel stops killing Palestinian civilians we will stop killing Israeli civilians," he told me. "Look at the numbers. It is we who suffer most. But it is only by striking back, by making Israel feel what we feel, that we will have any hope of protecting our people."

The drive to remove Hamas from power will not be accomplished by force. Force and collective punishment create more Rantissis. They create more outrage, more generations of embittered young men and women who will dedicate their lives to avenging the humiliation, perhaps years later, they endured and witnessed as children. The assault on Gaza, far from shortening the clash between the Israelis and Palestinians, ensures that it will continue for generations. If Israel keeps up this attempt to physically subdue Gaza we will see Hamas-directed suicide bombings begin again. This is what resistance groups that do not have tanks, jets, heavy artillery and attack helicopters do when they want to fight back and create maximum terror. Israeli hawks such as Ephraim Halevy (a former head of Mossad), Giora Eiland (who was national security adviser to Ariel Sharon) and Shaul Mofaz (a former defense minister) are all calling for some form of dialogue with Hamas. They get it. But without American pressure Prime Minister Olmert will not bend.

Israel, despite its airstrikes and bloody incursions, has been unable to halt the rocket fire from Gaza or free Cpl. Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured in the summer of 2006. Continued collective abuse and starvation will not break Hamas, which was formed, in large part, in response to Israel's misguided policies and mounting repression. There will, in fact, never be Israeli-Palestinian stability or a viable peace accord now without Hamas' agreement. And the refusal of the Bush administration to intercede, to move Israel toward the only solution that can assure mutual stability, is tragic not only for the Palestinians but ultimately Israel.

And so it goes on. The cycle of violence that began decades ago, that turned a young Palestinian refugee with promise and talent into a militant and finally a martyr, is turning small boys today into new versions of what went before them. Olmert, Bush's vaunted partner for peace, has vowed to strike at Palestinian militants "without compromise, without concessions and without mercy," proof that he and the rest of his government have learned nothing. It is also proof that we, as the only country with the power to intervene, have become accessories to murder.

See more stories tagged with: extremism, violence, hamas, bush, israel, gaza

Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, was the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times. He spent seven years in the Middle East and reported frequently from Iran. His latest book is American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.

Ten Fantasy Celebrities

Rita Hayworth

Ava Gardner

Marilyn Monroe

Sophia Loren

Sade

Tony Braxton

J LO

Jenna Jameson

Uma Thurman

Penelope Cruz

Eight Random Facts

Eight Random Facts About Me

1. The first random fact about me is how painful it is that I find this task to be. Itâ�™s not that I am shy itâ�™s that I am painfully shy.

2. I donâ�™t like to talk about myself.

3. I used to sell magazines door to door. One time we had a sales contest: First Prize was a new Cadillac. Second prize was a set of steak knives. Third prize was you were fired.

4. Iâ�™ll be 59 years old August 9. I always used to be the youngest guy in the room. Now I am the oldest. The best revenge is to outlive your enemies.

5. I was born in a Log cabin in Kentucky in a town called Hope.

6. I am a mammal standing on this sterile promontory with only a hitchhikersâ�™ guide to lead me.

7. I think that Religion poisons everything and could very well lead to the destruction of the earth and the extinction of mankind.

8. I canâ�™t bring myself to say, â�œI guess Iâ�™ll be toddling along.â� It isnâ�™t that I canâ�™t toddle, itâ�™s that I canâ�™t guess Iâ�™ll toddle.

Pans Labrynth

Go see Pans Labrynth. It is a wonderful film. I highly recommend. Check out the link Below.

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/pans_labyrinth/reviews_users.php

Prajna - Wisdom

Prajna nay be likened to the rain, the moisture of which reflects every living thing.

-Hui-neng

The quality of mercy is not strained, It falleth to the ground like the gentle rain.

-William Shakespeare

Mass Murder

Dresden (Germany) was the largest massacre in European history. On 2/13/1945, 135,000 people were killed by British firebombing in one night. The whole city was burned down. It was a British atrocity. Not ours. We firebombed Tokyo and Nuked Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

The Situation in Darfur

Darfur, a region in Western Sudan, is home to the first genocide of the 21st century. In February of 2003, government sponsored militias began systematic process of killing, raping and torturing innocent civilians.To date over 400,000 people have died and over 205 million have been displaced from their homes. Currently there are approximately 3.5 million men, women and children in the western Darfur region of Sudan. The Sudanese government has sponsored a campaign of violence and forced starvation.

Not since the Rwandan genocide of 1994 has the world seen such a calculated campaign of displacement, starvation, rape and mass slaughter. These innocent victims are essentially on life support, their continued existence dependent on the U S and international humanitarian aid and the presence of African Union Peacekeepers.

Despite the best efforts of the under funded and under manned African Union peacekeeping force, attacks have increased in recent months, leading to tens of thousands of new arrivals at refugee camps in Darfur and across the border in Chad.

International experts agree that the United Nations Security Council must deploy a peacekeeping force with a mandate to protect Darfur's civilians immediately.

Please visit www.SaveDarfur.org to learn more.

Arrowsmiths

Arrowsmiths make arrows

Bow constructors make bows

Time flies like arrows

Bovines grow bows

A bowman is a male bow

A bowie is a little bow

And boeing is the sound a bow makes

When the string goes boeing.

Consitution

The Constitution of the United States of America

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.