A few days ago, I left Gaza with Medea Benjamin (above, as we came through the Sinai) and four other members of her Code Pink delegations. I wasn’t really able to write about Gaza while I was there. We had so many wrenching meetings and encounters over nine days that it was all I could do to drag myself back into my room at 1 in the morning and then rise at 6 or 7 the next day to begin the cycle again.
When I said that I was witnessing bondage out of the Bible, a friend I made in Gaza, Mond Mishal, (right), a would-be graduate student, shook his head.
“Don’t talk about the bible, or an old story. You must find a new metaphor. We are being experimented on. This is a human experiment,” he said.
The other friend I made there, Reem Abu Jaber, echoed the point: “This is beyond books and fairytales. Sometimes I think that words are not made for what we are going through.”
Over the next few days I’ll be offering individual stories from Gaza in an effort to persuade Americans that this is persecution. In the meantime, I wanted to give my overall impressions.
Our days were full for a simple reason: Gaza is lonely. Shunned by the world community and closed off from interaction, the people feel an utter loss of respect, and so almost anyone who knew that the Code Pink delegation was there, from the UN relief agency to Hamas leaders to the International Solidarity Movement and even the New York Times correspondent, wanted to meet with us to try to explain the Gaza experience. These meetings always went over time with exhausting emotional exchanges. Gazans have been written out of the human family, notwithstanding the fact that they are “civilized to their core” (as John Ging of UNWRA says), and the hunger to regain respect in the eyes of the world pervaded every encounter we had, along with rage and helplessness at the global picture of Gaza as a place filled with crazy extremists.
“They think there is one man in Gaza with a long beard and he is saying these things,” Abu Jaber said, referring to Sheikh Yassin—“He is not me. But you must see the context, why he was doing this and saying this.”
She touched on the pervasive atmosphere of the trip, of hatred, communicated between two separated peoples. I’m more interested in the Israeli hatred, because Israel is the powerful party, and I’m Jewish and feel responsibility when I witness the intense racism I observed in Gaza. “What are we, cows and donkeys?” wailed Aisha Abed Rabbo, (left) who had been rendered homeless, living in a tent, through what Human Rights Watch has determined was the “wanton” destruction of housing in the easterly village of Izbet Abed Rabbo.
The answer to Aisha is: Yes; to them you are not much more than cows or donkeys. I know some of this prejudice. I grew up with a sense of Jews as a superior people. As readers of this site know, I am proud of Jewish achievement, I’m a reader and writer because I am Jewish, my culture granted me intellectual confidence. But there is a downside to the exceptionalism, a disdain for people who live off the land, and I saw it at every hand in Gaza. The vicious graffiti on the walls, the use of white phosphorus in civilian neighborhoods (which I’ll document in days to come), the rampant trashing of property—these arise from the cultural and racial differences between Jews and Palestinians that have been inflamed by colonization, war, and maybe worst of all, segregation. When you see this stuff at first hand, all Michael Walzer’s just-war arguments about how Israelis really ought to treat Palestinian civilians in the same way that they would Israel civilians during a battle in a neighborhood come off as overly detached. He knows Jewish exceptionalism as well as I do and knows the contempt that goes along with it. A few hours in Gaza reveals that the Israelis would never treat Palestinian civilians as they would Jewish ones, and inasmuch as Walzer removes this conduct from its real cultural life, he does us no real service.
Just look at this ambulance that the Israelis crushed under a building in a kind of sport, after they stripped the driver of his uniform, which is mutilated here.
That’s Norman Finkelstein walking away (photo right). Finkelstein and I had a running joke. Whenever we visited schools or cultural centers, where children were singing songs and women were learning English, he would walk out and pronounce, “It’s just like Jeffrey Goldberg said! That was a slamdunk! This is [the evil kingdom of] Amalek!” Making fun of Goldberg’s view of the Palestinians as hatefilled extremists, when we had seen ordinary kids singing songs, playing games.
Here it is important for me to add that Goldberg’s view of Gaza draws on truths; and from the moment I arrived in Gaza the Goldberg in me was engaged. Islamic society is different from mine; and in Gaza the difference goes beyond religious difference to racial, cultural and class difference (Gazans are so much poorer than Israelis). I don’t like fundamentalism of any kind; but the strict roles for women in Gaza seem especially illiberal to me. I did not see one woman driving a car there. Here we are in a classroom (left) with a teacher clad head to toe in religious robe, wearing gloves, too, and just a slit for her eyes. I wondered at the model she was making for 10 and 11 year olds. And just as I urge the lesson of American minority rights for Israel’s racist treatment of Palestinians, so I urge a little Title IX on the Muslims.
Something else Goldberg is right about is the hatred toward Israelis and Jews. I heard this expressed often. “Before I hated them. Now I hate them even more,” said our translator, who had lost her home to the latest slaughter. Several Palestinians told me that the only solution is to push the Jews out of historical Palestine. Here, this woman who works for UNRWA is pointing at a map of Palestine and explaining that it is our land and they should just put their things on their backs and go back to the country from which they came, or go into the sea. “It is our land,” I heard that three or four times.
Many of the Gazan trash bins in the street are decorated as this one at left is, with the Star of David.
People routinely spoke of the Israelis as the Jews. The yehud, they would say. The failure to distinguish upset one of the Jews in our delegation, Joyce Ravitz (right), a lifetime Hadassah member and now a one-stater, who made a point of saying that many Jews had come out here to help Palestinians. Finkelstein told me that his parents, concentration camp survivors, always referred to the Nazis as Germans, and that this was a natural confusion, as Nazis were the only Germans they knew.
Given the horrifying onslaught Gazans have experienced at the hands of the Jewish state, which controls and reduces their lives, hatred of Jews is comprehensible to me; and besides, I think that definitions of Jewish identity are a real issue in this conflict. For most Jews, a Palestinian life is simply not worth as much as a Jewish life (Just read Israel Shahak on this question; or consider the fact that Dershowitz says that it is the “sacred mission” of Jews to protect Jewish life –as opposed to others’ lives).
The ethnocentrism and contempt were brought home by the meeting we had with the families of men held in Israeli jails. About 60 or 70 of these people were gathered in the room, for us, as the minister of detainees brought up one after another to the microphone. A boy who had not seen his father in 21 years. This 82-year-old man, Jalal Sagr, who reminded me of my own father, and who has not seen his son in many years and wants to see him before he dies. This little girl with a picture of her father.
I have no idea what the jailed men did or didn’t do. That’s an argument for another day. The simple point is that These people haven’t seen their kin in years. They’re not allowed to visit. And their men are less than 100 miles away in a foreign country. The inhumanity of this is crushing when you consider the point that several family members made, that Gilad Shalit has been held by Hamas for 3 years and his name is known worldwide. Every ambitious politician in Washington knows his name, and meantime there are 11,000 Palestinian prisoners and we never learn a thing about them!
Thus the racist double standard of Arab life being worth so much less than Israeli life is exported from Israel and Palestine to America, and these poor people know it.
Over two weeks in the Middle East, I came to the idea that Israel/Palestine has become an epicenter of hatred; and hatred flows out to the outside world from both sides. The insistence that all of Palestine is Palestinian and Israel/Jewish settlement doesn’t exist has resounded in Arab countries for decades; I have heard it in Egypt and Syria. And the insistence that Palestine is Jewish is meanwhile carried by neoconservatives and Zionists into high levels of American establishment, feeding the settler movement. I’ve fought the Jewish hatred of Arabs for years on this site; and I regret nothing I have done to elevate the Palestinian narrative. It is unheard in the United States, where the Zionist narrative is embraced by politicians who parrot a racist mantra again and again at AIPAC–Israel made the desert bloom–as if Palestinians weren’t growing in the desert for millennia.
Yet I recognize from my trip that there are dangers in the Palestinian narrative. It is backward looking, and it is too large in Palestinian consciousness. Many Palestinians are having lives in other places; and yet, because of the ongoing oppression, this narrative of dispossession and massacre and humiliation crowds the consciousness, just like the Holocaust narrative that I was nursed on as a young man (and that led Jeffrey Goldberg to emigrate to Israel out of the belief that the U.S. was not safe for Jews). I sense that the Nakba narrative is a liability in forming identity. It is its own form of mythology, and while mythologies are rooted in truth, it is not a help in actually imagining a Palestinian future. “We are living 10 percent in the present and 90 percent in the past,” Mond Mishal said to me. The ratio needs to be reversed in order to imagine a future.
I don’t know how Palestinians get past this. Americans could play an important role. They must force the acknowledgment and recognition of the Nakba in world culture, because the failure to acknowledge it is a form of holocaust denial. Barack Obama demonstrated this power the other day when he acknowledged Palestinian humiliations in his Cairo speech, and instantly won the hearts of many Arab youths whom I talked to.
Much as I dislike Islamist fundamentalism, it too must be understood as a form of cultural resistance the Palestinians have been reduced to by their extreme conditions. Sensing Israel’s contempt and returning the hatred, Gazans have fallen back on the thing that sets them apart from us, their religion, and made it scary and alien to us. Mond told me there used to be a liberal culture in Gaza, now it is absent. And with staggering unemployment figures (you hear numbers like 80 percent) there is no middle class, on which democratic life depends. The siege of Gaza is breeding ignorance and idleness and a smuggling culture that undermines civil society.
I believe that we have enormous power to shape the Arab spirit. Code Pink’s outreach to Hamas leaders had an effect in softening the group’s politics; and myself I feel an urgency about working with one foot in the Jewish community and the other in non-Jewish communities, to try and build connections between Arab intellectuals and American intellectuals, connections that could make my country safer and also transform Jewish life.
I’ve said nothing about the larger politics here because I’m boggled now. The occupation and siege are aimed at destroying the Palestinian spirit, that is the only obvious conclusion to me. “Whatever we do now, we are not going to a good place,” Reem Abu Jaber said, breaking down in front of a room full of visitors at the Qattan Center for the Child, which she heads. “You will talk, I know you will. Tell people to come and see my real face, not a media face.” [she is shown here holding a child’s painting of the onslaught]
Myself I almost don’t care how the savage siege and occupation end, with one state, two states, or multiple cantons. What matters most of all is that there is Palestinian freedom of movement and the walls of hatred and suspicion start to come down. On our last night, I was sitting with Mishal, Norm Finkelstein and Roane Carey of the Nation, when Mishal said that Arafat should have accepted the deal in 2000–just as the Arab states should have accepted partition in '47. “They made the same mistake, twice.”
It was a shocking thing for us to hear (Carey has edited an important book criticizing the deal offered at Camp David), but who were we three American lefties to argue with a young man whose dream of becoming an intellectual of the world has been smashed through an unending siege by a great power that is not going away– a young man who accepts that reality?
Ging urged the Code Pink delegation to go to Israel, and try to work with Israelis. I know he's right. A couple of people said to me that the jail that the Israelis have built for the Gazans is the jail in their own minds. “Israeli politicians need their close friends to help them to understand what they are doing,” Hasan Zeyada, a psychologist at the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, said, appealing to us. “They have a very tragic experience in the second world war, and … they are psychologically displacing and projecting their suffering on the Palestinians. They need mature politicians to help them pass that experience and integrate it. Only when the Israelis feel guilty about what they have done to the Palestinians will we come to a place of peace.
"And this is your responsibility now, to help them understand.”
Phil…this is just astounding. Absolutely first rate. You are up there with Nir Rosen and Patrick Cockburn now..and with that, comes huge responsibility. So many of us have enormous respect for what you're doing. We thank you for your words and for putting yourself in this heartbreaking and dangerous situation. Just GO for it!!!
I also appreciate everything that went into this report. But I don't think that the notion of "hate" gets us very far in understanding the situation. Perpetrators learn to hate their victims, and vice versa. Why should the moral distinction be blurred?
Phil youre the man….my favorite jewish american writer. right the universe.
I think you are a self hating Jew.
Wow! You say you are boggled? I can only imagine what insights you will show when you become unboggled. Thank you for your clearly communicated insights in what must be an exhausting trip. And thank you for including a way forward for CodePink and others. I agree with you that Israelis must be often approached by leaders with requests that they rethink things. The peacemakers, the negotiators, the wise leaders, the brokers must go into full drive for the long haul. And Obama must impose restraints on our financial and munitions support or Israel will never take us seriously.
I don't share much of your worldview, but you are a very decent man, and I respect you and your inner struggle.
Thanks for that post. There is hope in mutual humanization. There is no hope in mutual dehumanization. There is no hope in your or my voice articulating dehumanization, by mistake or any element of intent. I hope that you consider the lessons that you seem to have learned about mutual humanization in your selection of material to present on your site, and in the way those issues are framed. There are still two elements of your comments that disturb me. One is the generalization that the balance between humanism and "exceptionalism" in Jewish consciousness (either in numbers, thought, decibels, or dollars) is on exceptionalism. I've grown up with you in related families for which, although there were clearly moments and emphases on exceptionalism (stated both as entitlement AND as obligation), the humanism was far more profound. In ways I think your preoccupation with that concept is largely subjectively personal and not even accurately cultural or objectively personal. (Do your siblings feel the same for example?) The second is your dismissal of Israeli existential fears. There are multiple bases of decision-making, and establishing consent of the governed. The free-market economy decides on the basis of dollar votes (one dollar, one vote). A literal permanent democracy decides on the basis of one-person one-vote. A mobocracy determines on the basis of one decibel, one vote. A theocracy or dictatorship determines on the basis of one authority, one vote. All of those forms can either distort or implement the greater good, based on compassionate reason. A democracy in the case of Israel in the jurisdiction of Palestine from river to sea, with the right of return applied liberally or carelessly, results in the DISENFRACHISEMENT of the 5.4 million Zionists in the region. The selection of jurisdiction is then important. The amateurish or opportunist selection of jurisdiction is LESS than justice. I hope that you clearly and well articulate that Gazans are human beings, largely undeserving of collective punishment, with valuable current and potential contribution to the world. I hope that you do NOT ignore the role that Hamas played in being a willing and escalating party to conflict that was avoidable short and long-term, even as you accurately identify that Israel has acted in a harmful way in moments and in policies. If there is no path for reconciliation, and Hamas clearly directed violence specifically at civilians over an extended period, then there is validation for most of the Israeli claim that military action in Gaza at some scale was/is defense. I've said for a very long time about dissent that functions as adding pressure where there is no viable out, is explosive. The same argument applies to the Gazans isolation clearly. My experience over a couple decades of following this, is that Hamas has acted to prohibit ANY reconciliation, and historically has urged the pressure-cooker approach, unless it dominates. I was very disappointed with the range of questions directed to Hamas that you reported in an earlier post. I'd also be interested if you experienced any accommodating comments from Norman Finkelstein in your time together, if he shared some of the observations that you presented here on Gazan hatred, or any criticism of Hamas.
I am so pleased you went on this trip Phil, because your Jewishness has not overshadowed your humanity and that is the most important part of us. It is an unbelievably complex situation, with no lack of blame to go around. But steps need to be taken, and it will not be easy or perfect, but it cannot continue in the direction it has been going. Most importantly, we must continue the dialogue and the Palestinian voices have to be heard. Thank You for your clear and compassionate voice.
vomit from witty. what a surprise.
Great stuff, Phil. I do however understand the part about resorting to religion in Gaza. This has always been the power of religion – it's the one thing they can hang on to when there is nothing else. The more they have been stripped of dignity, the more fundamentalist the religion. It's not for nothing that a fundamentalist form of communism took hold in China. Powerlessness begets vengeful religions and fundamentalist/absolutists ideologies. The solution – as you say is to restore a measure of power to the dispossesed. And to do that perhaps a reverse hasbara trip to israel is in order. Today, my 20 year old Israeli niece called to say she hates Obama because he "hates Jews". I said we'll talk – soon. I'm not sure when or how. If I tell her about the nakba, she'll turn off in total abject denial. That's what young people in Israel do. If i ask her (as is my wont) what is a Jew anyway, she'll not comprehend the question, though bright she may be. She has not been provided with the tools to really deal with such questions in over 12 years of schooling. How does one get through to the brainwashed family member? she will want to hear nothing of what happened to the gazans because in her mind – like in most israelis' – "they deserve it". I know I am not qualified to treat this condition and found myself reaching for the accounts of those young mormon women who were rescued for a while from the Texas compound. I wonder how the social workers and psychologists dealt with them – perhaps there'll be some tips that'll help with my niece. maybe someone who tried de-programming an offspring or sibling lost to a cult? I'm only recounting this because I believe this is the next step that Phil will have to face. A brainwashed population, one that doesn't even recognize (for the most part; exceptions granted) that they are in a cult.
Phil thank you for witnessing what many have been witness to for 50 some years. I so admire what you are doing and what Code Pink is doing. Not to forget all of the folks who have been pushing our awareness and understanding on this issue for many many years. Edward Said, Noam Cholmsky, Former President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Tutu, James Baker (yes James Baker), Vanessa Redgrave, Norman Finkelstein, Art and Peggy Gish from the Christian Peace Maker TEam Mordechai Vanunu, etc etc…… and now you and Medea oin those efferts the last several years. Thank you for what you are doing and documenting. Important work
This is superb work, Phil. You must find a new metaphor. We are being experimented on. I've been wondering lately whether it is correct anymore to call it an 'occupation'. I don't see similarity with the historical examples that the Geneva Conventions were designed to regulate. This has been going on so long that it has morphed into something new. … this was a natural confusion, as Nazis were the only Germans they knew. Excellent point. Jewish outreach is essential to change the perception of Jew=Israeli government. The occupation and siege are aimed at destroying the Palestinian spirit, that is the only obvious conclusion to me. I'm reminded of a Frank Herbert quote from either Heretics of Dune or God Emperor of Dune. It went something like "those souls who would control other souls first destroy their self confidence".
Mond Mishal, the graduate student with no future, is correct in saying the Gazan story "is beyond books and fairytales." Code Pink needs to connect more Mond Mishals with students from Israel and the USA. A continuing dialogue between young people has to be fostered. Fairytales will be blown away by the ensuing discourse and exchange. All power to you Phil. Maybe a trip to Israel next?
On the human experiment there. There is an element that we are ALL human experiments, and of others. And, there is an element that we co-create our world. How do Jews and/or Zionists co-create their world (an important question)? How do Palestinians and/or Arabs and/or Muslims co-create our world? How do dissenter co-create our world? Blame is the opposite of the moral acknowledgement that we co-create.
Thanks Phil, for taking this trip and wrestling with such issues with an open mind and heart and sharing your insights with us.
Amazing article. Great job Phil. Glad you went to Gaza and saw some truth.
And I think you're an Arab-hating, Semetic-supremacist, Dan.
GOM – great post. Hopefully, we're moving from the "war of ideas" to the exchange of ideas.
You hit the nail on the head. Israelis are Judaic Scientologists. Their minds are blown. They're nuts.
Here is a man who recognized the sense of cult that the early Germans were getting accustom to, before the Nazi party took over____http://www.listenlittleman.com/ http://www.listenlittleman.com/
Phil. I am astounded and humbled by your commitment, your passion and your personal/intellectual/spiritual honesty to visit Gaza and provide Mondoweiss readers with a first-hand account of the truth on the ground. Much has happened while you've been in Gaza and Cairo on this side of the ocean, and it is what you and Adam fervently hoped for a mere six months ago. AIPAC is panicked. The blogosphere is questioning the "special relationship" like never before. The non-neocons are supporting Obama's call to freeze ALL settlement activity. Max and Joseph's "Hate" video has gone viral and is approaching a quarter of a million hits in its first three days. Good people now feel they have the freedom to intellectually debate the $3 billion a year we pump into Israel so they can decimate Gazans with white phosphorus weapons without any impact on their economy. (CONT'D)
What we've been missing all along is the on-the-ground experience. You are returning from the event of a lifetime — especially having had the amazing experience of seeing our president deliver one of the most important speeches in decades before a live, potenitally hostile audience. Your reports may change the hearts and minds of ordinary Americans and taxpayers, who for years have been pumped full of anti-Muslim sentiments from the mainstream media. You have no idea how important a witness you are at this particular point in history. But you will soon enough.
"Excellent point. Jewish outreach is essential to change the perception of Jew=Israeli government. " More than outreach, I think it's a matter of Jews taking a zero tolerance approach to supporters of Israel. They need to leave the synagogues and mainline Jewish community organizations in droves. That's the only way Jews can convince skeptics that we are not, in the main, behind what the monsters of Israel are doing to the Palestinians. When 100,000 Jewish Nazis march in NY City to support the Gaza massacre, it reflects on all of us.
After someone runs over your house with a tank and shoots your family, witty, we'll see if you continue with this mindless, obfuscating blather of yours.
One bit of your story puzzled/disturbed me: You were in ground-zero of a ruthless assualt on an imprisoned population, yet you are disappointed that the Palestinians can't 'get over' the Nakba? These people's whole lives have been formed by the Nakba and its unending episodes of subjugation and persecution. How can they detach what is happening to them now from their initial displacement and dispossession? To say that they should try to look more to the future, especially in today's blockaded disaster zone of the Gaza Strip, shows a surprising detachment from the reality of the situation… or an inability to empathize.
“What are we, cows and donkeys?” In this country there a humane laws that prevent cruelty to mammals. Not so the Gazans. This is a profoundly unsettling report. The level of sadism perpetrated against the Palestinians is beyond comprehension; the hatred it engenders is terrifying. It is as if the Israeli society is collectively psychologically disturbed. The USA has been complicit in this outcome. "Whatever we do now, we are not going to a good place," Sounds like the voice of prophecy although I hope not. Thanks Phil.
Truths remain. That Phil seems to have adopted the view of mutual humanization rather than your suggestion of "Israel is demon" only, I think the truth wins, thankfully.
I certainly hope, for consistency's sake, you lay equal blame on the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazis abusing and murdering them. You pig.
You have no shame do you Witless? That's not what the Palestinian meant when they said human experiment. Look at you, trying to equate the suffering of the Palestinians to not just Jews and Israelis in the present, but everyone? Even you, sitting comfortable in your home? Even me doing the same? Etc.? Just shut up. You are disgusting.
There is a difference between Jews and the Holocaust and Palestinians and the Nakba. The Palestinians have been suffering for 60+ years. The Jews suffered too, but so many were exterminated. They didn't have to live on and on and on in refugee camps/being born in refugee camps/being tormented by their enemy and being shunned by their so-called friends (the Ummah). So yea, I think Phil was superficial there on the comparison. The Holocaust was one insane act of evil but it was began and ended. The suffering the Palestinians may end one day but it's been going on for more than 60 years with no end in sight.
John, Check Phil's earlier post, and hopefully subsequent ones, about the Palestinian Youth Committee. I was with Phillip during his first week in Gaza. We met with representatives of their group. Most were recent college graduates who'd lost scholarships abroad because they were not allowed (by Israel and Egypt) to leave Gaza. They are starved for contact with the outside world. Our delegation is working to set up internet networking for them. The young people of the world are our hope for the future….we, you and I, must do everything in our power to facilitate dialogues.
Wonderfully thoughtful article. I was wondering what Richard thought about the headline. ************************************************************************************************************************************* They surely are a military-human-experiment. That's what is striking me most. It could be a future scenario for all kind of "mobocracies" as you call it. Expanding boundaries in warfare. Pushing frontiers of what can be done, how and where. We have for quite some time now over here, admittedly I am not following it closely, the demand from some of our "leaders" to change the play ground for our military. It may be useful to be able to deploy it inside the state, they think. That's why it feels Gaza concerns us all.
Right. And the White Rose was a group of self-hating Germans.
You guys are a case. After a long post of the humanity of Gazans, your response is "vomit". What cult do you guys belong to?
What don't you share?
I can only surmise that you regard "Hamas" as equivalent to "Gazans". I don't. My impression is that Hamas willingly put Gazans at severe risk and torment by shelling Israeli civilians, that required a military response. Hamas actions were to escalate UNTIL Israel responded militarily. Even Gideon Levy described their approach in December as suicidal. I don't think that is the right word, as the victims were the civilians, not the Hamas cadre which hid during the Israeli military action.
On the headline. Its provocative. He couldn't use the term "tragic". It had to be a "nazi" metaphor. At least the subjective term "we" was used. "We feel" that we are a human experiment. To the extent that insults are part of the message, they will be dismissed. So, if Phil is interested in persuading (necessary to exact reform rather than some violence), then he will adopt language that does not contain a barb. I liked his post. It avoided barbs thankfully, and conveyed his and their experience.
I put myself in the place of these Gazans and think how I would feel if some jew or american, particulary a jew or american, 'toured' my misery, the ruins of my life and family , had been touring my misery for FORTY YEARS..and yet nothing has been done and nothing has changed. Hate would be too mild a word…they are 'entitled" to hate the jews and we americans. If Israel/USA/Jews stopped presecuting the Palestines today….they would be 'entitled' to hate for just as long as the Jews have hated the German and Europe and everyone else…..over sixty years. And the Palestines would be entitled to feel they qualifed for "exceptionalism" on their sheer pride and fortitude in managing to stay on at least part of their land despite the largest power in the world providing their Israeli occupiers with every weapon to use against them. If this ends and they don't hate the jews and the US for sixty years, or centuries, then you will know they are 'superior ' to the jews and some of us americans..
Hold the phone. WE consider Hamas equivalent to "Gazans" ??!? No—you are t citizens alking about the blood rodents of Israel. THEY are the ones who massacred 1500 people, many of them children…of Gaza, and destroyed hospitals, schools, industries and thousands of homes, preposterously claiming they were "striking Hamas." You are a genuinely sickening individual.
"I believe that we have enormous power to shape the Arab spirit. " What do you mean, power to shape the Arab spirit? Just help end the occupation through educating others about it Phil, and let the Arabs chose their path without colonizing them culturally. They are not dumb idiots and their spirits aren't incomplete. As for the lady in all black, it unsettles you to see her becasue of cultural differences. I have no such problem with women like that. Some of my family dresses like that in Pakistan and they are educated, opinionated, successful and satisfied with their lives. Why are westerners so bent on changing other people's culture? What is it to you if she's naked or she's dressed from head to toe? To be honest, I also feel just a teeny bit uncomfortable when holding a conversation with someone whose face I cannot see, becasue I'd like to read her facial expressions. BUT, that's my problem, not hers.
Hold the phone. WE consider Hamas equivalent to "Gazans" ??!? No—you are talking about the blood rodents of Israel. THEY are the ones who massacred 1500 people, many of them children…of Gaza, and destroyed hospitals, schools, industries and thousands of homes, preposterously claiming they were "striking Hamas." You are a genuinely sickening individual.
Weren't there five students from Gaza that had been awarded Rhodes scholarships to study at Oxford and Israel would not let them out even after an international uproar? Will there ever be a time in my lifetime when Israel does not act with such impunity?
Jimmy Carter is going to Gaza next week. I've been listening to his book on my I-Pod. It is profoundly moving. I can't wait to see what he has to say about the conditions in Gaza today. And I had forgotten that he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for trying to bring peace to the Israelis and Palestinians.
As if that's not the oldest diatribe in the book…. It saddens me to see that so many Jews with their minds and desires in the right place who speak out against the Occupation are vilified as "self-hating Jews." If anything, the Occupation and Israeli policy towards the Palestinians are perhaps the main causes of the upsurge of anti-semitism we are seeing today!
As if that's not the oldest diatribe in the book…. It saddens me to see that so many Jews with their minds and desires in the right place who speak out against the Occupation are vilified as "self-hating Jews." If anything, the Occupation and Israeli policy towards the Palestinians are perhaps the main causes of the upsurge of anti-semitism we are seeing today!
How do Jews and/or Zionists co-create their world (an important question)? How do Palestinians and/or Arabs and/or Muslims co-create our world? How do dissenter co-create our world? Would you also apply this question to the European Jews during the Holocaust? "How did the Jews in Europe under the Nazis co-create their world?"
On the headline. Its provocative. He couldn't use the term "tragic". It had to be a "nazi" metaphor. Except that tragic is a stereotype. It's tragic that you cannot accept the Phil Weiss we love. What exactly forces you to classify an attempt by a Gazan (?Gazans) to describe what it feels like to live there as a "nazi" metaphor? … At least the subjective term "we" was used. "We feel" that we are a human experiment. Isn't exactly the "we", obviously alluding to Gazans, what triggers "Nazi" for you? "Nazis" always target civilians, the/some Gazans target Civilians, thus a phrase thought up by a Gazan must be a "nazi metaphor"? In ways I think your preoccupation with that concept is largely subjectively personal and not even accurately cultural or objectively personal. (Do your siblings feel the same for example?) Look, the subjectivity and honesty is exactly what we love about Phil. He may be tortured, he may be rash, he may in one line celebrate his Jewishness in the next look at it critically. Nothing in Phil is fixed, you want to pin him down. But in this context we are antagonists, since we feel the Phil you want would kill the Phil we love. Deep down human subjectivity turns into something objectively human.
"I've been wondering lately whether it is correct anymore to call it an 'occupation'. I don't see similarity with the historical examples that the Geneva Conventions were designed to regulate. This has been going on so long that it has morphed into something new." Excellent point. Other idea? I can't think of anything myself… imperialism doesn't get it, ghettoization doesn't work either. Genocide is what it is, really (and the Egyptian government is guilty of it as well). How about enslavement? I'm a little reluctant to say it, but really, what else can we call it?
I have no problem with the woman in black as long as she has a choice. When girls are denied an education, the right to vote or drive then it is a problem.
That part about shaping the Arab spirit bothered me, too. But you said it better than I would have.
"I believe that we have enormous power to shape the Arab spirit. " It's pretty obivious one thing the Arabs have is spirit. For all Phil's good work he still can't let go the delusion that his culture is somehow superior to the Arabs. I am still waiting for him to tell me what the "jewish accomplishments' in the world that he constantly harps on are, …besides Israel and Gaza.
I liked his post. I acknowledged that, and I am pleased about it. ;) But at one point I had to smile: There are still two elements of your comments that disturb me.
In 1975 I was 25 and probably the first non-Arab American to live at Jebalya Camp for six weeks. I was a student at Columbia Journalism School in New York and went to live with a Palestinian family and report on their travails under Israeli military occupation. The New York Times afterwards was highly intrigued by my story – they had never seen anything like it. But after leading me on for almost a year they treated the story and me with contempt. It was never published in one piece. It was Pulitzer material, but the Jewish editors at the Times were as thick headed then as they are today. My time there in Jebalya was incredible, though. Fabulous, generous people! Nothing has much changed. Even then camp residents were persecuted and tortured by the Israeli soldiers, but few Americans knew anything of the Palestinians, and what they knew was merely negative, esp on the heels of the Munich massacre. I salute this blog and its creator. It is the best place to learn about what's really happening on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank. Thank you for brave reporting.
On the human experiment there. There is an element that we are ALL human experiments, and of others. Abstract layers always feel more comfortable. I wouldn't have survived my post-war years without a series of brilliant math teachers and the flight into abstraction.
Excellent news from Lebanon!!! The people have spoken and they Don't want Hezi terrorists in charge of their lives!!! Whooo-Hooo! This pig won't be flying anytime soon: http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6452/3581/1600... http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6452/3581/1600...
It occurs to me that Witty must be a gigantic fan of our new president, who takes a very Witty-esque approach to the crisis, it suddenly seems to me . We can talk about Palestinian suffering, heartache, displacement, grievance but we must scrupulously avoid all mention of who is causing it. We must present their hardships as a sort of cosmic bit of rotten luck, for which no one (least of all the marvelous Israelis) bears responsibility.
Welcome, andalus. Why don't you select a passage of what you wrote then and sent it to Phil? It will not get you the Pulitzer anymore, but then? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3707738.st... The camp has been the scene of much violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is also considered a major stronghold of the Hamas movement. Eyewitness: Inside Jabalya Camp http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3707738.st...
Indeed, you are right up there with Ernst Zudel and David Irving.
But Taylor, you haven't proven you actually think.
Thanks for the anti-semiticxcomment. It is always good to remember exactly what Phil's backers represent.
It appears that Lovely has been hit on the head, several times.
Insightful, humble, and moving, Phil. You truly have a gift for seeking out meaningful personal stories and the feelings of the seldom-heard, and for deftly sewing them into the complex patchwork of the greater narrative. I hope there is more to come in the way of accounts and analyses from the Gaza trip.
I don't want to speak for Deb, but I understood her to mean that Phil's identification with a group (in his case, Jews) is not greater than his identification with his humanity. If that is what was meant, it's not anti-Semitic at all.
I think if Phil succeeds at improving the lot of Palestinians without inflaming hatred towards Jews or Israelis, that I will yell his praises in the most conservative of shuls in my region. I agree that the courage to convey the experience of Palestinians is a jewel, an art. But, it is an art that he has experimented at, not succeeded at yet. The concept of co-creation of our reality, IS the essence of a moral approach. I know that Phil adopts, having had this conversation with him periodically (of morality) since we were 14 (with long lapses to our contact). A forceful harsh tone (Gevurah in Hebrew) is at most a means to a morally engaged life. Ultimately it contrasts with and yields to compassion (chesed) as the primary value in a moral life. To the extent that he continues his mutual humanization in his editorial decisions (selection of material, how they are written, how they are framed, how they are headlined, how they are promoted), I will applaud his work. And, his work will be effective. Punitive approaches will not be necessary. Assertive and clear ones will be.
The reason that "tragic" is a useful descriptor is that it does include the acknowledgement that Hamas had some effect on what occurred in December and January. Its a falsehood to say that Israel was the only "doer". For the civilians of Gaza, they are living in a tragedy that need not be. The construction of that tragedy is a joint effort by opportunists, Hamas and Israeli alike. It is no coincidence that the parties that rejected Oslo as a direction, if not a result, were Hamas and likud, the two "leaders" of their respective very divided communities.
I salute this blog and its creator. It is the best place to learn about what's really happening on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank. Thank you for brave reporting. I could not agree more! This is the go-to site on the web for accurate reporting on the issues surrounding I-P, and unless you're a major asshole, commenters of all stripes get a hearing here. I completely agree with LeaNder22: send in your piece to Phil, or put it up on a WordPress blog and link to it.
You dont read much, do you? Hezbollah is terrified of receiving a majority in the elections. They do not want the attention. They have been actively pursuing keeping expectations down. They want a place at the political table, but they do not want to run Lebanon. Google it, because I dont feel like being your reference librarian today. You're naïve.
Phil: Excellent.
Jacob. She is trying to say that love and care for your fellow human beings comes before national exceptionalism. You should care about the health of the world population before you care about the health of your own clan. If innocent people are dying unjustly we should all take a stand. Do you really think saying that equates to antisemitism?
Your message would have been a whole lot more powerful without the last two words.
Richard Witty, you are a master in the art of empty, meaningless blather.
It was seven Fulbright scholars. I think four were eventually allowed to leave http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/200...
More meaningless blather. The human experiment being conducted by Israel in Ghazza and also in the West Bank is an experiment in the creation of human despair. Your persistent attempts to equate the responsibility of the Palestinians with that of the Israelis who hold them in their virtually absolute power in Ghazza is beyond reprehensible. Would you apply the same standard to the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto relative to the Nazis? Would you apply the same standard to the black slaves in America relative to the Whites who owned and traded them? Would you apply the same standard to the Native Americans and the European colonists who systematically slaughtered and enslaved them?
Surpasses. That treatsie on von Braunn's V2 as Hitler's surrogate viagra was beyond Freudian.
The reality is that the Holocaust ended 60 years ago whereas the Nakba continues until today. A further reality is that the Holocaust is virtually universally acknowledged to the point that Holocaust denial is a crime in at least some European countries, whereas the Nakba is virtually unheard of in much of the world, and attempting to raise consciousness about it is, at best, a social gaffe. I. too, was disturbed by this part of Philips narrative. However, it is also true that he is still processing his experience, and has quite a ways to go before it will be fully processed, so I felt inclined to give him a break on this.
"I believe that we have enormous power to shape the Arab spirit. " Saleema, I had the same reaction as you to this statement. It is so "white man's burden", and it disappointed me a lot. then, of reflection, I remembered that Phil is in an early part of this particular journey and decided to let it go for now. And I. too, have had to confront my prejudices in regard to women who cover their faces, and guess what? I discovered that it IS possible to talk to them, and that often they are bright, lively, and friendly people. However, I am afraid that the face covering will always serve as a barrier at least in the beginning.
Yeah, His Harvard education sure is a waste as far as thoughts and words go, and how to put them coherently.
http://juivessansfrontieres.blogspot.com/2008/02/... Another blogger put the full text of Israel Shahak's book online.
I don't think 'enslavement' is a good description: as the American slave holders routinely argued – with, one has to concede, a certain justification – their slaves were their property, thus it was not in their interest to treat their slaves too badly. Put another way, few businessmen would, for good reason, treat their physical property in the way the Israelis treat the Palestinians.
I had to think twice about that part. I do, ultimately, see his point: it's a matter of curating memory, creating history. It's not the kindest thing to say to a population suffering as much as the Gazans, but as a part of a political strategy, distancing and forgetting are crucial requirements, as as different thinkers as Renan and Nietzsche noted. (And I do think that is happening: Nakba memorialisation is becoming structured, formalised, monumentalised; in the jargon of 'memory studies' we're seeing the creation of the different forms of lieux de mémoire: archive, monument, etc. In that way the Nakba enters into dialogue with other catastrophes, and actually invite the empathy of others, even as the primacy of experience yields to interpretation for the Palestinians themselves. Of course, the full transfer of the Nakba into the (conceptual) past requires a just settlement; that should go without saying.)
I don't have a Harvard education. Thats Phil. If you have questions about what I mean, ask.
I believe that we have enormous power to shape the Arab spirit. I was just scrolling through the comments to see if this disgusting expression had been picked up on or not. If it hadn't, I was going to post a comment of my own saying I found it disgusting. I was debating with myself mentally whether to explain why I found it disgusting. It is often demeaning and humiliating to feel that you have to explain what should be obvious.
You certainly have a point regarding the ongoing nature of the Nakba (it's a point discussed quite cogently in Lila Abu-Lughod and Ahmad Sa'di (eds.), Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory, New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). On the other hand, one can note the atrocious manner in which many Holocaust survivors were treated by Israel – one wonders if it really ever ended for many of them. In many ways, it points to a culture in which only vicarious, rather than real, suffering is valued…
I've never understood the phrase self-hating Jew. Care to explain why you use such an accusation?
That's quite useful – thanks for the link. The book, however, is published by the great left-wing Pluto Press, which we should all support – so go and buy:) (The latest edition also has forewords by Edward Said, Norton Mezvinsky, and Ilan Pappe, which are worth reading.)
Good point. I regret 'enslavement'. The word we do want is 'Helotization,' though it's unfamiliar. Palestinians are the helots of Israeli and Egyptian society. The important and interesting connection here is that in Sparta, it was legal for you to kill a helot every now and then.
This "intense-debate" interface is HORRIBLE.
"Something else Goldberg is right about is the hatred toward Israelis and Jews. I heard this expressed often." "Given the horrifying onslaught Gazans have experienced at the hands of the Jewish state, which controls and reduces their lives, hatred of Jews is comprehensible to me" Arabs hating Jews?? What a discovery. The problem with your silly apologetic attitude is they've hated Jews long before the latest bloodshed, and carried out massacres long before the establishment of Israel. They prove it with their own words: "Several Palestinians told me that the only solution is to push the Jews out of historical Palestine. " Unlike what you imply, many Jews have gotten over their hatred of Germans. It's about time the Palestinians grew up and accepted the fact that the Jews are not going away.
But their minds are not in the right place. Perhaps they are to satisfy anti-semites, but not reasonable people.
There are so many other important things you don't understand. This is just opne more. Kind of proves and explains your severe limitations.
But she is not saying that at all. And you know it.
With all due respect, I think Phil is being a little wishy-washy in dealing with what he's heard. I'm hard pressed to name a Palestinian ideology that decided their solution was to go somewhere else and establish their own colonial-settler state*. Although I can accept as an explanation Israelis playing out their trauma from Europe, that doesn't make Palestinian trauma equally urgent to overcome. And Egypt and Syria (not to mention Lebanon) have also been targets of Israeli occupation, so it's not hard to imagine how many people must feel that could be them in Gaza, and so I'm a bit more sympathetic to their hatred than the American establishment figures. Yaacov Lozowick quoted a girl in the Warsaw Ghetto, "There are good Germans. They should be killed last." I don't regard that as equal to Der Sturmer. The peace process refrain, both sides have their extremists, doesn't cut it. *Obligatory smartarse thinking of Black September, please sit down. That's not what I'm talking about.
I am very very appreciative of Obama's approach. His approach is a mutually humanizing one.
I'm tempted to copy and paste the post I just made under jan_gdyn earlier in this thread. It's as good as a rebuttal to your comment.
The area of Gaza and the West Bank have never been free, some power or another has ALWAYS occupied them. They just started bitching about it after the occupation was from non-Muslim entities.
what the hell are you talking about? this comparison is ridiculous and pretty unoriginal.
What exactly forces you to classify an attempt by a Gazan (?Gazans) to describe what it feels like to live there as a "nazi" metaphor? … The term implied that Jews/Israelis were conducting a parallel experiment to the Nazi "experimentation" on bodies. Phil either knows that reference was implied, or should know. It implied that Israel was treating Gazans as rats in a maze, to observe how rats in a maze behave.
Just compare Witless's rhetoric now, to his rhetoric regarding those Qassam rockets (BOMBARDED! SHELLED! whoops, 15 dead in 7-8 years…hmm, wonder how many Palestinian children alone Israel has killed in 8 years?) He does this all the time. When it's tactically urgent, he will equate the various aspects of the conflict to give Israel the edge (since it has the support of the Western intelligentsia and elite and we're almost only given the Jewish – not Israeli – narrative). Witty is immoral. He's just polite.
Blame is the opposite of the moral acknowledgement that we co-create. Classic psychobabble.
Good for you. You can add your story to a list of people who have gone and lived with the Palestinians and have had their stories ignored and shut down by the NYT and other MSM outlets. This ability to shut down these stories is why the American people have been blinded by the I lobby. How many times in the MSM do we hear "all Americans support Israel" no matter what they do. Completed hogwash. there is an obvious shift going on when you have folks like Phillip Weiss, Medea Benjaman etc jumping on the push for justice for the Palestinians….this push has been going on for a long time. Walt and Meirsheimer's recent book and Former President Jimmy Carter's endless efforts have been a huge part in the shift. Thanks for what you did back in 75 and your continuing efforts to shed light on what has been going on for 50 some years