New Moon Massacre

[Guest guest]

New Moon Massacreby

Murray

The new year began, astrologically, with yesterday's New Moon.

Astrologers had been watching its approach with bated breath. Like its

parallel transit exactly a year ago, when Benazir Bhutto was killed in

Pakistan, we knew this latest Pluto-Mars duet would stimulate a vision

of civilization breaking down. It was widely expected that somewhere in

the world something would happen to epitomize the convulsions our globe

is experiencing right now.This

morning American newspapers are too busy prattling on about sluggish

retail sales to say much about the massacre in Palestine, but the

timing tells the tale. The explosive Pluto-Mars conjunction overhead is

opposing the US Sibley chart's Venus (values) /Jupiter (morality)

conjunction, from which we can infer that another piece of this story

is the challenge it poses to America's sense of right and wrong. Our

complicity in this latest atrocity is being pushed in our faces.Transits

of Pluto always trigger hidden shames. Whether on the personal or

collective level, the planet functions to usher painful understandings

to the foreground of consciousness. That which is hidden becomes

embarrassingly difficult to conceal.On the event level, the

transit is pointing us to two issues. First, like a power-point

presentation writ large, Pluto is making us look at the meaning of

what's been going on in Palestine for years. Secondly, it is begging

the question of why so few Americans know about it. The twin reality

being highlighted here, represented by the opposition in the US chart

between Mercury and Pluto, is that there is a blackout (Pluto) of

information (Mercury) in the US media about Palestine, among many other

global hot spots.Not exactly a secret but definitely not part

of the national conversation is the fact that Israel is right up there

with Burma, war-criminality-wise. Its state-of-the-art military,

supplied by Pentagon equipment and ingenuity, has created a

humanitarian disaster in Palestine. Ever justified by the claim that

"Israel has the right to defend itself", Israel's policy has been one

of hideous collective punishment. Though this despicable tactic

righteously appalls us when we see Hollywood Nazis using it, it's

somehow tolerated as standard operating procedure in the Gaza Strip.For

every desperate suicide bomber that makes his way out of the wretched

throng behind the apartheid wall, an entire village in Gaza gets

bombed. For every stone thrown at an Israeli army tank by a ragged

child, Israel cuts off food and clean water to thousands. Most

Americans don't have a clue about any of this, despite the fact that

our taxes provide the expensive guns, bombs and spies (may we call them

for what they are, instead of using the Pentagon's term, "intelligence

operatives"?) that have been obliterating centuries-old communities,

with no end in sight.Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is

clearly meant to grind down their will to live until they simply

disappear. In between outright bombings, they are subjected to a slow

dehumanization process: cut off from their ancient lands, denied access

to subsistence jobs, heating oil, food, health care. They are deprived

of the freedom to travel two miles without showing identity papers. A

Palestinian's access to his own farm, visible through the barbed wire,

may depend upon the whim of a well-armed guard at the checkpoint.

Consider the rage that would be inspired within the proud breast of an

American landowner if anything even remotely similar to this kind of

occupation were attempted by a superior military power on US soil.But

the unrelenting pro-Israel cant that streams out of Washington has made

the issue a black hole of ignorance for even the most progressive of

American thinkers. As for our elected officials, Israel's program is

unilaterally espoused by American politicians -- Democrat and

Republican alike. Israel's blood-soaked government (remember the

assault on Lebanon a couple of years ago?) has been championed with

particular relish by Hillary Clinton, especially when she was angling

for that New York Senate seat. Those US pundits who portray themselves

as "liberal" and fulsomely condemn genocide everywhere else in the

world, even they -- perhaps especially they -- don't dare touch this

one. It is considered political suicide to mention the blockades, the

daily child-murders, and the all-encompassing anti-Arab racism within

Israel upon which these atrocities depend. Meanwhile, with every month

that passes, new "settlers" arrive, requiring the bulldozing of more

and more old stone homes, in order to erect ugly new condos on land

where native farmers tended olive groves for uncounted generations.How

insulting to Jews everywhere is this equation of Judaism with Zionism.

What a defilement of the idealism behind Israel's meaning. But

propaganda has created the indelible impression in America's mass mind

that this noble old religion is the same thing as the brutal modern

regime that is now nominally its guardian. Meanwhile the mainstream

media censors all mention of any other Jewish approach to the issue.

For all the coverage they get, peace groups within Israel might as well

not even exist; one never hears about Jews for Justice in Palestine, or

the many other courageous organizations like it.America's

European pals have been equally cowardly, if not as financially

complicit, in this bloodbath. None of Washington's allies have stood up

to the truth of the situation. As in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Cuba,

the ongoing horror in Palestine exposes with particular bitterness the

hypocrisy of these supposedly civilized states. The Palestinians are

the latest in a sorry roster of indigenous tribes once colonized by the

E.U. powers. Though the UN has condemned this latest siege as a crime

against humanity, the governments of the G8 have barely raised a peep

of protest. (But the rest of the world is protesting. The immense scope

of a transit like this one would suggest no less. Demonstrations have

taken place in Amman, Damascus, Cairo, the West Bank; in Brussels,

Madrid and other European cities. In the US the first action was called

for the day after the massacre in New York's Rockefeller Center.)What

is the ethical response to an immoral event? Not everyone is a

political activist. But every one of us has a position in time and

place, and a moral responsibility to connect to our shared humanity. We

look to the transits to tell us what aspect of that shared humanity is

being raised to the light. We know that when Mars (action) gets

involved with Pluto (destruction), there is deadly action. What

response makes sense to deadly action?First of all, it makes sense to start where we are. The ability to respond

begins by realizing that we incarnated into a certain lifetime, ended

up identifying with a certain country, maybe living there, maybe paying

taxes there. We are linked, somehow (not through blame: that's too

simplistic, and keeps us stuck) to what our country does. This New Moon

atrocity is not some faraway irrelevance. The White House green lights

Israel's every move. The 280+ dead and the 644 writhing in pain on

hospital cots right now in Palestine are not the victims of some

distant foreign dictatorship; not somebody else's problem. They are

ours.Soul-health depends upon committing, as an individual, to

our own self-defined values. Let's say we find ourselves strongly

identified with a certain political candidate. We are emotionally and

ideologically turned on by his victory; engaged for the first time in

years, perhaps, with our national system. The next step would be to

stay engaged; to begin to view a President-elect, say, as a public

servant; to hold him accountable.Do we want a president who

supports war criminals? The Israeli military targeted civilian

population centers right at the end of the school day. They wanted to

inflict as many casualties as possible, including on children. Their

Defense Minister Ehud Barak has said, "The operation will go on and be

intensified as long as necessary," (AFP, Dec. 27). Is this the foreign

policy you voted for?http://jessica-mothersky.blogspot.com/2008/12/massacre-in-palestine.html