Son of Holocaust survivors, I was raised and follow the motto “thou shalt not kill”. Thus, I watch with horror the irresponsibility of Zionists towards life and the world
On October 21, 1956, my mother simply disappeared from home and I was left in the care of my maternal grandmother and my father. I was already five years old at the time and I don't remember what explanations I received, if any. Anyway, my mother came back a few days later carrying a cute baby wrapped in swaddling clothes on her lap. I hadn't even noticed that she had gotten a belly. As incredible as it may seem, at that time, conversations about sex and pregnancy were not part of a child's domestic and social agenda. According to Michel Foucault, talking about sexuality, even among adults, is a characteristic of modernity.
Between my mother's disappearance and my mother's return, probably to distract me, my father brought a television that was whirring all the time, sometimes showing a North American indigenous person on the screen and, rarely, some other image and sound. The indigenous man, I later learned, was the symbol of TV Tupi, the first broadcaster to operate in Brazil. Although I was entertained on occasion, I was never tied up nor did I ever have a television in my own home.
Have you ever heard the Ninth Symphony by Beethoven? Tender by João de Barro and Pixinguinha or assume black by Humberto Teixeira and Luiz Gonzaga? Perhaps Trash by Caetano Veloso? Well, you've probably heard all of these songs more than once and, even so, you're still willing to listen to them again. I read and reread Sophocles, Shakespeare and Leo Tolstoy who, although I know the plots backwards and forwards, always move me as if I were reading them for the first time. I can say the same about The boy by Chaplin, Sunset Boulevard by Billy Wilder and Blade Runner by Ridley Scott.
So, I didn't have a television and I lived buried in books that I read and reread and old films that I watched in theaters. In 1990, when I lived on Rua Frei Caneca, the Elétrico Cineclube opened on Rua Augusta 973 [http://www.cinemasdesp.com.br/2008/08/eltrico-cineclube.html], two blocks from my house . I frequented cinemas so much that, at a certain point, I decided to become a lifelong member of the Cineclube, which guaranteed free entry until the end of my life. I'm still alive, but Elétrico's life came to an end a year after I became a lifelong member (what was left was my membership card, which I still keep today).
In 1985, the year that marked the end of the military dictatorship, I was a permanent professor at Unicamp and I resigned from the university, which, despotically and irregularly, did not authorize my leave for a post-doctorate, even without remuneration. While my colleagues, nominated by Ulisses Guimarães, headed to Brasília, I set sail for New School in New York.
My closest friends were astonished by my initiative, because Unicamp's Institute of Economics was the most important in the country and, as a permanent professor, I had a lifetime position and the right to a full pension. Unicamp forgives me, but I thought it was all a delay in life. I was in my 30s and didn't want to sacrifice my life to ensure a full retirement. I lived in the present, I never thought about my future and about living a millionaire old age.
I have always been detached from life. Not fearing death, for me, was a way of living life fully. On July 20, 1971, after undergoing interrogations and torture at the Operation Bandeirantes headquarters on Rua Tutóia, I was taken and fell asleep in the cell, overcome by a desire not to wake up alive the next day. But I'm still alive and the Dictatorship is dead, despite the longings that still arouse in various macabre ways.
Today, in my seventies, I have scheduled my departure for 2035. I remain detached from life, I was not abducted by TV, I survived the Military Dictatorship, Unicamp and Elétrico Cineclube, but I did not prepare myself to survive the world, watch the world end. Sitting here on my couch, I feel completely helpless in the face of the news that surrounds me, especially the carnage in Palestine and Israel's fearless provocation of Iran.
There are people who think that everything was peaceful before the violence that Israel suffered on October 7, 2023. Others, more aware, attribute the conflict to the rise of the Zionist right to power in 1977 and, definitively, in 2001. Still others can see the origin of the problems in the occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank from 1967 onwards, responsible for the emergence of the Palestinian national movement.
Few are those who are able to accept the violence and expulsion perpetrated against the native population of Palestine since the beginning of the 8th century, when Jews represented 1948% of the population, and especially during the creation of the State of Israel in XNUMX. In its various gradations, defenders of the State of Israel position themselves as if there were no relationship between modern political Zionism and the leadership of a prime minister who would rather see the world go down than have to face the judiciary and the prison reserved for him by corruption.
The history of humanity, in some cultures, coexists with suicide attacks and suicide bombers. But there is also the concept of a bomb state or suicidal state, in the terms of Paul Virilio, used by Bentzi Laor, referring to the State of Israel. Patrick Lawrence, in an article following the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, wrote that Israel is determined to pursue a broader war in the region, centered on the destruction of Islamic Republic. Apparently, the State of Israel aims to spread the conflict and, if necessary, according to its understanding, it is willing to see the world, armed with hydrogen bombs, enter a world war to safeguard its existence as a state. Jewish.
Son of Holocaust survivors, I was raised and follow the motto “thou shalt not kill”. Thus, I watch with horror the irresponsibility of Zionists towards life and the world. And, as always, I go black and white, I pour my anguish on paper. Also, as I could be wrong about the end of the world, I will remain committed to speaking out against the carnage in Gaza, the climate crisis, social injustice, tidying up my drawers and paying the bills due at the end of this month. My mother disappeared from the house but came back carrying a cute baby wrapped in cloths on her lap.
*Samuel Kilsztajn He is a professor of political economy at PUC-SP. Author, among other books, of Jaffa [amz.run/7C8V].
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