Let’s celebrate the brilliant journalism of Joel Greenberg in the Washington Post last weekend, a profile of young Palestinian activist Hurriya Ziada that deploys all a reporter’s tools to convey the thinking of someone new and important who is Palestinian. I believe Greenberg or his Conservative rabbi father moved to Israel from the U.S., and I have probably accused him of being a Zionist at some time (I have a popgun), but this is fabulous reporting. It is a simple effort to convey the shifting consciousness of Palestinians and the growing hatred of the two-state Bantustan solution to American readers. The piece has 446 comments, a reflection of its importance. This is how Americans will learn about the true dimensions of this conflict, from brave reporters who are more interested in what the world looks like than in tired American assumptions about the world. (H/t Phyllis Bennis) Greenberg excerpts:
A 22-year-old university student who is active in protesting the Israeli occupation in the West Bank, [Hurriya] Ziada is skeptical that the statehood bid will bring any tangible change. Disillusioned with her leaders after years of fruitless talks with Israel and uninspired by the prospect of symbolic U.N. recognition, Ziada is part of a loose network of young activists who represent a potential new force in Palestinian society and politics.
Ziada is active in protests against Israeli occupation in the West Bank.
A still-undefined, embryonic group of a few hundred across the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the activists made their mark by organizing protests that peaked in March….
To Ziada and her cohorts, the Palestinian Authority’s bid for recognition of a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with its capital in East Jerusalem, is a shriveled vision of what Palestinians at home and in the diaspora deserve…
She and other activists envision a campaign similar to the American civil rights movement and the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa. Their vision extends to Palestinian refugees in neighboring Arab countries and Israeli Arabs….
Her family originated in the destroyed village of al-Falouja, in what is now southern Israel. Her father, a union organizer and member of a militant leftist faction during the first Palestinian uprising in the late 1980s, was arrested repeatedly and jailed for months without trial. In the second uprising, which erupted in 2000, her older brother, then a member of Fatah’s armed wing, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for his role in a shooting attack on an Israeli settlement…
The aim, organizers say, is creative nonviolent action to disrupt the Israeli occupation. Activists regularly join what they call “popular resistance,” such as weekly marches in villages against the seizure of land by Jewish settlers or against Israel’s separation barrier in the West Bank, which has cut off many farming communities from their lands.
Joel Greenberg? Article in WaPo is unsigned (today 10:42 AM). Nice article, good to see in MSM.
Years ago the NY Times had a reporter named Joel Greenberg who was both a NYT reporter and an Israeli citizen, who fulfilled his military service in the IDF while drawing a NYT paycheck. Apparently neither he nor the NYT bosses saw a conflict of interest.
Is this the same Joel Greenberg?
This is a very reasonable, informative piece that does not at all seem to deride the idea that the Two-State Solution is a farce. It actually leans towards embracing the idea proposed by the Palestinian activists it covers that a single state with equality for all should be the overarching agenda. In fact, the article does not descend into any Israeli-centric propaganda. Very surprising coming from WaPo.
i would like to be positive, but i remain unconvinced.. 1 article going against an overwhelming tide in the opposite direction is not enough, but more a token to suggest the wapo might not be hypocritical in it’s coverage of the i/p issue… i am curious to know the answer to nevada neds question too…
Why do you suppose Israel and the US are wasting so much of their precious political capital fighting the Palestinian statehood bid tooth and nail if it is meaningless and won’t have any tangible benefits?
The S in BDS does not exclude legal sanctions. The admission of Palestine as a State member of UNESCO should already have permit it to do something the Bantustans could never do when they were victimized by apartheid, prosecute the bastards who are responsible in an international criminal court.
Activists can still have boycotts, flotillas, demonstrations, & etc., but giving those things priority over prosecuting the crimes that have already been committed is not acceptable. Imagine if someone suggested that demonstrations to end the rape of 10 year-olds were an adequate response in the Penn State case.