유태인 학살에 대한 책들, 장편영화, 또는 다큐멘터리를 통해서 받은 강렬한 충격에도 불구하고, 만화를 이용한 슈피겔만의 Maus도 충분히 자극적이다. 그러나 유태인과 나치를 각각 쥐와 고양이로 이분법으로 나누어 묘사하는 슈피겔만의 방식은 지독하게 역겹다. 이것은 북한을 돼지와 늑대의 나라로 각인되도록 나를 세뇌했던 80년대의 반공교육의 탓일지도 모른다. 그러나 얼마나 단순하고 명료한가? 선과 악 두가지만 존재하는 것이다. 10% 미만의 나치가 유태인에게 그랬던 것처럼, 2~3%의 유태인에 의해서 움직이는 미국에서 Maus가 퓰리처상을 받지 못할 이유는 전혀 없다.

왜 유태인의 학살에 대해서 우리가 동정해 하면서도 팔레스타인의 고통에는 그렇게 무관심할 수 밖에 없었을까? 팔레스타인의 한 여성은 다음과 같이 이야기한다.

Have you seen our life here? Have you been to the camps? With the water dripping inside in winter? The people in America might know about the problems here, but they’re on the side of those with the money, and the Palestinians have no money. Why did the U.S. react to strongly to Kuwait? And if you’re one of the one-in-ten or one-in-a-hundred journalists who wants to tell the truth about Palestine, it won’t get printed because the Jews own the newspaper, they own everything in America. The Managers and bosses in America are all Jewish. (Palestine, p. 126)

Palestine에서의 사코는 냉정함을 유지하려고 노력한다. 슈피겔만처럼 감정적이지 않다. 더욱 사실에 가깝게 접근하려는 의지를 볼 수 있다. 사코는 Palestine을 통해서 슈피겔만의 쥐들은 결국 고양이임을 증명한다. 슬프지만 통쾌하다. 섬뜩하지만 가치있다. 이것이 Palestine을 반드시 읽어야 하는 이유인 동시에, 슈피겔만의 Maus가 설득력을 상실하는 이유이다. 유태인을, 이스라엘을, 미국을, 그리고 팔레스타인과 그 주변국을 다시 한번 되짚어 볼 필요가 있다.

다음은 이스라엘과 관련해서 잘 알려지지 않은 사실이다.

30 Little Known Facts About Israel

1. Did you know that non-Jewish Israelis cannot buy or lease land in Israel? A Jew from any country in the world is guaranteed citizenship in Israel, while the Palestinians who have been there for centuries are oppressed and persecuted.

2. Did you know that instead of sewing an insignia on clothing to distinguish race (like the Germans did to the Jews before WW2), Palestinian license plates in Israel are color coded to distinguish Jews from non-Jews?

3. Did you know that East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights are all considered by the entire world community, including the United States and the United Nations, to be occupied territory and NOT part of the State of Israel?

4. Did you know that Israel allots 85% of the water resources for Jews, and the remaining 15% is divided among all Palestinians in the territories? For example in Hebron, 85% of the water is set aside for about 400 Jewish settlers, while the remaining 15% is distributed among Hebron’s 120, 000 Palestinians?

5. Did you know that the United States awards Israel $5 billion in aid each year from American tax dollars?

6. Did you know that US aid to Israel ($1.8 billion annually in military aid alone) exceeds the aid the US grants to the entire African continent? This aid is used both to buy American weaponry and to buy arms made in Israel.

7. Did you know that Israel is awaiting an additional $4 billion worth of American military hardware, including new F-16s and Apache and Blackhawk helicopters. As Israel’s main ally and supporter internationally, the United States is committed to maintaining the Jewish state’s “qualitative edge” in weapons over its neighbours.

8. Did you know that the U.S. administration has notified Congress on numerous occasions that Israel has violated the rules on how US-supplied weapons are used? (In 1978, 1979 and 1982 during fighting in Lebanon, and once after Israel’s bombing of an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981.)

9. Did you know that Israel is the only country in the Middle East that refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and bars international inspections from its sites?

10. Did you know that high-ranking military officers in the Israeli Defence Forces have admitted publicly that unarmed prisoners of war have been summarily executed by the Israeli forces?

11. Did you know that Israel blew up an American diplomatic facility in Egypt and attacked a US warship in international waters (the USS Liberty), killing 33 and wounding 177 American sailors and the US did nothing about it? (Imagine if an Islamic country like Iraq did this!)

12. Did you know that Israel stands in defiance of 69 United Nations Security Council Resolutions?

13. Did you know that Israel is explicitly dedicated to the policy of maintaining a distinct Jewish character?

14. Did you know that Israel’s current Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, was found by an Israeli court to be “personally and directly responsible” for the Sabra and Shatilla massacre in Lebanon where more than a thousand innocent Palestinian men, women, and children were axed to death or lined up and shot in cold blood?

15. Did you know that on May 20, 1990, a group of unarmed Palestinian labourers were lined up and murdered by an Israeli solider as they sat waiting for transportation back to Gaza? The terrified labourers who gathered in an area of southern Israel known as Rishon Lezion (known to Palestinians by its Arabic name Oyon Qara) handed their ID cards to the Israeli soldier. The soldiers ordered the distressed labourers to kneel down and face the ground and unexpectedly showered them with a barrage of bullets, killing seven and wounding many others. Needless to say, the soldier was not charged with any crime.

16. Did you know that until as recently as 1988, Israelis were permitted to run “Jews Only” job ads?

17. Did you know that the Israeli Foreign Ministry pays six US public relations firms to promote a “positive image” of Israel to the American public?

18. Did you know that Sharon’s coalition government includes a party–Molodet–which advocates ethnic cleansing by openly calling for the forced expulsion of all Palestinians from the occupied territories?

19. Did you know that recently-declassified documents indicate that David Ben-Gurion approved of the forced expulsion of Arabs from all Palestinian territory in 1948?

20. Did you know that the former chief rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Ovadia Yossef, who is also a founder and spiritual leader of the religious Shas party (Israel’s third largest political party) openly advocates a ‘Final Solution’ to annihilate the Palestinians? Speaking at the widely broadcast sermon marking the last Passover, he declared of the Palestinians: “The Lord shall return their deeds on their own heads, waste their seed and exterminate them, devastate them and vanish them from this world. It is forbidden to be merciful to them. You must send missiles to them and annihilate them. They are evil and damnable.”

21. Did you know that Palestinian refugees make up the largest portion of the refugee population in the world?

22. Did you know that Palestinian Christians are considered the “living stones” of Christianity because they are the direct descendants of the disciples of Jesus Christ? And the Palestinian Christians stand united with their Muslim brethren in the struggle against the Israeli occupation.

23. Did you know that despite a ban on torture by Israel’s High Court of Justice, torture has continued unabated by Shin Bet interrogators on Palestinian prisoners?

24. Did you know that despite every Israeli attempt to disrupt Palestinian education, Palestinians have the highest ratio of PhDs per capita in the world?

25. Did you know that the right of self-determination is guaranteed to every human being under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [December, 1948], yet Palestinians were/are expected to negotiate for this right under the Oslo Accords?

26. Did you know that despite what is widely perpetuated and written in the history books that the Arabs attacked Israel in the 1967 war, it was Israel who attacked the Arab countries first, capturing Jerusalem and the West Bank, and called the attack a pre-emptive strike?

27. Did you know that, as an occupying power, Israel has a particular responsibility under the Geneva Conventions to protect Palestinian civilians?

28. Did you know that, despite Ariel Sharon’s public call for a unilateral ceasefire, Israeli soldiers have not stopped shooting, killing or bulldozing Palestinian homes? The most recent example of this is the murder of three innocent women who were shot by an Israeli tank as they sat in their tent!

29. Did you know that the Zionists have been trying to destroy Masjid al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock for the last 50 years by digging underground tunnels beneath the sites to weaken its foundation causing it to collapse?

30. Nelson Mandela called the Israeli government an apartheid regime, just like South Africa used to be.

 출처: From Mission Islam

It was my first time to skate in my life. I went with M even though I didn’t feel very well. I had skated for about two hours. I was very careful not to fall down for the first half. During the second half I tried to become a copycat. Looking at carefully others’ skating, I just followed how they were doing. I’m very clumsy at sports. Believe it or not, however, it was not that bad and it was so fun. The more I fell down on the ice, the more I was confident that I could run on the ice.

They came back with the same casting and storyline as the previous one, only changing a little bit of background. So it can’t be better than the first one. It’s as bad as its prequel.

How fortunate for leaders that men do not think.
Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.

Hitler

According to Ben in “The Wave”, less than 10 percent of Germans at that time participated in the Nazi Party. It clearly shows that all the people’s consent is the least necessary to rule the world. For a privileged few, in addition, this is too bulky or too annoying to rule the world. Rather, what the minority power holder needs is an effort to inculcate the majority of people with respect and terror for the absolute power or to make them mentally or physically apathetic. The Wave describes how the power is seized and how it controls the people.

“You would have put on the uniforms, turned your heads, and allowed your friends and neighbors to be persecuted and destroyed. You say it could never happen again, but look how close you came. Threatening those who wouldn’t join you, preventing non-Wave members from sitting with you at football games. Fascism isn’t something those other people do of us. You ask how could the German people do nothing as millions of innocent human beings were murdered? How could they claim they weren’t involved? What causes people to deny their own histories?”

. . . “If history repeats itself, you will all want to deny what happened to you in The Wave. But if our experiment has been successful - and I think you can see that it has - you will have learned that we are all responsible for our own actions, and that you must always question what you do rather than blindly follow a leader, and that for the rest of our lives, you will never, ever allow a group’s will to usurp your individual rights.” (p. 135)

The Wave: The Classroom Experiment That Went Too Far
Todd Strasser

Michael Clayton: I am not the enemy.
Arthur Edens: Then who are you?

It is worthwhile to see Michael Clayton in that it shows a human being suffering in his/her life, not a hero judging the world. You will be disappointed if you expect that you can meet Erin Brockovich in Michael Clayton. Ironically, Michael is more appealing and valuable than Erin even though Brockovich is based on the true story and Clayton is not. He is not brave enough to fight against the enemy. And I don’t think that he honestly fights for the justice or the truth. But for the retaliation. Just like you and me. It makes Michael Clayton more realistic and attractive, I believe. As you know, we can blame somebody for something but hardly fight against it. Staring at us in the cab, Clayton may want to ask us, “I’m ashamed of myself. But what can you do if you were me?”