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Comment
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LegendMaker
Registered User
(4/10/05 7:55 am)
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Kibbutzim
This is probably the wrong forum for this, but someone with the handle 'blisslessly' responded to one of my old posts on this board, quoting me, and I thought it deserved a reaction... Now archived, the topic was on the movie The Village. She wrote, "Somebody mentioned in a previous response that the Village was trying to be 'peaceful...like the Israeli Kibbutzim.' In what planet are the Kibbutzim peaceful? How are the killing of indiginous people and the bulldozing of their homes and the diversion of their water, peaceful? But there you have it, the mythology is so much stronger than actual facts on the grounds."
It was I who made a reference to the Kibbutzim being a peaceful model of a socialistic community, as opposed to a socialistic national government which seems to inevitably use dictatorship to enforce the ideology. In response to blisslessly's question about "what planet" -- very much ours.
She says the mythology is so much stronger than actual facts, but must be assuming that I am basing my opinion on the news media. In fact, I'm basing my opinion on personal experience. I've been to Israel, I've been to kibbutzim, and I've met people who were members of kibbutzim (one of which who was born in America, but he's not anti-Capitalist or anything). I'm also good friends with people who are good friends with members of kibbutzim. Kibbutzim are very old and still very common in the middle-East, and I have no doubt there are good ones and bad ones, but the point I was making was that, in my experience, members of the Kibbutz were freely allowed to leave. Nobody I knew was forced to share, they shared voluntarily. This was what was meant by a peaceful socialistic model. Are they all this way? Well heck if I know, I didn't visit all of them. I didn't think I implied "all" of them were peaceful, but 'blisslessly' strongly suggest "none" of them are peaceful. Don't make sweeping judgements based on a few examples, and especially don't base these judgements on something as faulty, subjective and exaggerated as the news media.
The news creates mythology by focusing on any event that is dramatic (sometimes an event that is hearsay) or supports the reporter's opinions or personal agenda, and pumping it for more drama. What makes it worse is that the competing venues each jump on the same band-wagon, competing to see who can make the same event more dramatic than the other, until you think there is nothing else going on in the world but this.
The news we get out of Iraq is a typical example. Most of what we hear about are reports of Americans dying, and Iraqis killing themselves in protest. And yet, my cousin went over there a year ago and spent several weeks there touring about with members of Saddam Hussein's former Republican Guard and others. He brought back home video and showed me everything, and talked about his experience there. He had flown into Jordan and commuted into Bagdad by caravan and stayed there. He never saw any bombs going off, he didn't see anybody dying, and he didn't see any terrible protests. (He saw scars from the battles, but not any battles.) In fact what he saw was astonishingly the opposite. This was a nation under anarchy -- there was no government, and therefore hardly anyone to enforce the law (what ever "law" means in such an environment). And yet there was a lot of order. People went to work, they ran their stores, they shopped, and tried to live their lives as normally as they could. There were reports of problems of criminals breaking into homes and taking them over, forcing families out into the street, because nobody could stop them. There were looting problems and all sorts of crime that couldn't be stopped. My cousins didn't see it, but he heard about it. The same would happen if America went into archarchy, or any other country. They made a restaurant out of one of Suddam's overthrown palaces and my cousin dined there. The most remarkable thing were the huge rallies of Iraqi citizens who were meeting to discuss a democratic society, and the people who who showed tremendous respect for the American and other soldiers occupying their country. Everyone my cousin met, including the old Republican Guard, were very happy the Americans did what they did. I can't say as I agree with them, because I was in protest of this attack (based on moral grounds, not intelligence). But I do understand them, and I understand that what we see on the news represents a minority. what I saw on 2 hours of home video was a very different picture from what I see on CNN. I think the news creates a modern mythology that is contrary to personal experience.
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rosyelf
Registered User
(4/11/05 3:02 am)
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kibbutzim
Hello, LegendMaker. You make some very valid points in your post. Yes, the media often create a mythology which, exactly because it is in the media, becomes more potent in many minds than. . .other mythologies. By mythologies I do not mean "stories that are not true" but rather, "versions of events that contain a bedrock of truth."
And isn't it also important to point out that the "Jewish settlements" mentioned so often in the news-many of which HAVE displaced people, etc-are not the same as Kibbutzim-many of which, as you say, have been around for yonks ? I don't know if the former aim to establish a viable socialistic community, whereas the latter certainly do.
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ronnerandall
Registered User
(4/12/05 4:31 am)
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Re: kibbutzim
I'd like to underscore what Rosyelf has said -- that the kibbutzim are NOT the same as the "settlements" on the West Bank and Gaza Strip that we see so much of in the news. It is unfortunate that the confusion has occurred, and the confusion is symptomatic of a much larger issue (which this board is not the place to discuss--although there is the issue of how "mythologies," for lack of a better term, get created and perpetuated) -- in the current climate, to many people, everything Israeli, or everything associated with Jewish Israelis, becomes demonized. Sad. And dangerous thinking.
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