When we talk about "Middle East issues", what are we talking about?

❏ "Suffix" editor:

 The current "Be Your First Reader" series, "Suffix" focuses on: introducing the citizen's "what is he concerned about?", "How to pay attention?", "Why pay attention?"

An article by a citizen often reminds me of this idea:

If our attitude toward "injustice" today is none of our business, and tomorrow when "injustice" invades our homes, how can we expect that, who will pay attention to us?

The way the artist cares about the object, the method of discussing the issue, also includes " fictional stories ", such as the film "Palestine" (Palestine).

"The film depicts an Israeli soldier living in the West Bank, Al-Haim, who lost his memory in an accident where his car rammed into a fence. While wandering, he was found by Palestinian residents on the other side of the fence and brought back to the community. Care. A woman in the community, Asmahan, insisted that Chaim was her son who had been in Israeli prisons for over a decade, and brought him home to continue her care... " From " Love, Hate, the wall of graffiti (love and listening) 〉

 Why do people put on the veneer of culture, but instead become beasts and kill each other? Will blood be the taste of civilization? Until the memory is lost, is there an opportunity for understanding or reconciliation?

And @Endless Journey takes these (related to the Middle East conflict issues) creative works (historical documents, novels, films, documentaries, songs, poetry collections...) as the object of discussion , and writes " Love, Hate " , and that wall series with graffiti ", repeatedly asking yourself what do you really care about? (And why are you thinking along the lines of your creative work?)

The above are all interpretations made by the editor-in-chief, let's hear what the author has to say.

❏ Foreword :

 I often say that I am a silent marginal person in Matt City, why is it "Suffix"?

When Jeger sent a message to invite the manuscript, I wanted to say "I can't read it", but I remembered that when Matt City was in the NFT frenzy a while ago, the progress was a few beats slower, and I finally learned some fur, got my wallet, and got it. I signed up with Opensea's account, and then I happened to see Jeger giving away works. I, who had never read any of his articles and never interacted with him, asked him for my first NFT collection so cheekily. .

For the kindness that connects me with the new era, if I repay it with "I can't read it", it is too unreasonable, so even if I feel that I am really a difficult person to talk to, the background is not deep enough, there is nothing to say. Dig out to contribute, but still bite the bullet.

What do we mean when we talk about the so-called "Middle East issue"?

For me personally, it's war.

"Gulf War", "Iraq War", "Israeli War", "Syrian Civil War", "Yemen Civil War".

That's all that popped into my head, and none of these wars ended at the click of a finger (meaning, I really think Thanos was an idiot, and should have wiped out all of humanity at the click of a finger!), the Middle East The war, once, twice, three times, seemed to be endless, stopped and fought, fought and mediated, and then continued.

Like the " Israeli War " that I am more concerned about, it has entered the 21st century intermittently from the middle of the 20th century. It is really tiring to watch.

How do you get information about the "Israel-Palestinian conflict"?

I also heard about it from the news media.

Larger conflicts are usually reported in the news, but unless the scale is large enough to cause heavy casualties, they will not be continuously reported as mainstream news. I am used to paying attention, and my personal radar is more likely to detect such news.

I also follow some social media like "free palestine ", there is more information in it, small regional protests, conflicts or (illegal) arrests, such news will be posted from time to time .

But I have to be very honest, you will be paralyzed after reading too much of these news. From the beginning, you felt empathy and filled with righteous indignation, and then you will only be left with " Ah, why are you here again, the Israelis are too much ". Not a heavy bland reaction.

It looks like you are on the Palestinian side, why?

It seems to be the case that people have a tendency to " sympathize with the weak " more or less.

But every time I read the history of the persecution and slaughter of European Jews, I still have some kind of conceited understanding and tolerance for the tyrannical behavior of the State of Israel (to say tolerance doesn’t seem right, after all, I am a Irrelevant people, I can't bear to talk about it.)

And some people may also question what a "weak" is. "Hamas" is considered a terrorist organization, so is it still a weak?

I have to stress again that I am really not an expert on the "Middle East issue", I just have a little more interest in it, so I thought of writing articles, slowly and gradually, from the history I have read. In books, novels, movies I've watched, and news, these texts, audios, and videos tease out the Israeli-Palestinian feud that has been entangled for centuries.

Why special attention to these issues, including "white terror"?

I think it's because of the movie, because of the book.

Our generation (the generation in our 40s) probably grew up during the martial law, after a high degree of depoliticization and lifting of the martial law, the most entangled period when democracy flourished, ignorant, timid, but always aware It turns out that there is something in the textbook that is not quite what we think it is.

I don't remember very much about my childhood, but there is one thing I don't know why I have never forgotten it. It was a time when our family went out to dinner. It was a quick fried restaurant. It was full of guests. The noisy restaurant suddenly quieted down. I saw someone took a flyer to my dad, and then there were other guests at other tables. I leaned over curiously and wanted to see it, only to see that there seemed to be a print that someone was bleeding and lying down. blurred photo of it, and then because my dad had already rubbed it up and stuffed it in his pocket, I didn't see what was written on it.

"It's that beautiful island..." the guest next door said in a rustling voice.

That was the hidden history of the island that first entered my cognition, but I was too young to realize that I had been fed by lies and myths.

I seem to be talking too much nonsense (now fast forward), in short I am interested in these social, political, international issues, because I want to escape reality . Studying all the time, being a good student all the time, I am tired and annoying.

So after high school, I started to skip tutoring, even classes, and started throwing myself into the world of movies and books. My high school friends also began to share with me the idle books she had at hand, some of them were her sisters in college. I lent her some non-Party magazines and so on. That's how I came to recognize the "reality" in order to escape the "reality".

From " Sad City ", to " Guling Street Teenage Murder Case ", to " Super Citizen ", I have come to know Taiwan little by little.

As for the Israeli-Palestinian issue that I often write in Matt City, my special attention to the Middle East started with the very popular novel, "The Kite Runner ". Once I started to get interested, the related movies and books will be my favorite. I will start to follow and watch, and gradually I will put my feelings into it, watching the news, worrying, indignation, and empathy.

What's the most political thing you've ever been involved in? Or have you ever thought about going to the Middle East to work as volunteers, journalists, etc.?

 "We live in politics every day, we participate in politics every day, the firewood, rice, oil and salt, the water you drink, the air you breathe, and the land you step on are all politics."

This is what I wrote on Facebook. In the real world, I should be regarded as a political devil in the eyes of my friends and colleagues , but our king (my husband) said that I am the one who "criticizes more and participates less". Kind of half-tone.

Although I was a little dissatisfied with what he said, as I got older, my urge to run the scene gradually weakened.

You should be referring to political activities like the "318 Student Movement", right? In fact, the deepest and most involved comparisons are the protests on issues such as environmental protection, labor, and farmers.

Do you know Wu Yinning, Yang Rumen, and the later peasant formation?

I was very influenced by them, so for a period I was very involved in these kinds of issues.

This is going to be too much to talk about, so let's talk about something crazy and funny here.

 Once, for a land expropriation protest, I followed an event organized by the Farmers’ Front to protest at the scene. When I got home, I couldn’t get rid of my anger. In the elevator of the home building.

The king's family lived in the same building, so I was able to get in, but the next day my father-in-law called angrily and nervously, saying that the police or the national security personnel ran to adjust the video and said it looked like "your daughter-in-law". .

After that time, my in-laws temporarily confiscated my entrance card to Dawang's house, and it took more than half a year to return it to me. I'm fine, anyway, I just have an excuse to go less.

On the contrary, Your Majesty was already used to my violent rush, and the old god said, "It's just sticking something, not to smash his car, it's alright, anyway, my dad also denied it to the national security police to the end."

As for going to the Middle East as a volunteer, I have really thought about it, but I just think a lot and take action less, but even if I don’t volunteer, I am determined to go there in my life. Israel, I would also like to go to the West Bank if I can.

Having written this, I would like to recommend three books, Wu Yinning's "Where Are the Rivers and Lakes-Taiwan's Agricultural Observation" , Yang Rumen's " White Rice is Not a Bomb ", and a photographic documentary book about Liuqing: Xu Zhentang and Zhong Shengxiong's " South Wind ", these three books gave me a different feeling and understanding of the island we live in .

By the way, there is also a documentary "Wu Mi Le", this documentary is an important key to pulling me from my comfort zone into the circle of protesting angry youth.

 Around 2002, Taiwan joined the WTO, and farmers were the first to be affected at that time. The government opened up the import of foreign rice, which was the trigger for the white rice bomb incident.

After Yang Rumen was imprisoned for the bomb incident, the people started a solidarity campaign, because the WTO has also been hurt and affected farmers in other countries. They also expressed their solidarity through organizations and joined the campaign. American singer and social activist Jim Page also flew in specially. Taiwan visits Yang Rumen.

There is a dialogue between him and Yang in prison. So far, as long as the bomb incident is mentioned, it is still often cited. Through a translator, Yang Rumen asked Jim Page: "Why do you support the weak?"

Jim Page put it this way: "There are people who stand on top of many people and make those people underdogs. If you don't do something, you also become an accomplice in standing on top of these people."

That's when Yang Rumen gave Jim who was visiting him a thumbs up. (recited by the person who accompanied the visit)

Jim page later wrote a song about it, a song called "White Rice Bomber: Yang Rumen".

Do you think focusing on white terror (dictatorship?) and war is the same thing? Have the same essential connotation? why?

To be honest, I didn't particularly pay attention to the war, it was just that the place I paid attention to, happened to have frequent wars.

Do these things have a similar connotation essence? Maybe there is, that is, they all have the destruction and deprivation of people, life, emotion, thought, and will.

However, here I want to digress and say something else, some reflections that popped up when I read Bai Fear's book.

 Among those political victims, there are also some eagle dogs who used to be in the government units of intelligence and governance. They used to be judges, extortioners, torturers, and executioners. But in that treacherous era, it was possible Just because of a factional dispute, he became a prisoner, and all the cruel methods he used to impose on others have now fallen on himself.

Some of them were shot at the end on trumped-up charges. When I read these accounts, I had a cruel "pleasure" in my heart, thinking that they all deserved to die.

But when I calm down and think about it, I want to say a little hypocritically, that they too were wronged and died, and they were also deprived of their lives for no reason. Am I too ideological to shout out loudly.

Really I am a "slut hypocritical", damn it is damn it, it's not just retribution, why do you think so much.

(Will this paragraph be too sharp, you can delete it at your discretion)

If you have poor foreign language skills and want to focus on Middle East issues, do you have any recommended media or websites?

If it is Chinese, I often look at the BBC Chinese website , RFI (France Radio) Chinese website , and in fact, the United Nations also has a Chinese news website, search for words such as Israel, Palestine, or the Middle East, and you can see a lot of real-time news. news.

Taiwan's independent media " reporters " also have many good articles about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You can find them by searching their website for "Israeli-Palestinian conflict ".

You can also follow Susanna Cheung Chui Yung's Facebook . She is a journalist in Hong Kong. The media will always call her a famous war correspondent in the Chinese circle . She has several documentaries about interviews in the Middle East. , and also wrote columns for magazines such as the world, which can be searched on the Internet.

Having said that, I must also recommend that my favorite author in Matt City @fide, she wrote a series of articles about the Opium War, and the last few articles talked about the last century along the way of historical facts. The war in Afghanistan, those articles are really worth reading . I love her so much, or I’m just obsessed with her), such a rigorous textual research article is really not comparable to a casual article like me that I pieced together from news, movies, and miscellaneous books.

At Matters, I know of two people who are better suited to talk about the Middle East than me.

@Stacy is a social worker based in Jordan.

@MaryVentura has lived in Israel and has written several articles about Israel that are far more in-depth and true than my slobbering movies and stuff.

Why is it "thinking along the lines of the creative work"?

Because in the real world, I can't actually experience ( or it's more difficult for me to actually go to the scene, really see it with my own eyes, and personally feel it ) the conflict that the land is going through. I can only understand and understand it through these works. .

I have stopped writing this series of fences, and the reason why I will stop writing is partly because I read the article that Fide wrote to me: " Don't Call Me a Terrorist" , I love that article very much. (Can you help me connect it? Although I feel that it is a personal love letter written by Fide to me, I am reluctant to disclose it)

What was written in that article gave me a feeling of being hit in the head. I reflected on whether I was writing comments on the complicated love-hate relationship between the two ethnic groups in a rash manner. I thought about it later. Stop it first.

 Finally, can I put a paragraph in the fide text?

I don't understand enough (only understand that it is very complicated), and I have never cared about doing serious research. But I know that the situation is much more complicated than the "we are on the side of justice" position given by the media nowadays, which is very clear about who is good and who is bad. The established position and ideology of the vast majority of Western mainstream media are so clear that I often feel powerless: If I am a college student who is just beginning to care about international news, how can I distinguish the media not only from prejudice, but also from historical ——Not to mention the past 100 and 1000 years, just the history of the past few decades——almost complete ignorance and amnesia? I should and can only fully accept the truth of their reports, not to mention that they are still flying such a clear banner of justice.

I remember when 9/11 happened, after the first shock, I watched TV news of many Arab world people marching in the streets, I especially remember a Chinese wearing burqa with a face full of joy of victory. Young women, what I'm thinking is: what on earth did they go through to be so utterly ignorant, and even so excited, about the horrors, the deaths of so many lives? These are young people, or the so-called literary youth, who are easily in the mood to understand others, to understand the standpoint and voice of the villains and bad guys in the (at that time) mainstream media. And if you're willing to take the time to dig, there are thousands of stories and testimonies waiting for you, telling you how many horrible things they've been through, today when the news explodes and everyone can communicate with everyone Not to mention. And the so-called limitation is also here. It is difficult to really understand these situations. It is even more difficult to read ten or even a hundred news reports, special features, and character interviews (because if I don’t have the history and situation of these places. I have no way of discerning and judging what existing positions are embedded in these news stories, and if these reports are all in one accord, I’m more likely to interpret this as “objective truth”).

That's why I love the Little Drummer Girl novel and the TV show that was adapted from the novel. Le Carré met people on both sides, and the stories and characters he wrote had nuance. Real people, stories, emotions, love-hate conflicts are always complicated, so I would think that things with nuance are more likely to be closer to reality-if there is no such thing as objective truth, then at least we can use More faces, more stories, to supplement your understanding little by little (under the premise that it is impossible to really supplement).

 Just like the question that the editor-in-chief asked at the beginning: "Do you seem to be on the Palestinian side?" At that time, Fide's words also made me think about whether I am using a biased position and a loose way to look at a complex matter. .

After the wall text stopped and didn't write, it happened to encounter another big fight with Matt's citizens (that was the third time I encountered it), and suddenly there was a kind of "who am I, what am I doing here". I felt at a loss, so I covered the whole article at that time and left here temporarily.

After returning for a long time, Ben didn't want to restart the Wall series, but in fact, the related books and movies are still dabbling, and the attention to there has not diminished, so I can't help but continue to write, but, I hope This time I can write and look at this series with a more rigorous attitude.

 In the movie "Super Citizen", Xu Sang, who survived alone, searched for most of his life, kept searching and asking, and finally found it in the six-zhangli burial mound and was tortured by himself. The tomb of Chen Sang's friend, Chen Sang's old age, knelt in front of the tomb, and the camera turned from his mourning face to the surrounding tombs illuminated by candles.

Those were the white terror victims who were also buried in Liuzhangli, and Xu Sang also inserted candles one by one in front of their graves.

Now when the name Liuzhangli is mentioned, most of the people who know it are because it is the name of a MRT station, and Machang Town has become an ordinary park in Taipei City.

"Have you heard of Babacho?"

"This used to be an execution ground."

"..."

The conversation with the king ended in his silence.

Excerpted from "Baba Town That Becomes a Park", the editor-in-chief just read this passage and decided to interview the author of this article. When I'm walking in the same place, if someone tells me, "This used to be an execution ground!"

I might have "no feeling at all"!

" But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be the sons of your Father in heaven, for he makes the sun shine on the good and the wicked, and rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. " (Matthew 5:44-45)

Why would anyone be willing to forgive someone who hurt them?

Don't you believe that one day a righteous God will judge, avenge the oppressed, and wipe away their tears?

The Gospel of Matthew , a Gospel specially written to Jews who believe in Judaism, quotes a lot of the words of the Jewish prophet Jesus, including: The general outline of the law is "Love your neighbor as yourself." Dissolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a guide that cannot be ignored!

May all the mourners of injustice rest in peace!

RIP 🙏🙏🙏

(Editor's sentimental postscript)