LAWLESS IN GAZA

Eyeless in Gaza is a famous 1936 book written by Aldous Huxley about intellectuals in English society. The title is just a modernist trick since none of the characters are blind and Gaza is not even mentioned. But the middle-east journalist Jonathan Cook has cleverly referenced the title in his latest post which suggests that Israel is using Gaza to market its surveillance and security technology

Five countries can boast of having murdered most people. Obviously Germany 

and Japan are on the list – but many people will be surprised to find the US, 

UK and  Israel there also.

What I want to do today is to see how well writers have risen to the challenge of dealing with such violence

Everyone is familiar with the German case – British television is constantly 

screening second world war films but people have forgotten the 1986 debate 

in Germany about its Sonderweg – or exceptionalism – when its historians 

eventually forced its citizens to come to terms with the enormity of the Nazi 

deeds. But Fritz Stern’s had shown the roots of fascism much earlier in his 1961 

book The Politics of Cultural Despair – a study in the rise of Germanic ideology 

But those who prefer their history to be narrated in more personal terms
are advised to go to Gita Sereny’s amazing conversations with and study of 

Hitler’s architect Albert Speer – his battle with Truth (1995)

Japan is more difficult for a Brit to deal with – I have to rest on Ian Buruma’s 

The Wages of Guilt – memories of war in Germany and Japan (1994) 

For the United States Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States is the go-to book for the violence inflicted on ordinary people in their struggles for recognition and dignity in that country. And Noam Chomsky has recorded the millions of deaths the country has perpetrated both directly and indirectly on the peoples of the middle east, central Asia and Latin America.

The violence of the British Empire is summarily dealt with in Pankaj Mishra’s Bland Fanatics – liberals, race and empire (2020)

My view of the violence in the middle east has been coloured by the superb journalism of Robert Fisk whose The Great War for Civilisation (2005) reflects his long experience in the middle east and sets in context Ten Myths about Israel (2017) by the famous Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe. And for those who prefer images I recommend the 2002 Pilger documentary on Palestine

But for raw and open dialogue I would guide readers to this powerful interview 

with Yuval Harari