Jodi Rudoren moved out of her comfort zone today. The New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief, who tends to focus on the Jewish and Israeli understanding of the conflict, has a front-page piece titled, “After West Bank Kidnapping, 2 Mothers Embody a Divide,” that features the Jewish mother of an abducted teen and the Palestinian mother of a teen shot dead by Israeli soldiers. It’s a good thing that Aida Abdel Aziz Dudeen and her late son Mohammed are treated as human beings in the New York Times– and all to Rudoren’s credit.
The problem with the article is that its on-the-one-hand/on-the-other composition makes it seem like the conflict is a human relations problem. Rudoren works hard at humanizing, and never deals directly with the central facts of Palestinian life, occupation and the daily denial of human rights. Moving statements from the Jewish woman, Rachel Fraenkel, suggest that her 16-year-old son Naftali was a complete innocent.
“I was praying maybe he did something stupid and irresponsible,” Ms. [Rachel] Fraenkel recalled, “but I know my boy isn’t stupid, and he isn’t irresponsible.”
We believe her. But the youth was hitchhiking inside a military occupation with two settler teens. He is not to blame; but his society surely is. The international community is unequivocal on this score: the occupation and settlements are wholly illegal.
Aware of that sentiment, his mother gets to defend herself from the settlement charge:
She stressed that [her community of] Nof Ayalon, which spills slightly over the 1949 armistice line dividing Israel from the West Bank, is not a settlement.
But why did she send her son to school in an illegal occupation? That fact is seen as more on-the-one-hand/on-the-other:
Most Israelis see the missing teenagers as innocent civilians captured on their way home from school, and the Palestinians who were killed as having provoked soldiers. Palestinians, though, see the very act of attending yeshiva in a West Bank settlement as provocation, and complain that the crackdown is collective punishment against a people under illegal occupation.
That’s the only reference in a long article to occupation. The Palestinians may see it that way, but our reporter evidently doesn’t. There is no description in this piece of Palestinian political attitudes, formed by nearly-50 years of dealing with military checkpoints and dispossession. It’s a good bet that Mohammed Dudeen never got to visit the Mediterranean Sea or Jerusalem, though both are under 30 miles from his home. Hebron, the city that his family lives outside, was locked down for days after the kidnaping, its city center has been taken over by Jewish settlers and soldiers imposing conditions that are “apartheid on steroids,” and the Palestinian villages around Hebron are subject to settler and soldier raids.
Rudoren’s article will leave readers thinking, Why can’t these people just get along? Why can’t the Palestinians teach their children about the Holocaust so they know where the Jews are coming from? Why can’t the Jews learn about the Palestinian food and customs? When the central truth is, occupation.
Thanks for highlighting this article that Taxi linked to earlier… I’m pasting my comment here:
‘“After West Bank Kidnapping”…
I almost stopped there, but I read the article.
I was surprised to read: “They had no idea he had never arrived.” How did they not know?
There is too much to unpack in the article, but the mention of ‘purple’ made my brain go to this:
““Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple ”
Thanks Taxi.
I hope the missing teens do get home. I am sorry that Mohammed won’t be able to.’
I am struck by the absence of the “Occupation”, that is mostly why I am so unsettled (no pun intended) by Rudoren’s article. There was this bit though:
“Ms. Dudeen said her family was not affiliated with Hamas — which Israel says is behind the kidnapping — or any other Palestinian faction. “I want my homeland to be liberated from Israeli colonialism,” she said, her grief mixed with a bit of pride. “When the Israeli soldier picked up his rifle against Mohammed, he did not turn his back, he did not fear.””
for most readers, “colonialism” does not elicit the same emotions that Oppression and Occupation might… but that is it in a nutshell.
co·lo·ni·al·ism
kəˈlōnēəˌlizəm,kəˈlōnyəˌlizəm/
noun
noun: colonialism
the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.
”It’s a good thing that Aida Abdel Aziz Dudeen and her late son Mohammed are treated as human beings in the New York Times– and all to Rudoren’s credit.”
I’m slightly puzzled as to why Rudoren continues to get something of a free pass here. So she ‘humanises’ Palestinians? Are we really setting the bar so low that Palestinians need to be grateful for being seen as ‘human’?
”She stressed that [her community of] Nof Ayalon, which spills slightly over the 1949 armistice line dividing Israel from the West Bank, is not a settlement.”
Who gives a toss what this woman ‘stresses’. If it’s over the Green Line, it is built on stolen land. And btw I think it’s becoming clear why some accounts describe all 3 of the ‘kidnapped boys’ as being settlers, and others say only 1. Maybe only 1 was from what even Rudoren would admit was a ‘settlement’ while the others are only kinda-sorta settlements? Gotcha.
“but I know my boy isn’t stupid, and he isn’t irresponsible.”
Maybe not, but you are, since you sent your son to ‘study’ on stolen land.
”Palestinians, though, see the very act of attending yeshiva in a West Bank settlement as provocation, and complain that the crackdown is collective punishment against a people under illegal occupation.”
This whole thing of painting objection to the ILLEGAL settlements as merely subjective Palestinian whining is the oldest trick in the game. Of course, it’s not that the ‘settlements’ are unambigously illegal under international law. It’s not that citizens of the occupying state are not considered protected people under the Geneva Convention. It’s not that collective punishment is a war crime. No, it’s all about what Palestinians ‘think’ it is.
Like I said, I’m baffled as to why Rudoren continues to get a free pass here.
the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over another country, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically.
that is American history, past and present.
Don’t you know, “symmetry” is the only way you are allowed to criticize Israel in the official media. I like to think that Jodi-Jodi-Jodi was feeling some heat from her recent
efforts. I don’t think she’s a bad person just not capable of seeing how her biases effect what she.
A little subtle, but Rudoren writes, “Her husband, Jihad, has for 10 years been doing construction in Israel…” This isn’t normal sentence construction you’d read in the Times, it’s how Americans in Israel begin to talk when they start translating back from Hebrew.