Stop flinging dead people in my face

[scarlettina]

[ rant mode ]

Over the last three days, three people--two on Facebook and one in email--have insisted on posting graphic, horrifying images of war dead. I understand these people have points to make. I am aware that there's a nightmare's nightmare going on in Israel and Gaza. I know how privileged I am not to live in a war zone. And perhaps I'm a princess for asking this--so be it if I am--but, people, PLEASE! Stop flinging corpses in my face! Good freaking G-d!

I'm angry about what's happening over there. I don't need the random baby-with-its-brains-blown-out image to stoke my fury. I stopped being supportive of Israel a long time ago. The dream of the original settlers has been lost in what Israel has become--perhaps what it's been forced to become. I can't support the Palestinians, either. They've lived for the destruction of Israel since the very beginning. At this point, my feeling is "a plague on both their houses."

Anyone who posts an image like that in a public forum, though, is there to generate heat, not light. And as soon as you start to do that, you lose me. You lose me completely. Because it demonstrates that you're not interested in dialogue or enlightenment. You're interested in controversy, argument and ill-feeling, not the building of bridges and the binding of wounds. A plague on your house, too.

[/rant mode]

Comments

[skaldic.livejournal.com]

what you said exactly, and I, for one, don't think you're a princess for wanting it. I don't think it's ever okay to show corpses in a public forum -- you never know what sort of triggers will get tripped. Displaying them without the consent of the viewer is just wrong, on so many levels.

[garyomaha.livejournal.com]

Thank you for saying this. I grew up in a community of "everything and anything for Israel" and today I'm surrounded by friends and some family who believe religion is the cause of wars and most bad stuff...and I'm working at a church! (albeit an off-the-beaten-path type of church) Such cognitive dissonance. The news does NOT help.

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

I grew up in a similar sort of community and I still have relatives who feel that way. I can't talk with them anymore about politics, about Israel. It's pointless.

Years ago, I attended the first Jewish Film Festival in Seattle, and in the theater lobby, a local orthodox Jewish radio station had set up a table from which they were broadcasting live. They were looking for people who had seen several films to interview. They picked me. When I started talking about one of the films, which had prominently featured sympathetic Palestinian characters, the DJ started talking about how they weren't human. He was serious. That's when I politely disentangled myself and walked away.

[lagilman]

Amen.

I have radical Palestinian supporters on one side of my life and radical Israeli supporters on the other, and I've basically stopped reading anything they say right now because they've all utterly forgotten the cost in their need to be Right.

And then there are the people who just want to be Radical and haven't actually read any of the history beyond last week's social media headlines, and I want to lock them in a library and not let them come out until they've actually educated themselves on the tangled history of that region.

*ahem* Sorry. I'm kind of ranty this morning.

[scarlettina.livejournal.com]

No need for apologies; none whatsoever. On this subject, feel free to rant. I did. The world is an unpleasant place, no question. To inflict that unpleasantness in a public because one has an agenda or an axe to grind is just not acceptable.

[joycemocha.livejournal.com]

Between the ranters on Israel/Gaza and the ranters about Central American kids desperately trying to escape a hideous situation, I'm pretty fed up with a lot of folks on my Facebook feed. I got the irrational fundamentalist support of Israel stuffed down my face as a kid and that really ticks me off. Most of those folks support the Israeli cause because they think it will bring about the Rapture (which is pretty darn sick in and of itself).

Like you, I'm at the "a plague on both their houses" stage. Good people on both sides are being exploited by power-mad control freaks. I can't even start...

(and we won't go into the sudden spate of hideous injured and abused animal pictures that are popping up this summer. Between graphic war dead pictures and graphic animal abuse pictures....sigh)

[herself_nyc]

Right there with you.