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Pornography Used in Military; also part of Culture Wars
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Arwa: [QB] This is a long essay about Rabbi Dresner taken from the magazine [URL=http://www.culturewars.com/2003/rabbidresner.html][i]Culture Wars[/i][/URL] I hope Egmond Codfried will find it interesting aswell. Anyway, the recent war in Gaza, an Arab news channel suddenly broadcasted pornography [try to google to find the link], but before I quote a segment of the essay, you should really read the whole text to avoid (future) misunderstanding. [QUOTE]The Israelis have recently shown themselves well-versed in what one could call the military use of pornography. At 4:30 PM on Mar 30 2002, Israeli military forces took over Palestinian TV stations, when they occupied Ramallah in the West Bank, immediately shutting them down. What followed was a little more unusual. Shortly after occupying the Al-Watan TV station, the Israeli forces began broadcasting pornography over its transmitter. Eventually, according to a report from the Advertiser, an Australian newspaper, the Israelis expanded their cultural offensive against the Palestinian people by broadcasting pornography over two other Palestinian stations, the Ammwaj and Al-Sharaq channels. One 52-year-old Palestinian mother of three children, according to the report in the the Advertiser, complained about ‘the deliberate psychological damage caused by these broadcasts’. The only Palestinian station not taken over by the Israelis ran a written message at the bottom of its screen claiming that ‘Anything currently shown on Al-Watan and other local TV channels has nothing to do with Palestinian programs but is being broadcast by the Israeli occupation forces. We urge parents to take precautions.’ In addition to being outraged, the Palestinians were bewildered. ‘Why in the world,’ one correspondent to Omanforum.com wondered, ’should one do such a thing?’ If we turn to the dominant culture for an answer, we can only become more confused, because according to the dominant culture’s explanation, pornography means freedom. So, making use of the hermeneutic provided by the dominant culture in films like Boogie Nights and The People vs. Larry Flynt, Israeli troops began broadcasting pornography over captured Palestinian TV stations because they wanted to spread freedom among the Palestinian people. Somehow that doesn’t sound right. The simple fact of the matter is that this incident simply cannot be explained according to the principles available in contemporary American culture. In order to understand the disparity between the official explanation of pornography and what might be termed its military use, we have to go back to the ancients. The story of Samson and Delilah might be a good place to start. Israel was invincible militarily then too — at least that part hasn’t changed — so the Philistines decided that they had to get at the Israelite leader by other than military means. Unable to defeat him in battle, they decided to seduce him sexually. Once Samson succumbed to Delilah’s wiles, he lost his power, and Israel lost its leader. They could find him then not on the field of battle, but rather, to use Milton’s phrase, ‘eyeless in Gaza, grinding at the mill with slaves’. The story of the Palestinian TV stations broadcasting pornography has a curiously Biblical ring to it. Having learned their lesson, the Israelis decided to turn the tables on their opponents, because they knew that a blind opponent is no opponent at all, and because they knew — as the ancient Greeks knew — that lust makes a man blind. Thomas Aquinas, giving voice to that same tradition over a millennium later, said that lust ‘darkens the mind’. Suddenly, Israel’s use of pornography in their battle against the Palestinians isn’t so inexplicable anymore, because a blind opponent is a weak opponent. A blind opponent is no opponent at all. [/QUOTE] [/QB][/QUOTE]
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