[thenightwriterblog] The Night Writer: The zero lottery

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Posted by The Night Writer:
The zero lottery
http://thenightwriterblog.powerblogs.com/posts/1214189596.shtml


   A few weeks ago my wife and I were playing golf with some folks from
   New Jersey, lifelong East-coasters enjoying a little of the Midwestern
   experience. During the round a tornado siren went off, startling and
   somewhat confusing our guests, who wanted to know what the siren was
   for.
   "It's either a tornado warning or lightening in the vicinity," I said,
   as I matter-of-factly dialed the clubhouse on my cellphone to get more
   details since the day was still clear and sunny. Ultimately it turned
   out that this warning was related to the storm that delivered a deadly
   tornado on the town of Hugo, MN, a dozen miles away from where we
   were. As we played golf we saw the skies darken and the ominous clouds
   coming, remarkably, from opposite directions. It was pretty much
   standard summer fare for my wife and I (we didn't know until later
   that evening of the net effects of the storm), but our friends from
   Jersey seemed to find it rather amazing that people live in a place
   where deadly storms are a routine part of your existence.
   Of course, Nature (as far as we know) hasn't sworn to wipe us out.
   I thought of this example the other day as I read Yaacov Ben Moshe's
   post from [1]Breath of the Beast entitled [2]Welcome to Sderot.
   Sderot is an Israeli town within range of Hamas rockets and the victim
   of the leadership policies of both the Israeli government and that of
   Hamas that requires a macabre calculus of acceptable losses that keeps
   both groups of leaders in power ... while killing Jewish civilians.
   Hamas knows that launching rockets on a slow but steady basis, but
   killing only a few at a time will maintain its political power base
   with the jihadis, satisfy its foreign sponsors, while not seriously
   exposing itself to all out countermeasures from Israel.
   Simultaneously, Israel's government tacitly accepts a handful of
   deaths as being below the threshold of requiring dramatic and deadly
   response, knowing that it will be pilloried by foreign public opinion
   and seen as the aggressor if it does so. Ben Moshe cites JINSA (Jewish
   Institute for National Security Affairs) Report 781:

     âFor Hamas, the key is to keep the rocket attacks below an
     understood threshold and Israel's response will be tolerable,
     precise and produce minimal collateral (Palestinian) damage. The
     Hamas pattern is to fire one, two or three rockets at Sderot. Wait
     a few days and do it again. Injure two, three, four Israelis. Kill
     one or two, but not more than that - this week. Increase the range
     and accuracy of the rockets incrementally. Hit Ashkelon, but just
     once. Then wait. Hit a shopping center, but if no one is killed,
     the Israeli response is unlikely to threaten Hamas rule. If Israel
     does retaliate, the world will probably be more annoyed by the
     "disproportionate response" than the original rocket attack.â

   Ben Moshe continues:

     As I was reading, though, something was bothering me. I was still
     stuck on the seemingly more limited issue of the terror involved.
     Who are these people who are being killed by the rockets? How do
     they live knowing that, only if some, unspecified number of them of
     them are killed and maimed, will their government be moved to do
     something about the terror under which they live? This dangerous
     and painful situation is only partially a product of the
     Arab/Islamist dream of annihilation of Israel. It is made possible
     by a combination of ruthless internal enemies (e.g. the far left
     peace movement), clueless dupes (e.g. Olmert, Livni, et al) and
     shortsighted erstwhile foreign âfriendsâ who do not understand the
     reality of the threat. This motley assortment of fools and
     instigators hold Israelâs defense establishment, her regard for her
     own citizens and, indeed, her very moral, civic, ethical and
     intellectual integrity hostage.

   His point, or part of it, is that the Israeli government has decided
   that the greater good for the country, or for itself, is to sacrifice
   a few for the perceived benefit of the many. Ben Moshe's thoughts as
   he dwelt on this lead to a chilling analogy:

     When Shirley Jackson's famous short story The Lottery was first
     published sixty years ago in the June 26, 1948 edition of The New
     Yorker magazine, it set off the most [3]violent reaction the
     magazine had ever experienced. In the story, the reader is
     gradually drawn into a nightmare- as what seems to be a ânormalâ
     American farming village gathers for some sort of annual community
     gathering. There is a lottery involved and little by little it
     becomes apparent that it is a âselection processâ. The readerâs
     curiosity gives way to bemusement as the author quietly seeds in
     ominous details that build a sense of foreboding. Then, near the
     end of the story there is a sudden shift to horror when we realize
     that the âslightly tooâ nonchalant dialogue and mysterious
     references have been leading up to the revelation of a sacrificial
     rite. One person in the community is chosen by lottery to be stoned
     to death- sacrificed for âthe good of allâ.
     It is little wonder that the story caused the explosion of
     controversy that it did. A scant three years after World War II,
     the cataclysmic battle against totalitarianism, here was a story
     that hinted that the enemy was not dead, but could lie ever so
     close beneath the surface in the most unlikely of places. Is this
     lottery totalitarianism? I think it is. It is a society that holds
     itself hostage in a suicide pact. The eerily believable
     rationalization that the lottery must be carried out because the
     welfare of the group is everything- the individual is nothing- is
     the brutal signature of fascism.
     The weird, unconvincing quality of the âreasonâ that stoning one
     member of the community to death is âfor the good of allâ is also a
     dead giveaway. It is true that an oblique reference to the
     sacrifice having a good effect on the corn is made but there is a
     dispiriting vagueness about it and nobody seems to endorse it
     convincingly. In fact, the agricultural pretext is really
     irrelevant. The central drama of The Lottery is the absence of
     individual human value. In my post about Islamofascism, I quoted
     Louis Menand (ironically, writing in the New Yorker), âofficial
     ideology can be, and usually is, absurd on its face, and known to
     be absurd by the leaders who preach it.â This is another hallmark
     of totalitarian systems. These lottery victims are the moral
     equivalent of suicide bombers, human shields and hostages. They
     have no power to achieve anything. Their own genuine emotions and
     aspirations are anathema to the system in which they live. Only
     their annihilation is of value. Every one of them is a martyr- most
     of them just arenât dead yet. They are, in every sense imaginable,
     dead men walking.
     ...The people of Sderot listen for the sirens all day and all night
     365 days a year and all must wonder if today is the day that a
     rocket will come through the ceiling in a busy dining hall or a
     kindergarten classroom or a high school auditorium and finally be
     âenoughâ to force the government to use the power it has always
     had- but may not always retain- to eliminate the threat. They wait
     for the government to act. They pray for the rest of the world to
     recoil in horror. They face each day with bravery and hope. Just
     like the people in Jacksonâs story, they are hostages.

   Ben Moshe goes on to remark on Muslim mathematicians having developed
   the concept of zero, observing with grim irony that, "...at least
   under the most fundamental application of their
   religion-as-political-system, zero is the human condition."

     If there was outrage in 1948 over the publication of that short
     story, how could there not be outrage today when an Israeli
     government dares Hamas to kill one more Israeli and see what
     happens and when they do, dares them to kill another one. Over and
     over again the children of Sderot draw lots and when one of them is
     torn apart by ball bearings or has a leg blown off, what happens?
     Is it somehow âfor the good of allâ that they suffer?

   Is it too far a leap to suggest that, of all the grim ironies, the
   most insidious is that of the West's blindness to its own willingness
   to trade blood for peace, to cutting off fingers and feeding them to
   dogs under the table so as not to upset the place-settings.

     Do you believe that it is about The Nakba or The Occupation or The
     Settlements? Do you allow yourself the fantasy that there is a way
     to stop the madness- a sacrifice big enough to satisfy this
     ravenous cult?
     Then what did the innocent victims die for on 9/11- or Madrid- or
     London- the Darfur? This is part of the same grotesque lottery that
     has been going on for 1500 years. In spite of the sacrifice of the
     innocent victims of 9/11, it is all too easy for us to deny that we
     are hostages too, but those âzero beingsâ from the Islamist void
     will not be happy to delete only Israel. They have "selected" them
     for annihilation first but it is nothing personal, you understand,
     just a sacrifice to prove there is no value to human life. There is
     no value to anything that does not affirm the spiritual vacuum of
     Islamism. It is not because they worship Allah, nor is it is that
     they believe Mohammed was a prophet. It is that they believe that
     he was the only prophet, that they know the absolute truth and that
     it is their mission to ignore (and destroy) all evidence to the
     contrary. If you believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of
     happiness, they will not rest until they destroy you too.
     The Jihadists are not interested in cease-fires or peace. They are
     happy to tell you what they want. They want the world to live under
     Shariâa law. They believe that anyone that doesnât want that is
     sub-human and deserves to be killed. This is nothing less than
     another confrontation with the evil of fascist, totalitarianism,
     and that is a beast whose hunger cannot be sated with souls, nor
     can its thirst be slaked with blood. The lottery they are holding
     is to determine not if you will be destroyed but when you will be
     destroyed. We are all citizens of Sderot- its just that most of us
     donât know it yet.

   This type of post is hardly my forte. Grasping the political, economic
   and military realities of this situation is something my friend
   [4]Jeff Kouba does much better than I. I know, however, that Yaacov
   Ben Moshe is hardly an unbiased observer, or without his own agenda.
   Even discounting for his perspective, I still finding myself counting
   my fingers.

References

   1. http://breathofthebeast.blogspot.com/
   2. http://breathofthebeast.blogspot.com/2008/06/welcome-to-sderot.html
   3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lottery
   4. http://peacelikeariverblog.com/