“My Family in Israel” is a piece in Forbes by Richard Behar, an investigative journalist, about his relatives living in Israel suffering from rocket attacks. The piece fully absorbs the Israeli national-security psychosis. “This behavior does not suit human beings,” a relative says, of Palestinians. Another justifies indifference to Palestinian rights by saying that they just want an Islamic fundamentalist state. (This is the same mindset that I encountered in interviews on the street in Jerusalem with Israelis who have forgotten about the two-state solution.)
The most interesting excerpt in Behar’s piece are the paragraphs below. (Thanks to Alex Kane.) They show how a commitment to Jewish history as Behar interprets it trumps his professional ethics. His greatest goal is to guarantee Jewish safety, and in that spirit he’s taken on the fears of the Israeli Jewish community, as his own concern:
These hits and near-hits inspired me to write this column, although the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is something that I’ve stayed away from in my 30 years as an investigative journalist for major media outlets. (My only exception: This expose last year on the deplorable interview of the just-released Shalit by Egyptian state TV.)
When I speak to investigative journalism classes, I advise students not to register with any political party, nor sign petitions for even saving the ice caps. They’re not needed for that. And yet, born a Jew, I’ve come to recognize that my first priority as an investigative reporter has to be to live safely – something 4,000 years of my ancestors’ history had rarely permitted them to do (anywhere in the world).
I’m not going to write a thesis about who started the conflict, or who is right or wrong. I do have strong pro-Zionist views that have evolved over many years and visits – as well as 60+ books on the topic, penned from all sides.
First I would read “two millenia”, then “three thousand years” — and now it’s four everywhere I look. (Prosnor at the UN, etc.)
My understanding is that not even the early Zionist writers would make this claim with a straight face because it required a literalist reading of the Old Testament as “history” in the modern sense.
Is there some hasbara scoreboard that rolls up the count by a thousand every few months? Will the discovery of the distinct DNA of some Nile slave take us to five thousand, or is four the official limit?
RE: “‘This behavior does not suit human beings’, a relative [of Behar’s in Israel] says, of Palestinians.” ~ Weiss
MY COMMENT: In (un)reality, many Israelis do not consider the men, women and children in Gaza to be human beings (at least not in the universal sense).
SEE: “IDF rabbinate publication during Gaza war: We will show no mercy on the cruel”, By Amos Harel, Haaretz, 1/26/09
‘[There’s] biblical ban on surrendering single millimeter of [Land of Israel] to gentiles,’ publication said.
ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/idf-rabbinate-publication-during-gaza-war-we-will-show-no-mercy-on-the-cruel-1.268849
Behar’s notion of security brings to mind Hillel. “If I am only for myself, then who am I?”
“They show how a commitment to Jewish history as Behar interprets it trumps his professional ethics.”
then he’s neither professional nor ethical, not even close.
Someone should show Richard Behar this column:
Noam Chomsky: Palestine 2012 – Gaza and the UN resolution
http://www.israeli-occupation.org/2012-12-01/noam-chomsky-palestine-2012-gaza-and-the-un-resolution/