Last night and this morning, a group called Philadelphia Jews for a Just Peace had a vigil outside the Israeli consulate in their city to commemorate the fact that the anniversary of the massacre at Deir Yassin outside Jerusalem in 1948 falls on the same day as Passover, today, April 8. En route to my parents' place outside Philly, I took a bus to town and got to the vigil at 10 p.m. The order of the night was that they were having a "workshop" on their feelings about The Conflict. A woman in boots from Milwaukee led us through actions in a tight circle. She was fair-skinned and dark haired, I thought of her as the second coming of Golda Meir (a schoolteacher in Milwaukee).
In this way we stayed warm for a couple of hours till a delivery of humus and hot chocolate from some fellow travelers in West Philadelphia arrived and the circle broke up for a while. We had just begun an exercise in which everyone was to write down a question on a piece of paper and the questions were gathered and redistributed, so you got someone else's question to read aloud. My original question was, Why are there so few men here? Only four, out of 20 or so people.
The workshop petered out on account of the food, and it being 12:30, and the Milwaukee woman said, Well let us just read the questions aloud and finish up. So we did. The one that struck me was, "How much support do you have from your family in your work on this issue?" I asked Milwaukee if before we finished up we could just get a nose count, Yes or no, on that question.
We ended up spending another half hour on it, with people talking. Any impression I had that the division this issue has brought to my family was unique soon disappeared. A couple of people cried.
Here are some of the things people said, a little garbled from a long night:
--My father won't leave the place of, It's complicated. It's too complicated to have an easy answer to.
--I've argued with my mother for years about it. She's never wanted to hear anything. But this year when the bombs began falling in Gaza she came to a demonstration with me. She stood there and even held a sign. That was real progress.
--My father's Peace Now. So he feels like he's done the right thing. He's a liberal. He used to go into the Hebrew school and tell them to put the green line on the map. They didn't even have the Green Line on the '67 lines. But they're Zionists. I was born there. When I got into the issue, they couldn't believe it, they couldn't believe how radical my sister and I were. For a while I wasn't welcome to come to the house. They're in Israel now, having Pesach. My sister and I aren't invited.
--When I got into it, my parents thought, She's a Jew for Jesus. That was the only way they could explain my stance, emotionally. It was that foreign to them. They did visit me in the West Bank. They saw a refugee camp and faced some of the conditions there.
--My mother's Israeli and the child of Holocaust survivors. My father's American and he studies the Holocaust. I was afraid to look at the issue all my life. Then when I looked into it, my mother said, Yes it's apartheid and we should have just killed them all, or moved them out. It was shocking to me, especially the casual use of terms that Nazis might have used. My father is much more reasoned. It's like the difference between Americans and Israelis.
--When I was in the West Bank, I was afraid to come home. I didn't want to come back. Then my mother did a great thing. She said on the phone, You come home and I promise you, I will listen to you for two weeks. Anything you want to say, anything you need to express, I will listen and not say anything back, or argue with you, for two weeks. So I came home. And my mother did that for me. But I never talked to my father about it, he was too upset.
--My parents are dead, and frankly it's good they are because they would not understand the work I'm doing. My son got me into it, so we get along great. We talk all the time. But my extended family, where I'm going for seder, one of the cousins is a leader of the religious community in Hebron, in the West Bank. So we never talk about these things.
I'm forgetting a lot of the stories. It went on for a long time. It was like a Seder in that the stories were liberating, the understanding of shared grief around the issue. My own story seemed so humdrum and bourgeois, I said it in a line, I have a very loving family and we don't talk about this stuff.
The question came from a woman called Susan Landau. She's very involved with these emotional questions and seeks support from others. Landau told us that she teaches at a Hebrew school and on Israeli independence day last year she stood out on Benjamin Franklin Parkway with a group of other women dressed in black and held up a sign that said "Nakba." A float went by with a bunch of kids on it, and three of the kids were in her class. They stared at her in confusion. She was hurt by the incident and later sent all the kids an email explaining what she was doing there.
It was 1 a.m. and Adam Horowitz was to give a little presentation. He got out his computer and showed us a movie about Deir Yassin. I think he wanted to bring the night back to the reason we were there: what has happened in Israel and Palestine. It was a wrenching video, and this is not the place to go into it. I was still in the feelings of the workshop. Adam then gave me a ride home and we talked about the appropriate proportion in this work of Agonizing about our Jewish feelings/Describing the experience of the Palestinians. It's an important question. This morning I'd say that the first part is an essential part of the process for American Jews to come to terms with what they have underwritten in Palestine. There is a lawyerly part of Jewish tradition, best embodied by Alan Dershowitz, that is fierce and abstract and unstraightforward. The energy in the workshop was the opposite, and I guess that answers my question about Why there were so few men there. Afterward the women passed around a big cloth big of hot rice to warm our hands with. I was amazed at how long the rice held the heat. That bag's got a lot of places to go yet...
passover day. the angel of death will pass over the homes of the jews who can say, "israel has no right to exist".
Remember the thanks. It would have been wonderful to hear some of the people in your circle express "I understand why my parents feel that way".
It doesn't equate to agreeing, or putting one's time and energy into the same efforts.
But, it does reduce the DIVIDE.
I know you are enamored with that term, of thinking free from the stultifying convention, but the convention that I seek to free myself from is the political based division.
I'm a believer in the power of compassion, and a disbeliever in the power of anger-based (even outrage-based) agitation.
@Phil: "Why are there so few men here?"
For me, the answer would be:
"A woman in boots from Milwaukee led us through actions in a tight circle."
This would creep out most men I know.
I'm a believer in the power of compassion, and a disbeliever in the power of anger-based (even outrage-based) agitation. Posted by: Richard Witty | April 08, 2009 at 12:12 PM
That's an example of Witty using Christian verbiage again.
Seriously, though, Phil, this is a superb post.
"There is a lawyerly part of Jewish tradition, best embodied by Alan Dershowitz, that is fierce and abstract and unstraightforward."
This isn't fair, though. The greatest figures in the rabbinic tradition were earnestly concerned with coming to a just conclusion within the boundaries of the law.
Dershowitz is a living parody of the amoral legalist who uses pilpilistic and logically defective arguments to justify whatever wicked thing he wishes to support.
@ Witty
"I'm a believer in the power of compassion, and a disbeliever in the power of anger-based (even outrage-based) agitation."
So, as a Jew in a concentration camp, Witty, you'd just have turned the other cheek? You're a secret Jew 4 Jesus?
This is a powerful post, and prompts even more respect from someone like me, whose family gives him no pressure at all. The great Henry Siegman says some of his relatives won't even speak to him, which must be particularly painful now that he is older.
A semi-rhetorical question: why doesn't the mainstream press write about this kind of intellectual and moral courage, whether in the diaspora or inside Israel itself? James North
The more pervasive public education and free press in the world, the less people read books other than those they buy off the rack at the check-out counter. As was said (paraphrasing) in conflicting dialogue
in the fairly recent teen movie, Sidney White (& The Seven Nerds):
Fair, blonde, blue-eyed Sorority girl leader (a real bitch, beauty sans charm): "Democracy needs the elite since the masses don't read much and don't really know what's best for them."
Brunette, Sydney (the nice cute girl next door, Dad's a plumber), leader of the Nerds (& the rest of the 80% ill-powered contingents of the masses (including US Army students, Orthodox Jews, Gays, Witches, etc): "The elites know less than they think, and the unwashed masses, more."
At the end of the movie, segments of all college contingents get up to testify that they are really nerds, of one stripe or another. Our populist campaigner, Sydney wins. The haute WASP archtype Witch screams in humiliation and runs off, utterly defeated.
I bet a neocon watching this movie wouldn't even realize which side he or she should be rooting for–or rather, they would, but they wouldn't make it public. I didn't check who wrote the screenplay, directed, or promoted the flick.
How much longer can they go on casting the WASP model (boy or girl) as the ultimate evil?
Sundance needs some new blood.
Michael Medved and Richard Praegar would find this teen movie fun and enjoyable. I also found it annoying, so predictably PC. Maher wouldn't say so, but I do. Rachel is the WASP witch. She takes an immediate dislike to Sydney and successfully boots her out of the blonde sorority. Sydney is then taken in by the seven dorks, who live in the "Vortex," a broken down cottage that is synonymous with the outcasts of the school's social network. Eventually, with the support of the dorks and her prince, Sydney overthrows Rachel and the college Greek system by running for student council president and winning. Time for a horror movie along the line of a revised Freaks, depicting who really lives in the Vortex these days. The filmmaker should consult Phil regarding
how to depict the contemporary outcasts.
"The order of the night was that they were having a "workshop" on their feelings about The Conflict. A woman in boots from Milwaukee led us through actions in a tight circle. She was fair-skinned and dark haired, I thought of her as the second coming of Golda Meir (a schoolteacher in Milwaukee)."
No offense, but that part lets me know that this group can't possibly achieve anything substantial, and probably wants nothing more than to unload some neurosis in a friendly environment.
Lovely post, Phil. I have heard some of my friends talk of their families in similiar terms …and I could see how difficult it was for them.
Witty
….There is a lawyerly part of Jewish tradition, best embodied by Alan Dershowitz, that is fierce and abstract and unstraightforward.
There is a lawyerly part of Jewish tradition, best embodied by Richard Witty that is, well, not all that fierce, but none-the-less abstract and unstraightforward.
After I detail my opposition to Israeli militant aggression and US support of it, my father asks me what I have against the Jews.
There is no problem so trivial people can't break up their families over it.
"I'm a believer in the power of compassion, and a disbeliever in the power of anger-based (even outrage-based) agitation."
Richard Witty
From this you could vomit! No you are not, Richard, you are an American Zionist supporter who seems to be awakening just to bit to what you are involved in, so you have decided to hedge at least your literary bets.
You are of no use to Israel in this condition, Witty. This is not the kind of strength and unity which put through the mortaring of the Arab quarters in Jaffa, or prosecuted the nakba What good would you have been in the latest attack on Gaza? Don't worry, Witty, you're not changing, just going flabby around the edges. You'll shape up soon.
That's an example of Witty using Christian verbiage again.
Posted by: Rowan
You noticed that, too, Rowan? I've noticed that there are some very distressing parallels between the Christian "born-again" movement and the Jewish "frum-again" and hasbara movements.
Wow.
"The great Henry Siegman says some of his relatives won't even speak to him, which must be particularly painful now that he is older."
There is a flip side to this. There are a gamut of leftists who won't speak to me solely because I don't condemn Israel in the same way as they do. Even as we do work together on energy issues, other peace issues, community economic development.
Its a problem with urging division. I think Phil means to say, "have courage, do not compromise your convictions". But, he says, "divide your family".
Mooser,
You don't get the inneffectiveness of politics driven by anger, in contrast to politics driven by compassion and thought?
You think "get the fuck out" is going to get ANY traction in the next century?
Politics driven by anger seems to serve Israel and its American supporters quite well, which is probably one reason why the Palestinians have mimicked it. Many who oppose Israeli aggression and America's support of it are driven by compassion for the Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites who suffer from it. It is the same compassion they felt for the victims of the Holocaust, the victims of the Killing Fields, the victims in Fallujah, etc. Having compassion for victims should also drive anger against policies that make the compassionate perpetrators through citizenship. When those policies are embodied in political leaders, the compassionate should be angry with them, too.
Witty
"You think "get the fuck out" is going to get ANY traction in the next century?"
It got pretty good traction in Palestine in 1948
It continues to get traction with every house and farm demolition since –
You are beyond hypocritical – beyond comical
Israelis say get the fuck out to West Bank Palestinians without using vowels. They use American made weapons instead.
Imagine how hard it is to grunt out all those Hebrew consonants. No wonder they left the Gaza homes full of fecal matter. I don't think the gutteral SS even did that.
So sad. So very sad.
"I'm a believer in the power of compassion, and a disbeliever in the power of anger-based (even outrage-based) agitation."
So, we should have compassion for Jews who hold Nazi-like views toward the people who have been displaced, mass murdered, impoverished, and are being systematically robbed of their humanity in the Jews' name, and we should criticize and condemn their victims for reacting with anger and outrage.
And, Richard, does your disbelief in anger-based agitation extend to the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto? Should they have just gone, as so many other Jews did, like lambs to the slaughter instead of fighting back against their oppressors?
Witty does not give a damn about objectivity.
His wind-baggery is a tactic.
He spends all his time on this blog trying to equate the conflict and soften Israel's brutality.
Why don't we narrate this conflict on our terms, just as he does?
Notice his rhetoric: 'shelling' S'Derot/'ethnically cleansing' the settlers back to Israel/etc.
This guy is not an honest person. He's on the same level as Julian/Berel/Suzanne/etc.
He's just civil. Which is why he's more dangerous. Stupid people fall for Witty. They vote for people like him.
But his ideas are just gift-wrapped dog shit.
He's like those hypocrites asking where the Palestinian Gandhi is.
Witty would not afford this much understanding to the more (relatively speaking, not absolute) fascist States of our time like Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy or whoever.
It's like Munich the movie. We get to see all this psychological turmoil because it's made by people who belong to the general constituency of the main characters.
Remember the reaction to that film about Hitler? It was released a couple of years ago. The scene where Hitler flips out (kind of vague right?) is on YouTube a lot.
Anyways, Jewish critics and organizations were angered by this attempt to humanize Hitler. Why wouldn't they be? He is their Voldemort.
So in some respect, I can understand Witty's constant rhetorical acrobatics.
But it only lasts so long. We're not REFLECTING here. This tragedy is going on AS WE SPEAK.
Witty is a fucking apologist. End of story.
I don't care about objectivity either. I am always going to be biased in favour of the oppressed over the oppressors.
As much as I despise the old hypocrite, no one has said it better than Elie Wiesel (in one of his most hypocritical statements):
"We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."
WOWee-ZOWee – thanks for helping me find a way to agree with the Weazel –
Witty is born in prevarication and raised a dissembler . . .
Come on, guys. Witty doesn't deserve this kind of abuse.
He obviously cares about these issues, or he wouldn't be here. I do wish he would take a less nebulous position on things occasionally, but he doesn't flame or insult anyone like the trolls.
good god — it's Holy Thursday
David F. – (my real name BTW) – you have not been here long enough to understand the depravity of Mr. Witty – his position is not nebulous – it is blerkpo.
"Usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about change." – Malcolm X
So, go ahead, get angry! There's plenty to be angry about and many things that need to be changed.
LD:
"Witty does not give a damn about objectivity…
This guy is not an honest person. He's on the same level as Julian/Berel/Suzanne/etc."
Palestine is your religion, making it impossible for you to be objective, but Jews like Witty willing to constantly compromise, are actually your best allies.
When I read about Phil's silly workshops. How everyone sat around in a circle discussing their feelings it makes me feel good. It's just the same old narcissistic crap that accomplishes nothing.
so why be so proud of israel if youre an american jew?
http://antiwar.com/radio/2009/04/08/grant-f-smith-2/
spying on the u.s is par for the course for israel.
Julian, where and when did you "read about Phil's silly workshops?"
Its a problem with urging division. I think Phil means to say, "have courage, do not compromise your convictions". But, he says, "divide your family".
- Witty's words of wisdom
If my family supported Al-Qaeda, would you prefer that I compromise by humanity with the aim of keeping family unity, or would you want me to 'have courage, and not compromise my convictions'
Shafiq, right on point. Witty is oblivious to what he actually says, despite his best effort at hiding it.
He is mentally defective in this one area for sure, like Goebbels, who was a very smart man and very keenly sensitive on a personal level and in terms of general isms versus isms.
Witty would cheer watching a typical Hollywood movie depicting the heroine railing against her own family at the white trash picnic table, but he sees no similarity at all in his own words–perhaps its not his fault, as there has never been a Hollywood movie that gave Archie Bunker types
an objective, not to mention, romantic, platform.
In essence, then, Witty is a simpleton. You know of any Hollywood producer who'd like to
do a new movie on Archie Bunker, one that would actually follow through on all biases? Depict the meeting of any ID politics with reality? Now that would be a blockbuster, all right.
My position is not nebulous in slightest.
It consists of two commitments, that you can agree with or not.
1. Sovereignty – In an environment of committed acceptance of the other, the green line is the best selection for boundary (with the exception of the Jewish sections of the Old City of Jerusalem). It is more defensible for Israel than the settlement maze, the wall. And, it provides for an optimally contiguous Palestine to afford the prospect of actual national self-governance.
2. Title – Equal due process under color-blind property law in both Israel and Palestine, that prefers compensation to dispossession for prior claims. My position includes overturning the 1950's laws in Israel that prohibited Palestinians from return to assert their day in court, and attributed vacated land to Israeli state title.
In Israel, many Palestinians have legally valid claims. In Palestine, many Israelis have legally valid claims, each preceeding 1948.
Any legal determination of title, whether in Israel or Palestine, will inevitably face difficult choices weighing relative title assertions. The majority of Palestinian title claims result from title by prior residence (analagous to a leasehold right, not to fully perfected property right). There are few cut and dried cases that are low hanging fruit. There certainly are some.
So, that effort will take clarity, backbone, and Solomonic wisdom in reconciling conflicting claims.
Do you agree as to goal?
Or, do you prefer "get the fuck out"?
Well, there is something to say for "get the fuck out." If nothing else, it tells us who stole land in the first place from the Palestinian arabs under cover and with the aid of the non-arab ruling powers after both world wars.
Or do you deny that? Your silence on that issue will indicate you don't.
Moving on. The green line is, as you say, more defensible for Israel than the settlement maze,
both morally and in view of military strategy, not that those are exclusive, but why exactly is the green line the best hope for an " optimally contiguous Palestine?" You at least need to explain this observation, no? How about a 60-40%, more in keeping with the populations respective at the time of the original partition, only reversed to suggest the original populations at the time?
Next issue: What court will implement due process under the law, and under what law?
How about that goal, Witty?
You don't want the green line as border?
Courts are a difficult question. Currently, among the court systems in the region, the Israeli ones are the most fair. Similarly for the state of color-blind rule of law.
What do you suggest, practically, that results in "equal due process under the law"? (I assume that you regard civil rights as relevant.)
Here is an example of the "fairness" of Israeli courts: Google: El-Kurd Family Eviction – Going Home to Talbieh