Brian Eno on the Israel-Gaza crisis: How can you justify images such as this?

[Jefferson23]

When the musician Brian Eno saw a picture of a Palestinian man carrying the remains of his dead son in a plastic bag, he was moved to write a cri de coeur to his American friends, asking them to explain their country’s unconditional support for Israel. This is his letter – followed by the response from the author Peter Schwartz



Dear All of You,

I sense I’m breaking an unspoken rule with this letter, but I can’t keep quiet any more.

Today I saw a picture of a weeping Palestinian man holding a plastic carrier bag of meat. It was his son. He’d been shredded (the hospital’s word) by an Israeli missile attack – apparently using their fab new weapon, fléchette bombs. You probably know what those are – hundreds of small steel darts packed around explosive which tear the flesh off humans. The boy was Mohammed Khalaf al-Nawasra. He was four years old.

I suddenly found myself thinking that it could have been one of my kids in that bag, and that thought upset me more than anything has for a long time.

Then I read that the UN had said that Israel might be guilty of war crimes in Gaza, and they wanted to launch a commission into that. America won’t sign up to it.

What is going on in America? I know from my own experience how slanted your news is, and how little you get to hear about the other side of this story. But – for Christ’s sake! – it’s not that hard to find out. Why does America continue its blind support of this one-sided exercise in ethnic cleansing? WHY? I just don’t get it. I really hate to think it’s just the power of Aipac [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee]… for if that’s the case, then your government really is fundamentally corrupt. No, I don’t think that’s the reason… but I have no idea what it could be. The America I know and like is compassionate, broad-minded, creative, eclectic, tolerant and generous. You, my close American friends, symbolise those things for me. But which America is backing this horrible one-sided colonialist war? I can’t work it out: I know you’re not the only people like you, so how come all those voices aren’t heard or registered? How come it isn’t your spirit that most of the world now thinks of when it hears the word “America”? How bad does it look when the one country which more than any other grounds its identity in notions of Liberty and Democracy then goes and puts its money exactly where its mouth isn’t and supports a ragingly racist theocracy?

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/brian-eno-on-the-israelgaza-crisis-how-can-you-justify-images-such-as-this-9643916.html

[intaglio]

1. As far as I can make out this was first published on David Byrne's website

Together with a response from Peter Schwartz. I'm glad that this has been picked up by a mainstream news outlet

Link to these letters Gaza and the Loss of Civilization

[bemildred]

2. ‘Bomb Gaza?? Google Play app lets Android users carry out Israeli air strikes on Palestinians

Google is facing criticism for continuing to allow Android mobile users to download a game called “Bomb Gaza”, in which players are required to “drop bombs and avoid killing citizens”.

The app, which was uploaded on 29 July, has been installed up to 1,000 times and received at least one report as “inappropriate”, yet still remains available on Google’s Play store.

According to the game’s description and a series of screenshots, users gain points by controlling aircraft marked with Israeli flags as they drop bombs on cartoon Hamas militants.

It comes as more than 1,800 Palestinians have been killed in the ongoing Gaza conflict. Israel has confirmed that 64 of its soldiers have died in combat, while three civilians have been killed by cross-border shelling from Gaza.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/bomb-gaza-google-play-app-lets-android-users-carry-out-israeli-air-strikes-on-palestinians-9647579.html

[Jefferson23]

3. The game of life. n/t

[reddread]

4. the follow up is exceptional

http://stopwar.org.uk/news/brian-eno-in-a-world-of-horrors-why-i-single-out-the-crimes-of-israel#.U-CtNPldVa4

[Jefferson23]

5. Thank you for that! n/t