Menajem Perez's family bar mitzvah trip to Israel
posted by Israel Maven tours on facebook
Most of my Sept./Oct. trip to Israel and Palestine was demoralizing. The two societies are utterly separated and have zero sense of shared community. The Israeli community is contained in its values and beliefs and privileges and has no idea about Palestinian conditions, and Palestinians in the occupied territories are utterly contained in a segregated world. The sense of impending conflict is overwhelming. I found myself hating the Israelis for their colonialism and racism and apartheid but not wanting to jump into the bath of Palestinian resistance completely. It is not that I differ with the Palestinian analysis, it is only that the emotion is so raw, sore, victimized, and revolutionary, and the denial involved in referring to Israel as "'48" seems a kind of blindness.
I found this separation of consciousness and community so scary that at times I said to myself, I’m American, this isn't worth dying for; I need to get out of this mess and tiptoe away.
Then at the end of my trip in Ramallah I got a glimpse of hope, in an Arab Spring social media way. I had dinner with Abir Kopty and Joseph Dana and others and had an upward mood swing, to the belief that the same forces that upended the fear of Mubarak's unending totalitarian order in Egypt could also upend the fear in Israel and Palestine of the unending segregation order. A new idea has come, borne by a new generation. But that's at the end of this story…
This was my fifth trip to the area and I spent less time in Israel than ever before. I realized that I am unconsciously boycotting Israel; I want little to do with the place. But Israel feels like a geographical anachronism, a New-Jersey-Austria teeming with guns and North Face and Ben and Jerry’s, implanted in the Arab world.
Here are two of my West Jerusalem walks:
I walk out of the Old City at the Jaffa Gate, and there are two young women at a little kiosk handing out cards to send a care package to an Israeli soldier. The appeal is entirely in English. Notice this language: "Express... our unity." Thank them! Message: You live a protected life in the U.S. so we are defending the Jews.
I walk down to the David Citadel, a forbodingly lavish hotel designed by Moshe Safdie, and draped over the bronze and granite façade is a weatherproof banner for Menajem Mendel Perez’s bar mitzvah tour, organized by an Israeli touring company called Israel Maven tours with the M&Ms logo on the banner-- you can glimpse it at right.
I go back to my room and find Israel Maven Tours' facebook page and there is Menajem and his family firing guns on his bar mitzvah tour. (picture at top)
And look: Here's a video of Menajem's grandmother firing an automatic rifle, on facebook.
So that’s what he did on his bar mitzvah. Now you are a man. Go fire guns.
I walk up the hill to the King David Hotel to taste the history of the British mandate period and famous terrorist Zionist attack on the hotel in 1946 and the rebirth of Jewish sovereignty. Instead I find myself walking down a long hallway in the hotel reading a row of tiles with celebrity guests’ signatures. I am thinking of world history and standing on Candice Bergen and Metallica.
I go to Rosh Hashana services at an English-language synagogue in Jerusalem and come out afterward as a sandy-haired youth in green Teva sandals is showing off his M16 to friends and family. Actually his father is showing the gun off. The little bearded father is telling the friends what rifle barrel is longest, Uzi, M16, Kalashnikov. “I was trained on a Springfield .303,” the kid says in a New York accent.
There is such a worship of guns in Israel, and so much fear-- fear of this historical moment, of the Arab spring, of Turkey, of democracy. I felt as if the Israelis intended to recreate the Warsaw Ghetto, this time with guns. For the historical framework of the Warsaw Ghetto rationalizes Jewish ethnocentrism and militarism-- and expiates the survivors’ guilt so many Jews feel because they lost their whole family in the Warsaw Ghetto.
This framework explains why Israel has done so much to alienate Egypt and Turkey. The isolation fulfils the Israeli emotional baseline: the world hates us. And now opposition to the UN statehood initiative is just isolating Israel more.
There is something self-destructive about Zionism. The myths of Masada and the Warsaw ghetto are romances of self-destruction. And now the Zionists are isolating Jews from any larger ideal, and embracing hatred, and there is no way this can end happily…
I spent most of my time inside the occupation, observing the treatment of Palestinians. This is crushing to see. Every American Jew should get a little taste of what I saw. And every American. I've described some of my journeys inside the occupation here and here and here.
Palestine is cut up into different sections, A B and C, and whenever you are on the border of Area A you see big red signs warning Israelis not to go there, it's dangerous. There is a feeling inside Israeli society that if you even walk into these areas you will be torn limb from limb-- Palestinians are teaching their children to hate you in squalid refugee camps that are nests of masked terrorists.
This is part of the segregation of Palestinians. It is like the fear that white Americans used to have of the ghettoes, but reinforced by law and the "security" wall. I know that I had that fear too. I’d never been to Nablus before this trip, I thought of that as Deep Dark Palestine. Who would be able to pull me out? The Marines won't help me!
Then you go in and it is another human place. People are working, or they are walking with their families. People smile at you and want to help direct you to your destination. The famous hospitality is just that-- deeply welcoming.
But everyone’s life has been touched by military occupation, and the stories never end. These people hate the occupation. I can't blame them.
I met Saed Abu-Hijleh, an American-educated lecturer and poet, whose mother was gunned down right next to him outside their hillside villa in Nablus 10 years ago. His father is a leading surgeon in Nablus-- his father is like the surgeon you'd want in an American hospital, stony, neat and precise. His wife was gunned down by Israeli soldiers as she was doing embroidery on the stone terrace. Their house in Santa Monica would go for $5 million. During the first intifadah young Saed was shot in the stomach at a demonstration and imprisoned, and beaten in prison till the stomach wound opened up again. When he got out, his father shipped him to American schools to save his life.
I met the mayor of a village in the Jordan Valley who was shot three times when he was 15 when he was walking out to his family’s fields to visit his parents. Haj Sami Sadeq was paralyzed.
He showed me around his village, and at the women's clinic, I met a young Palestinian American woman in a sequined belt and designer handbag whose brother was killed when the Israelis blew up a police station during the second intifidah. She had come to the clinic with her mother, who wore traditional clothing. The mother says a prayer for her son every morning. The young American is suburban; she is afraid to come back here.
“The way I look at my country, I like rules. I want people not to live in chaos. In America there is freedom because there are laws. I like the law. Here they live under chaos because there are no rules.”
These are not unusual meetings. Yes, Abu-Hijleh and Haj Sami are leaders, I sought them out. But meeting that woman was entirely random. The sense of lawlessness is pervasive. Israel is trying to take their lands. That is the largest truth of the occupation. It is a "slow-moving... ethnic cleansing," Bill Fletcher Jr. says accurately; and fear and uncertainty and despair fill every molecule of political consciousness. The American government paves the roads and builds clinics and puts up huge billboards, normalizing the occupation-- but it does nothing to stop the neverending theft of lands by violent settlers supported by the army.
“These people need one thing—“ says Gilbert Carlson, a tall young idealistic American teacher in Nablus. “Exposure. They need their story to be told to the outside world. What they need is for the people from the governments that support Israel to wake up and realize what is going on here is beyond absurd. The word absurd doesn’t begin to characterize it.”
Gilbert Carlson
Carlson tells me of the frustration he experiences trying to describe a checkpoint to friends back in the States. Imagine hundreds of people standing waiting in the cold, women and children up to their ankles in mud, as Israeli teenagers in uniform sort though their documents, he says. But Gilbert doesn’t feel he can ever convey that scene.
“Before I set foot in Palestine I would have said, ‘the occupation is fucked up,’ but really I had no idea what was going on here. There really are no words. Or I’m short on words for what I’ve seen. There are too many emotions to put across, that words don’t allow. And in the end I say, You just have to come visit a checkpoint.”
I experienced that emotional battering time and again in Palestine. I wondered what I could say or do to convey what I was seeing to Americans. What picture could I take? What wail could I record?
And what struck me most of all was that where you would expect to see an international force protecting a vulnerable population, you see 24- and 25-year old international idealists, like Gilbert Carlson. Where some international legal body ought to be separating the populations and protecting the weak from the fourth largest army in the world and airlifting supplies to Gaza, there are 24-year-old kids—like Morgan Bach, a teacher from Seattle who lives in Haj Sami's village so that it is not wiped off the map by Israeli military bases that surround it and have demolition orders for the town. The courage and sacrifice of these young people is inspiring. I would never be capable of it. Some day their deeds will be recorded in history books: that when governments failed to do anything to protect people, they stepped in.
My side is frequently accused now of trying to “delegitimize” Israel. And I know that some on my side see no legitimacy in Israel and work to delegitimize it by calling it ‘48 and Palestine. But when you visit the place it is clear that Israel has done most of the work for them. Its complete indifference to the 1967 lines of international consensus, which its advocate Alan Dershowitz described as “Auschwitz borders,” as Abba Eban did before him, justifying the Warsaw ghetto with guns and Candice Bergen-- well, they showed the same indifference to the 1947 lines of international consensus, UN Partition. And the ethnic cleansing and colonization that Israel carries out today in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and the Negev serve to undermine the liberal idea that the establishment of the state was a blow for human progress, rather than just a chapter in the story of colonization and expulsion and the white man's burden.
“1948 is still going on every single day, but that’s a tough narrative to sell in the U.S.,” Gilbert Carlson says.
I told Carlson that the American view is changing. The statehood initiative and Obama’s collapse have woken a lot of Americans up to the issue. Henry Siegman recently used the word colonialism in connection with Israel. And the New York Times is doing stories about Israel’s international isolation with the thrust that Israel has brought this situation on itself. America has been damaged; Netanyahu’s humiliation of Obama at the United Nations has shocked our liberal Establishment. And Nicholas Kristof’s piece reluctantly calling for democracy in the entire land is animated by awareness of this isolation.
But the Israelis, even the good ones, are incapable of sorting this problem out for themselves. The occupation is "lovely" for them, as Nabil Sha’ath put it. A leftwing Israeli Palestinian friend who hates the occupation has started ignoring politics and says that it is a time of hopelessness: she has to live here and there is nothing she can do to change things. You stop even thinking about it, she says, because you can’t see any good coming from any of the players, the Quartet, Obama, Netanyahu. They are all so incapable of doing any good.
She is in her 40s. One of the problems with the conflict is age. The old are all locked in their generational understandings, and those understandings are failures. Nabil Sha’ath is locked inside the great saga of Palestinian resistance, compromise and Oslo—the failed saga of his lifetime, and no one wants to admit that the saga is a failure. Anyone over 45 or so in America who cares about the issue has also been trained by a group of experiences that begins with terrorism and ends with an olive branch and historic compromises and the dream of two people living side by side, oh how can we achieve it.
Partition has a generationally ordained quality. Sha’ath in his 70s supporting Partition as the climax of his life's arc. I’m 56 and sometimes support Partition. We have old eyes. Young people have a wisdom born of new experiences and assumptions. It is no surprise that the most interesting voices on the struggle, from Adam Horowitz to Ali Abunimah to Max Blumenthal to Susie Abulhawa, are in their 30s.
My last night in Palestine I spent in a Ramallah restaurant courtyard under a pomegranate tree with young social media activists, Abir Kopty and Joseph Dana and others. Kopty is from the Galilee and Dana from the US and Israel. They say that their crowd is a small one, but what inspiring belief and esprit de corps they have. They remind me of the Egyptian facebook revolutionaries: they have a new idea they truly believe in and don’t see why it can’t be brought about. Democracy-- really, is that such a hard idea to absorb?
And though their movement ramifies in a lot of different ways (nonviolent protest, international voluntarism, boycott, the statehood initiative, etc) it is really in the end a mental struggle, they are resisting old ideas, and they must convince millions of people who are set in an old way to say I am for democracy.
Tahrir could not have happened without western media-- without the worldly young revolutionaries using facebook and the American networks to leverage their struggle; and in the end Kopty and Dana are also seeking to leverage western media. They are up against the same kind of generational opposition that Tahrir faced. Because of their heroic battles, the old think that two states is a good and legitimate outcome. There is that attitude to overcome. Not just in America and the Israel lobby, but in “international consensus."
Well Mubarak had international consensus behind him, didn’t he? Ideas and attachments can dissolve in a few seconds. Nicholas Kristof and Daniel Levy, both fairly young, are saying the same thing: We have to talk about the possibility of one state.
One big wall the dreamers must tear down is Israeli fear. Israelis know that they have done wrong. When Micha Kurz of Grassroots Jerusalem came to the United States and talked about the occupation a year or so back, he visited a conservative synagogue where wise men acknowledged everything he told them about Jerusalem. But they said their great responsibility in political life is to protect Israelis, and they are afraid that when the Israelis lift their boots from the neck of the Palestinians there will be a bloodbath. The Palestinians will turn on the Israelis.
At our dinner under the pomegranate, Joseph Dana said that this was the big emotional play of the Israel supporters in the U.S. But he said that Ali Abunimah has shown that the same fears prevailed in South Africa, and were used as a dam against progress; and in fact when apartheid was ended, there was not a bloodbath. While Abir Kopty pointed out to me that if Palestinians had wanted to slaughter Israelis, they could have done so on any number of occasions before now. They could do so right now, and they don’t, she said. They have generally always sought another means.
Of course historical models don’t mean that much in the end. We can look at the American civil war and Algerian independence, or for that matter the battles against tyranny in World War II, and predict that there will be great bloodshed in Israel and Palestine. Kopty nodded. In the end we have to take the risk.
These young people’s ideas are stronger than their parents’ generation’s ideas. The idea of a liberal democracy embracing both Palestinians and Jews is exciting and in line with western ideals and the Arab spring. The model on the showroom floor is about racial separation and colonialism. It simply cannot win. Even Hillary Clinton says it is unsustainable.
And maybe I am caricaturing Israeli society when I describe it as the sum of Menajem Perez’s bar mitzvah and the M16 in the American shul-- or the young pretty border officer I saw standing in her booth at the Allenby Bridge crossing to scream at a Palestinian woman with her children. I am seeing the worst aspects of that society. I am sure that Israeli society has many good points that I am missing from being in the community on the other side of the green line. But I know that I will be indifferent to them, and even must be indifferent, until Palestinians are free.
Phil, you’re making it awfully vivid, terribly vivid. I’m reading a very perceptive novel, now, “The Eighth Day” by Thornton Wilder. In it, an American living in Chile, 1900, explains to another American why the very, very poor Chileans (Indios) beat their wives and children every night after getting drunk. They are all miserably poor, work in dreadful conditions in mines. They get drunk, we are told, to release their anger, because without drink they are loving family men. But they must let loose because their lives in the mines are so dreadful, and they cannot attack their foremen or, least of all, the American owners and mining engineers. In effect, they are kicked by fate and th4e Americans and they end up kicking their families (having no dogs to kick, I suppose).
In I/P, the Israelis live in fear (largely self-made, and largely self-reinforced by treating all neighbors so badly that they must be fearful of them) and arm themselves and shoot anyone they can, whenever they can. So, the pogroms in the West Bank. so the attack on Gaza and Lebanon. So, the planned attack on Iran. And if this Wilder-inspired analysis is correct, it will never end, for they will always be fearful.
Very good points, Pabelmont.
When you know that you are doing something very wrong, and you alienate everybody , but at the same time, you are being fed with all those grandiose ideas about your own exception/ having almost god-like qualities , then you know, that the only thing that is left for you is to protect/defend yourself.
And protect yourself you must. Because your obvious disregard for the rights, peace and freedom of others ,brought a lot of anger and hate upon your head.
And you know that your inflated pride and feelings of your own “betterment/chosenness will not let you to ask for forgivness of those, that you hurt. Plus, you know that you may not be forgiven, instead the justice maybe be done on you for all your evil deeds.
So ,probably you will fight, until the very end. Hoping that you will be the one ,who wins.
Is this called desperation???
incredible read phil. you should write a book about it.
I second annie.
We need a book.
Why a book? They are so last century. I think Philip has the right idea; the internet is where it’s at, and it’s because of the internet that Israel’s days are numbered.
I remember the bad old days when I had to read books and depended on a subscription to the Journal of Palestine Studies for a monthly update on the news. Back then (1980/90s) I never met anyone who knew anything about checkpoints, land confiscation, arrest and detention without trial, or house demolitions.
People who want to know about what’s happening in Palestine are on the internet. Book publishing has always been a very effective method for limiting the discussion and good riddance to it.
No one is saying a book in place of the Internet, but in addition to it. The Ritalin generation may see nothing good in books, but those the wisdom of experience know better.
“incredible read phil. you should write a book about it.”
Seconded. With enthusiasm (And a promise of a sale of said book.)
This is one of my fave posts by you Phil. Just wonderful.
Amazing article.
I was speaking with a Zionist last month who was in Israel and Palestine on a Disney Land tour. He tried to tell me that the situation is all OK over there and is being exaggerated by Palestinian propaganda.
I don’t think we was looking in the right places. I’m going to email him a link to this.
Thanks.
“Disney Land tour”. You’re kidding right? I hope.
Birthright Revisited–by Joe Winkler, young American Jew:
“Well, coming here I wasn’t sure if Israeli soldiers felt resentment towards their service but after this trip, after meeting our soldiers I see that army service intertwines with their lives, they enjoy it, it provides meaning to their lives in a way absent in America.” link to jewcy.com
I find this offensive. If Joe Winkler actually knew any American families with kids in the US military service, he would never have written his crap. But he’s a Jewish American young man, and they don’t know any average American families at all. What he says his absent in America, is not absent at all. Meh. I spit on Winkler. He thinks his experience in America is America? Nothing could show me more how distant the American Jewish experience in the USA 2011 is from reality.
“What he says his absent in America, is not absent at all.”
Abso-lutedly, Citizen! America’s volunteer soldiers know how to integrate their military and civilian experience!
Good article on morality alive in US soldiers, Mooser. Thanks. I think we should sweep those guys off the streets, clean them up, and replace our US Congress with them–PTSD included. I go to VA hospital pretty regularly, and I meet these guys all the time. Also meet them on the streets.
Best argument I’ve heard for the draft in a long time. I’m a Libertarian so that’s saying alot. Sort of like bringing back slavery.
Perhaps we should have something like Mussolini’s Jewish Fascist Brigades, but they were volunteers(Netanyahus) weren’t they? An all Zionist Division for pampered Jewish-American conscripts. They could be the first wave in Iran.
What’s even more offensive is that to this Joe character, the Israeli soldiers are “our” soldiers in a way that his serving American compatriots are not. So just who does Winkler belong to?
Israel is going to need to suffer a hard & damaging defeat if
they ever integrate into the middle east. They need to experience
a damaging war that will make them reassess their entire
‘greater Israel’ plan. Because the Arabs that surround them will remain and continue to grow, while Israel doesn’t have the colonial recruitment to perpetuate it’s continued growth. It’s really going to evolve into a Jonestown scenario in the next decade.
great insight. I’m sure eee will like this piece.
Without speaking Hebrew, “hating” the Zionists/Israelis and capable of interacting only with English-speaking Israelis or Palestinians-Phil has very narrow and distorted views, exemplified by the current piece. His compassion is reserved only the Palestinian victims, his mindset is the one sticking out at the Israeli landscape, showing escapism and “ghetto” feeling.
If regular Israeli reader would read it, as I did, Phil’s ideas would have no influence since they are as detached from the daily lives of Israelis as the gun-waiving Bar-Mitzva trips mentioned here.
I bet you are right, dimadok. Why, if settlers, Ultra-Orthodox, or Haredim, read Phil’s article, they wouldn’t even know what he was talking about!
First, because they are not the majority in Israel.
And second, Phil views are skewed towards the Palestinian views and for what it worth, there is nothing wrong with it, but to present them as the ultimate truth and to try to build some solutions upon, that is a different story.
I do not hate any of the Palestinians, Arab or Muslim person. But should any of them choose to fight me or my country for whatever reason he has, my moral duty lays with protecting my country and my fellow citizens, including in case of Israel its Arab citizens as well.
Also I’d like to thank you for not bringing the Holocaust theme here.
” But should any of them choose to fight me or my country for whatever reason he has, my moral duty lays with protecting my country and my fellow citizens”
So then you agree that the Palestinians were completely in the right, from the mid-nineteeth century onward, to fight the zionist invaders who chose to invade their country and steal their land and who continue to maintain that theft to this day; that they have a moral duty to fight the zionists. Good to know.
“Also I’d like to thank you for not bringing the Holocaust theme here.”
Can’t blame you, pal. We all insist on our perogatives! You know what’s your’s and you’re willing to whine for it.
“First, because they are not the majority in Israel.”
Well, then, why do you let them run the place? Are you too weak to resist them, or do you just like having some deluded fools to do your dirtywork, and serve as a sacrifice.
Or are they too Jewish for you?
Neither are bankers in the US, but they just happen to wield all the power and influence.
What’s the matter dimadok? Do you want us to have more emptahty for the rapist and stop fussing over the victim?
That’s how they felt in 1948, yet you and your ilk contnue to insist to this day that they were being unreasonable by refusing to give up their country.
Understanding why they fight is not equal for supporting their fight. It’s 101 of basic strategic and tactic thought. I must assure you that there is no one in Israel who does not understand why the Palestinians fight, but there is a prevailing majority of the people who are willing to stand against it.
However, while Zionist movement was building their society as well as fighting, all Palestinians could come with was the military option. Funny enough the PA and Fayyad efforts to build something of a functioning framework get ridiculed here as the “collaboration”.
Some much effort here is devoted to the support of “innocent” Palestinians, regardless of their deeds, and demonization of the Israelis, forgetting that it goes both ways, including the boycott option.
You are an ignorant but typical ethno-nationalist, dim.
In another thread you MOCKED a pregnant woman of great esteem. A journalist whose politics you don’t even know.
She was harassed by your fellow citizens/soldiers and your government apologized in response!
But you kept mocking her and trivialized her ordeal.
You compared what she went through to the people of S’Derot under rocket fire.
But if that were a serious comparison – which it is NOT – then surely, you know that the people of S’Derot experience a FRACTION of what the people of Gaza experience when Israel rains down destruction upon them.
ETC ETC
This cynical and totally idiotic logic you and your fellow ideological allies employ would be funny if it weren’t so sad at the same time.
So save your commentary. You are a racist, nationalist goon. If you can trivialize that pregnant woman’s ordeal with such STUPID and shallow analogies (not to mention IRRELEVANT because what the HELL did she do to deserve that treatment?????) then I have no doubt you would deny any ill-treatment/abuse/killings/war-crimes perpetrated on the Palestinians by your countrymen.
You only come here to troll.
This is the reason for BDS – a non-violent movement. We are up against SADISTS and sociopaths like you and eee.
It is good to know that you’ve figured out me out.
It’s because we’ve seen so many of you here before, always saying the same thing.
But you are wrong to say that most Israelis understand why Palestinians fight. Most Israelis are steeped in racist lies from birth and firmly believe that the Palestinians are aggressive demons who mean to “kill all the Jews.”
Dimadok, You are easy to figure out. You have a mental illness. There is just no explanation other than mental illness. Knowledge alone does not make one sick, so it has to be something else. The Zionist and Neoconservatist brain suffers from mental illness. Period. There is no other explanation for such irrationalness. You and others like you fail to see things the way they really are. The excuses, rhetorical questions, fantasies, sarcasm that is hateful, etc. Mental illness. Caroline Glick and Jennifer Rubin make sense now. They are mentally ill.
Have you met lots of Israelis?
Awesome remark!
Being called thug etc. is not enough- I must be mentally sick.
Ad hominem at it’s best.
Wow. and you accuse Zionists for having bigoted attitudes…
“Most Israelis are steeped in racist lies from birth and firmly believe that the Palestinians are aggressive demons who mean to “kill all the Jews.”
Sooooo… how did you come to this conclusion?
Polls on attitudes. The Israeli society support for the Gaza massacre. Israeli textbooks. The institutional discrimination by Israel against the Arab citizens of the country. The racist laws in Israel. The continuing colonization of Palestine. The fact that Arab political parties are constantly accused of treason/being traitors.
The way in which Israeli murderers of Palestinians get out of jail so quickly. The fact that Israel honors it’s terrorist past, present, and future.
etc. etc.
“Phil has very narrow and distorted views, exemplified by the current piece.”
Dimadok, everybody is already aware that you think Mondoweiss should include only Hasbara. We get it, already!
Any serous comments here, Mooser?
Perhaps you’ve missed the last sentence of my post.
dimadok, I’ll stand for a lot, realising your handicaps, but the inference that I read your posts is an insult.
Patronizing won’t get you far.
“Phil has very narrow and distorted views, exemplified by the current piece.”
Well, this must have been somewhat true in the past, but he’s seems to be struggling mightily to leave them behind. I think it’s called growth. Might even be the point of the article. At least for those of us who have had similar struggles in other places.
Leaving one’s indoctrination behind is a very difficult process except for those so fortunate to have never been exposed to it(are there such people?) and those who are still firmly in it’s grip.
Hej!
since they are … detached from the daily lives of Israelis
That’s exactly the problem. Warsaw is more relevant to Israelis than Gaza.
Shmuel, you are sure about that?
Citizen,
Watch the Israeli film “Defamation.” Shows it. And it’s why Shmuel wanted to get his daughter out of Israel, before she got indoctrinated.
Shmuel, you are sure about that?
Shorthand again. The Warsaw Ghetto is central to Zionist ideology. Phil writes: “I felt as if the Israelis intended to recreate the Warsaw Ghetto, this time with guns. ” But there were guns in the Warsaw Ghetto, which is precisely what makes it so important. It provides the paradigm of the “fighting victim”, and Gaza is relevant only to the extent that it fits that paradigm – with Jews as victims! Israelis are thus far more concerned with (the symbol of) Warsaw than with (the ongoing suffering of Palestinians in) Gaza.
Exactly, MRW.
The movie ‘Defamation” shows us a sample of a terrible ,brainwashing propaganda that is thrown daily on the youth of Israel.
While on the obligatory , high school trips to Poland, (just to see concentration camp Auschwitz, nothing else there) they are not allowed to speak to the native people, the are fed lies about “big, bad anti-Semites” waiting for their “Jewish Blood” behind every corner . They have their own supply of mean body guards and translators, who often lie.
Sad, very sad example of forceful separation of young people from the Truth and Reality of the world, building the Ivory Tower of own uniqueness and chosenness , disregard for other people , and on top of it ,instilling the fear/anxiety of constant persecution and desire of the “goyim world” to get them, to rip them to shreds.
The lesson of the Warsaw Ghetto is that the great powers don’t care. The Soviets stood by as the Germans liquidated Warsaw in 1944. the US will stand by too one day.
“The lesson of the Warsaw Ghetto is that the great powers don’t care. The Soviets stood by as the Germans liquidated Warsaw in 1944. the US will stand by too one day.”
You’re confusing two events: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which occurred in the first half of 1943 and the Warsaw Uprising, which occurred in mid-late 1944. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was an uprsising against the Nazis by the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, which ended with the Ghetto’s liquidation, utter destruction and the murder of the Jews in the Ghetto. It took place when the Soviet Red Army was still in Russian, (it took place between the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk).
The Warsaw Uprising, which occurred a year later, was the uprising against the occupation by the Polish resistance, which was timed to coincide with the Soviet advance. The Soviets, in craven, dasterdly fashion, stopped their advance, as the Polish Home Army began the fight to liberate Warsaw. The Soviets’ pause welcomed the Nazis — the Soviet’s old friends and allies in the crimes committed against Poland — to regroup and crush the Uprising. The Soviets’ action caused the loss of thousands, the killing of hundreds of thousands of Polish civilians, the displacement of nearly a million civilians, and the destruction of Warsaw.
The Soviets bastards didn’t want the Home Army to form the nucleus of a new Polish Government, as they favored communist asslickers who would be happy to put the nation under the Soviet boot.
You are correct Woody. Thanks for the brief explanation of those two, different facts that many people in America, confuse out of ignorance.
“This was Sparta”.
Here a beautiful ,short video of a great song of 1944 Warsaw Uprising. ”
link to youtube.com
That’s precisely what Phil said in his article. Israel is a stae of clueless, delusional naricists like you who are in complete denial.
dimadok: If regular Israeli reader would read it, as I did
A regular Israeli reader? You?
This is what you wrote about harassing a pregnant women:
Oh my, oh my-pregnant woman got X-rayed by the evil IDF!!! So much drama, so much outcry. All based on dangerous mix of ignorance, Israel-bashing reflex and blatant hate, and Get over it-people are dying all over.
A regular Israeli you are.
Please! Pregnant woman got scanned at the checkpoint.
How many pregnant women get regular X-ray exams without much hype and outcry.
link to mayoclinic.com
Particularly, body scanners emits equal amount of radiation as 2 min of flight in commercial aircraft.
Save the holy rage and righteousness for things that actually matter.
dimadok: Save the holy rage and righteousness for things that actually matter.
I was not doing holy righteousmess. I was just quoting you.
dimadok,
are you really THAT ignorant , or you just pretend to be??
The link ,that you gave us , says basically that while a single dose of
an X-ray may not kill/hurt an unborn baby, it may still cause a damage later in life ( leukemia eg.).
If YOU don’t HAVE to take an X-ray, ( for health reasons) YOU don’t take it. That’s Final.
This lady was FORCED THREE times to walk (unnecessary) through the X- ray machine. That’s pure cruelty and blatant disregard for human’s health and life.
I’ m not even mentioning the humiliating strip search that she was forced to endure afterward.
I would call you some not-so-fancy-at-all names, but Im afraid, it won’t pass the censoring x-rays. .
Thank you Mr.Weiss for your insightful and poignant article.
Unfortunately for me, your article has caused me to lose all hope for any kind of a resolution to this intractable I/P mess – resignation – they’ve won. With the Israeli right-wing having gained substantial popular support and any left-wing opposition not only rendered impotent but also demonized, the goal of a long-term “status quo” together with continual settlement-building has become unassailable.
The knowledge that your heart-rending vignettes as well as any others of a similar nature will never , ever, get even the slightest mention in the MSM presents a huge barrier – if no one knows, no one will care.
My professional colleagues are all highly-educated persons trained in critical thought, well-read and current about national and international affairs. Yet to most of them my advancing of the Palestinian cause and criticism of Israeli actions and policies are considered to be rants of a possibly anti-semitic nature – if there is no hope of persuading them, there is no hope of a change of attitudes of the general population.
So, with the knowledge that the majority of Israelis favour the current situation and that the politics and MSM of the US, Canada and Britain are utterly in Israel’s corner, resignation and depression result.
well, there is the other 99% of society and we are starting to trend differently.
the future is in the world of twitter and social media. both have made inroads which squishes the dominance of the msm. don’t loose hope, we’re making massive strides. darkest before the dawn.
Annie, I have no idea who Chet is but he does sound like a concern troll. Oh folks it is so bad that it cannot be reversed, all you are left with is to accept the reality on the ground.
Actually no, what we are left with is BDS; a tool if effectively used will force the Israeli people to capitulate and accept their Palestinian citizens as equals.
I agree with Chet — the typical Israeli is so racist that they cannot reform from within. But they will capitulate with sufficient outside pressure. South African Boors anyone?
“concern troll” – WTF??
Incidentally, it’s Boer.
hey chet ” insightful and poignant article” aside, i think the your heart-rending vignettes as well as any others of a similar nature sentiment went over like a lead brick. for me anyway.
ton of bricks?
think not. jst goes to show that breaking the grip of the pro-Israel sentiment will within ‘normal’ circumstances be impossible; it will be Israel’s behavior, particularly following an invasion of Iran, which will turn the tide on popular foolishness.
wish annie’s confidence was possible, but the masses are indeed asses, entirely dumb. That is why the Zionist assumption prospers.
Annie -
“heart-rending vignettes…went over like a ton of bricks”
I’m sorry that my reaction to Mr. Weiss’ observations of Israeli cruelty wasn’t sufficiently moderate for your taste, but thank you for taking the time for your valuable input.
i didn’t say a ton of bricks, i said a (single/one) lead brick. it had nothing to do w/it being a moderate or not moderate btw, it had to do with it sounding insulting. you can dress up an insult but it’s still an insult.
thank you for taking the time for your valuable input.
sure chet. btw, you’ll note my first response to you (the one you chose to completely ignore) referenced no insult. it was only after your WTF?? i thought i would weigh in on your question. anyway, you’re welcome. glad i could be of service and that you found value in it.
Annie -
FYI, my references to “thoughtful and insightful” and “heart-rending” were genuine expressions on my behalf and not intended as some kind of insult as you seem to believe.
My “WTF” regarding the “concern troll” comment was in the sense of “what the f*ck is a concern troll” as I had never seen or heard that expression before.
“I am sure that Israeli society has many good points that I am missing from being in the community on the other side of the green line. But I know that I will be indifferent to them, and even must be indifferent, until Palestinians are free.”
Which proves that you haven’t lost your moral compass.
By the way, strange how in Europe, whenever the theme “gun crazies” comes up in the MSM, there are pictures of Americans with rifles. Why do they never point out that many Israelis also qualify for the character of “paranoid white people armed to the teeth”?
It’s not part of American Jewish PR vision to show it’s macho stupidity to the goyim.
Wow, incredible piece Phil!
Go Gilbert Carlson! Go Morgan Bach! Go Phil Weiss! We’re with you.
Phil has confessed that he wishes to see things through the eyes of the Palestinians and not through Israeli eyes.
But for a second an insertion about Israeli eyes: The second intifadeh killed the chance for peace vis a vis the middle of the road Israeli. That’s what decided things in the direction of hafrada. Things were not positive beforehand and a more nuanced view of the second intifadeh is available to those who wish to immerse themselves in the narrative of the other side, but omitting the Israeli narrative, omitting the second intifadeh, this is just proof that you are only talking to one side.
” The second intifadeh killed the chance for peace vis a vis the middle of the road Israeli. That’s what decided things in the direction of hafrada.”
I don’t buy that for a minute, because it assumes that the middle-of-the-road Israeli was ever actually seeking a just and reasonable peace. In fact, it is the Israel’s refusal to even consider accepting what it woudl take to reach a just and reasonable peace which is the primary problem here and which caused the Second Intifada. Put yourself in the Palestinians’ shoes and examine the Israelis proposals for Palestinian surrender and ask yourself whether any human with any self-respect would ever consider accepting such degradation.
Here is the problem- surrender lexicon. How is that Israel has to make a concessions while Palestinian option is only to ” surrender”? And don’t bring the military inequality here, since obviously no one is looking for the full war.
Because Israel has already taken everything Palestine could conceed.
“Here is the problem- surrender lexicon. ”
When a Native People is only granted their freedom from a brutal, inhuman, multigenerational occupation by a horde of foreign-born thugs and their offspring, on the condition that that Native People forego any semblance of autonomy, are not permitted to defend themselves from the degredations of the foreign hordes, are not permitted to control their own borders and airspace, that is a surrender.
And if the average Israeli was desirous of anything other than that, then they really need to work on that vaunted “democracy” they are always bragging about, because then it doesn’t work for shit. The only governments that it ever produces offers nothing but the same ol’ racism, surrender and degradation of the Palestinians whose land they’re all on. It’s like the Klan taking power, again and again, and the people electing them trying to blow smoke up the world’s ass by saying that what they REALLY want is to life in a liberal, multicultural, open society that welcomes people who are different than they. Forgive me if I think that they are all full of shit.
“…you are only talking to one side.”
He may call himself “wondering” Jew, but one thing he never wonders about; whose fault this all is. That question is settled!
It’s just incredible isn’t it, dimmy and wondering? I mean can you possibly imagine why any reasonably intelligent, well informed person could look at both sides of the P-I issues and not come down firmly in the Israeli camp? What on earth could account for that? You’ll have to tell me, I’m not sure I can think of anything that awful.
[...]
What a miserable kaleidoscope you’re using. Not only are the above two paragraphs a dismal excuse for a logical argument, the first paragraph doesn’t support the second, nor is it actually related to it.
But, from your banal argument, it seems that you expect two things to happen:
(1) That it is perfectly natural for an oppressed people to remain silent. You actually expect them to remain silent as you do not view them as deserving of fair treatment.
(2) The basic concept of cause and effect eludes you.
But, not only are you detached from reality what with that lazy historical revisionism, you pretend as though separation is something new, a defensive measure, a result of the second Intifadah*.
But that nonsense couldn’t be farther from the truth. The fact of the matter is that segregation and separation were always the corner stones of Zionism. Israel’s 20% minority has never actually enjoyed any form of integration. And after being loyal citizens for 6 long decades, they still face separation, both geographic and economic.
You don’t stop there with your garbage. You go on about the second Intifadah, oblivious and conveniently forgetful of Ehud Barak’s games at Camp David just a few months prior.
How many times do you suppose contributors and commenters here will have to remind you of the facts surrounding that famous “generous” offer before you actually stop peddling the same bullshit? And where do you come off with your red herrings and dimwitted arguments?
No. You’re simply upset because Phil dared humanize Palestinians, and you’re furious because he shared his own personal experiences that contradict the garbage narrative you have been eating since the day you were born.
In addition, inside the Green Line where Israeli forces shot and killed 13 Palestinian citizens of Israel, the Or Commission recommended the Israeli government reconsider its discriminatory and segregationist policies. To date, not only has the government ignored the commission’s findings, it has actually worsened its treatment of said minority.
*It’s Intifadah not Intifadeh. Learn to properly pronounce and spell names with which you pretend to be familiar before lecturing others from your balderdash podium.
For the record, the second Intifadah was inevitable. Israeli leaders KNEW that it was a matter of time before Palestinians caught onto Israel’s stalling tactics; at the time, 10 years of peace processing.
So in 2000 Ariel Sharon, the butcher of Beirut and a darling of the settlers — a settler himself — marched into the Dome of the Rock and proclaimed that the site was eternally Israeli and Zionist.
That wasn’t merely a provocation meant to further reinforce the reality that Israel has its boot on the Palestinians’ collective neck, it was an act loaded with symbolism, with contempt and authoritarianism for the person that carried it out was the racist and criminal Ariel Sharon.
“But they said their great responsibility in political life is to protect Israelis, and they are afraid that when the Israelis lift their boots from the neck of the Palestinians there will be a bloodbath. The Palestinians will turn on the Israelis.”
No they won’t. And the analogy with US history is inapt because our country is bigger and the stakes of fighting back after the intial changes had a lot of roaming room. Palestinians want their future. Why would they look back after the boot comes off their necks? Those kids are right.
The Israelis, with all their guns, will turn on the Palestinians. As they already are doing.
Geat piece, Phil. Hope you are composing some more. (I’m sure you took lots of pictures.)
Another great article, Mr. Weiss.
I’m glad you said if “every American” could see the Occupation, as well as every Jew. That’s important. What’s also important is Seham’s and Kate’s “day in the life” posts. They show, as best is possible in written, internet form, how routine, meticulous, needless, and pervasive the humiliation of Palestinians is. I really don’t think many people, even people that are genuinely interested in justice on this seemingly interminable conflict, get that. Live a day as an Occupied Palestinian and become enlightened, if not converted. Most people here can (or have) escape(d) the total subjugation of self that Palestinians have to go through every day.
In any other place, certainly in any other “western democracy,” if someone was throwing rocks at my kid, I’d find some way to immediately intercede (strenuously escort them back to their parents for a good “ass wuppin’ “) or get even, (legally or otherwise). Occupied Palestinians know that they don’t have either “luxury.” They know that if they act as any human would in those circumstances (confront), they would be jailed, beaten, or killed.
The ultimate sad paradox to me though, is the quote about the suspicion “if we remove the boot, there will be a bloodbath.” The paradox (or is that irony?) being, that if the boot is NOT removed there WILL be a bloodbath (no speculation about it). This is why God invented the word crisis. We as humans (not only Israelis) generally know what the right thing to do is. We just don’t do it, for whatever reason. Principally fear (real or imagined), in my experience.
Supporting that is the quote about “if we wanted to kill Israelis (Jews) we could.” As absolutely true a reality as it is dismissed in Israel and the US. I think your own experience there is evidence. Many other Israelis/Jews have had the same experience when going to the WB and/or Gaza. When does the epiphany come of that single, salient, fulcrum fact?
Keep doing what you do here. It’s, again, important. The conversation is changing.
I think it all depends on how much damage Zionism has done to the Palestinians. Will they be able to grow when it is all over? Or will the hurt and trauma be too deep? The New York Review had a very insightful piece about Vietnam recently. The war destroyed the society and the price they paid was simply too high .
The Palestinians are the only ones who can save the Israeli Jews from the hell they are moving towards. Israeli fear is manufactured by the Israeli machine. Those poor people get a very shoddy education. It’s not really their fault. The cosmopolitans will seep away slowly the worse things get. It is not looking good for Israel.
“I’m glad you said if “every American” could see the Occupation, as well as every Jew. That’s important.”
I’m not so sure. I’ve heard this before, but alas the Viet Minh didn’t play along. I wonder why the former Mossad chief is becoming so much more vocal about his view of the short-term event horizon? Is Phil’s generation 10 days too late?
It is possible to defeat a nuclear power on the battle field, it’s been done. At some point, this conversation might no longer matter? Can you imagine a world without the Israeli concerns?
Can you imagine a world without the American Superpower? It’s been done.
Hej!
Teach for Palestine, teach-for-palestine.org, shows the extraordinary challenges of providing basic education in a place where day-t0-day life is all about survival and the hope factor runs on fumes.
The students and teachers at teach-for-palestine.org are flowers in a desert.
“Tahrir could not have happened without western media”
I wish that we could get away from this very erroneous idea. Tahrir happened because of years of hard work and activism and arrests and torture of dedicated groups of people, whose frustrations coalesced and were triggered by factors that we can recognise that did not include western media. There is nothing causal in this about western media or social networking sites. Bouazizi in Tunisia did not use western media to light himself on fire in protest. Western media did not cause the groundswell of protest against Arab regimes and elites. Western media did not help when leaders shut off mobile phones and the internet. Just as in other instances of revolts in the Arab world in previous decades and centuries were revolts against regimes, rulers and their imperialist supporters, western media was not a part of it. Let us please stop patting ourselves on the back for having any role in this. Let’s not trivialize the Arab uprisings and try to get onto their bandwagon. Let’s recognise that these are homegrown uprisings and that the best thing that we can do for the revolutionaries of the Arab world is to get our own leaders to change course, the very same leaders who are supporting Arab tyrants in the counter-revolution.
This is a great and vivid article. I can really see right now the pretty Israeli woman barking at the Palestinian mother…When I read this, I felt like I was back in the West Bank, I can feel it and remember it so clearly when I read articles like this…I relate so much to the frustration at wishing I could somehow convey everything I saw to Americans, the right picture, the right interview, the right story, what will it take to show Americans what it’s like here!?
also, from above, Teach for Palestine, teach-for-palestine.org, received a donation of a few inexpensive digital cameras (TFP is run on miniscule funding and contributions) and some of the kids took pictures as a class project; these pictures show their daily lives and have been posted on the teach-for-palestine.org web site; hopefully more are on the way.
These are the people that the Israelis fear so much?
a reminder -
gaza and the warsaw ghetto
same place
different time
while the world stands by
genocide
live*
*slow motion in gaza
so on liberation day?
the punishment for those who committed genocide?
being tried and prosecuted at the international court of criminal justice
for those who could have helped stop the genocide but didn’t?
exile
for those who said they knew nothing about the genocide?
having to wear an “I pretended to know nothing G” patch on their shirt or blouse
for those who were part of the resistance against the occupation?
full palestinian citizenship
“I spent most of my time inside the occupation, observing the treatment of Palestinians. This is crushing to see. Every American Jew should get a little taste of what I saw. And every American. I’ve described some of my journeys inside the occupation here and here and here.”
Such a great post Phil. Have read accounts, seen pictures, heard many people speak about their experiences in the illegally occupied territories for decades. Your direct experience and account feed into the accumulative recordings of what may have witnessed and documented over what is it now six decades.
Wondered if you would write more about your time there. Thanks
thanks kathleen, of course this is essential. i will try and do so
Read once will read several more times. Lots there. Thanks again
I’ve never been able to get even one American to look at the daily life of Palestinians. It’s pretty depressing from here. For some reason most of them think Israel is identical to the USA and Iran is Nazi Germany, a direct threat to the USA. They have no facts about the ME at all, yet they are true believers. Anyway, the kill ratio in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was very disproportionate a la OP Cast Lead et al: link to warsaw-life.com
Citizen -
The only way I could get people’s attention was to refer them to the USS Liberty incident (which, incidentally, no one was aware of).
I tried that, chet; they just looked at me like I was insane. Nobody did a follow-up on the USS Liberty. Nobody responded when I sent them info on it.
I’ve never been able to get even one American to look at the daily life of Palestinians.
citizen, check out this link and watch the linked video..really cool. it’s canada tho.
link to salisbury.anglican.org
Alas, annie, it is Sherborne, Dorset, a county in England.
I don’t believe the TV series has ever been shown on the CBC.
Here’s the first para of the article:
The Bishop of Sherborne, Dr Graham Kings, chaired discussions on the ground-breaking TV series The Promise with filmmaker Peter Kosminsky. The story interweaves the history of Britain’s involvement in the founding of the State of Israel with current events, seen through the eyes of Erin, an 18-year-old girl retracing events in her grandfather’s diary.
Good linke, annie–I can’t get anybody to look at it.
what an excellent, very emotionally descriptive piece.
One of your best, Mr.Wiess, imo…
A very vivid portrait, Phil. Thanks for writing it.
Shlocky journalism on the view of the Israeli side of the divide. Like the “journalist” who arrives in NYC and describes the Port Authority and knows all of New York, no need to travel to Brooklyn Queens and the Bronx, he knows it all.
But underneath the shlock- a valid question. Jews and weapons. Jews and an army. How essential is a Jewish army to the current generation of Jews living in an Arab war zone. (I’m sure I’ll get flack for that. Please note I mean an Arab neighborhood turned into a war zone by geostrategic causes and the existence of a Zionist movement.) The bar mitzvah photos (gleaned in a tourist spot, the lobby of a hotel and Jaffa Gate is a tourist spot as well) are the American Zionist grotesque clowning on a very serious topic. The nonZionists and anti Zionists wish to disarm the state of Israel (I simplify) and I can tell you that such a move will not go down easy and the Shoah is one cause as are hundreds of years in Europe and basic powerlessness in other parts of the world and the turmoil of the 20th century and the “iron wall” necessary (?) in such a project.
The photo of the Bundists in the forest of eastern Europe holding three or four pistols and the others holding knives, familiar with that photo? Chaim Potok wrote a book about that photo.
“Woke myself this morning
got myself a gun…”
I suppose by citing this song I am comparing Israel to gangsters. But the song has been going through my head, so I add it to the mix.
This is not a simple subject.
It’s certainly not as simple as “living in an Arab war zone.”
You left Israel, didn’t you?
Chaos- I have very close relatives there, so I am concerned and even if I am not willing to live there, that does not mean that I don’t care about the lives of friends, old friends, distant relatives and very close relatives. The issue of Jews and weapons is an important one (interesting one) even if one chooses not to live in Israel.
Thank you for an informative, candid, description of your trip.
For all, with every objective on the planet (victory for my side, democracy, spiritual transformation, messianism – in positive and negative forms), the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has been a frustrating crucible.
That you see no change, is the same as every close participant since the issues came to be prevalent, and even before (with a different set of fundamental issues – before there was an Israeli state, or any modern intention/need of states in the region).
I have two observations of your comments. Thank you for acknoweldging that the range of possibilities and even what you perceive is constructed at least partially by your place in time, the period and arc of your specific life, that we share.
Living at a place and time is alternately one’s way of expressing the values that extend beyond a singular context in a singular context. It is the relationship of a spiritual life lived in this material world (to coin a cliche that has significant and permanent meaning beyond the irritation of a cliche).
The positive form of that, is to *love* the gift to the world of having lived in one place at one time, within one very specific, unique (but shared) personal context.
I spent the week in London at a funeral for my holocaust surviving mother in law. At our shiva, we met a dozen Hungarian holocaust survivors, a few of them hasidic, with beautiful compassionate eyes formed by 8 decades of distinct smile lines on their faces. The respect of my hasidic son for these elders (even from different sects) is sincere, and because of that, is allowed to be candid, intimate. I am more forced, appreciative, but from a museum-like distance.
What is the reality of the Jewish life here? It is NOT the irritations of different political views, stimulated by different programmed (and sincere) evoking stimuli.
In the states, I have very limited experience with the holocaust. This week, I heard though a dozen times from my mother-in-law’s brother, other cousins, friends of family, neighbors (strangers to me and my wife), survivors mostly of the end of the war Hungarian death marches from slave camps to the death camps.
It is not forgettable and shouldn’t be.
They survived. That they survived to tell their story IS important in the world. That they survived to live as fully as life may offer in this world IS important in this world.
How did they maintain their hope to survive? By walking despondently on the marches towards their certain death? Yes. By appealing to the knowledge that this idiocy cannot go on forever? Yes. By appealing to the generation to generation teachings of how to live? Yes. By remembering that this life is inevitably short and obscuring and that there is a “life” beyond? Yes. By remembering that its taken billions of years to evolve a species and cultures that can embody and evoke the GOOD in this world? Yes.
All of those. All of those as lessons to Zionist Jews, to civilist Zionist Jews, to anti-Zionist Jews, to sympathetic non-Jews, to wierdly ideological/religious recently sympathetic non-Jews, to sympathetic Arab neighbors, to self-affirming Arab neighbors, to hating Arab neighbors. Yes.
The second observation is that I strongly urge you to develop a much more independent view of the region and time. They only way that I can see doing that is in personal spiritual discipline that gets expressed in the same old requirement when dealing with anyone of not complying with conclusions, but incorporating concerns.
The spiritual discipline is to literally dive deep, and to literally construct the pscyhological features in one’s life and community that support the lessons of diving deep (“putting a fence around Torah”, Torah partially defined as the way of seeing and living that brings spirituality into the material world).
The political constructs of anyone’s partisan goals (even for democracy) are temporary, changing, driven by agenda more than by spirituality, clarity and imagination.
Your post confirms to me that the way to change the world for the better is by patiently and honestly conveying the mutual humanity of all concerned, and NOT by the pursuit of a “which side are you on?” form of political agenda.
Just for edification. A couple of the hasids that attended my mother-in-law’s shiva were from sects that either totally ignore or reject Zionism.
Her struggle to emigrate from Hungary to Israel in 1949 was not disrespected, an experience that was shared by many families from all sects.
That you see no change, is the same as every close participant since the issues came to be prevalent, and even before (with a different set of fundamental issues – before there was an Israeli state, or any modern intention/need of states in the region).
Richard, something is missing in the sentence above, no? Maybe a little editing will help? Is the same as every close participant saw? That can’t be.
>> RW: The second observation is that I strongly urge you to develop a much more independent view of the region and time. They [sic] only way that I can see doing that is in personal spiritual discipline … of not complying with conclusions, but incorporating concerns.
Although his “stream of consciousness” prose is as baffling as ever, RW appears to be urging Phil – by means of “personal spiritual discipline” – to cast aside his sense of humanity, morality and justice and to embrace instead his (RW’s) “humanist” mantra:
>> I cannot consistently say that “ethnic cleansing is never necessary”.
>> If I was an adult in 1948, I probably would have supported whatever it took to create the state of Israel, and held my nose at actions that I could not possibly do myself.
****Richard Witty supporting the Nakba and the tactics that facilitated it, both directly and indirectly:
LINK: link to mondoweiss.net
****Richard Witty, trivializing the Nakba as ‘academic’, while simultaneously comparing the removal of ILLEGAL JEWISH COLONIES to the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from their historic homeland by Jewish terrorists during the 1948 war (during WAR):
LINK: link to mondoweiss.net
****Richard Witty saying intentional murder is “never justified”:
LINK: link to mondoweiss.net
****Conclusion:
Richard Witty – like every single other Zionist on MW – is a racist, bigot and ethno-religious nationalist fanatic.
Imagine a raft floating down a river with some people on it. Suddenly they see a bunch of heads bobbing in the open water; these heads head toward them. At first some people are allowed to crawl onboard, but soon the raft is being divided as to who can sit where; the original rafters look at each other as they get pressed toward the edges of the raft. What to do? The new sailors keep bringing onboard more and more heads. The raft is only so big, the waters are dangerous, with no shore in sight. Where would you place Dick Witty in this scenario? Where would you place yourself? Where would Dick Witty place you? Well, he wouldn’t place you anywhere, but he would consent to putting you somewhere, so long as he’s not physically involved…
Phil’s description was of his frustration to be able to make change, even with his best summary reporting and candidly conversing with young leaders hopefully bringing new approaches, even if just from a different set of formulative experiences.
I’m saying that in contrast to the frustration of urgency, the effort that will actually make change is patient humanization of the other, repeated and clear descriptions of the humanity of the other (including the humanity of those that are in the way, orthodox Jews and Muslims, settlers, poor, refugees, former refugees).
The political solutions will vary, but right now they include the set of those that are willing to deny the other. Anti-Zionists deny the holocaust (the honest significance of it in Jewish consciousness), and thereby deny the humanity, the experience of the survivors and family of survivors. Some Palestinian advocates, pan-Arab and pan-Islamic expansionists deny the life of Israelis.
Zionist expansionists and willing pressuring occupation advocates deny the nakba, and the experience of refugees and descendents and those living under occupation.
Its always ideology in some form that fosters that denial of the other.
The choice of how to orient politically, after accepting the presence and experience of the other, is a very different process. Mutually respectful will find a way to allow and help each other become healthy.
Richard Witty, does not your division of the world between Jews and Gentiles create the other? What is the point of such a language framework in the first place? Assuming we are all created in the image of God, are we not all humans as first priority? And within the species, are we not all unique individuals? What is the point of role-playing? Games?
>> Anti-Zionists deny the holocaust (the honest significance of it in Jewish consciousness), and thereby deny the humanity, the experience of the survivors and family of survivors.
This latest attempt to justify Zionist terrorism, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the creation of a religion-supremacist “Jewish state” smack of desperation. I guess RW isn’t above engaging a bit of “academic speculation” when it suits his purposes.
Witty is a proponent of the insane idea that the Shoa guarantees that the non-Jewish world will always be waiting to spring the next progrom. He should go back in history and see how the pogroms were more peasant uprising than anti-Jew per se. But he won’t. Jewish history makes its own bed at least as much as anyone else ever made it.
Yeah, let’s not deny the honest significance of the holocaust in Witty’s consciousness–Atzmon call’s it Pre-TSD. He’s mentally disturbed by his own imagination. Hence, the Palestinians will just have to truck on daily as they are shown to do here on MW’s regular updates, while Witty reclines in his safe harbor in Goyland.
I will tell you a story.
A few years back, a Japanese professor came to Israel for a convention. It was his first time here so he wanted to be prepared.
When he arrived I was lucky enough to pair up with the guy who picked him up at the airport.
When we did, we saw his face was white, as if he’d seen a ghost.
He then explained that he prepared himself for a first time visit to “the holy land” by reading the bible. And that is wjat he expected to find, so he was in shock for a few days.
And why did I tell this story?
Because your blog reminds me of the bible in this story. People who have never been to Israel or have just started to get interested in the conflict read something like “There is such a worship of guns in Israel” and other sentences you wrote, and see Israelis in a very VERY distorted way.
there is no worship of guns, not even close. You took your experiance with several AMERICAN crazy settlers, and made them the majority of Israelis.
The fact that you are a jew does not make you an expert on Israelis.
like you wrote – you have met only one side, the bad side, of Israelis (and I guess much more American jewish crazy settlers, which are not “normal Israelis”).
I invite you to meet with normal Israelis. Meet with me. You have my email, so please – next time you’re in Israel, meet with me. See how “normal israelis” view the situation.
You are new to this blog and presume to know how Phil thinks.
Phil did a series of articles already where Israeli Zionists authored a bunch of blog-posts. They gave us their views from perspectives as Israeli Zionists.
We have Israelis who regularly comment here as well like Shmuel. Danaa too. Avi too. We have had Israelis author blog posts.
I will ask you a question, nimbod. But first, welcome to mondoweiss.
From what you say in your post, I’m assuming that you are a university prof in Israel. So my question is this:
What do you make of the statistics in Ami Kaufman’s Dec. 5, 2011 article, “Israel’s bizarre decision to give up on education – and its future.”
Do you consider the situation described in this article ‘normal’?
link to 972mag.com