This is always so. The actual world is represented in instants of reality, and our minds recreate the actual world as cognizable and communicable "knowledge" from these instants. Two days ago the Gaza we reconstructed (perceived, understood, interpreted or made a material of the intellect) was of that father weeping, devastated by the bodies of his three dead children. Yesterday Gaza was that UN-run school building that crushed the bodies of tens of innocent children. Today's Gaza will probably receive its construction materials from one of the international news agencies. We will know "Gaza" without ever having been in Gaza.
This universe of knowledge that we create in our minds belongs to us. It is unique to us. It does not belong to anybody else. So we are responsible for that universe.
Now, in this universe of intellectual construction, our "Gazas" are under occupation. This universe of ours faces several threats. In the first place we may generalize "Gaza" to the whole of our universe and feel that the whole world, including ourselves and our nation, is under occupation, locked in an open-air prison. This is what happens in most of the Arab streets.
We may let our intellectual construction process get stuck in the continuous construction of the reconstruction of the "occupied, invaded, oppressed, denigrated, slaughtered Gaza." This accounts for the occupation of our intellectual capacities. We cannot think of anything else. We start looking at the world from that window. We use the raw material of "Gaza" to construct our domestic facts, personal lives, religious sentiments and rituals. In short, everything becomes "Gaza-ized." This is not healthy. It is as if we feel the pain of each and every uppercut a boxer received in a boxing game we watched, and we continue to feel the same pain even after the game is over.
This is one of the "extra" kinds of damage done by wars. They continue to traumatize humanity even after they come to an end. Israeli decision-makers may think that when Operation Cast Lead ends and they manage to force Hamas to submit to their conditions, everything will go back to normal. Nothing will be the same -- ever. So many of us, so many of the Muslims in the streets, have already started to think in "Gazan" terms. "Gaza" has become the construction material of so many houses, love relations, friendships and businesses that it will be impossible to replace those "false reconstructions" with healthy ones.
This article may sound confusing to readers who have not yet let their minds be "invaded" by Gaza, whose intellectual production mechanisms are not yet "Gazaized." Leave yourself to the call of Gaza; look at the world from the broken window of a refugee in Gaza, and you will see what it means to think with "Gaza."
This is not healthy, and this is what is going on in Turkey. Without understanding this one cannot understand why the Turkish prime minister is so angry and so politically incorrect. Without understanding this one cannot give a meaning to the basketball fans going to the arena just to protest and prevent the Israeli team from playing.
