Many people have passed along Ethan Bronner’s latest piece in the New York Times, “What Mideast Crisis? Israelis Have Moved On” in which he visits Israel and Palestine and discovers that Israelis are prosperous and happy and have given up on the peace process, and by the way, Palestinians have forgotten about it too. Though Bronner’s worried; at the end he likens Israel to the Titanic.
When Bronner was Jerusalem bureau chief, we criticized him constantly on this site for being Israel-centric, and this piece is no exception. His view of Palestinian attitudes is based on “an afternoon in Ramallah.” He quotes no Palestinian, but he interviews several Israelis, in prose reminiscent of a Zagat’s guide:
[Dan] Meridor, nursing an American coffee at the cafe near the house his parents bought many decades ago in the upscale Rehavia neighborhood..
[Yair] Lapid, who spoke in the outdoor section of his neighborhood cafe in north Tel Aviv on a fragrant spring afternoon..
A former senior aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed, over a Jerusalem lunch of toasted bagels and salad…
He also describes a wedding he went to involving Yemeni-Israelis. I bet that’s his wife’s relations; Bronner’s wife is a Yemeni Israeli. Their son served in the Israeli army. Maybe he should have told the reader how immersed he is in Israeli society?
Bronner’s takeaway is that “there can be no Israeli-Palestinian peace deal so long as outsiders want it more than the parties themselves”– as if he made any effort to fathom Palestinian attitudes, as if the movement inside Palestine for equal rights, echoed by international opinion and BDS, is of no consequence.
Some excerpts:
Instead of focusing on what has long been seen as their central challenge — how to share this land with another nation — Israelis are largely ignoring it, insisting that the problem is both insoluble for now and less significant than the world thinks….
Indeed, Israel has never been richer, safer, more culturally productive or more dynamic. Terrorism is on the wane. Yet the occupation grinds on next door with little attention to its consequences…
A former senior aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed [with Lapid over lunch].. that most Israelis considered the peace process irrelevant because they believed that the Palestinians had no interest in a deal, especially in the current Middle Eastern context of rising Islamism. “Debating the peace process to most Israelis is the equivalent of debating the color of the shirt you will wear when landing on Mars,” he said.
An afternoon in Ramallah revealed no stronger sense of urgency among Palestinians….
All of which suggests that, as has long been argued, there can be no Israeli-Palestinian peace deal so long as outsiders want it more than the parties themselves.
Yeah, I read the piece also. When Bronner says “Israelis” think this or that, he means Israeli Jews. But 20% of the citizens of Israel are ethnic Palestinians. They are ignored. Bronner’s statements are somewhat defensible it it’s understood that to Bronner, Israeli Jews are the only Israelis whose opinions are worth reporting. This is, of course, the NYT running true to form*. The Palestinians and their story has been systematically suppressed, even for those Palestinians are Israeli citizens.
This got me thinking…Suppose that a US reporter in the 1960’s, covering the Civil Rights struggle in the South, wrote that “Southerners” really aren’t that into civil rights. The reporter means “white Southerners”, of course. Black Southerners and their opinions are just not worth reporting.
*The piece by Ben Ehrenreich was an admirable exception.
The juxtaposition of Bronner and Freeman on the blog here underscores Freeman’s encompassing geopolitical hard-headed brilliance vs. Bronner’s lazy diary writing style of journalism (give ’em emotion, give ’em color) repeating shibboleths we’ve heard ad infinitum. (But the article probably paid for his trip to the wedding.)
No one in Israel discusses Palestinians, much less peace. Everyone here is too busy making a living, providing for their families, and having a good time. Today we held two nationwide civil defense drills.
The northern border is the current concern.
To put it another way, Mondoweiss is obsessed precisely with what Israelis totally ignore.
Imagine that.
Ethan Bronner is a racist. Now what, Philip Weiss, do you want to convey? Latitude for racism?
It’s often said that it’s good to send people to are Jewish to Israel because “they know the culture and can identify with the people”.
The problem is that these same people are often ethnocentric and their nationalism clouds their judgement. This is why in most negotiations or other instances where neutrality is needed, you bring in an outsider who can see the conflict from a distance.
But of course, remember the shit storm when the current chief in Jerusalem, Rudoren, tweeted a normal message to Ali Abuminah from the Goldbergs of the world and his “liberal” as well as neocon allies?
Imagine if you’d have a non-Jew! Or even more so, an Arab. I’d venture most of these same people wouldn’t mind a black South African report from white ruled-South Africa in the 1980s and would most likely ridicule any white Afrikaaner reporter who didn’t have a strong anti-racist streak.
But of course, Zionism is different to these people. Their “liberalism” is as shallow as their writing and often less so.