Last week Miko Peled, the Israeli author of The General’s Son, appeared with his publisher Helena Cobban in Manhattan and spoke for 40 minutes. You can watch his speech in a Manhattan apartment above. (He was hosted by Donna Nevel and Dorothy Zellner of Jews Say No and Constancia Romilly of the Friends of the Jenin Freedom Theater). The speech is eloquent. The bit of laughter a minute or two in is when Peled discovers that a leaky pen has ruined his shirt. Other than that the talk is very serious.
As the speech is long, I want to paraphrase the salient points (I apologize that these are not direct quotes, but readers who require them can easily produce them from my video):
This is not an evenhanded presentation. Anyone who tells you they’re evenhanded is not being truthful. The situation is not even. When people say things should be worked out like between kids in a schoolyard, they are not telling you that one of the kids is a bully and he is armed.
Coming from a legendary Israeli family, notable for his father Matti Peled, a leading general of the ’67 war who had served as an officer in the ’48 war, Miko Peled never spoke on equal terms with Palestinians till 2000 in San Diego. Then he began learning their stories and it was painful to him. He heard about the Nakba from people who had experienced it and he trusted. He recognized that the Law of Return for Jews claiming a 2000 year old connection was a hypocritical double standard when people living in Palestine 60 years ago can’t come back to their homes.
People say, The Palestinians should get over it. But Jews are taught to nurse the grievances of thousands of years ago in Egypt at the Passover service, and to teach their children not to forget. Who are we to tell Palestinians to forget their expulsion inside their own lifetimes?
Learning about the Nakba was excruciating. So much of what he had learned as a child was lies. Though his mother said that she had been offered an Arab house, as the family of an officer, in 1948, and turned it down, staying in a small apartment. And she had seen Jews looting Arab homes in the wake of the Nakba and felt great shame. Jews don’t do these things. There are many things we were taught that Jews don’t do. And we were wrong.
Peled’s niece Smadar was killed by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem in 1997. She was 13. Because the family was famous for seeking peace with Palestinians, journalists crowded Miko’s sister Nurit Peled-Elhanan’s house to hear her response. She said, No mother should experience what I am experiencing. No mother, Palestinian or Jewish. And what have we done to Palestinians to so blight the hopes of their children that two young men would be willing to kill themselves and in so doing kill my daughter? The brutal occupation has done this. The enemy is not the Palestinians. It is the extremists in our own political life. Since then Nurit Peled-Elhanan has done a study of the racism taught to Israelis in schools, to enable the occupation.
People speak of Jewish military achievements but these are greatly exaggerated. How was it possible for a small Jewish community to rout 800,000 Palestinians and then five armies in 1947-1948, erasing 500 villages? Well the Jews had been preparing for years and forming well-trained and indoctrinated militias. Right after Partition they began ethnic cleansing.
In 1967 the Arab armies were not prepared for war. Peled learned this in army archives: His own father said as much in counsels of the Israeli army. The Egyptians were a year and a half away from being ready for a war. And so the generals urged a strike in June 1967. The generals also extended the war, in defiance of the political leaders, for two days. Only because this coup was a success, and seized the Golan, were they not reprimanded. The political leaders were more conservative. They were born in Europe and had memories of Jewish helplessness. The generals were all born in Palestine. It was not a miracle that 15,000 Arabs were killed in six days and Israeli trebled its territory. It was military preparedness.
The occupation of Palestine post 67 is merely a continuation of the occupation of Palestine in 48. The Nakba has never ended. The same designs that Ben Gurion had Avigdor Lieberman has: to Judaize the land of Israel. Not the state of Israel, but the land. The treatment of Palestinians inside Israel is often worse than the treatment of Palestinians inside Palestine. They are denied electricity and water, because they are supposedly too remote; while neighboring Jewish communities get the services.
Israeli leaders began to talk the two state solution only when they knew it was impossible to effect. The conversation was a charade. The two state solution is an absurd proposition now, Partition is impossible. There is one regime between river and sea and the challenge is its “transformation” from racism and apartheid to democracy. This is a transformation that Americans can help to produce, the 50 people in Peled’s audience.
Both sides are oppressed by fanatical wings. The only way to overcome the fanaticism is political: for there to be a democracy in which the reasonable middles of both sides find one another and marginalize the fanatics.
As it is, fanatics rule in Israel. And the army is the largest most well-equipped terrorist organization in the world. Its only purpose is to penalize Palestinians, from arresting them in the middle of the night to shooting them. The Palestinians fire rockets. Of course. Any people would resort to violent resistance if they were under siege unending, as Gazans are, and denied water and freedom of movement.
“Who are we to tell the Palestinians not to forget their expulsion inside their own lifetimes?”
I think you want to lose that “not”.
Miko Peled is related to Nurit Peled Elhanan. Great generous people, humanistic Jews who are an example to those mired in ethnic hatred. Long term they will be vindicated.
He is in fact her brother.
Former Israeli soldier and current peace advocate Elik Elhanan- is he related as well ?
link to youtube.com
Yes Elik is Nurit’s son.
link to counterpunch.org
I cannot say enough about Miko and his power as a speaker. This man is simply magnificent.
The amazing thing about Miko, is that as a fierce critic of Israel, he was able to inspire empathy in me for Israel and Israelis. When he speaks about his sister and his niece, it always beings tears to my eyes.
I am ashamed to admit that when I heard of the violence perpetrated by Israel on Gaza or Lebanon, I secretly wished for Israelis to feel the pain they were inflicting on others. Every time I catch myself doing that, I think of Miko’s family and what it would mean for them to be in the firing line, and I am brought back to sanity.
“I secretly wished for Israelis to feel the pain they were inflicting on others.”
Very understandable.
I just wish they could understand what they are doing to Gaza. Take away the blinkers of ideology and see the ordinary people in the crosshairs. Wonder how they would feel if it was their children. See the shared humanity.
I suppose the whole education system is built around ensuring as many people as possible do not make that connection.
Shingo,
The Peleds are on the margins of Israeli society. In fact, people like them are considered traitors in Israel. The vast majority of Israelis support Zionism’s myth of origin and support Israel’s continued atrocities. Just 3 years ago, more than 90% of Israelis were in favor of the Gaza onslaught. And the polling was conducted by several Israeli newspapers and research centers, well into the 22-day offensive in January 2009.
The vast majority of Israelis support Zionism’s myth of origin
but do they actually believe it too? they must know what happened by now.
C’mon Annie. Are you pulling my leg? You know these things.
Anyway, here’s a reminder. In general, the myth is just that. Many Israelis, for example, still believe that Arab armies descended on Israel in 1948 and that the Nakbah was an inevitable result of that so-called war.
link to youtube.com
Surely, you also know professor Nurit Peled’s recent book: Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education
avi, what about the hasbrats here? don’t you think it’s likely many of them know damn well they are pushing lies? supporting a myth is a lot different than covering up the truth and i think there’s a heavy dose of that goin’ round.
don’t you think there’s a decent chance a large percentage (you used the term ‘vast majority’) of them know the truth of what came down (the intentional ethnic cleansing) and just believe it was ‘worth it’.
Sure, there is also a great deal of rationalization going on. One can rationalize actions and deeds to the point where he or she start believing them as truth.
One of the ways in which Israelis who ARE familiar with the truth about the Nakbah rationalize it as a fight for survival. You see the same theme throughout Israel’s 60 some years of existence. Israeli schools, media and public figures repeatedly claim that Israel’s very existence is under threat, whether that threat is a bottle rocket or a child throwing a stone at a military Jeep.
So the distinction becomes not so much a matter of knowing the facts, but a matter of analyzing those facts and organizing them.
annie…
If you read most of the liberal zionist –then yes, they say they believe it was worth it, much as they ‘regret’ it had to be done or was done the way it was –so they do “know”.
I think a lot of the hasbara brats on threads are just ‘cult-washed’, they don’t read anything but what the cult managers put out and feed them. All their info sources are Jewish zionist sources. Even if you give them evidence and proof of something they will claim the document or reporting or whatever is cited was done by a anti semite so not true or that reports of whatever event were slanted because the world is naturally against Jews and etc..
I’ve never seen a zio bot when presented with something that is undisputed by the majority non Jewish non zionist world and historians ever say…’well I didn’t know that, maybe I was told something wrong”.
i wonder how many of them are just faking it, they know and they just keep pushing the narrative. so much pr and never fixing the problem, just glossing over heaping heap after heap of lies as if they can somehow turn the clock back before the truth became revealed to anyone with eyes and ears. for the kids i can understand not being exposed to reality, being conditioned not to look. but for the adults that kind of willful ignorance is hard to keep up. then it just turns into supporting lies, unless one is a fanatic or something.
I’d say for Hebrew speakers it must be really weird shit to go abroad and realise that virtually nobody with a reading age more than 14 buys the carefully parsed narrative that passes for common sense in Israel .
I think Ziobot and Ziocaine belong on a tshirt together
What I think is somehow justifiable for Europeans (and I stress “somehow”), certainly it’s not for the inhabitants, whoever, of Palestine (apart children below 9 yrs, and in any case, it’s not their fault). The crimes committed since, let’s say, 1948 on, can’t but leave a heavy burden of evidence, I guess impossible to erase. So, only bad faith can perpetuate the enormous lies, and specular ignorance, that are still spread all around the world. The fiction about the byproducts of war… well, it’s a fiction (and I’m sure B. Morris knows it very well).
First of all Annie
i (and i will speak for myself so interpret it as you will)
don’t necessarily agree with you on all the facts (for that we will have to go into the details of the facts)
but most importantly i don’t agree with your interpretation of the facts or with your moral conclusions.
They don’t seem to realize it.
I actually like a good, vociferous argument with an informed opponent. For example, I still have pleasant memories of the joust I conducted with an Italian Communist a decade or so back.
I just don’t get that with Israel supporters. It’s just verbal abuse and mindless repetition of exposed mythology, debunked arguments, and simple, point-blank lies. It’s fighting the good fight, but it’s dull. They’re frigging mindless. It’s like talking to a barking dog.
People believe what they prefer to believe about something. They’re extremely good at this.
If it creates a more orderly, harmonious, comprehensible universe for someone if he believes that Israel is good and right and filled with people ‘just like us’ who are incomprehensibly under attack, that’s what he will believe.
“Every time I catch myself doing that, I think of Miko’s family and what it would mean for them to be in the firing line”
Oh, don’t worry. Once it’s all said and done, a simple administrative process will separate the innocent Israeli from the culpable, and no-one need suffer unecessarily.
Kinda like Obama’s kill list where everyone they kill is declared ‘guilty by proximity’ and magically the drones never kill any civilians.
The Start-Up Nation must be kicking themselves they never thought of that one…
So I take it it’ll go like usual, and the innocent will suffer while the guilty get off scot-free?
You can bet all those noxious American West Bank settlers are going to be long gone when the roof starts falling in, for starters.
I met Miko Peled at the ADC conference in Washington after he spoke in NY, very interesting character. I also read his book. The penultimate chapter is about Peled’s meeting with a former Fatah commander, Abu Ali Shahin, whose family was massacred by the IDF in 67. General Peled investigated, wrote a report which was dismissed; it had a major impact on his views.
The father of Abu Shahin was killed in battle in 1948, when he was 9. General Peled fought with great distinction as a junior officer in 1948, and he and his wife were offered a spacious home in Katamon, the west Jerusalem district of well to do Palestinian families who had fled (e.g. Edward Said’s). They refused, especially his mother, who would not occupy the home of a dispossessed family. The family suffered some privation as a result, and it wasn’t until Peled advanced in the ranks that they enjoyed middle class comfort.
In 1967, when the Israelis massacred Abu Shahin’s whole family, and others, over 30 non-combatants, they were living in Rafah refugee camp. He was a senior Fatah figure moving around in Israel and the territories, and was eventually captured.
He weighed 75 kilos then, and after 5 months of torture, during which he didn’t
talk, was down to 39. He was then brought to Tel Aviv, where Rabin, Bar-Lev and a third general, interviewed him. They asked him why he hadn’t talked. He asked them, when the Palestinians liberate Tel Aviv, and capture you, will you talk? Tough words to the 3 most senior Israeli generals, coming off 5 months of torture.
He later told the story of the massacre to an interrogator who was reporting to General Peled, who was commander in Gaza at the time. Peled knew Arabic, and went to Rafah camp personally and interviewed the survivors and witnesses of that day, and visited the massacre site. He wrote a report and sent it to Rabin, the
chief of staff, who of course did nothing.
Miko Peled asked his mother about it, and she recalled it immediately, said the general couldn’t sleep for weeks. In addition to the massacre report he wrote a Gaza Report at the end of his tenure, which was famous to the IDF archvists, warning of the inhumanity of the occupation and of the degeneration of the IDF.
Abu Shahin was the commander of the prisoners in Israeli prisons for 2 decades. He looked so weak when the torturers turned him over to the military prison that the warden refused to accept him. The Israelis threw him in with common Israeli criminals, including one notorious gangster and serial killer, whom they expected would murder him or at least make him miserable, but they conspired with him against the jailers. With their help he organized smuggling of notes and texts in tiny handwriting throughout the prison system up and down Israel, instructing and educating the Palestinian prisoners, who democratically wrote and approved a constitution, among other accomplishments.
Abu Shahin insisted he never attacked civilians, and that was also the IDF’s record of him, he fought “only the khaki”, the army. He learned of General Peled’s investigation of the massacre in Rafah camp. He learned Hebrew in jail, and knew of the public change in General Peled’s views. The Palestinians in Israel called Peled Abu Salaam. Abu Shahin realized that the massacre and investigation had been a major influence on Peled. After Abu Shahin’s heroic resistance and suffering, he recognized on the other side someone who understood him, with whom he could have lived in peace. Upon his release Abu Shahin visited Peled’s grave 9 or 10 times, sometimes leaving flowers, until his Israeli permit was revoked. Miko Peled’s Palestinian friends introduced him to Abu Shahin, and he spent an extraordinary day hearing the story.
All that said, I am a little jaded about an apartment full of American Jews swooning over their latest Israeli hero, in a line going back to Yesh Gvul after Lebanon in 1982, and earlier. American Jews need to become ex-”diaspora Jews” and instead liberal citizens, as Peled has become an ex-Zionist. Miko’s story is an inspiration, but it is not a substitute for Spinoza, Marx, Luxemburg, Arendt, Berger, Deutscher, Rodinson, Shahak, et al. Rather Miko and his family have joined them, in their remarkable way.
@CitizenC
What an excellent post!
Very interesting Citizen.
What stands out for for me is Miko is his father’s son…that he got his moral values from his father and family.
I don’t think most Israelis instill any human values in their children wrt others….seems all others are enemies, less than human in the general Israeli view.
How a society like that can be turned around peacefully I don’t see.
I think they need some shock to shake up their thinking –but still there’s no way to know if it would ‘convert’ their thinking so to speak, or drive them further into their hostile outlooks.
Thank you Cloak and American. More on these lines at
link to questionofpalestine.net
More to come.
General Peled was a hawk in 1967, part of the military clique who pressured the civilians into war, lest they lose a brilliant military opportunity. Miko discusses his role role at a crucial cabinet meeting. I don’t recall anything on his views on Suez in 1956, which was pure Israeli self-aggrandizement, and the book does not have an index. But he soon realized that the smashing victory and resulting occupation were a political and social catastrophe.
“…But he soon realized that the smashing victory and resulting occupation were a political and social catastrophe…”
That’s a concept a lot of Israel supporters (since they are power-worshippers with small brains) still can’t wrap their heads around. That your military prowess can be useless.
I’m not particularly anti-militarist. A military is a useful tool, and so, indeed, is war. However, it’s only a tool — and it only accomplishes anything if it is employed as part of a realistic and well-thought out plan. Ala Bismarck. He made excellent use of the Prussian military in three well-thought out and carefully timed wars. They got him exactly what he wanted: a unified Germany that was Prussian dominated and conservative dominated. Then he stopped waging wars. They weren’t going to gain him anything further.
Israel just mounts essentially useless and even counter-productive strafexpeditzione (punishment expeditions) against whoever happens to be nearest and most frustrating — usually at those moments when internal political and social pressures demand a war. For from war being a tool to some realistic end, it’s simply a mode of self-expression, an irrational lashing out. Just as it’s highly unlikely I’ll do anything to advance the deck I’m building if I just start flailing it with a hammer, Israel usually doesn’t get anywhere with her wars. All she does with them is inflame the hatred of her neighbors and gain territory whose possession makes a Jewish-dominated state an increasingly improbable long-term prospect.
Israel hasn’t fought a genuinely successful war since 1948-49 — for the excellent reason that none of the wars she has made any sense as part of a realistic strategy. Every military operation is a complete success in tactical terms — and a further setback in terms of reality. She’s almost literally winning herself to death. It’s getting worse, too: 1967 was only a failure in retrospect. 1982 pretty quickly went south. Lebanon 2002 and ‘Cast Lead’ were simple, unqualified disasters. If it wasn’t for the victims and the consequences for us, I’d literally be licking my chops over what will ensue if Israel bombs Iran. Mind, I’m reasonably confident that she can take out whatever targets she chooses. Military failure as well would just be a bonus.
Terrific post and the last lines almost made me jump up and cheer behind my computer.
If the attack on the USS Liberty was for the purpose of concealing Israeli preparations for the attack on Syria, as is often claimed, that would seem to imply that the attack on the Liberty was done without the knowledge or consent of Israel’s political leaders.
I would assume that even if consent was given, it was given in the form of ambiguous exchange.
‘We may need to prepare the Americans for an invasion of Egypt.’ (it was Egypt that was the target of the ‘Black Op,’ not Syria).
‘Do what you have to do.’
‘Do you impose any limits?’
‘No.’
It often works that way. Any successful politician has long since learned not to leave his fingerprints on the gun.
Furthermore, the Liberty attack was a move with potentially disastrous consequences for Israel (which were only just averted).
Either (a) this was coordinated with the US at an extremely high level (which I personally find a tad unlikely if not completely out of the question). That takes us back to senior political involvement.
or (b) it was a more or less independent initiative of the Israelis. Surely any general who came up with such a risky scheme would at least check with his masters in general terms before putting it into effect. Else we have something on the lines of General Jack D. Ripper in ‘Doctor Strangelove.
…which last is admittedly possible. But if that’s the military culture Israel has, it’s really worrisome that they’ve got nuclear weapons.
However, whatever the true story, I doubt you’re going to find clear proof of high-level involvement — even on the military side. It’s not just politicians who have learnt to be careful long before they reach high rank. No one would want to be tagged with this if it went wrong. Probably there was some colonel or something whose stomach was in knots when it turned out the Liberty was afloat and chock-full of live witnesses — but I’m sure his seniors were all in plausible deniability land.
Also verryyy interesting. Jerome Salter who I have kicked around a bit for his anti semite harping has finally written something I agree with to add to what Peled is doing :
“Many are commending Beinart and Krugman for their “bravery” for their forthright–yet, not strong enough–criticism of Israel. I want to take (mild) issue with that, and especially with MJ Rosenberg, who today wrote: “If he speaks out on Israel/Palestine, the lobby will try to shut him down….After all, if they can shut Paul Krugman up, who exactly will be allowed to speak?”
A bit over the top, dear MJ? “They?” “shut Krugman up?” Who will be “allowed” to speak?
The Israel lobby isn’t that powerful, indeed not by a long, long shot. Indeed, by suggesting that the lobby has the power to shut up the critics, we are in danger of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. It doesn’t take much bravery to take on the lobby; rather, a fear of doing so, when the consequences are so trivial, might be labeled as timidity.
I’ve also been commended for my “courage” for some of the things I’ve written. It’s always pleasant to be complimented, of course, but the term should be reserved for the impossibly courageous journalists and dissidents who criticize the Russian, Chinese, and other brutal and truly powerful governments.
They don’t have to worry about being chastized by ignoramuses; the risks they run and all too often the price they pay is many orders of magnitude greater. Just imagine: these people live with the knowledge that their attacks on the powerful may and often do end up with the loss of their livelihood, terrible beatings, imprisonment, or their murder. ”
Yet they continue: now that’s bravery. I couldn’t begin to do it–but bring on the Israel lobby, any day.”
To which I say..Amen…bring on the Israel firsters and the lobby.
Even in the US consequences can be far from trivial for many people. Dissidents are persecuted in the US too. True, the crucial sanction is loss of livelihood. Things don’t usually go further than that. But that by itself is quite enough to intimidate most people.
When I was on the faculty at Brown University, local Zionists set up a working group to get me fired. It was supposed to be secret, but sympathizers kept me informed. I was not fired, but several colleagues (me too) were frightened into shutting up by the campaign against me. When Norman Finkelstein was fired, a colleague of his was also fired merely for speaking up in his defense. Businesspeople may fear that a smear campaign will destroy their business. You can’t blame people for this. They have families. Some people also fear being excluded from their social milieu, which I think is less defensible. As a result there are numerous “closet anti-Zionists.”
@ Stephen
What were their grounds for trying to have you fired? For being an anti zionist or did they slur you as a anti semite?
The thing to do with people like this is sue the shit out of them…and out the institution they are trying to force to fire you.
Why more people don’t do this I don’t know….the ADL has lost some big lawsuits and had to pay serious money when counter sued by poeple they tired to smear.
On the grounds that my views were “extremist.” This is such an arbitrary label that it cannot be proved or disproved.
I agree that suing is an appropriate response to false accusations of anti-Semitism.
Parenthetically, it’s not like the Israelis had any reason to be startled by their success in the Six Day War.
The CIA had calculated that they would win in five days. Something like the Liberty could have been choreographed well in advance.
I think 1967 was a risk that the Israelis miscalculated whose impact will be seen over the next 2 decades . Leaving aside 1948, by 1966 Israel had the potential to develop into a decent society.
A fraction of the 100bn USD frittered away on YESHA could have sorted out the reparations for 1948 and Israel could have become part of the region.
Another fraction could have gone to bringing the Ultra Orthodox out of the Middle Ages.
But the zealots won. And they risked it all on 1967. And subsequently all the money went to the settlers.
they deserve what is coming.
Miko and his family are just tremendous. His sister, Nurit, finally released her book about the Israeli educational system, in English.
I ordered the book as soon as I heard it was being translated, which was at least a year ago. It only just arrived in the mail a week or two ago after many delays and rescheduled deliveries. I wonder why the publisher had such a difficult time!
In any case, I can’t wait to read the book finally. Nurit and Miko are both amazing people.
Miko Peled represents that segment of humanity which always sides with the oppressed, never with the oppressor, even (better, especially) when the oppressor(s)happens to be a coreligionist, conationalist or co-anything else. His message is that of someone who has undergone the type of transformative experiences that tear down walls of separation between and among peoples. Israel’s apologists know this too, and intent as they are at keeping the I/P discussion within the tribe, undoubtedly they’re besides themselves now for fear Peled’s message will reach & “infect” the general public, possibly changing, thereby, the very nature of what’s being discussed. What Israel’s supporters haven’t grasped yet (perhaps they have but refuse to admit) is that Peled’s just one among many former apologists for Israel who are speaking out. It’s as if the cork’s come out of the bottle and no way can it be replaced. On the horizon now – delegitimization of apartheid Israel + justice for Palestine.
I read Miko Peled’s exciting book in a day and a half. The most emotionally powerful part of the story was on p.159 when it says: