Rudyard Kipling"
āWhen you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldierā
General Douglas MacArthur"
āWe are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.ā
āIt is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.ā āOld soldiers never die; they just fade away.
āThe soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.ā
āMay God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .ā āThe object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
āNobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
āIt is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Solidarity Week not doing justice to Palestinian cause By Commander S THAYAPARAN (Retired) Royal Malaysian Navy
Sunday, October 29, 2023
Malaysiakini : So, to see young children dressed in the symbols of occupation and
resistance play-acting is the worst form of propaganda and demeans
Palestinian children, living under occupation. In other words, their
trauma is fodder for propaganda.
As a parent, if you want to buy
your child a toy gun, thatās up to you. But this is different. What
these adults did was put toy guns in the hands of children for a
specific cause, teaching them that a violent solution is the only
solution for Muslims in the Middle East or elsewhere.
Now,
does anyone really think that Palestinian parents want guns in the
hands of their children? Do you really think that Palestinian parents
want their children to live in a world where they have to carry guns to
kill their occupiers?
Missing from the outrage of the debacle of Solidarity Week
are the Palestinians themselves. Lost in the outrage of young Malaysian
school children being taught to āhateā is the trauma young Palestinians
in occupied zones face every day.
What does this say about adults
in Malaysia, who view the Palestinian experience as only that of
violent, head scarf-clad combatants? What this does to the Palestinian
cause is to reduce their experience to that of a propaganda video.
Watching
these children parade around with their toy guns is akin to watching a
propaganda video by an extremist group. This is not about the
Palestinians but rather about indoctrination.
Think about that for
a moment. Rational people disavow violence especially when the victims
are children from both sides of the conflict. Palestinians who have not
voted for a government for over a decade want freedom, not carnage.
They
do not want to be represented as violent scarf-clad-wearing combatants
and they certainly do not want their children fighting against occupiers
who have demonstrated a cavalier attitude when it comes to using lethal
force.
What
they want is for their stories heard, especially in the Western press,
but more importantly, they want their children to be safe and not out in
the streets engaging with well-trained professional soldiers, which is
what the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) is.
But Solidarity Week is not about them, is it? It is about flag burning and championing nihilism as martyrdom.
Reality of Palestinian children
Think
about it this way. You are a Palestinian parent. You want your children
to go to school. But the school has been destroyed and you have to make
do with what is available.
Your children, like most children everywhere, just want to play with
their friends. However, because this is an occupation, for some of the
older children, this is not a playground but a battlefield. These
children have to worry about their security.
They could be
influenced by other older children who have been radicalised. I do not
mean radicalised like how some folks are radicalised in this country.
I
mean radicalised by the fact that their family members have been killed
by bombings or imprisoned (in some cases for throwing stones), or died
from lack of medicine, or shot by mistake, or even killed by the very
people who claim they want to liberate them from their Zionist
oppressors.
Aid which was meant for children has been siphoned off for other purposes. This is the reality for these parents and children.
But
did you get any of that from what these adults did in Malaysian
schools? What you got was self-aggrandisement, extremism informed by
religiosity, and a carnival atmosphere far removed from the trauma
experienced by Palestinians.
Indeed, the Palestinian experience was nowhere in these displays of solidarity.
āMuch-needed revised relationshipā
The
response from this administration has been juvenile from the beginning.
Indeed, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim could have taken a page from
former prime minister and current jailbird Najib Razak when he addressed
the UN with regard to Israel during the Temple Mount tensions.
āGiven
the Rosh Hashanah violations of al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and
aggression against its worshipers three weeks ago, I call on the Israeli
government to live up to Judaismās highest ethical principles, and the
essential message of the Torah as succinctly expressed by the first
century BC sage Hillel.
āWhen asked to describe the Torah in a
soundbite, [Hillel] said: āThat which is hateful to you, donāt do to
your fellow human being,āā Najib said.
āThis dictum, known
universally in all religions as the Golden Rule, could herald the dawn
of a much-needed revised relationship between Muslims and Jews.ā
The
Palestinian Solidarity Week is not about the Palestinians. This is
about galvanising a polity in support of a cause but using the cause as a
stand-in for something else. The same could be said of the march
organized by Perikatan Nasional this weekend.
Palestinian voices
are missing in mainstream media, especially Western mainstream media.
They are missing in the Solidarity Week and all these performative
rallies too.
