Posted by pancho from adsl-64-160-45-79.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net (64.160.45.79) on Tuesday, February 19, 2002 at 2:45PM :
In Reply to: At yahoo news today... more Israelis... posted by Jeff from bgp01107368bgs.wbrmfd01.mi.comcast.net (68.42.59.180) on Tuesday, February 19, 2002 at 1:57PM :
Isn't senseless at all...just like the killing of Iraqi children isn't senseless and neither are the WTC killings senseless. All of this stuff allows some pretty nasty people to gain power and control of governments they would otherwise be hardpressed to and kept out of because they really have nothing positive to offer anyone.
Religious hardliners thrive in an atmosphere of fear, insecurity and paranoia. I believe that Assyrians also prefer for Radical Fundamentalism to sweep the planet.
I have a very bright friend who goes slumming sometimes and talks with me. He is of the opinion that as things eased up under the Shah and the earlier version of Saddam...eased up as far as secularizing Muslim society, and the money flowed, there was the hue and cry from the Fundamentalists...on BOTH sides.
Intermarrriage for one thing was countenanced more and more as religious fine points and extreme positions melted into the background as prosperity always makes people open and expand and grow up and leave off from mumbo jumbo...the special area of priests and wild man politicians.
All this hatred of Islam is not just for what happened 1000 and fifty years ago. It is fueled now largely by fear and insecurity. If we throw the doors open and the lion lies down with the lamb, or the Christian with the Muslim and the Muslim with the Jew...pretty soon we'll have a lot of just plain "kids" running around who will have to find other ways of defining themsleves as unique, or "different...and in time maybe they'll all just run together and everyone will love and hate everyone for what that person is, without caring much or even knowing what religion who is.
Assyrian Christians, as we can see, are very jealous of their identity...they feel they fought long and hard to maintain their religiously based identity and aren't about to just love everyone. We are extremely insecure and uncertain as to what makes an Assyrian anyway. The one sure thing was our Christianity, which forced us to isolate ourselves....and that "preserved" our nation etc.
If in Iraq and the MidEast, religious fanatics on all sides died out, you'd be left with the awful specter of Assyrian Christians, Muslims and Jews getting along...there would BE no senseless killings and in that open and gentler and kinder atmosphere our Patrots fear that we would be the first to disappear. After all, besides this religion thing, what makes an Assyrian? I mean fixes him or her so indellibly Assyrian that the identity could withstand anything? Nothing, that's what. That's why these Patrots seek to foment as much hatred towards Assyrian Christians in the MidEast as they can...the last thing they want to see is Assyrians back home hugging and embracing Muslims. The answer to... "Why can't we all just get along"?...for an Assyrian Christian is..."because then we would disappear".
We face the same problem in the Christian West. Just what makes an Assyrian or Chaldean what they are...and can't they be compromised and lured away real easy? years and years ago, during the glory days when Muslims were persecuting Christians back home...our people could at least be assured of living huddled together, in fear...but at least they remained TOGETHER.
Even in America years ago when we all had to blend into the melting pot it was a relief that white America didn't accept darkies, because we were forced to remain together. That changed soon enough with our children going out and mixing and being accepted, and soon they didn't want to marry each other but Stacey and Jennifer instead...even though we started naming our kids Scott and Heather...they still found it easy to be attracted to non-Assyrians...and another challenge was added to this business of staying "ethnic"
The persecution we suffered is seen as a good thing overall...because it kept us "together", kept us "Assyrian" and "Chaldean" and "Whatever". That's why Peter and Firas and the Gang keep at it...not necessarily just because they hate Muslims...but because they know no other way to keep an identity going.
In the MidEast and the West we are in danger of being done away with. But that's only because the way we had all those years of remaining Assyrian was suited to other times, to a different world view...one the Fundamentalists among us all wish to go back to. They all react with horror at the "Christian Ideal" of loving your enemies and loving your neighbors and all that stuff...cause that way assimilation and annihilation awaits.
That could explain the narrow and parrochial response to the idea of going on into public AS Assyrians in this country that these monument projects represent. It is the ethnic ghetto dweller's fear of either being mocked...or maybe worse, accepted and welcomed and opened up to. It becomes sort of like marrying a stranger...swimming in a wider world, and maybe you'll just swim away? The irony is that if we don't do something like become a little more assured of who we are and build on our strengths and not our weaknesses...we WILL die out, BUT at least we will die out PURE!!!
These hidebound guys are from another Era, they are for other days...days they'd rather see return or be maintained cause even with all that persecution and death and destruction...we were at least UNIFIED. All over the world, wherever the Three Sisters From Hell hold sway, there seems to be an effort to polarzie and create as much hostility between the followers of each...the Extremists on ALL SIDES are thriving and they do this best by creating fear and panic so people will close in among themselves, look for shelter and support and protection among their own. It is an atmosphere in which Hitlers thrive...and Bushes and Saddams and Reagans and Thatchers and on and on.
It doesn't work anymore...or let's put it this way...you shouldn't want it to work...unless all you care about is lying down in a grave with your OWN people in your OWN cemetary in YOUR part of town.
-- pancho
-- signature .