US, Israel & Brazil: The Unbearable Political Levity

This week we are going to address some examples of political levity (here referred to as incongruence) that should make any human being, who thinks, wonder about the kind of people we have running our lives.

Incongruence #1

In the name of business, of trade, politicians are willing to sacrifice their country's collective identity. 

Arab nations reckon they have a strong collective identity (based on the Islamic religion); and for that reason they demand from non-Muslim women the use of veils, chadors, niqabs etc whenever they visit their country – those who decide to go there, subject themselves to that disrespect (for their own identity) and comply to that demand. But it's interesting to see that Arabs are not willing to reciprocate the gesture when they come to our side of the world and, because they invest heavily in our economies, Arabs believe that they have the right to impose their customs on us. What kind of problems does this lack of reciprocity create? It creates cultural clashes, unnecessary tensions and (ultimately) violence. 

I was shocked when I read that recently an Iraqi citizen, who after much strife joined his family in the US, was shot by an American citizen in the street. An organisation with links to Hamas, CAIR, is trying to connect this murder to hate crime – yet the media didn't pick up the story, why? First, because CAIR is the voice of a Terrorist Organisation; second, because this attack may have been the result of political negligence: if a political leader avoids stating the obvious, if he refuses to call things by its proper name, if he offers the impression that he favours a certain group over the other; then he can expect tensions to rise and violence to occur, since the people are completely able to connect the dots by themselves and, when perceiving that their leader is taking the wrong course of action, they may decide to take matters into their own hands (Selah). 

Incongruence #2

America and Israel continue to feed the “occupation” lie – this makes no sense, specifically when the international law clearly refutes such claim; so why keep repeating the same lie incessantly? Whose interests does the perversion of truth serve? 

Prof. Eliav Shochteman, a renown expert in International Law, supported in public what many of us have been saying for years: Israel is not an Occupying Power. 

“After the People of Israel had been in exile for so many years, its right was recognized to return to its Land. The practical translation of this recognition of the right of the Jewish People to its land was expressed in the text of the British Mandate for the Land of Israel, within which framework, Britain was named to be the executor of the plan to establish a national home for the People of Israel (...) In addition to this, in order to assure that the government of Britain would indeed carry out this plan, a specific clause was defined in the text of the Mandate in which it was stated that the government of Britain was forbidden from transferring any of the territory of the Land of Israel to a foreign sovereignty” -- Prof Shochteman 

Yet Britain did it by illegally transferring 80% of the territory covered by the mandate to the Arabs, in order to create yet another Arab nation: Jordan. The United States and the European Union want to do the same now and illegally transfer Samaria and Judea to a ex nihilo UN/Sweden/Latin America recognised Arab state: Palestine. Those countries want to violate the very same international law they invoke to justify their violation of the law - this is an incongruence. 

But the bigger incongruence comes from Israel itself: why does the Rosh Hamemshalat Medinat Yisrael allow this injustice; what is he waiting for to restore the truth? 

Incongruence #3

Brazil, following the example of other Latin America countries, added a paragraph to the Homicide Law (Art 121 of the Penal Code), giving thus birth to “femicide”: the murder of a woman, by a man, because of her gender and crimes committed against pregnant women, girls under 14, and women over 60. 

In Latin American countries, women are treated terribly, albeit violating the principle of equality (i.e. all citizens are equal under the law regardless of religion, race, gender, age etc) is not an excuse, nor the proper means, to tackle violence against women. 

The word homicide implies both genders (and even everything in between), so why this discriminatory term “femicide”? In Brazil's case, to distract the electorate (and women are its biggest slice) from journey towards the abyss that President Dilma pushed her country into. 

The argument “the critics have a point but they need to understand that many women die everyday of domestic violence” is flawed because it doesn't address the inability to enforce the existing law; and it is invalid for it doesn't present valid arguments to justify the violation of the sacrosanct principle of equality [a capital principle stated by Article 1 of the Human Rights Charter “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”]

The law of “femicide” suggests that a woman, due to her gender, has more rights than a man (i.e.  they are not equal under the law); it prejudges that intent to kill based on gender is easily proved; it assumes that despise for and discrimination against the feminine gender is easily proved (anyone who has profiled abusers, knows that the abuser is often a psychopath who displays a charming and trustworthy behaviour, acts carefully not to be caught and thus manipulates the spouse into silence); and this law naively supposes that those who display an anti-women behaviour will automatically change their deportment due to the existence of this new paragraph. 

The incongruent term “femicide” is not only demagogic but also illegal – but again, to make a mockery of the law is the trend nowadays. So what's next in the agenda...gaycide, blackcide, Muslimcide? 

“On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth.” -- Milan Kundera

(in The Unbearable Lightness of Being)