I sometimes quote people from memory (it's a literary tradition) and sometimes I get them wrong. My old friend Dan Fleshler is irritated that I casually quote from a panel we had together a year or so back at an Upper West Side synagogue. I just did yesterday, offhandedly:
A year ago I had a debate with Dan Fleshler, where at one point he equated the power of the Palestinian terrorist with the power of the Israeli border guard. Something like that.
Fleshler says I'm not being journalistic, and he's right. I have a tape of the event and just listened to the exchange. Fleshler–a longtime and noble opponent of the occupation– talks about how progressives ought to talk about the general issue of the occupation. He said:
This situation coarsens and brutalizes both peoples. It’s difficult when one side has so much power and the other side doesn’t to realize that both of them are in fact victimized, but that’s exactly what is happening. There is more than one generation of Jews now as well as Palestinians who were born after the Six Day War, they’ve inherited the situation, they didn’t want it–What are they going to do with it? And they’ve inherited a situation in which an occupation exists that neither of them can change for whatever reason, for a variety of reasons. And the average person on the street has to deal with and contend with that situation. And when the average 19 year old Israeli kid has to man a checkpoint, that coarsens and brutalizes him, and he’s as much of a victim as anybody else. So I’d like to just have that realization in all the rhetoric that happens about this issue. And if that’s there, if there’s a sense that Jews have the problem too and it’s the same problem as the Palestinians, we can start working toward a common solution.
I apologize to Fleshler for paraphrasing, but I think his answer is consistent with my interpretation. I think he's giving too little agency to the Israeli soldier; there are actually things he can do. Too little agency to American Jews, implicitly. And actually equating the victimization level of Palestinian and Israeli. I don't see it. As for the real lives of soldiers, yes, their lives are hurt for three years in Israel, if they're serving the occupation, then they spend another year unwinding in India or Argentina, a wanderjaar, and then they get to have their dreams, without checkpoints. Palestinian hopes are far more limited.
Related posts:
- Some Israeli Kids Refuse to Serve the Occupation. Why Don’t We Know About Them?
- The Price of Journalism: Picking Peoples’ Brains Without Credit
- Making a difference: Haim Saban gives equally to Brookings Institution and Israeli army
- Jewish and Non-Jewish Groups Must Work Together to End the Occupation
- Gen McChrystal and the difference between an insurgency and an occupation
{ 17 comments }
Yeah, this is the key quote: "he’s as much of a victim as anybody else". This is plainly untrue, and judging from Fleshler's comments here my guess is that he didn't really mean it to come out that way.
"Apartheid coarsens and brutalizes both peoples".
I also find it hard to sympathize with people who worry about the mental anguish suffered by IDF soldiers when they have to break some bones at checkpoints. How come they never worry about the mental anguish of the people with the broken bones?
Thanks, JamieSW. It was, I see now, a very stupid phrase to use, because it did imply that the level of victimization was comparable. I didn't believe that then and I don't believe it now. As I noted in a recent comment, there is obviously an assymetry of power and an assymetry of suffering. But I do stand by the assertion that Israelis are coarsened and (morally) brutalized by the occupation.
Schindler's list describes quite nicely the torments of the German camp commandant. Somehow, you are not supposed to feel sorry for him.
What I don't get is why you would take that single phrase from Dan's speech, that was obviously not the emphasis of his comments, and inflate it to mean that Dan is some insensitive racist fool.
There is an organisation of retired IDF soldiers, who discuss these exact issues, based on their own experiences. They are conducting tours to Hebron, and have been attacked by a settler mob.
The breakdown of rule of law, and it's replacement by the rule of whim in Occupied Palestinian Territories is heartbreaking to see.
http://www.shovrimshtika.org/index_e.asp
Please note, some of the stories are really harrowing to listen to.
The overemphasis on the suffering and the moral anguish of the coloniser and military occupier is in fact a repeated trope in zionist discourse and deserves exactly the disparaging treatment that Weiss is handing out here.
A particular emphasis on the way that Israelis are coarsened and (morally) brutalized by the occupation is a pointer towards jewish chauvinism if it is not matched by a similar emphasis on the way that e.g. South African whites or the Pieds Noirs were similarly brutalised and coarsened. If it is part of a more general overconcern for the brutalization of the colonizer and other perpetrators, as opposed to their victims, it would be a very rare moral sense indeed.
the tasteless equation of the brutalization of victim and perpetrator is another excuse to keep doing it. fleshler's comments are very clear – he is equating the two, unfortunately he cannot get away from the tape. it may also be , however , a cover. a cover for his reputation among jews who sympathize with israel. it would be nice if there were more jews who were as forthright as phil, but we should be happy for the temporizers, the ones who don't want to be caught on the wrong side of history, yet don't want their career to end.
The prosecution takes the defendant's side
Whenever a policeman is tried.
Definitely not equally victims. But equally in need to be liberated, as Nelson Mandela taught. The Blacks from their oppression, the Whites from their fear. The Palestinians from their oppression, the Israelis from their fear.
It starts by recognizing the humanity of the other. Then understanding what is in the other's heart. Few people hold onto hatred and rage for long, if there is another way, such as confession and forgiveness. Then finding common cause, one thing in both hearts that can be achieved together. Then building on that.
"we should be happy for the temporizers, the ones who don't want to be caught on the wrong side of history, yet don't want their career to end."
I don't know Dan very well, but I do know that taking the stances he has taken –like talking to the PLO in the mid 1980s– have not exactly advanced his "career." Neither has telling American Jews that they should demand that Israel stop the settlements madness because it is against American interests and threatens American security. Those were not especially smart "career" moves. Just the opposite. I do think it is true, though, that the recorded comments betrayed a certain over-reaching to appeal to what was, if I recall, mostly a Jewish audience. They don't sound like the comments one finds on Realistic Dove these days.
angels dancing on the head of a pin. and the beat goes on.
angels dancing on the head of a pin. and the beat goes on.
"we should be happy for the temporizers, the ones who don't want to be caught on the wrong side of history, yet don't want their career to end."
I don't know Dan very well, but I do know that taking the stances he has taken –like talking to the PLO in the mid 1980s– have not exactly advanced his "career." Neither has telling American Jews that they should demand that Israel stop the settlements madness because it is against American interests and threatens American security. Those were not especially smart "career" moves. Just the opposite. I do think it is true, though, that the recorded comments betrayed a certain over-reaching to appeal to what was, if I recall, mostly a Jewish audience. They don't sound like the comments one finds on Realistic Dove these days.
Of course occupation affects the occupier as well as the occupied. As Aime Cesaire wrote,
"We must study how colonization works to decivilize the colonizer, to brutalize him in the true sense of the word, to degrade him…" (Discourse on Colonialism)
This is actually quite an important point – it means, for example, that most of those who call themselves "pro-Israel" are in fact supporters of Israel's moral degeneration (not to mention its possible physical destruction).
That said, I share some of the other commenters distaste at those (and I'm not saying Dan is one these) who effectively transfer the massive suffering caused by the occupation from the Palestinians to Israelis – i.e. the standard 'shoot-and-cry' Israeli liberal I spoke of in another thread. It's a symptom of the underlying indifference many people have when it comes to Palestinian rights and welfare – if the occupation is bad, it's bad because it affects *Jews*, not Palestinians.
This phenomenon is hardly unique to Israel, we might add. So for example, when Tony Blair left office as Prime Minister, the papers were full of retrospectives discussing his time in office and his "legacy". Where the catastrophic suffering Blair brought to Iraq was mentioned at all, it was invariably described solely in terms of its political effects on *Tony Blair*. For instance, Polly Toynbee wrote that “Iraq was [Blair’s] nemesis, the reason why Labour’s great winner crashes out of the sky still in his prime”. “For Iraq” Toynbee concludes, “Tony Blair has paid with his political life”. All the Iraqis who paid with their *actual* lives went, needless to say, unmentioned.
Again, this is just a symptom of an underlying racist attitude towards the victims of Western power, whereby the rights and suffering of Palestinians or, as the case may be, Iraqis simply don't register.
phils angels danc on the head of a pin, and the beat goes on.
Comments on this entry are closed.