touching the simulacra

While I am writing for pleasure, I don’t even know or feel the true torrential sadness that actually happens. The failure of conferences in Oslo and Madrid that made Lebanon bombarded of course is not a slump. Systematically drawn from embedded hatred, it is now not only in between the two countries, but between personal identities, spiritualities. When the velocity of identification spread, we will easily fall for either, since in accepting stereotype or slogan people doesn’t need to delve for more. Musthafa A Rahman stated two rivalries in the recent conflict:

*US, Israel, and Arabian countries pro to Arab Peace Initiative in 2002, like Mesir, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Jordania (better known as non-rouge countries for US, but well, recent terrorists even came from Mesir and Kuwait. I guess label doesn’t show the truth then)

*New power groups that see there is no place for Israel in the middle east (mention a few: Hezbollah (remind you that they are helped by Ahmadinejad’s Iran), Islamic Jihad, and recently Hamas, inherited the struggle of Yasser Arafat who had a Christian wife.)

The ‘stereotype’ that I’m talking about is believing that the first group always be associated to the conservative Republican US and the second one with Hasan Nasarullah’s “that Hezbollah’s war against Israel represents all ummat (recently defined as Arabs and all Moslem), Hezbollah’s victory will be also all ummat’s victory.”

The question is, should Christian, in other part of the world, never even seen and touched the real blood of the Arabian people should be grouped into the first one. And should all Moslem be put into the second one? Just by grasping the simulacra made by media, and transfer the ‘outside’ hatred into our own neighborhood?

These kind of identifications does not affect our real lives. Should we prioritizing giving sort of money to Palestine instead of helping the uneducated children in the east Indonesia, just because they are (widely known as) Christians? Or should we pray and fanaticize Israel and not praying for Lebannon in our Sunday sermons just because those people are Moslems, not realizing that the same kind of flesh of children are killed?

But, of course, it is our choice to identify ourselves globally, asided the geographical borders and put religion first. Anyhow, the duddest deed of all is meshing the name of our identity as the ‘universal value’ instead of put the real ‘universal value’, human rights, on its supposed throne. Since Christianity is not a value, neither does Islam. They’re just names, and the same greatness of quality of values inside those names, I believe, is not something uncanny for those who respect.