Last night in a conference room at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, 20 students gathered to hear a young Palestinian woman and a former Israeli soldier, sitting side by side under the auspices of the peace organization One Voice, tell of the situation in Israel/Palestine. At the end, the two, who had politely disagreed about a number of issues, were asked for a final statement about their hopes. The Palestinian, who had long dark hair and a downward gaze, said, “It’s not necessarily about hope. It’s about not wanting another best friend to die. It makes me tremble just to think about that. And I decide that I cannot shape a Palestinian identity around violence. So it’s really about compromise. It’s not about hope.”
The former Israeli soldier, blue-eyed, his shirt sleeves pushed up around his biceps, said, “In Hebrew we have a word, Amal. It means, I have nothing to add. I agree with her completely.”
(I am sorry not to have these young people’s names; I got there late; I will supply them later.)
The news from Israel/Palestine these days is desperate. For the second time in a few months an “errant” Israeli mortar shell has destroyed an innocent Palestinian family in Gaza—
and this time caused tremendous pain in Israel too. Haaretz has castigated the country’s military leaders, saying that “more and more pointless military operations… will not lead to anything except to kindling more hatred, we must try a completely different path.” At a memorial service for Yitzhak Rabin, murdered 11 years ago by an Israeli extremist, novelist David Grossman, whose son Uri, a tank commander, was killed in the last days of the absurd Lebanon war, offered a similar message. The military has long been the most revered institution in Israel, but that culture would seem to be eroding. Last summer a friend said to me that Israelis had to live with the fact that there would be war after war after war. Many Israelis seem now to need to reject this endless cycle of violence.
As a post-Iraq American Jew, I’m attuned to the Jewish/Israeli part in this madness, and so I want to go to something that blue-eyed former soldier said last night: he spoke about the pressure on Israelis from the diaspora Jewish community to maintain militant policies. A Parisian Jew tells him that Israel must never give up Gaza, as he pours another espresso. “Well I am the one who must defend and die for your cause while you are having your baguette,” the former soldier said, in a surly tone. “This is something that really gets me going. You know what, it doesn’t make me feel good.”
He and I later talked about the American pressure. He said that the lobby in the U.S. produces pro-Israel legislation in Congress that is to the right of anything the Knesset could produce. And he noted of the extremist religious settlers who cause such havoc in Palestine—many of them are U.S. exports, called to the holy land by the voice of god and god knows how many other voices. The Palestinian woman had also complained about the American role. “We’re not really a happy camper in terms of what America is doing right now…”
Today when Israel is in crisis, and when Israelis and Palestinians are at far greater risk than we are, Americans should examine their part in the craziness. Last summer, we supplied the cluster bombs, despite Human Rights Watch‘s many objections to the savage devices, cluster bombs that are still doing so much to turn Muslim hearts and minds against us. The Israel lobby made sure that the U.S. would do nothing to restrain Israel. Jerrold Nadler, Upper West Side liberal congressman, said the snatching of the Israeli soldiers by Hizbullah represented an “existential” threat to Israel. That’s nuts. Yet it is repeated time and again here, to justify anything Israel wants to do. There are many exceptions to this attitude, including the great blogger Richard Silverstein. But these voices tend to be drowned out by pro-Israel groups that seek to remove the expression “cycle of violence” from our discourse, and replace it with cant: another blow against Islamofascism.
Diaspora Jews have long enabled the violence. This goes back to ’48, when (according to The Pledge, Leonard Slater’s book) Jews in New York were assembling bazookas and other munitions (in violation of American laws aganst supplying the yishuv with arms) so as to further the “War of Independence.” Palestinians and Arab states of course played their bloody part in those hostilities, which they refer to as “the Nakba,” or catastrophe, as it resulted in the expulsion of 700,000 Arabs from Palestine.
Last night the former soldier noted that Jews too can perform acts of terrorism. In 1994, a year before Rabin was murdered by a nutbag settler, another nutbag settler, Baruch Goldstein, walked into the mosque beside the tomb of Abraham in Hebron and killed 29 Arabs, before he was beaten to death. For those keeping score, Goldstein was merely performing payback for the Arab murders of Jews in 1929. So Goldstein is now a martyr for the settlers, his grave a shrine.
In the wake of the Goldstein atrocity, Rabin had an opportunity; he could have used it as a pretext to remove the extremist settlers from Hebron, settlers who had imposed an apartheid system on the second-largest city in the West Bank. In his book, The Missing Peace, former Clinton aide Dennis Ross writes that Rabin chose not to. Rabin chose not to. As if it were only his choice. As if the U.S. was not also making a choice, a passive one; as if the American government could not then have demanded the only fair thing, the settlers’ removal. For we also were implicated: Baruch Goldstein and his ill wind had arrived in Israel from New York. He had been a doctor here.
You can understand why the Arab world blames us for our part in the cycle of violence, just as we blame extremist culture in Saudi Arabia and Egypt for the ill wind that blew this way on 9/11.
In his book, Dennis Ross (who is associated with One Voice) offers an explanation of how Israeli identity came to be shaped around violence; the Holocaust had taught Jews the lesson that “weakness begets tragedy.” In his book, Jewish Identity on the Suburban Frontier, the sociologist Marshall Sklare described the symbolic impact of Israeli militarism on American Jewish identity. “I think in the non-Jewish community people became aware that Jews have guts and stand up and fight—that the Jew is a man, not just a merchant,” an accountant told him.
The two young people who were at Columbia last night will be our country’s guests for another week or so, doing several more events, including one at Random House today. I hope they get a wide hearing. Neither of them is a symbol.
[Later: The Israeli: Seffi Kedmi, a former pilot. The Palestinian: Aya Hijazi. AMAL: slang for "Ain Mash-hoo Acher L'Geed" ]
hey douchebag, thanks for decoding what two random people have to say about the situation in Israel.
If Israel is in "a crisis", how does one explain this:
In the first nine months of 2006, Israeli companies have raised USD 1.15 billion, up 7 percent from the USD 1.07 billion raised in the same period last year.
This has resulted in a plethora of start-ups dealing with everything from water purification to video websites. While some Israeli companies go on to become multinational giants like Check Point Software Technologies, most of the time these companies focus on narrowly tailored niches. Eventually, many are bought by larger, established companies.
While venture investors have put money into Israeli companies before, activity has increased in the past few years. Israeli companies have been receiving more money than companies from European nations.
Roughly 30 percent of the funds went to life sciences during the quarter. The country and local universities like the Technion are placing a greater emphasis on pharmaceuticals and medical devices.
The Tel Aviv Stock Exchange has been roaring for the past three years and recently soared to record heights.
It's too bad you are such a dim-witted, dipshit and can't deal with the truth.
In his book, Dennis Ross offers an explanation of why Israeli identity came to be shaped around violence… (here follows the old tiring holocaust thing)
Phil, the sad thing is that a people trained since toddlers to memorize history by means of the mnemonic device of creating hiperbole and absurd relations between events and peoples will never be able to explain their identity to others. Never.
It's better to learn nothing from the past and start your life afresh than to memorize a distorted version of it for the single purpose of justifying your next act of violence.
That's the way to be less of a Victim and more of a Man, a thing an accountant could easily do, perhaps, were he more of a Man and less eager to exploit the credits he would receive as Victim.
"… a thing an accountant could easily do, perhaps, were he more of a Man and less eager to exploit the credits he would receive as Victim."
Nicely put. :)
That was a very moving account, Phil.
I googled for "Seffi Kedmi", expecting he would be one of the Israeli military refusniks, but came up empty. It is only the group Courage to Refuse (seruv.org) which posts the names of the signers. Kedmi could have belonged to the group of 27 pilots who refused in 2003. Or he could be a reservist who has taken a private vow to partake no longer in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. It is obvious that any soldier who sees the so-called enemy as a human being with hopes and fears like his own will be able to kill and maim no longer.
There are a total of 1,669 Israeli military refusniks now. Adjusting for population difference, it would be the equivalent of 100,050 American troops balking at military operations which dishonor their arms. Sounds about right.
Pearlman, wiseking et al, don't even think about smearing these Israeli soldiers, who have already paid a huge social price for standing by their principles. If you do, I swear I'll lay a Buddist prayer on you that will keep you awake at night.
I don't think israel is capable of living in peace with her neighbors. Look at the reponses you get on this blog. a leopard can't change his spots. You can't put a european country in the middle of the middle east and not have what you have now. It's time to admit Israel is no longer feasible
"There are a total of 1,669 Israeli military refusniks now. Adjusting for population difference, it would be the equivalent of 100,050 American troops balking at military operations which dishonor their arms. Sounds about right."
You are living up to you dumb reputation, Brenda.
The US Military is about 1.4 million (active and reserves). The Israeli army is about 400,000 (active and reserves). 1,669 Israeli military refusniks equates to 5800 in the US Military.
Thanks, David, we know that in the realm of human accountability a wise auditor would pity Phil for having to appease his readers:
For those keeping score, Goldstein was merely performing payback for the Arab murders of Jews in 1929. So Goldstein is now a martyr for the settlers, his grave a shrine.
Would also ask people bent on adjusting for population differences if they are willing to aggregate less favourable transactions, for they are plenty.
I see one of them auditors named "p" is already at work. Good going, "p".
Yes little Phil, American Jews helped in shiping arms to Jews 3 yrs after the holocaust so that there wouldn't be another 600,000 thousand dead Jews, something that wouldn't have bothered you I know. And Brenda, I belong to the Friends of the IDF, I don't smear Israeli soldiers like you people do. You wish they would all die, I don't, that's the difference here. Oh and one last noter. For little Philly Weiss to call himself a Jew is quite the stretch, you are actually an apostate who sits in a dark room and obsesses about other Jews and Israel when your not attending ISM meetings.
I have a question specifically for little Philly but the rest of the Joseph Mengele brigade can chime in to if they would like.
Put this column on the Hamas or IHR web site and it's just the run of the mill par for the course crap. What gives this its hook is the fact that little Philly is supposedly a "good little Jew who fearlessly criticizes Israel, the LOBBY!!!!!!!!, and generally comments on the vulgarity and loathsome qualities of American Jewry in particular and world Jewry in general.
But here is the question little phil. ¥ou take an active part in the campaign against Israel, the worlds only Jewish state has opposed to the multiple Moslem countries that don't seem to faze the Mengele brigade. And can anyone doubt that if the military balance was reversed there would be a second holocaust. Would anyone want their famalies left to the tender mercies of the warriors of Islam. You are married to a non-Jew. You don't have Jewish kids. You don't give a dime to Jewish causes. You participate in no public or private Jewish religious observance or ritual and your a self described atheist.
What exactly makes little Phillly Weiss a Jew, I really would like to know
I am gratified that you chose to refrain from smearing the IDF refusniks, Pearlman.
Question: if you do indeed find this blog so run of the mill par for the course crap, and if you find Philip Weiss so unappealing, then why do you spend so much time contributing to the blog threads? Is it because you think the rest of us would miss you?
Well Brenda, it's because I know that deep in your heart you have wet dreams about me and I don't want to disappoint you.
The comments regarding this article are simply amazing. First we have "hey douchebag!" and then we get "Check Point Software is a multi-national giant." Great. And that is only to be followed by character assasination attacks and lots of !!!!! exclamation points!!!! Thats very helpul commentary. Very rational, very civilized. This is just so typical of the reactionary vitriol and hate that occurs anytime someone criticizes Israel.
However, public sentiment is slowly turning against Israeli violence. With more and more attrocities occurring at the hands of the IDF ( why would any civilized nation be using artillery shells to terrorist targets within a civilian city's limits? is it a surprise that 18 civilians were wiped out while the slept this week?), more and more reasonable people are starting to speak-up. Neither the cry of "anti-semitism" nor holocaust guilt can keep rational people from eventually coming to their senses around what is clearly a human-rights disaster. There is no way to justify these acts. Period. In its attempts to wipe out its terrorist enemies, Israel has become a terrorist. It is so ironic. Psychologically it is quite classic. The victim that then becomes the perpetrator. A population that experienced a genocide in the previous generation now becomes a regional bully aiming indiscriminate violence all around any time it is poked. I remeber during the 2nd intifiada when the IDF rounded up every male from 15 years old on up in some towns in the west bank and/or gaza to conduct indiscrimnate interrogations. They etched serial #s into their arms to keep track of them. It was right out of a holocaust picture.
This is another great emission from that large mass of self-hating, we're just as bad as they are, American Jew. Blech. Go to hell.
"The Jews' immediate reaction to their own experience was to become persecutors in their turn … . In 1948, the Jews knew, from personal experience, what they were doing; and it was their supreme tragedy that the lessons learnt by them from their encounter with the Nazi German Gentiles should have been not to eschew but to initiate some of the evil deeds that the Nazis had committed against the Jews." (Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History, 1957)
My reflection of the IDF refusers number to the US was to give an idea of what this number means to Israeli society.
The population of Israel is about 6 million but the IDF is selected from the Jewish population only. Arab Israeli citizens — about 1 million — are not required or encouraged to serve in the military. The population of the US is 300 million. Multiply the refusal number by 60.
1,699 military refusals to serve in Israel is significant. If 100,000 American troops defected in an American war, the American public would consider the war lost.
The number of IDF refusals to serve in Occupied Palestine represents an acute embarrassment to the State of Israel. It is an indication that the war against Arabs is lost, an imperative to make peace if Israel is to survive as anything other than a beleaguered society continuously fighting a losing war. Isn't there more to life and to society than this? This is supposed to be some kind of reckoning for 6 million Jewish deaths in the 1940's?
This is a very active subject for debate in Israel. But not here. Not here where the wherewithal to continue the devastating war comes from. Not here, thanks to the right-wing Israel lobby — which doesn't even truly represent American Jews who voted 87% for liberal Democrat policies in the recent election.
No, here in America, all we ever hear about is that there is no alternative to the losing war, that Israel has no choice but to fight otherwise the Arabs will drive Israel into the sea. Here we never hear about the numerous Arab offers to negotiate a peace.
It do make you wonder, don't it?
Who is benefitting from this misbegotten war in the Middle East? Certainly not Israel.
Hey Douchbag Alex,
Your use of "Period." is so much more dignified than those slovenly exclamation points and your story about "serial #s into their arms" is charming. Comparing Israelis trying to stop terror bombings to Nazis hunting Jews- wow, you really are a DOUCHEBAG.
Go get some truth and rationality into your corroded mind.
Alana:
Arnold Toynbee was a classic British foreign office Arabist. He probably
took it up the ass from his pal T. E. Lawrence. By the way, how exactly have the Israelis been like the Nazi's, how. If anybody would know about that it's the Arabs. They were the ones who were German allies during the war.
There's a new book about Philip Weiss:
The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-hatred, and the Jews
by David Mamet
http://www.amazon.com/Wicked-Son-Anti-Semitism-Self-hatred-Encounters/dp/0805242074
The correct spelling: Sefi Kedmi
There is a good article about a good Arab father in Haaretz:
Click:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/786103.html
The Wicked Son: Anti-Semitism, Self-hatred, and the Jews
by David Mamet
I am suspicious of this book.
Self-important?
1. Most Jews are decent, superb, respectable people. The achievement of the Jews is unparalleled.
2. Many ultra-orthodox Jewish scholars are cultivating the theological circus that keeps Judaism alive. And hated.
Most Jews should follow Spinoza, and cut their umbillical cords to the Old Testament. Get born.
Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity (Hardcover)
by Rebecca Goldstein
It is emotionally difficult to get free.
The Christians and Muslims have the same problem.
Faith is a tricky matter. We need to slide out of it gradually. No revolution. Just peacefully.
Brenda, you obviously come from the Phil Weiss school of bad analysis.
Compare "refusnik" statistics when there was a draft in the US. During Vietnam, there were about 125,000 draft dodgers- about 25 times the rate in the Israei Army. Like Weiss, you have no idea what your are talking about- factiods pieced together do not make truth.
The population of Israel is seven million people.
This column/blog/whatever-it-is makes The Observer look like something floating in the toilet of the world of journalism.
Intel has several facilities in Israel, including two chip factories. In the so-called fabs is where the wafers are processed, i.e. the wafer enters "virgin" and exit full of chips on it. Then the wafers are sent to other facilities, called "assembly and testing", where they are cut and the devices (processors, chipsets, etc) are packed (terminals and a body are added).
Intel has fabs only in three countries: United States, Ireland and Israel. Assembly and testing facilities are found near consumer markets.
So, the final product from a "Fab" is a wafer, to be sent to assembly and testing facilities. That's why you never see "Israel" on the body of any CPU but "Costa Rica", "Malaysia" or "Philippines", for example.
Besides the two fabs, Intel has several research and development centers in Israel The Haifa team is responsible for creating Pentium M CPU and all other CPUs based on its architecture, like Yonah (dual-core Pentium M) and the forthcoming Merom, Conroe and Woodcrest.
The Petach Tikva team is in charge of the development of all cell CPUs from Intel and also Wi-Max technology, after Intel bought a company called Envara in 2004. This year Intel bought a company called Oplus, located in Yokneam, which develops HDTV decoder chips. The Yakum team is a branch of the Haifa team and also develops CPUs and chipsets for mobile platform.
Intel history in Israel is very old. The Haifa development facility was established in 1974 (just five years after Intel was established) with five engineers headed by Dov Frohman, the man that created the EPROM chip.
And your point is, Rich?
Thank you, p, for the statistic on American soldier defections during the Vietnam War. I wanted to know this when I wrote my last post but I didn't have the time to look for it.
I think you contributed to proving my point. The American people considered the war lost and petitioned their government, in myriad ways, to end the war. They did this for years before the war finally ended. It ended badly. The 125,000 American military refusniks comprised one significant symptom of the lost war. There were others.
What I said was that the number of Israeli military refusniks today is the rough equivalent, adjusting for population, of the number of American refusals to serve in the military then. It is not proof that the Israeli war against the Arabs is lost, but it is food for thought.
Hey Pearlman,
"deep in your heart you have wet dreams about me and I don't want to disappoint you."
You know, if you keep talking that trash talk like that, I might start thinking you're a man instead of a merchant. Can I feel your muscle?
Hey Pearlman,
"deep in your heart you have wet dreams about me and I don't want to disappoint you."
If you keep on talking trash talk like that, I might start thinking you're a man not a merchant. You got guts. You stand up and fight. Can I feel your muscle?
hello,
i read you comments and i stand amazed. i am not a refusenic, nor am i a military pilot. (i am a civilian one). i served a full 3 years military service, and i still serve as a reserve. i came to Columbia to speak in behalf of OneVoice, and our mandate of ending the conflict, as it is a mutual israeli-palestinian need, that is based, in both cases on the national interests of both sides.
i specifically mentioned during the event that i am not a refusnic, and that i support neither of the refusenic movements (right or left), as for me they mean the end of democracy and the army.
you are welcome to approach me personally.
First Sgt. (Res.) Kedmi.