Mustafa Ekici
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
William Butler Yeats
One of the most shameful events witnessed by mankind is, without any doubt, the genocide committed by the Jewish Colonial State of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories. This genocide differs from its historical counterparts in two main ways: the group that committing the genocide and takes Judaism as reference, defines itself as a “victim” in front of humanity and history, while being unconditionally supported by the world’s greatest powers, who did committed genocide against Jews both historically and recently. In this way, this so-called “victim,” which bind both history and humanity, continues to commit crimes and perpetrate genocide without being bound by any human rules. Here, we are confronted with a history that distorted and constructed with myths and fables of dubious reality and an obsessive religious/political ideology based on that history: Zionism.
History should be read as a conflict/war between organized ideologies. Because the individual has no authority in history. History is almost entirely organized politics. Although history, due to its inherent connection to the concept of the “past,” may lead to a static/frozen perception, in fact, history is a living process. When based on the individual, history can be regarded as passing away events but when evaluated in terms of its connection with culture that is vast phenomenon in life of all individuals, is a strong link that connect the past to present and to the future therefore history is a set of facts that have an active relationship with the future as well as the past. Religions, languages, states, societies all exist on this living and productive ground extending from the past to the future.
In the aftermath of the two world wars that caused massive destruction in the last century, the central global intellect and central politics under the influence of it opened up a significant space for liberalism and its derivatives, which could be read as a kind of optimistic pacifism. This optimistic pacifism that had been built on the beliefs that mankind will inevitably progress and the rationality is the only way for this progress, emphasized that the bloody class struggles, revolutions, fascism, religious revolutions, and other major political upheavals of the last century were primitive and belonged to the past. Despite its seductive appeal, this approach suffers from the defect of confusing history and myth. This assumption encourages understanding gruesome historical scenes—such as the exhibition of severed human heads by the French in Algeria, the Belgians handing the severed hands and feet of the children to villagers in Congo who didn’t meet their daily rubber quotas, or the horrific images of nearly a million people being brutally hacked to death with machetes in Rwanda—not as political, historical events but as mythical, shocking, or poetic scenes. The suggestion is that there will never again be a proud and victorious commander standing on a mound of human heads with a bloody sword, or a king at whose feet children are slaughtered. Now, there will not be dirges and rituals but rather a society of free, happy, and prosperous people at the bright dawn of civilization and progress.
But not even a century after the two great world wars, we are on the verge of a new, bloodier confrontation that is likely to lead to greater massacres. Only with the genocide committed by the Jewish Colonial State of Israel in Gaza, optimistic pacifism, which built on the immunity of children and women, non-aggression against civilian infrastructures, protection of the environment, international law and other common common goods of humanity, along with all its established related international institutions, has been shattered in ten months. Humanity has been waking up to a grotesque reality where kings and soldiers with chubby faces pose on the bodies of shattered children, while rabbis enthusiastically chant “Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad.” for months. This is not a poetic and picturesque medieval painting, we are faced with vibrant history. With one difference: every resource possessed by societies is now both the target and the instrument of war. In past centuries, armies did confront in a specific location, and the war would end there. Often, countryside of a state and even the towns remained unaware of the conflict. But now, with advanced military and civilian technologies, there isn’t a single square meters of safe space. Now, the newborn baby and the six-year-old girl, Hind, are openly and specifically targeted in war.
It is time to return courageously to realism. The constantly ringing Chamberlain bell is now nothing but the sound of weariness created by distant and unreal approaches such as peace. Now we have a situation that cannot be explained by anything other than shame for almost everyone; ideologists, religious people, statesmen, communities leaders and all members of all sociesties feel nothing but the shame. The source of this shame is not just the heinous and disgraceful crimes committed by the Jewish Colony over the past year. It is also the crimes of the dictatorship in Syria, which exploited the deep fears of a sectarian minority, and the horrific scenes of children being beheaded with blunt swords at the feet of hysterical kings in Yemen, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Now, the scattered, bloodied corpses of children and women, abused and killed by coward and guilty soldiers, can only be looked upon with deep shame. There is nowhere left to turn our eyes away; the stench of rotting flesh and the sticky presence of filthy human blood have now become inseparable parts of existence of mankind in this world. As Madame de Staël said about the French Revolution, “if we were close enough to describe these outrageous brutalities in detail, we would be ashamed of ourselves.” And indeed, every individual is now close enough to these crimes and unable to escape from this shame. It is time to confront reality and shame.
Trying to flee from this shame and ignore it, would mean fleeing from history, geography, reality, and gradually, step by step, from being humanbeing and from God and running away from common good. It will be a taking refuge into myths, frozen fables, and legends that fill people with a naive satisfaction and poetic ecstasy. History is a reality intertwined with geography and culture, the state of humanity rooted in the soil, whereas myths are frozen in the past, detached from the land and geography, vague dreams. This is why they are irrefutable, integrist, and definitive. This is why they lead to the absurdity of attempting to derive honor from the grave crime of killing children.
Zionism, as a highly controversial attempt to create a homogeneous nation from an ethnic multi diversity that not rests on historicall reality but only myths and folk tales. A gathered community of fugitives, who have never established a connection with the land throughout history and weirds that have never been neighbors to anyone, can only find shelter in myths, not in history. They attempt to exist by breathing life into a stoned corpse on lands where they can not take root. However, history and geography flow with a completely different reality alongside this frozen dream. For these “victims” surrounded by a massive “enemy” of 400 million, life is not something that flows but is frozen in the myths of Masada. Counterfeiters and usurers, who had no homeland but only a satchel throughout history, intoxicated by myths they believe that can have a homeland. But, the homeland is the state of humanity rooted in the soil, not in distinct, wild, and lifeless myths.