Alien Newsletter #4: The Genesis War
Network Note: Apparently, no one can escape the current conflict brewing through the Holy Land, even those observing from a far safer distance. So in capturing the latest transmission, we of thee Network have scanned this particular report on Israel and Palestine for a possible perspective that might cast new light on this issue. If anything, it has only shown us how so much of what is vital can get lost in translation.
The Greatest Apes develop strong, lasting and in some cases pathological bonds to all sorts of stimuli, from their favorite persistent vision enabled televised images to modes of exercise to each other’s feet. Perhaps the strongest connection is to the land underneath theirs, where it is said they all come from and from they certainly will one day return. Certain supersimian tribes hold fast to the sacrality of the places where their corpses will be buried, for disturbing these properties means their eternal rest will be somehow compromised. Other tribes adopt a variant of the clarion call “blood and soil” before spiraling off into their occasional homicidal bloodpurge fevers (the last of which our own civilization faced several million terrestrial orbits ago before a significant intellectual upgrade was performed upon the populace, which itself caused great collective unrest before it was widely adopted.). The Marquis de Lafayette, a legend-shrouded figure who assisted the American Apes in their foundational skirmish, reportedly imported several tons of American soil back to his home country, just so he could be buried in it after he died.
As one can imagine, the fiercest struggles that can erupt amongst the Greatest Apes is when two or more tribes claim the same parcel of land as their own. One might as well claim another person’s heart or lungs as one’s own. Perhaps the longest running feud of this sort exists in a small portion of land, hardly larger than the smallest of the American states, that is referred to as the Holy Land by millions of the Greatest Apes. Considering that this land is deemed so holy, it is perhaps the most cherished and deeply contested of all. Hardly a period of civilization has passed without a war being fought upon it. So even at a time when several desperate skirmishes and emergencies clamor for attention, this one has once again seized the attention of the tribes, urging them all to heed the call, once again, to battle.
The stories of the two tribes’ history in what is now called Israel by most (though not all) of the Greatest Apes’ tribes barely even seem to intersect with each other at times, even though they take place on the same general strip of land. Currently, the land is claimed by the tribe referred to as Israelis, who follow a form of belief referred to as “Judaism.” Prior to 1948, the land had been known as Palestine, under the rule of the then expansive British Empire. Before Britain surrendered their claim to the land, the Greatest Apes outside of the region attempted to implement the first of what is now referred to as a “two-state solution” for both sides to possess this ground in roughly equal measure, but the two tribes had other ideas, fighting a fierce battle which led to the Judaic tribe gaining even more territory than what had originally been proposed. Israel now celebrates May 15th, the anniversary of the signing of its constitution, as Independence Day. The Palestinians, on the other hand, commemorate the day after as the Nakba, or “the catastrophe.”
Not just days before these two dates fell on the terrestrial time-sequence, an Israeli court found against the claims of Palestinians living in Jerusalem, in a largely Arab section of the city called Sheik Jarrah. Also prior to these dates is Ramadan, a religious holiday celebrated by Palestinians and other cross-national believers of a religion called Islam. One of Islam’s holiest spaces is located in Jerusalem, on a space where the Judaic tribe’s ancient temple once stood. After Palestinian worshippers in this space attacked Israeli forces with rocks in protest of Sheik Jarrah, the forces responded with tear gas and stun grenades in their house of worship. To the east of this, those of the Palestinian tribe members living in a tightly congested strip of coastal land called the Gaza Strip fired rockets towards Jerusalem and populated city centers throughout Israel in retaliation (which they have done in the past, so much so that neighboring cities of Gaza possess bomb shelters for the express purpose of surviving these periodic flare-ups.) After over a week of bombings, widespread civil unrest between Israeli Jews and Palestinians living in Israel itself and rising tensions internationally, both the Israeli government and the Gazan polity, named Hamas, called a cease-fire — but not before 230 Palestinians and 11 Israelis had lost their lives in the bombing, not to mention 1300 housing units destroyed in Gaza and thousands displaced. The imbalance is even felt in the latest pandemic, with Israel successfully inoculating over half of its citizenry, whereas the Palestinians, only 3%.
It is a conflict so severe and so ancient that almost all the Greatest Apes find themselves either on one side or the other. Those who side with the Judaic tribe acknowledge their historical suffering. Prior to Israel, the Judaic tribe has spent much of its history in countries where they constitute an ethnic and religious minority and have been at the receiving end of persecution and conspiracies pitting them as evil, subhuman manipulators of capital and global sentiment. Should they lose their avowed homeland, one they insist was given to them by the creator of all creation itself, they would certainly be subjected to the same genocidal whims of nation-states that have inflicted upon them substantial generational trauma. The Palestinian tribe has aligned itself with movements for indigenous rights and Black Lives Matter, referring to the Jewish settlements that the Israeli state has sworn to repatriate (the “right of return,” as it’s called). The language of oppression is leveraged : sentiment, sophistry, nationalism, bigotry, paranoia, sorrow, rage and despair is presented to the outside world, whereas guided missiles, refugee camps, prisons, suicide bombings, interrogation techniques, rocks and tear gas are applied in a land where violence is never far from the surface.
Prior to the cease-fire, riots between Israeli arabs and Jews have overtaken several cities and towns. This week, Palestininans have gone on a a general strike, and stories of mobs, some Judaic, others Arab, inflicting violence and sabotage have created even greater chaos than usual. While the cease-fire holds for now, it can always flare up again - nine were called before the last one in 2014 eventually ended. And every nation expects this to eventually boil over once again. This recent flare-up in Jerusalem, just hours after the cease-fire took effect, would appear to bear this out
The Greatest Apes perplex me in moments like this. Their own stated goals, their favorite harmonious sound-time creations extol the virtues of peace, but conflicts like these expose their desire for the glory and catharsis that war and inflicting pain and trauma upon others affords them. For us, a one-time landed civilization that has lost several planets before making our home within larger spacetime itself, it may be hard to understand, but it is the imposition of physical limits upon a species whose inner lives are limitless that have caused so much friction, the fault lines upon which their grandest creations can become swallowed up by the earth they attempt in vain to possess. Just like the Burmans in Myanmar, they can plead to us, but they will have to find their ultimate liberation from their internal and external conflicts on their own. For not even outer space is large enough to accommodate the thirst of their aspirations, desires and needs at this moment in time.
Dark Matters
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