As you might know, an exhibit of horrifying photographs of the Occupation taken by Israeli soldiers (and sponsored by a host of progs including Brit Tzedek, APN, Jewschool) is touring the U.S. The Ivies anyway--Penn and on to Harvard. One of the things I love about the brave soldiers' group "Breaking the Silence" that is bringing this information to our shores is that they don't just talk to Jews. They want to show all Americans. If Arab groups are the only ones that will host them, imshallah... (I think it was an Arab group that hosted them at Princeton last time 'round.)
The tour has an electrifying effect on young Jews. It leaves some troubled, some in doubt, many angry and shaking their fists. The Daily Pennsylvanian reports that on Friday night at Penn's Hillel (housed in New Republic/New York Sun/anti-intermarriage/financial-but-not-political-genius Michael Steinhardt's gift to the university) 20 Jewish students met with the two soldiers who had come with the exhibit, to talk about the exhibit.
Outside Hillel, another 15 Jewish students protested the meeting, saying that American Jews should not even honor the veterans with an audience. (20 to 15. My side's gaining).
A few things leap out from this article:
--The Daily Pennsylvanian openly describes the protesters as Zionists "Zionist students protest traveling art exhibit" is the headline. Good for the DP for plainness of language.
--The students inside the hall refused access to reporter Alex Melamed. A pity. The IDF veterans would surely have welcomed any coverage at all. But this shows how agonizing the issue is to young American Jews. They can't have this struggle openly. Let us open up the struggle, please! This conversation should be happening across America now! As it is, a lot of these sessions have a therapeutic, i.e., self-absorbed quality. As the writer Zach Wales told me last year about these types of encounters: "It ends up being an atonement session for people who support Israel but feel
the moral burden. They’re like AA meetings." Yes: and these encounters over Jewish abuse of Arabs ought to be on the front pages of our newspapers...
--One of the Israeli soldiers makes an amazing spiritual gesture toward the protesters. Per Melamed:
One of the Israeli soldiers who served in the occupied territories, Arnon Degani, tried to reconcile with the protestors.
"I want to apologize," he said. "If I offended you, I apologize."
This statement is ravishing to me. It is so large in spirit, so full of compassion and suffering. It makes me love my people. The Cliff Notes on the Old Testament say is that it is filled with justice and wrath, and then Jesus came along and introduced lovingkindness and forgiveness. The law is not inscribed on tablets; it is inscribed in the heart.... No doubt there is some truth to this understanding, but it is reductive. It is not as if the Jewish tradition doesn't also include lovingkindness, forgiveness, etc. Degani's gesture touches my soul.
From the [U.K.] Independent article featured in the Shovrimshtika website linked above:
"In Shuhada Street, which runs through what is now the settlers' security zone, the rows of empty Palestinian shops and houses [are] boarded up with steel shutters, many daubed with Stars of David to show who is in charge here."
What a kick in the head. From being a mark of victimhood in pogroms, the Star of David is now transformed into a sinister proclamation of hegemony after ethnic cleansing.
Shame about the hundreds of millions invested in Holocaust museums. Their message is being obsoleted by Israel's supremacist policies today. Another reason why all U.S. aid to Israel should be stopped NOW.
2 post-scripts on articles related to BTS and its work. (not sure how to make links here, so will add URLs). First, Trudy Rubin has a column in today's Inquirer on the exhibition and the questions it forces us to ask:
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/columnists/20080224_Worldview__A_look_at_the_limits_democracy_must_set.html
Second, and perhaps more important, a chilling testament in Ha'aretz to the tragic fact that BTS' work must continue — the title alone says it all: "For IDF brigade, 'Hebron is like Wild West and army is the law'"
http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/957169.html
Here's a sample paragraph:
Channel 2 television's "Fact" investigative program recently aired additional alleged incidents of abuse by soldiers in the Kfir Brigade. "We'd go on a patrol," one soldier told Channel 2. "If even one kid looked at us the wrong way, he'd be slapped. Rocks were thrown at us during one patrol, and we caught one of the kids who knew the perpetrators. We beat the crap out of him until he told us who did it." The soldier said that he and other soldiers tracked down a boy said to be involved, aged 14, and placed the tips of their rifles in his mouth. "We said, 'You want to die? Just say when and where,'" the soldier recalled.
Another good source for understanding what's going on in the IDF is "Checkpoint Syndrome."
This small booklet was published in Israel about four years ago and caused quite a fuss. It was written by a young soldier and describes the encounters between the army and the Palestinians. At first it couldn't get a publisher, and when it was published, the company would only allow it out in Hebrew. Gideon Levy talks about it here–
link to haaretz.com
HAARETZ 21/11/2003
It's now been translated by an Israeli living in Britain and is downloadable in PDF format here–
I saw the C-SPAN broadcast of the "Breaking the Silence" talk. It was amazing the revelation of just how much harassment and abuse is commonplace.
In commenting on something at the Huffington Post, I tried three times to include a link to the "Breaking the Silence" campaign. It was filtered out each and every time.
Part of the Lobby's effectiveness is from the amount of gatekeeping it does.