Red Jenny Bombs the Internet
I'm a fan of RedJenny's blog because I'm just an armchair blogger and she seems to be one of those activist bloggers. I get a vicarious thrill, I guess. (Link to RedJenny article at the end of this trip down memory lane, for you Sooey non-fans who would like to skip SooeySays and go straight to RedJenny.)
Anyway, as I've posted here before, I have a bias with regards to the Middle East and have since I was kid, really. Like lots of North Americans, I've always thought of Israel as the struggling underdog surrounded by enemies - and I cheered as it won wars and gained terrority because I believed all of that made Israel more secure. And a secure Israel was a good thing because Israel, as far as I knew, was like a Western democracy - and therefore, like I said, a good thing. And really, the Arab countries surrounding it just seemed ridiculously unaccommodating and unaccountably hostile.
I mean... c'mon - move over. It's just a little strip of land with no oil under it. What do you care, ya big dumb lugs.
So yeah, I didn't really know much about the Arab countries surrounding Israel and I didn't really care about them (still don't actually - particularly with regards to their animosity towards Israel, for which I can't really see that they have any legitimate grounds) - but I knew even less about the plight of the Palestinians because, let's face it, they just didn't make the cut against what had happened to the population of European Jews during WWII.
So, whoever they were, I pretty much felt it was incumbent upon them to move over and make room for their new neighbours - even if their new neighbours were moving in as landlords. Although, I wouldn't have seen that as being the case at the time.
Indeed, as a kid, I always figured that Israel was the least the world could have done to start making amends to those who had survived the Holocaust. It seemed to me like one of those great ideas - it was a wonder the world didn't have more of them more often. Of course, like many people today, I wish that one great idea had been to create a Jewish homeland somewhere in the New World - like say... New Mexico or Saskatchewan, but, there you go - Israel is in the Middle East and that's the way it is.
So add to this general feeling of goodwill towards Israel, the Munich Massace. And, for me, the Munich Massacre was a double whammy - because my second favourite thing to do next to reading about the military triumphs of Moshe Dayan, was to watch the Olympics - obsessively. In fact, I was constantly in training from the age of 6 onwards to get there one day (although my dream was to compete in gymnastics while my skill was in running the 75 yard dash) and the Munich Olympics were especially cool for me because Olga Korbut was competing that year and I'd read all about her in Seventeen magazine (the whole Russian gymnastics team had makeovers - it was like a dream come true, I'm sure) and I'd figured out if I mastered five feats per year in a floor routine, I'd be at my peak for the Games in 1980.
Anyway, it was pretty brutal for a fan of both Israel AND the Olympics waking up to the news that Palestinian terrorists had inexplicably murdered the Israeli wrestling team. And, let's face it, aside from the shock of something like that happening at the Olympics, was the inescapable and widely recognized fact that it had happened to Jews, again, in Germany.
So, I think it's fair to say that for most people, the act went beyond unacceptable violence to something else, something very alien to the mind of a kid living in the New World, anyway.
I would even venture to say that the seeming randomness of that specific act of targetted violence probably did as much to turn North American opinion against the Palestinian people as the Diary of Anne Frank had done to turn North American opinion in favour of the people of Israel.
Understand, too, I'm remembering (I think) how it felt to me at that time and at that age.
However, and this is also very true, the Munich Massacre ultimately made very widely known something I hadn't really been aware of (and, like I say, I was the original Lisa Simpson and way ahead of myself in my reading of current affairs) - that there was a whole other side to the Israel coin and it was pretty alien to how I had always thought about Israel - by shining a media spotlight on the Palestinians.
Now, I don't mean to be dramatic, but I'd say the Munich Massacre loomed pretty large for me, then. As large as did the Montreal Massacre years later, I would say - if that puts it in context. So it was no small thing, although over the years, and as the plight of the Palestinians has become worse and the aggression of the Israeli government and army more blatant - the romantic notion of Israel as the struggling underdog has been replaced with a clear-eyed view of Israel as an oppressor of the Palestinians. (I'm sure there's a less inflamatory way of putting that, but, what the hell - I'm livin' dangerously today.)
Interestingly, and if it helps put into perspective my more realistic view of Israel, my opinion of the Arab states surrounding Israel (and the Palestinians) hasn't changed at all.
Anyway, here's RedJenny's piece on terrorism. It's very interesting, I think. Tomorrow I'll blog about my brief correspondence with Abba Eban. I know, I know - I was such a pain in the ass as a kid, you wouldn't believe it.
