Revolution united

I saw a documentary called  "Revolution united" on Aljazeera the other day. It was  about the Japanese “Red Army”. Japanese young men and women had joined the front for the liberation of Palestine and gone to Israel where they participated in the bombing of an airplane in 1972.


27 people died in this action and two Japanese Red Army members are among the dead. A third one was captured alive and sentenced to a long time jail sentence in Israel. He was eventually freed in an exchange of prisoners between the front for the liberation of Palestine and Israel. He still lives in the Middle East in Lebanon where he is seen as a national hero.

Another Japanese citizen who was among the original founders of the group was sentenced to 26 years imprisonment for her alleged involvement of an attack on French embassy in Holland in the early 1970s. Many other Japanese citizens were also handed long jail sentences for having stayed in Lebanon “illegally”.

I wonder what drove people from the Far East to join the Palestine cause. Many other nationalities have also fought for causes that are not of their immediate concerns. These individuals that transcend their own self-cantered, local, national, cultural and other boundaries are mesmerizing.

The Japanese group started organizing themselves first against the increasing union fee at their university. They were also demonstrating against the involvement of “an Imperialist Japan” in indo-china and its support for the USA in the Vietnam War.

Making local issues into a national one is a grand task in itself but going from a local student issue to an internationalism of Palestine liberation is a different matter. It is always regrettable when civilian lives are taken in the name of “a revolution” or “radical change” but resurrection to violence and revolutionary movements seems to be very characterizing of the 1970s. The military coup in Chile in 1973, the Ethiopian revolution that toppled Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 and the Iranian revolution of 1979 are just some examples of that remarkable decade when I was supposed to have been brought to this world.

Terrorism is probably the term that has been used extensively to explain all sorts of “violent resistance” these days. The sad association of Islam with that term shows how media always selects to focus on violence that erupts from other regions and religions than the occident.

The memories of radical groups from Germany and Japan from the 1970s may have been blurred but barely forgotten. Historical conditioning is perhaps in favour of those who hold the economic and political power in the world but the very creation of the state of Israel is the product of “terrorism” too. So it is a question of definition about what constitutes terrorism and who commits it.

I have always felt that an individual can make a difference in peoples lives whether a positive or a negative one. I do not like though feeling guilty for doing too little to bring about a change in the right direction in the fight against poverty, insecurity and injustice in the world. I am not guilty of being a critical citizen of the world. I am not an innocent anthropologist either. I am just a bewildered man who keeps wondering and questioning……………..