"Lots and lots and lots of houses of just ordinary people have been completely and utterly destroyed, and people are living in the rubble," she said, speaking in the garden cafe of her Gaza City hotel. "Some of them are struggling in tents, and some are just sitting in what remains of their homes."
Walker said her decision to visit Gaza, along with members of the U.S. anti-war group Code Pink, was spurred by the recent death of an older sister. She said she felt a connection to Gazans who lost loved ones in the war.
"I wanted very much to be with them and to bear witness to what is happening to them, this horrible, catastrophic, terrible thing," she said.
Walker does not say it explicitly, but it's clear she has been moved on the issue of Palestine. She makes reference to having been indoctrinated by a classic Zionist text – the film Exodus. The AP article continues:
Walker said she believes Americans have mostly been exposed to the Israeli narrative since the establishment of the Jewish state in 1948 and know little about the plight of the Palestinians. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were expelled their homes at the time.
"We were indoctrinated to the song in that film Exodus, you know, `This land belongs to us, this land is our land,' meaning the Israelis, the Jews, and for so long, we were told that nobody lived here, that it was a land without people, for a people without land," she said.
At the beginning of the war in Gaza Phil referred to it as "the anti-67 war." The 1967 war was a defining moment in establishing many American's affinity for Israel and the film Exodus, which came out in 1960, helped prepare the ground for this relationship. This era is passing. The war in Gaza led many to rethink their beliefs about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and jettison past assumptions. Today, Exodus looks dated and silly. There is no going back to Paul Newman's Ari Ben Canaan, a new understanding has been created.
Yeah, well Hollywood no longer has exclusive hold on film-going public. And MSM generally can now be
seen for the thick gauze it's become since the Nam era–via the internet. Newman's gone, and also Bogart–two little boys who made tons of money playing real men in a melodramatic fake world of black & white, then overly garish color.
"There is no going back to Paul Newman's Ari Ben Canaan, a new understanding has been created."
Grow up. People have long forgotten about the Maalot Massacre, the Passover Massacre and the Olympics Massacre. The Alice Walker's of the world will find a new cause to get their picture in the paper or on Oprah.
@ Julian
"Grow up. People have long forgotten about the Maalot Massacre, the Passover Massacre and the Olympics Massacre."
Oh Julian but we shall never be allowed to forget our gentile guilt about the Holocaust. That's one massacre that's so important than any other that it created the justification for the ethnic cleansing of another people.
What do you call a God who choses one people over another? A racist.
@ Julian
Grow up? People have forgotten the massacres you named? I doubt it, but they have never ever even heard of the massacres foisted on the Palestinians. Nothing to forget there as nobody showed them.
(And showed them, and showed them, and showed them ad nausem). Julian, you need to grow up. The American people too. GAZA wasn't an Israeli sponsored Hollywood film, but it's giving us the picture.
Next thing you know Americans without a job, living temporarily in their foreclosed home, might even
take a gander at our financial foreign aid albatross, Israel.
Paul Newman is boycotted in Lebanon.
"People have long forgotten about the Maalot Massacre, the Passover Massacre and the Olympics Massacre"
How many people have to be killed for it to count as a massacre,Julian? It's just that we are constantly being told that there wasn't one at Jenin.
How many people have to be killed for it to count as a massacre,Julian? It's just that we are constantly being told that there wasn't one at Jenin.
Six million.
Oh wait, that's a holocaust that gets a capital "H" and can't be investigated by historians for fear of charges of "anti-semitism" here in the states, and criminal prosecution in many other parts of the world.
The ADL will get back to you with what qualifies as a massacre. Of course, the first thing to consider is what ethnic group is being killed.
"The war in Gaza led many to rethink their beliefs about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and jettison past assumptions."
Not me! I'll never rethink anything.
(In fact, I try to avoid thinking all together as it's often very judgmental.)
What do you call a God who choses one people over another? A racist.
Posted by: Saleema
Ha! Good point.
Julian, you remind me of Yossarian in Catch 22, when he was trying to get classified as unfit to fight: you seem to see everything twice.
How many people have to be killed for it to count as a massacre,Julian? It's just that we are constantly being told that there wasn't one at Jenin.
Posted by: Suzanne's logic mentor | March 11, 2009 at 06:27 PM
53 with 48 proven militants? That's a massacre? I guess if your hamas and you needed those potential suicide bombers.
As for calling God a racist, I'm sure He's been called worse. I heard He doesn't really care what you think.
It is refreshing to be reminded that many of us once believed in "a land without a people for a people without a land". I also remember another slogan that attracted us — "they made the desert bloom".
The last one is real hoot. They turned large tracts of land into highly productive farms by importing European pumping technology into Palestine that allowed the early Jewish settlers to irrigate desert land with water that came from the coastal aquifers. This was farm land that the natives had worked for the last 1000 years with much less water. In fact, they used traditional wells that extracted smaller quantities of water. Today those aquifers are now suffering from salination problems that makes that water more and more useless in supporting any kind of agriculture. Given the degradation of this crucial natural resource let us look at Israel's solution. They have seized the ground water resources in the West Bank. Wow folks, another Israeli miracle.
One significance of the 67 war was that prior to 67, Jordan had ethnically cleansed all Jews from the West Bank, and prohibited all Jews from visiting their religious shrines. If one had an Israeli visa stamp, it was impossible even as an American to visit any Arab controlled state.
The vindication from constant physical and verbal attack, was felt as a liberation.
I visited Israel in 1968, and felt this sense of liberation. Even at 13, I got into an argument though with a right-wing cab driver that drove my parents and I on a tour of the Golan. He stated that Israel will never and should never give back the occupied territories, particularly the Golan. (He lived in the valleys below that similar to Sderot had been shelled repeatedly over an extended period of time by Syria then. I stated that the land wasn't Israel's, and that the best Israel could do would be to ensure safety.
Anti-1967 is half a truth.
Is Syria willing to move on? Are Palestinians?
Or do they seek vengeance, that confuses all future deliberation?
Your characterization, Witty, is rooted in the belief that Israel has committed no wrongs and that the conflict only begins when Israel is attacked.
You are dishonest. You are a troll.
The tribal god of Israel is racist. Not the God I believe in, who's love and compassion is universal and for all His children.
Racists don't care what others think. In fact, they don't think. Too bad for them. May the universal God give them a heart and compassion.
Saleema, my theory, which I admit owes as much to science fiction as it does to theology, is that there are two gods in Jewish theology: "Elohim", who is the one who remained in the sky, and JHVH, who is the one who landed.