Three straws in the wind:
–Last night on National Public Radio’s "Marketplace", Kai Ryssdal did a wonderful interview with Palestinian economist Youssef Dauod about prices in Rafah, in which Dauod was allowed to say that the Israelis had created a "humanitarian" crisis in Gaza, and the world must pay attention. There is nothing new in that comment. What is new is that Ryssdal aired it in a financial story and did not feel an obligation to get an Israeli spokesman to counter it!
–Last night I heard from an Arab student at MIT who told me that a group of Arab MIT students is now touring Middle East countries to urge Arab students to come to the U.S. to study–the first such delegation since 9/11. The group is now in the West Bank; and of course was stopped for 7 hours at an Israeli checkpoint on the Allenby Bridge from Jordan into Palestine. It is setting up a video conference this weekend with students in Gaza. And my informant tells me that the Boston Globe is writing about the group.
–A day or so back ADL’s Abraham Foxman issued an enraged statement at the "torrent of condemnation" of Israel’s policies in Gaza coming from international voices who are "relatively silent" about the "thousands of deadly rocket" attacks from Palestinians into southern Israel. The ADL statement is factually accurate: the international community and the American media have lately focused on the plight of the Palestinians— far more than on the fact that a dozen innocent Israelis have been killed by Palestinian rockets over the last couple of years.
I am a cockeyed optimist, but I believe that something has changed: Arabs are being treated as human beings in our press. And Israel is taking on the coloration of South Africa in apartheid days. Israel emerges in these reports as the thug in the background. Yesterday I blogged about Alan Dershowitz pouncing on Col. Lawrence Wilkerson for mentioning Walt and Mearsheimer in seminars. That was two years ago, nearly. It’s hard to imagine Dershowitz having the time to do so now. The blackout has been broken. Suddenly the water is safe for fairminded journalists…
Again, I’m an idealist, but I think these good things have come from: Jimmy Carter’s passionate book, Walt and Mearsheimer’s moral bravery, even the war in Iraq. For three or four years now Americans have been shown the suffering of Arabs in Iraq, Arabs hurt by the United States through no fault of their own. We have seen Arab scientists and librarians on TV, Arab schoolchildren, and Arab parents who seem somehow to invest their every hope in their children. Americans have come to relate to Arabs as human beings, and that sympathy now extends to the Gazans.
Hearts and minds, hearts and minds. Thus spake the condescending American. Well, hearts and minds works both ways. American hearts and minds are changing!
P.S. It would seem from Wikipedia’s list of Qassam attacks that there have been 100s of deadly rockets fired from Gaza, not thousands…
