Attack Jerusalem? Launching rockets on the eternal city? Imagine the irony if a Hamas rocket hits the Dome of the Rock? Recoil time to play in the rubble. Something here about Walter Benjamin’s idea of children playing in trash and debris and their unique ability to reconcile modern technology with long lost symbolism within the wreckage, what he termed as “messy antics.” The ultimate wreckage being complete nihilism and its doubtful he applied his idea to a vision of a destroyed Jerusalem, but then again his ideas on messianic violence, the end of law would be cannon fodder, excuse the pun if the Old City of Jerusalem were to take hits from the Mighty Martyrs Brigade and Quassam fan club.
To Benjamin, children viewed objects of the world as things charged with remarkable, and revolutionary,potentials. That is, the most valuable and dear objects are often what grown-up see as useless trash. How would children play with a destroyed Jerusalem, and what revolutionary ideals would they think of,and would they differ from Benjamin’s own fetish for the Marxist project? The central thesis of Benjamin is that, in having been neglected, the discarded object nonetheless continues to exist apart from the continuum of progressive historical time. In being discarded, the object that had once been a part of the historical process as a reified or fetishized commodity,dies a social death; but it is precisely at the juncture in which it exists as a ‘has-been’ that its potential to reveal the ‘not-yet’ emerges (its chance to be ‘born[e] again’). This two-fold movement opens up within the object itself, and therefore it points to two dimensions: on the one hand, as an extinct and bygone object it is able to demystify the structure of progressive history by exposing its ‘mythic’ dimension.
—Obama has contributed to the cooling of the relationship after the close ties between the Mubarak regime and the US by saying that he regards the present Egyptian administration as neither an ally nor an enemy.
But Miller said that Obama is also in a position to exert pressure on Morsi to ensure the peace treaty is not undermined by the Gaza conflict or broader political pressures, not least over Egypt’s position as one of the largest recipients of US aid.
“We’ve got a $4.5bn IMF loan to Egypt under consideration and Morsi wants our help with that. Why is there massive assistance to Egypt? It grew out of the peace treaty. Without that peace treaty, the chances of our treating Egypt as a special case are going to diminish dramatically,” he said.—Read More:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/15/obama-egypt-diplomatic-gaza-conflict-escalate image:http://www.alaintruong.com/archives/2008/10/21/p10-0.html
There is a redemptive dimension to destruction, as a destroyed Holy Land outliving its conventional collective social function and being re-projected into a new realm. Building a new Holy Land from scratch. Funny how an ardent Marxist like Benjamin could not avoid Orthodox notions of Messianism, even if he welded the masses and proletariat as discarded and marginalized objects, it still came back to some divine presence, an incomprehensible hand at work restoring its own equilibrium.
—On Wednesday Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s foreign minister, revealed just how much the UN bid is getting under Israel’s skin: he is, he said, considering immediate recognition of statehood within provisional borders if the Palestinians will drop the UN bid.
Palestinians know what Israeli promises are worth. But this is significant all the same: it is closer to actual negotiation than anything in recent years. This is not to suggest Fatah should abandon its statehood efforts. To the contrary, it is evidence that Israel is more vulnerable to a political campaign based on human rights than to a military one based on rockets.
It is the tragedy of the people of Gaza, and indeed all Palestinians, that Hamas is so blinded that it does not understand the realities of its situation or the madness of its actions.
Read more: http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/editorial/violence-in-gaza-kills-palestinians-chance-at-unity#ixzz2CPvvZGTW
Follow us: @TheNationalUAE on Twitter | thenational.ae on Facebook—
It was a genial assertion of Benjamin with his “now time” taking the idea of discarded objects and blasting them out of their historical continuum, which Biblically would be akin to Judaism’s and patriarchs of other faiths blasting into their own now-time in trips to the Garden of Eden and returning to material notions of time and space. As Benjamin said: “in order for a part of the past to be touched by the present instant there must be no continuity between them.” Except spiritually there is no rescuing of the kidnapped from the materialists “brutal grasp” but rather a symbiosis between disparate dimensions into a new fluid stasis independent of known science.
(see link at end)…Hamas said it fired long-range a rocket towards Jerusalem from Gaza, first time city has apparently been targeted in the current conflict. …Sirens were later heard in Jerusalem with claims from Hamas that they had fired a Qassam rocket at the city. However there were no immediate reports of explosions or casualties….Shortly after the air raid siren sounded in Jerusalem, Hamas’ military wing, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, claimed responsibility for the rocket fired at the capital area. according to the organization, it fired a homemade rocket called Qassam M76. …
A police spokesman acknowledged an explosion had been heard but said there was no initial indication a rocket had struck the city nor any immediate reports of casualties or damage.Read More:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/9681562/Israel-and-Gaza-conflict-rocket-from-Gaza-lands-near-Jerusalem.html
…In 1581, In Heinrich Bunting drew this symbolic map of the world as a cloverleaf, with Jerusalem the central point:
Heinrich Bunting (1545-1606) knew the world didn’t really look like this. There are enough maps in his works (such as Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae) to indicate he knew the continents had an irregular, and not a symbolic shape….
ht="402" />Read More:http://www.neatorama.com/2007/07/20/
Yet he delighted in drawing other symbolic maps, examples of which can be anthropomorphic (Europe as a virgin) or hippomorphic (Asia as a winged horse). This particular map is a tribute to Buntings hometown Hanover, as the text above the map indicates: Die ganze Welt in einem Kleberblatt welches ist der Stadt Hannover meines lieben Vaterlandes Wapen (‘The Whole World in a Cloverleaf, Which Is The Coat of Arms of Hannover, My Dear Fatherland’)….
—
David RUBINGER, Golda Meir feeding her grand-son, April 1963
Original Photography. Gelatin Silver Print
16 x 20 inch (40 x 50 cm)
Ed 50
Signed and numered by the artist.
Certificate of Authenticity + Biography—Read More:http://www.gadcollection.com/19_david-rubinger/123_david-rubinger-golda-meir-feeding-her-grand-son-april-1963.html
The map shows a world divided into three parts (Europe, Asia and Africa), connected at a single central point: Jerusalem. This is essentially still the same symbolic map of the world as the one first devised by Saint Isidore in the seventh century. Isidore’s ’T and O’-shaped map, itself inspired by Scripture, influenced Christian European mapmaking up until the age of discovery. Read More:http://www.neatorama.com/2007/07/20/
It is peculiar how the current bomb and missile exchange corresponds, apparently, to the Old Testament reading of the birth of twins to Isaac and Rebecca. Jacob and Esau are opposed from the moment of birth. As they grow older, their contrary personality traits become glaringly obvious with Jacob as the “dweller of tents,” a scholar, and Esau as outdoorsman, “skilled hunter” and a man with a passion for violence. Esau concedes his birthright for a bowl of lentils and the deal is sealed. Brains over brawn. The problem has always been to wear the badge of “My firstborn Israel,” the Jewish people had to be deemed worthy of the honor. Just not good enough that their father Jacob had purchased the birthright from an unworthy but willing seller.God told Moses, that he saw the Jewish people as being worthy of being redeemed, but you have to wonder if he had second premonitions or his own roadmap for peace also had vague timelines. The analogies of course are very complex, and at heart is a likely Islamic fundamental view that the Jew is unworthy and unheroic by nature, inferior, and the birthright was a sham and a scandal, imbued with a pervasive absence of responsibility. In the last analysis it may go back to that old homily ” you can sell your birthright for beans, but you can’t buy a birthright for beans.
COMMENTS