New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman went to Gaza to report on the cultural scene. Good for him, and brave too; we need more reporters in Gaza. He produced a long piece in a slightly-chirping tone all about how Palestinians thirst for western freedom of expression and are suppressed by fundamentalist Hamas.
Unquestionably, there is a conflict between Islamic fundamentalists and more open cultural forces in Palestinian society. I wrote about it here, in this piece on the Jenin Freedom Theater, in which theater director Juliano Mer Khamis says he is afraid of the fundamentalists shutting him down.
But there is something forcibly stupid and ideological in Kimmelman's piece: the only political condition he is able to talk about is the strain in Arab life between the intolerant and the freedom-seekers. The chief political and material conditions of Gaza– the siege, the blockade, the poverty, the sickness, he goes right past, with a neutral reference or two. These conditions strike any honest, intelligent visitor. Here is a recent report from a Canadian Jewish epidemiologist who expresses shame and disgust at the horrifying landscape for his hometown newspaper.
It
was as if we had travelled to another planet.
The sandy track is
surrounded by the blown-up remnants of Gaza's former industrial
district. Rubble stretching for hundreds of metres lines the route…. The air reeks of burnt oil and stale food from exhaust
fumes…Every so often, the smell of sewage fills the air. Lack of treatment
facilities means that much of it is dumped raw into the Mediterranean.
We went first to a children's hospital on the edge of Gaza City. The
hospital director and doctors described the conditions. Of 100 beds, 40
were occupied by children with bacterial meningitis, an extremely
serious disease…
The hospital has three ventilators; only one is working. Israel won't let in spare parts for the others. The working machine is for a "hopeless case" who can't be taken off.
Meanwhile, patients who could benefit have no working machine.
These conditions are why Gaza is routinely described as an open-air prison in Haaretz and at the U.N. Here is Jeff Halper saying lately that Gaza is a "bantustan" made by Israeli oppressors. Here is Idith Zertal, the scholar, speaking at a forum on Gaza at Columbia earlier this year where she expressed shame at unspeakable conditions for children and said that she did not blame Palestinians for picking up the gun. Zertal said that at every step in the history of the occupation, Israel had acted to
"thwart.. the growth of a democratic fabric in Palestinian society."
Yes, Kimmelman is writing about the arts. And he briefly refers to the "siege" and to Arab rage at Israeli control. But I believe he actually misrepresents Arab consciousness. Earlier this summer I asked Maysoon Zayid, a Palestinian actress and theater leader who is in a movie that Kimmelman cites approvingly, You Don't Mess With Zohan, about her fear of the zealots in Islamic society. "The zealots are so far outnumbered by the moderates. We are much more fearful of the army coming in more than any Arab. We take a huge risk that the army will come in and destroy the spaces people are working in." Juliano Mer Khamis saw his mother's theater in Jenin destroyed by the Israelis. He worries less about Hamas than he does about the larger material and political conditions that drive young actors to become martyrs instead: Israel's sharp limits
on Palestinian life: "xenophobic, racist, not tolerant and moving
toward what I would say is fascism."
It is a pity the Times is unable to include these voices, that Kimmelman could not mention conditions the epidemiologist describes, that there are one-year-olds so malnourished that they weigh only 6.6 pounds! No, the children are thirsting for pirated copies of "Friends."
