Last night I went to a party in New York for Emma Williams’s new book, It’s Easier to Reach Heaven Than the End of the Street, a chronicle of what it was like to live in Jerusalem during the second intifada.
Williams, an English doctor and wife to a U.N. diplomat, was introduced to the large crowd by Sir Brian Urquhart, the former under secretary of the U.N., and I reflected that I had once ridiculed Urquhart in the pages of the New Republic at the instance of Marty Peretz, because Peretz hated the U.N. I did that many years ago, as a young journalist trying to get ahead; still I feel ashamed. I certainly owe Urquhart an apology, and I would point out that this is the way that the Israel lobby works: support for Israel is woven into the fibers of Establishment life, Peretz’s New Republic was the Jaffa Gate for a young magazine journalist trying to enter the city. If you want to get in, well, you support Israel.
I saw a number of people who are planning to go to Gaza for the freedom march, and I saw Cindy and Craig Corrie, who are planning to go to Israel in March, the 7th anniversary of their daughter Rachel’s killing in Rafah, to pursue a lawsuit that they have launched over the circumstances of her death. Craig told me that by law, an American consular official was supposed to be in attendance at Rachel’s autopsy, which was conducted by Israeli doctors. The autopsy proceeded without such an official present.
The Corries and I talked about their brave congressman, Brian Baird, whom Cindy first sought out in the days before Rachel’s killing, when she learned about attacks on international volunteers and wanted the State Department to act. Baird visited Gaza for the first time after the onslaught this year, and the Corries directed me to the statement he made in February, which reveals his moral understanding of the issue:
“The personal stories of children being killed in their homes or schools, entire families wiped out, and relief workers prevented from evacuating the wounded are heart wrenching – what went on here, and what is continuing to go on, is shocking and troubling beyond words…. It’s hard for anyone in our country to imagine how it must feel to have a sick child who needs urgent care or is receiving chemotherapy or dialysis, then be forced to take a needlessly lengthy route, walk rather than drive, and wait in lines as long as two hours simply to get to the hospital. As a health care professional myself, I found this profoundly troubling, no, actually it’s beyond that, it is outrageous…"
I read a lot of Williams’s book on my train ride home, and it contains a similar moral understanding. It is filled with the fear of suicide bombings, and also deep dismay at the brutality of the Israeli response to the Palestinian uprising. Williams chooses to have her fourth child in a Bethlehem hospital, even as the Israelis are doing missile strikes in the occupied territories (because she prefers the British medical model, practiced by Palestinians, to the American one, which the Israelis practice). The chief theme of the book seems to be the impression I got in Gaza: the Palestinians have been dispossessed again and again by Jews who are themselves traumatized. Williams is regularly exposed to the Israeli narrative, and she finds it disfigured. She smiles and walks away at parties, she runs when a woman in the street calls her a murderer because she has U.N. plates.
"We weep to see the suffering of other people," said Uri, "but what can we do?" What Israel was doing was self-defense.
"Other countries have experienced terrorist campaigns–the Ira campaigns on the British mainland, for example–without giving in to extremism," I said to Uri.
"Very few of you were affected by that," he replied. I remarked that [my husband] Andrew’s cousin was killed in an IRA attack on a troop of cavalry in Hyde Park, my brothers’ school friend was killed in a bombing by the IRA and my uncle was lightly wounded in the Harrods bombing, and did what he could to help the injured. This cut no ice. "It’s not the same. These terrorists are out to kill us because of who we are."
Because of who you are, or because of what you’re doing in the Occupied Territories? I wondered…
"It’s because we’re Jews," he said. "They hate us and they want to destroy us…"
The good news of the party I attended is the news I’ve been pushing all year: post-Gaza, a leftwing/international political coalition is gelling that regards Israel’s behavior as extremist. And American Jews are participating, without Uri’s psychic baggage, without needing to distinguish themselves from other participants on a religious/ethnic basis.
For what it’s worth I had an ‘experience’ with the IRA, I’m sitting about a mile from where one of their bombs went off.
Perhaps I gave into the wrong kind of extremism?
Maybe you can give me more accurate figures, but Wikipedia says that approximately 60 civilians were killed in England by the IRA. That’s 60 in a country (or part of a country) with a population of 50 million. If this is accurate then there is no comparison to what Israel went through in the second intifadeh. (500 civilians killed, excluding those killed in occupied territory, out of a population of six million.) One should resist giving in to extremism, agreed, but England’s experience with the IRA is not comparable to Israel’s experience in the 2nd intifadeh.
Can we compare that to what Palestinians have undergone at the hands of Zionists for sixty-plus years now?
Also? And I really need to get in the habit of lumping my comments into one post (wouldn’t want to work Witty’s side of the street after all…), but yet again, Zionists make a case that Jewish (well, Zionist technically, but they don’t have much compunction against dragging in the rest of Judaism as rhetorical human shields) suffering is more privileged than anyone else’s. Surprise, surprise, surprise.
And how many in England went around insisting that the IRA “hated them just because they were English and they want to destroy us.” How many totally rejected the legitimacy of the Irish position, denied that British rule was brutal, insisted on their own innocence?
The difference is that most Israelis and the Jews who support them still refuse to confront their own guilt.
Wondering Jew, I do understand where your comments are coming from in regards to the disparity in deaths between the English0IRA conflict and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
However, do you not think that it is indeed Israels harsh measures and its far harsher treatment of the Palestinians relative to the British treatment of Irish people as a whole that has led more Palestinians to react violently? After all the British never ever laid siege to Irish neighborhoods, never ever commenced aerial and artillery bombardment of Palestinian neighborhoods and towns, and rarely ever arrested Irish men for no reasons and then sent them detention facilities outside of their own territory. (Keep in mind that 1/3 Palestinian men has spent time in an Israeli Prison).
Palestinians are angry, and rightly so. After all, they are the ones living under a military occupation and they are the ones living under siege. It is for this reason that they rebel and sometimes resort to violence.
Furthermore, look at the Palestinians whom are citizens of Israel. There are virtually no cases of them resorting to violence, mainly because the amount of pressure placed upon them is far less (although it is still far more than is in tolerable) than what is being placed upon Palestinians living in the occupied territory. Their resistance has largely been non-violent despite the fact that Israel does have a reputation of shooting and killing Palestinians for even peacefully protesting.
Basically, what I am saying is that it is Israels actions, particularly the occupation, that has led to Palestinian resentment of Israelis and has led some Palestinians to believe that only resistance through armed violence can change their situation. Israel can end all the violence if all it did was in the military occupation and gave the Palestinians their long deserved human rights.
The point of the article and the point of the headline was not the general one regarding Israel reaping what she has sown. It was quite specific. That others have experienced the same thing and reacted differently. Well, others have not experienced the same thing, certainly not the others (the British) cited in the article.
How to proceed from here regarding Israel-Palestine and what attitudes are necessary to successfully repair the damage are questions that should be asked. But they are not the questions raised by this article and its headline.
Gosh you’re such a troll. You’re ignoring your own dishonesty but pointing out what you perceive to be a dishonest headline.
I agree, that it’s not comparable.
However, the way Israel treats it’s neighbors and the Palestinians and the on-going ethnic cleansing and colonization of Palestinian land, etc. etc. – is all not comparable as well.
Maybe if you’re weren’t such a blubbering troll you’d realize what a hypocrite you are and wouldn’t sanctimoniously chastise Phil and the blog whenever a mistake is made.
It is pretty apparent that individuals who post nonsense like wondering jew have no intention of ever seriously approaching this issue, they just wish to maintain the status quo to complete the genocidal process against the Palestinians, otherwise they would not make such candy ass statements – becoming insufferable pendants. This is unfortunately the measurement of how much more “valuable” the lives of these Zionist colonists are, as compared to the Palestinians. They cannot measure things properly, of who the aggressor is, who dropped in on who, and the massive imbalance involved – they would rather snipe about perceived volume of a conflict than measure it in kind.
Its really quite limiting to discuss “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland only in terms of the bombing deaths in England, while ignoring the much greater violence in Northern Ireland.
Comparatively speaking, Northern Ireland is about 2/3 the size of Israel, and has approximately one quarter to one third of the number of people as Israel has. And yet, in 1970-72, over 500 people were killed in the conflict, over half of them civilians. This matches your 500 Israelis killed over an eight year span with the same number killed in Northern Ireland within two years in a much smaller overall population.
Wikipedia notes that between 1969 and 2001(32 years), 3526 people were killed in the NI conflict. Comparative figures for the years 1987(first intifada) up until December of 2008(22 years),provided by B’Tselem, show approximately 8,000 people killed, with approximately 6500 of those killed during that time being Palestinians.
I think that only a very selective, distorted (and frankly bigoted) reading of history would allow one to claim that the violence suffered by the Israeli Jews is without precedent or equal in history. It also seeks to distort the timeline, as Israeli violence against Palestinians for the most part did not occur in response to suicide bombings, but rather preceded them. The IDF fired off over a million rounds of ammunition in the month of October 2000, and had laid siege to most large Palestinian cities months before the first suicide bomber hit in February 2001. And of course, the occupied Territories had been under belligerent occupation, and slow land theft and ethnic cleansing for 20 years before the first uprising in 1987.
Of course the protestants in N Ireland certainly did engage in extremism.
The idea posherd, according to wondering jew is not the comparison, but that you cannot compare. This implies several things – how “much more deep” the problem is in Israel, more than anywhere else (and even if it were the case never to ask why it is so so deep, this problem, and that it has nothing to do with the Israelis). Secondly, it is that the Palestinians are “so other,” so savage and unable to negotiate, don’t you know this is why “we can’t find a negotiating partner?” So it is meant to vilify the Palestinians.
It is a milder form of the “don’t compare,” what I have heard a good portion of my life, only a milder form (if this is possible). Of course, no one denies some of the unique nature of this colonial escapade and the people trying to survive it, but it is not incomparable. It is the – “my illness is worse than yours – I have suffered more than you – they are after me – they want to annihilate me,” so whatever you do, don’t try to compare!
This falls into another category, since there is nothing comparable, you cannot look at other similar situations and say that there might be some similar remedies. It is so mystical, so hate filled (this conflict), so utterly beyond the knotty problems of what might seem similar, there is just no way that we can bring a solution to the ultimate conundrum. However, what it really means is this – we do not want to stop, we do not want to change our racist ways, we want to steal more land till Israel reigns from sea to sea, Eretz Yisrael – therefore, there is nothing that be done but a continuation of the same murderous course.
So this is what you are dealing with, and until the run around nonsense stops more people will die, the conflict will broaden, and there will purposefully be no remedy – because, it is not reconcilable – it is everyone fault of everyone else. So just let us march on our merry way. THAT (all the above) is what is going on, and there are no excuses for it, it has to stop.
I am not so much suggesting a comparison of N Ireland because of the suffering of the loyalists (which was all in their own heads) but their extremism – the provos looking a whole lot like the Israeli settlers.
“Of course the protestants in N Ireland certainly did engage in extremism”
Individuals did engage in extremism. Very true. But response of Britain and it’s military was totally different from indiscriminate and civilian directed response of IDF. Yes, they patrolled the streets. Yes, they responded when fired upon. Yes they arrested people and searched individual houses. But they never, ever, lied siege to catholic areas or shelled build-up areas.
In terms of civilian casualties, an honest count would include the civilians killed in N. Ireland. N. Ireland, claimed by Britain as it’s territory, has long been colonized by it. Similarly, the Zionists colonized Palestine, and geographically Israel is part of historical Palestine. England proper isn’t technically part of Ireland, the IRA would not claim any part of it.
In terms of brutality of the occupation, there’s no doubt that during “the troubles” Britain brutally suppressed protest of Irish Catholics who were impoverished because of discrimination. However it was not as bad as modern Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians as JB notes. Maybe the 19th and early 20th century British rule was as brutal as Israel’s rule. In modern times I believe Britain has recognized the land rights of the Irish regardless of creed, recognized their citizenship in the land of their birth and right to live there.
Since the latest Gazzan genocide, people have begun to the cries of Palestinian children and mothers which have been there to hear for the last 60 years. The conscious of many people including some Zionists have started bothering them, but all that cannot bring back the dead victims of Zionist evil culture. The old saying: “Never never again” holds more the current Holocausts being carried out in Palestine, Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq. However, the evil forces have succeeded controlling not only the governments but the minds of the majority of the western public through mass media. These evil forces has decided to kill hundreds of thousands more innocent people in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran for sake of “western civilization” and “the democracy”, which they’re to practice in their own countries.
“There is no country in the world in which use of official and sustained torture is an established and documented as is in the case of Israel,” – Amnesty International.
Terrorism: Theirs and Ours
link to rehmat1.wordpress.com
A little off topic but I wonder when the secular Jews will rise up against some of the indignities they are exposed to living in a “Jewish” state. See soldier gets 20 days for cooking on Saturday:
link to ynetnews.com
Or how bout having to share a country with people who think its appropriate to literally run over wounded Palestinians with their cars… while the IDF stands by and allows it…
Its like watching a lynch mob.
link to youtube.com
And the Al Jazeera English account of the event:
link to youtube.com
Kahanists really don’t regard anyone else as human do they.
There are no words to describe this adequately.
They had a medium-sized rally last week in Jerusalem. Problem is, every time some politician goes after the secular vote, does an Obama on them as soon as he gets into office and starts sucking up to Shas.
Secular Jews are voting with their passports, moving back to the US.
The guy was arrested for attempted murder, but he’ll get off totally
He received 1 month of house arrest.
Whereas a 12 year old who throws a stone at an armored tank gets years – if he’s an Arab.
You’ve all missed the point. The zionists have intentionally codified and systematized the use of extremism as an instrument to achieve their ends – namely a ‘greater israel’ … serial war-crimes, torture, endless inhumane treatment of other human beings and Orwellian techniques to dehumanize their victims while claiming victimhood themselves has all been part of a long process that continues unabated today with the blood and treasure of Americans fueling this endless terror campaign that is racist, murderous, land-approriating, ethnic-cleansing, criminal zionism
Yossi Sarid: link to haaretz.com
Is Obama? Or is he merely looking at how the zionists in his own government could
foil his Obamacare plan and make him look weak and ineffectual if he actually got tough with Israel by putting some of his big teeth into his Cairo Speech?
link to ft.com
It seems WonderingJew has started playing the numbers game. How come it can be played when comparing how many people died at the hands of the IRA and Palestinian groups, but not when comparing how many Israelis have been killed and how many Palestinians?
Phil Weiss is a journalist. If he wishes to write things that are preposterous in his articles and in his headlines that is his business. If I wish to point out the preposterous, that is my business. I’m sorry if that makes me bigoted or troll like in your estimation. But that is your business.
Who’s business is the “self-hating Jew?”
link to asiapacific.mediamonitors.net
Very good article! Must-read.
You know what? If we start comparing the number of Palestinian civilians murdered by Israelis to the reverse, suddenly your tune will change and you’ll be, “But the numbers don’t matter! It’s not about the numbers!” Zionists do that every time.
WJ – pedantry deserves pedantry. The headline states that “other countries have experienced terrorist campaigns”. This is a true statement. It doesn’t say that “other countries have experience terrorist campaigns that killed as many civilians as in Israel”. You are the one insisting on the by-the-numbers comparison, accusing the headline of claiming what it does not.
This kind of nitpicking is something you do regularly to deflect the force of an argument away from Israeli culpability.
Beware potsherd. You are talking with experts on “nitpicking” – I submit the talmud is Exhibit 1. It is the ultimate exercise in nitpicking. Some call it wisdom. usually those who look at the Cliff notes versions – with all the fun tales and the picks without the nits.
Talmudic trick #1 – focus on a technicality (such as a missing period, comma)
Talmudic trick #2 – address the timeline (eg could “yesterday” mean “yesteryear”? then spend 8 pages of commentary on what year could mean for whom and when)
Talmudic trick #3 – talk numbers (eg, could “three” really have meant “tree” which, as we know, has many branches, thus implying “three = many)
looks like the wondering wander is doing a variation of trick #3. But I think he is a novice because there’s a better argument to be made using Trick #2 (hint, hint…).
What is no wonder at all is why some take so naturally to lawyering.
I’m sorry, I don’t seem to recall calling you a troll, but what the heck…since when do facts matter?
Shafiq- The troll comments were made by others not by you. And the objections to the numbers game were made by others not by me.
potsherd- You prefer dittoheads whose vocabulary consists primarily of “trolls” and “Nazis”. Enjoy those who agree with you.
You tell yourself that, WJ, so you can feel righteous about evading the real issues.
The level of discourse at this site is not always what it should be. There is name-calling. There are personal feuds. There are fatheads. The solution isn’t to join in the namecalling.
potsherd- If you want essence I will give you essence.
The essence of this post is: “the Palestinians have been dispossessed again and again by Jews who are themselves traumatized.” I would essentially agree, but I would assert that much of the trauma has occurred in recent years, particularly during the suicide bombing phase of the second intifadeh.
Even when Rabin was negotiating the agreement known as Oslo II, Israeli Jews were pretty well evenly divided on the issue, with enough of the center willing to give Rabin the benefit of the doubt, so that the treaty could be approved by the Knesset by one vote (meaning that it had less than a majority of the Jewish MK’s).
3 things have happened since then: 1. Rabin was assassinated. 2. the demography has changed and 3. the second intifadeh.
Rabin’s assassination severely harmed the left, for he had credentials that no other “leftist” had or has. The Jewish demography continues to favor the right for the religious have more kids and the Mizrachi Jews have more kids and they are both right wing. And Ashkenazi leftists and seculars tend to move out. (When a right winger faces a problem in Israel that fills him with frustration, he reacts: Who can I kill to solve this problem? When a left winger in Israel faces a problem that fills him with frustration he reacts: Where can I move to?) (And by the way most leftists do not come from America, and even if they prefer America as a destination it is not a return to America.)
The only factor (that I mentioned) that the Palestinians had any control over was the conduct of the second intifadeh. And to minimize the psychological effect that the bombing campaign of the second intifadeh had on the Israeli center is to consider the Israeli point of view irrelevant.
I have not read the book by Ms. Williams mentioned by Phil Weiss in this post, but the quotes give an impression of a woman who is decidedly anti Israeli in her viewpoint. Although the view provided by “Uri” seems one sided, her view from the minimal quotes seems one sided as well.
(As a sidebar: a headline is supposed to reveal the essence of an article. Mister Weiss quite often ignores this purpose of a headline and uses many of his headlines to titillate and sensationalize rather than to inform. If I then focus on the headline and the information that was the basis of the headline, it is only nitpicking because Mister Weiss’s brand of headlines is not essentialist. Also as a journalist, or a former journalist, Mister Weiss has a responsibility towards truth and balance. As a blogger he has none of these responsibilities. Where is the balance on the issue of Lebanon which has now given approval to a militarized Hezbollah in its borders. Where is the balance in regard to Iran, which is only mentioned vis a vis Israel, but never as an independent actor with its own responsibilities and culpabilities. If only to dispel Mister Weiss’s self illusion that he is still a journalist he deserves to be nitpicked.)
Very good!
But I disagree as to the essence of the issue here. I believe it is the tacit proposition that because Israelis have been traumatized, their extreme repressive reaction is understandable/excused/justified.
Thus the importance of the headline, for it calls into question the tacit premise of that argument – that the trauma of terrorism can excuse or justify violent repression.
Jews – Israelis, Zionists and others – have been traumatized by the Holocause and have a tendency to take the Uri line – “they hate us, they want to destroy us, everything we do to defend ourselves is righteous.” They see themselves as the eternal victims and take a histrionic attitude to their own sufferings while discounting the sufferings of others. eg, the pothole in the street where a Qassim rocket has hit is blown up to “constant missile attacks.” Moreover, and this is the pilpul effect, they tend to obsess about what might happen. There have never been Palestinian rockets fired at Israel from the WB, but there might be and so IsraelHasTheRightToDefendItself.
And it is because of this factor that I believe the numbers are not the relevant aspect of the equation. The relevant factor is Jewish exceptionalism, in which Jewish suffering and trauma are all that matter.
But raw exceptionalism is indefensible, so out comes the comparison meter, the argument that the number of Israelis killed is greater than someone else’s. From which, of course, follows the unsaid conclusion that for Israelis extreme repression is justified – “See how much more we have suffered!”
And this argument is upheld by those Zionists in the US, who have not been traumatized by these recent violent events in Israel, but who are well marinated in the same exceptionalism.