Word of the week: Schadenfreude
July 22nd, 2006 by ktula
Schadenfreude |ˈ sh ädənˌfroidə| (also schadenfreude)
pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune.
ORIGIN German, from Schaden ‘harm’ + Freude ‘joy’
That is no equivalent word for Schadenfreude in the English language. That is the word i would use to describe President Bush in view of his administration’s stance on what can only be described as the wholesale destruction of the Lebanese society by our so-called friend Israel. If President Bush is not taking pleasure from the devastation being inflicted by the US-backed* Israel on the Lebanese, why else would he urge the Middle East countries to put pressure on the Hizbollah, instead of pulling the leash on Israel? After all, the US not only provides a few billion dollars worth of armaments to Israel each year, it also backs its unofficial 51st state by vetoing resolutions after resolutions (more than 75 vetoes) that were drafted against Israel in the UN Security Council. If President Bush wishes the conflict to be temporarily halted, all he has to do is to threaten to withhold the more than $3 billion dollars of aid to Israel each year. That is all he has to do.
But no.
Instead of immediately sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over when Israel started bombing Lebanon indiscriminately more than a week ago, he is only now sending her over, but not before she makes a detour to Asia. If there is a 5-alarm fire burning in a 10-storey building and gas-related explosions are occurring all over the building, imagine what would have happened if the firemen decided to stop by a McDonald’s for some lunch before leisurely heading over to put out the fire. Also imagine what would have happened if city utility has the ability to shut off the gas supply to the building but chooses not to. This is exactly what the Bush administration is doing. No sane person with the power to stop this madness will stand by and watch it unfold unless he is taking a pleasure in seeing the Lebanese suffer at the hands of the Israelis, who are targeting the Lebanese infrastructure and has threatened to “turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years.”
But no.
Even now, President Bush is still standing by “his stance that Israel had a right to act in its own defense.” Remember, this is supposedly over the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hizbollah. At this moment, President Bush surely must be acutely aware that this right to act in “self-defense” by Israel has caused the deaths of more than 350 Lebanese civilians while displacing easily more than 500,000, and at the same time destroying every known infrastructure in Lebanon. If this is the result of the act of “self-defense”, i shudder to think about what would have happened if it is not. According to journalist Robert Risk, President Bush’s “promise to ask Israel to stop destroying any more of Lebanon’s infrastructure” was an “eloquent gesture” and “no doubt touching”, but “there isn’t much of Lebanon’s infrastructure left to destroy.” Israel’s campaign, as stated by former President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, not only showed an “indifference to the scale of collateral damage,” but was also “morally not justifiable”.
Every Lebanese knows too well that the guided missiles and “precision” bombs, as well as the F-16 fighter-bombers and the Apache attack helicopters that are launching them are all made and supplied to the Israelis by us. From every destroyed buildings and apartments, fragments from the bombs read Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman or Raytheon, made in places like Seattle, Duluth and Miami. Every Lebanese is fully aware that the Bush administration is giving the Israelis the green light to destroy the Hizbollah and at the same time letting Beirut burn. Sooner or later, this is going to come back to haunt us. It is not a matter of if. It is a matter of when.
* Note: Whenever Hizbollah is mentioned in the mainstream media, terms like “Syrian-backed” and “Iranian-backed” almost always come up next to Hizbollah. So for a change, from now on when i mention Israel, i will use the term “US-backed”.
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