There is sanctity in the value of human life. Or so the expression goes. Every life is worth the world. But, there are alot of exceptions, asteriks, and legal loopholes and hoops to jump through. So, what happens when hierarchies, pecking orders, are created and people beome a little less “peoplie” as they are pushed towards the bottom. The un-people where care and biblical compassion exposes the sharp, jagged edge of morality within the cold chill of the technical and legal. Is it racism? What is the reserve of those 3/5 human slaves. free slaves and say corporations, “legal citizens” with more exalted rights. …
“Not naming streets is ignoring people’s existence,” said Meir Margalit, a municipal council member from Meretz in charge of the East Jerusalem portfolio. “If every person has a name, then every street has a name. The underlying message in this situation is that as far as we’re concerned, you don’t exist, you’re not worth even a street name,” he says. Read More:http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/hundreds-of-east-jerusalem-streets-to-be-named-after-years-of-confusion-1.393046
…Many of the 250,000 people who live in East Jerusalem cannot receive letters by mail at home, because they don’t have an address. Hundreds of streets in the east of the city are unnamed….The nameless streets are partly a result of illegal construction. The city’s refusal to recognize thousands of houses built without permits prevented it from recognizing the streets created by this construction. But the municipality’s prolonged neglect of East Jerusalem and problematic planning there are also to blame….
…The absence of names has repercussions in everyday life. People who don’t open a post office box can’t get a court summons, or any other official notification, simply because they don’t have an address. When they do get the notification finally, usually by courier, the delay has often already caused problems. In addition, a telephone technician, water company workers or cable technicians cannot locate the house or person who needs their service. ….Read More:http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/hundreds-of-east-jerusalem-streets-to-be-named-after-years-of-confusion-1.393046
ADDENDUM:
Noam Chomsky: There may be some of you old enough to remember the slogan “a terror against terror,” which was used by the Gestapo—and which we’ve taken over. None of this arouses any interest, because all of these victims belong to the category of unpeople.
Well, that—coming back to our topic now, the concept of unpeople is central to tonight’s topic. Israeli Jews are people. Palestinians are unpeople. And a lot follows from that as clear illustrations constantly. So, here’s a clipping, if I remembered to bring it, from the New York Times. Front-page story, Wednesday, October 12th, the lead story is “Deal with Hamas Will Free Israeli Held Since 2006.” That’s Gilad Shalit. And right next to it is a—running right across the top of the front page is a picture of four women kind of agonized over the fate of Gilad Shalit. “Friends and supporters of the family of Staff Sgt. Gilad Shalit received word of the deal at the family’s protest tent in Jerusalem.” Well, that’s understandable, actually. I think he should have been released a long time ago. But there’s something missing from this whole story. So, like, there’s no pictures of Palestinian women, and no discussion, in fact, in the story of—what about the Palestinian prisoners being released? Where do they come from?…
…And there’s a lot to say about that. So, for example, we don’t know — at least I don’t read it in the Times — whether the release includes the Palestinian—the elected Palestinian officials who were kidnapped and imprisoned by Israel in 2007 when the United States, the European Union and Israel decided to dissolve the only freely elected legislature in the Arab world. That’s called “democracy promotion,” technically, in case you’re not familiar with the term. So I don’t know what happened to them. There are also other people who have been in prison exactly as long as Gilad Shalit—in fact, one day longer. The day before Gilad Shalit was captured at the border, Israeli troops entered Gaza, kidnapped two brothers, the Muamar brothers, spirited them across the border, in violation of the Geneva Conventions, of course. And they’ve disappeared into Israel’s prison system. I haven’t a clue what happened to them; I’ve never seen a word about it. And as far as I know, nobody cares, which makes sense. After all, unpeople. Whatever you think about capturing the soldier, a soldier from an attacking army, plainly kidnapping civilians is a far more severe crime. But that’s only if they’re people. This case really doesn’t matter. It’s not that it’s unknown, so if you look back at the press the day after the Muamar brothers were captured, there’s a couple lines here and there. But it’s just insignificant, of course—which makes some sense, because there are lots of others in prison, thousands of them, many without charges. Read More:http://exopermaculture.com/2011/10/19/democracy-now-noam-chomsky-on-people-and-unpeople/