Friday, January 2, 2009

Consider What is Not Being Told/Gaza by way of Gabriel Garcia Marquez

More mulling over Gaza, from activist Anna Baltzer's recent letter:
I wonder if people in the US are also seeing the bodies and faces or, as I fear, only some rubble and angry Gazans. The day after attacks began, Israel's largest newspaper Yediot Aharonot covered almost the entire front page with the words, "500,000 Israelis Under Attack!" In smaller font, one could learn that in addition to 1 Israeli, 225 Palestinians had also been killed. It was surreal. Consider where you are getting your news, and what is not being told to you.

I'm in the middle of One Hundred Years of Solitude, at the moment of the massacre of the people of Maconda during a workers' strike at the banana plantation. The sole survivor of the massacre, Jose Arcadio Buendia, is haunted for the rest of his life about what happened, and is considered a madman for his memories. He is the living dead, whom the soldiers cannot even see, and yet his dying words remain: "Always remember that they were more than three thousand and that they were thrown into the sea."

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