The poster above is in a friend’s window in New York. It has been since the last Israeli onslaught on Gaza, three years ago. Here’s the street view:
Two days ago it got an anonymous response, taped to a door in the apartment house, accusing my friend of showing support for people who would have “me and my family and my friends mutilated to a cheering crowd”:
This incident brings home a few points to me. The letter isn’t canned. People who support Israel are highly articulate and engaged. They are individuals; they might be part of the Israel lobby, but no lobby is orchestrating them. They know what they think.
They feel a need these days to reflect criticism of Israel: “the discriminatory policies of Israel’s rightwing government.”
Many are deluded or suffer from paranoia, or what some have called a national psychosis: This individual in America thinks that Palestinians want to mutilate him or her– and “my family and my friends”– even as Israel is doing a lot of killing of Palestinians. And they are, by and large, Jewish and self-involved. The writer is engaged totally with the Jewish experience of history (the Holocaust) and blind to the living Palestinian experience (ethnic cleansing, apartheid).
That response looks like it came from a NY Zionist, someone who believes that people who choose to be/come Jewish are entitled:
– to a religion-supremacist “Jewish State” in as much as possible of Palestine; and
– to do unto others acts of injustice and immorality they would not have others do unto them.
The neighbor isn’t very neighborly.
@Phil
Yep. You have a New York Jew that genuinely hates the Gazans. From the sounds of it he’s never met a Gazan so this is all a product of poisonous actions and rhetoric.
There is a solution to that. The sort of shared humanity reconciliation type approach that peace activists used in the 1980s-1990s. It worked well, but expectations were unfortunately ridiculously high and so success was measured as a family. Support for discrimination decreased and there was economic progress for Palestinians. Politics shifted left and what had previously been impossible for both sides got put on the table, they never quite reached agreement but both sides shifted towards one another.
During the 2nd intifada and since then confrontation and more hostility got tried. Back to the pre-Oslo strategy of a rhetoric of total population war, even though the Palestinians were no longer in any position to even plausibly attempt it. So the Israelis can destroy 1/3rd of the infrastructure of Gaza in “self defense ” and your letter writer mostly agrees. In the end what matters the most is not whether Gazans hate Israelis, or New York Jews hate Gazans but how much Israelis hate Gazans. The higher Israeli anger and hatred towards Gazans the more Gazans die.
You want to avoid hate people need to be charitable. Try and see things from both sides. Appreciate common humanity. Look for win-win rather than win-lose. That’s how you avoid hate. We both like INN. Think about that for a moment. As far away as we are on this conflict, we both like INN. Maybe that means they are doing something right. That INN can dialogue with both of us from a position of trust is no small accomplishment.
I can dialogue with rightwing Israelis from a position of trust (excluding the more religious settler right, where I’m too much of pinko leftist assimilated American…). So likely can your letter writer. The violence against the Gazans has gone to far when we condemn it not when you condemn it. Or more accurately the fact that I reject the idea of Jordanian citizenship for West Bankers being sufficient matters to them, the fact you reject it doesn’t. Similarly you have cred with the other side. The reason the Allison Weir thing still bothers people so much is that JVP was able to draw a line in the sand and say “this rhetoric we will not support” and make it stick.
You do a terrific job in the “this is why the Palestinians are so pissed off” department. And that is needed. What you could do on the other side having built the credibility is…. try and work towards dialogue not confrontation. 5 years ago when we started having these conversations you believed BDS would grow and swamp the domestic counter pressure. Before that the resistance strategy would work and your role was going to be the typical domestic resistance. I think you realize now that didn’t happen. The American Jewish community was able to win the fight. And the Israelis were able to win their fight. The fraying you chart, isn’t happening fast enough.
We are in a weird void period. Its a good time for articles that think through what comes next. How do we create a less poisonous environment so that the Gazan poster isn’t seen as personal threat to a New Yorker?
Your friend should up more posters and even bigger ones. Also he should post a letter to every door stating what he believes.
“Sincere neighbor” feels uncomfortable, being reminded of the (ongoing) war crimes perpetrated by her beloved Zionist state on the powerless, imprisoned population of Gaza. Hamas and many of the residents react with venomous words, as they watch their children and families and friends being starved and maimed and murdered, and their cities and towns and farms and hospitals and mosques being destroyed by a merciless enemy. Understandable words.
Zionists and their apologists seem think the cruelty and sadism of the Zionist state of Israel must be accepted in silence.
“Sincere neighbor” would rather not be reminded of the dark moral void at the heart of the benighted state of Israel.
PW’s friend is to be commended for reminding passers-by of the intolerable suffering and tragedy of Gaza