Gaza Needs a George Orwell Now
Israel is barring independent journalists from Gaza, but The New York Times, relying on Palestinian correspondents there, reports that "Hamas, with training from Iran and Hezbollah, has used the last two years to turn Gaza into a deadly maze of tunnels, booby traps and sophisticated roadside bombs. Weapons are hidden in mosques, schoolyards and civilian houses, and the leadership's war room is a bunker beneath Gaza's largest hospital, Israeli intelligence officials say."
The Times account of how cruelly both sides are fighting underscores how badly we need reporting like George Orwell's from the bloody Spanish Civil War in 1936. Orwell joined and fought for the democratic left against the fascist Franco, but he quickly found something his leftist readers didn't want to know: Franco wasn't the only evil enemy of freedom in Spain.
If a new Orwell informs us that Israel, although it's hideously cruel and wrong, isn't the only evil enemy of freedom in Gaza, will anyone want to know?
Orwell watched Stalinists, the supposed champions of democracy, killing not only fascists but also other leftist and liberal democrats. He learned that the Stalinists were fighting less for Spanish republican freedom than for Spanish submission to Moscow. "The Communist influence in Barcelona was not progressive but reactionary," as Orwell put it.
The leftist British New Statesman and Nation refused to publish his reportage. That drove him to write his great book Homage to Catalonia, which also had trouble finding a publisher. Franco was so truly and obviously bad that no one wanted to hear that some of those fighting him were just as bad, possibly worse.
A reviewer of Homage for the Daily Worker called Orwell a "disillusioned little middle class boy" who couldn't stomach a tough fight for freedom. But it was Orwell who could stomach the truth, while, to this day, defenders of the idealistic but naive young American leftists who went to Spain in 1936 still deny what they actually served. That denial is sustained by the fact that Franco won, sparing us any disillusionment with a Communist Spain.
If Israel in Gaza can be likened in some ways to the fascists in Catalonia, can Hamas be likened to Stalinists who seemed (and sometimes were) heroic but carried a dreadful poison of their own? Read the Times story now, and hope that an Orwell will get into Gaza and tell us the truth, even if it includes things that some of us may not want to know.
Jim, I disagree. First, Hamas has some interesting ties to the Muslim Brotherhood which was once CIA backed and possibly a fascist organization of its own. The only time I see Islam resembling communism is in its rhetoric concerning the poor. Israel is strange in this respect also because many of the early organizations in Israeli society resemble communist ideals for community organization. Besides that ironic aspect, to me it looks more like two organizations with very similar positions fighting each other. The only difference is that the balance of power is extremely one sided. If the balance of power were reversed, the Jews might be the terrorist refugees from Europe fighting to get their homeland back.
January 11, 2009 1:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
I would add that all the idealism of communist organizations in europe and the rest of asia amount to hot air. They told the poor what they wanted to hear then used power to enrich an oligarchy class. China too, is a good case in point. The "communist party" says it does things for the good of the state but most of their actions look to increase the power of a small group of people, just like the so called "capitalists" of the west. Everywhere you look, the west, the east, and the middle east, communist or capitalist the result is corruption to increase the power of the few. All pay lip service to democracy, none provide it. Each side likes to accuse the other of crimes it commits. This I think is Hades, or Hell in the metaphorical sense. It is iconic male domination. To achieve Heaven, one must be submissive to death. The end of fear is the end of conflict. Israelis fear being stateless(meaningless?) as do Palestinians. Because the both fear they both suffer endlessly.
January 11, 2009 2:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
"Relying on Palestinian correspondents there (in Gaza)."
What is this phrase doing in your lead sentence, Mr. Sleeper? The New York Times article makes clear that the quoted allegation comes only from Israeli intelligence officials.
In fact, the first nine paragraphs of the NYT article quote only Israeli officials and an embedded Israeli military reporter.
Palestinian sources are cited only in the context of the phone calls being placed to Palestinian homes.
It takes guts to post something this dishonest at the same time you invoke George Orwell.
January 11, 2009 2:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
MJ's comment is one of the few here so far who actually read what I say in this post and comprehends what it means to oppose both Hamas and Israel in Gaza.
Most of the other commenters are reading and sliding around the truth that they cannot comprehend no such thing.
Zeno doesn't notice Orwell's comment that, in Spain, the Communists were as reactionary as the fascists.
Acanuck cannot read the line at the end of the Times story and gather from it that they have a few Palestinians on the ground.
The "balance of power" people -- and this is the mantra of the moment among those who place their hopes in asymetric warfare -- forget that by their standard one could make Spain's Stalinists into heroes. And some of them do just that.
Syvanen has no idea how Orwell got in to Spain -- and how and why he had to escape across the border into France.
John Richardson slides from my comparison of Hamas and Stalinists to a literal comparison of regimes, as if doing that has something to do with understanding how history often unfolds.
flavius seems to think that I said or implied that all Spanish republicans were committed Communists, or that I said that someone else said it.
My point, dear correspondents, isn't that Orwell was a saint. It's that it's quite possible for a person who has integrity to conclude that both of the militant sides in a tragic conflict are deeply wrong. Observations about the balance of power don't resolve that dilemma, I'm sorry to say. Where one goes from there is what matters, and in a post two days ago I endorsed a few other options.
January 11, 2009 10:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
The gist of your post is that people on both sides do bad things when in conflict - some newsflash that!
The overwhelming context is that the zionists knew, while still in Europe, that they would have to ethnically-cleanse palestine to achieve their objectives - and they were ok with that.
A quote from David Ben-Gurion, that lion of Judah and first head of the Israeli state: "There is a need now for strong and brutal reaction. We need to be accurate about timing, place and those we hit. If we accuse a family - we need to harm them without mercy, women and children included. Otherwise, this is not an effective reaction....There is no need to distinguish between guilty and not guilty."
Those women and children, who were totally innocent, were the grandparents of the Hamas people in Gaza.
January 11, 2009 11:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
The face of the Palestinian resistance has changed several times over the years. Few of those faces have been very congenial. They include the faces of gangsters, murderers, and fanatics. They also include the faces of many weak and desperate people resisting in whatever way they can, and joining whatever organization at the time seems capable of offering that resistance. While the Palestinians have sometimes resisted with mere stones and sticks, they have frequently fought very dirty. But somehow that seems less significant to me than the fact that it is the Palestinians who have faced an unrelenting campaign of dispossession, ethnic cleansing and confinement over many decades. They have been pushed off their land during that time, acre by acre. This is no mere accident, but a long term strategy aimed at taking everything, and eventually forcing the detested Palestinian Arabs off the entirety of the land Israel covets. Israel pushes and oppresses and brutalizes and provokes, and when they succeed in stimulating the violent resistance they are looking for, they use the opportunity to take more land and destroy more Palestinians. And Israel has fought very dirty as well in their long campaign of cleansing the land.
What is going on in Gaza right now is not an isolated war unto itself. It is just one battle in a very long war. And in that long war, there is a clear aggressor. One side has fought to take land from others, and the other side has fought to hold onto land, or recover land that was taken. For several years now, Gaza has been an internment camp, under a permanent blockade. It’s an abomination. The world is finally seeing that, and is not so worried as you are about the defective ideologies of the prisoners who are resisting the incursion of a powerful mechanized army of the jailers that is bent on slaughter, and on crushing the resistance of the prisoners.
January 11, 2009 11:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
DanK wrote: One side has fought to take land from others, and the other side has fought to hold onto land, or recover land that was taken.
For centuries Egypt, Rome, Assyria, all other Nations knew the Land of the Jews, governed by King David, King Solomon,. and others.
RECOVERING LAND THAT WAS TAKEN
Had the Romans not destroyed Jerusalem and scattered the Jewish Nation, it is highly unlikely that the Palestinians would have ever thought the land was theirs. They only moved in while the owners were away.
The Jews were determined to take back their land.
In the eyes of the original inhabitants the (Jews), any other group, was just opportunists.
Who by themselves could not remove the Jews, but they could only fill the vacuum.
If you want to place blame, blame the Romans for this mess.
In no way should it diminish how the Jews treat their neighbors or people.
Id the squatter’s intentions are to resist the original owner’s right to return home, then therein lies the problem.
Establishing the right of ownership is the key to peace.
Is that not what the UN determined years ago? Who had the right of ownership?
Of course all parties may not agree with the judicial decision.
So Dan, do the Jews have a right to recover the land that was taken?
January 11, 2009 12:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Romans? The Romans?!! Squatters??!!
Use some common sense. If someone steals my house or my father's house, the world's common legal systems typically provide some relief and means of recovering it within a reasonable amount of time.
But where in the world of rational human law are recovery rights so long-lasting as 2000 years? Am I entitled to go to Ireland and reclaim some property from the descendant of some ancient Hibernian who might have chased by ancestor off his land? Even more, am I entitled to some share of some property because I identify myself as belonging to a "people" people that was collectively displaced? Are the descendants of the ancient Canaanites and Philistines also entitled to reclaim the land from any Jewish "squatters" whose ancestors might have dispossessed the Canaanites and Philistines? Does it make sense to permit people to reclaim lost ancestral property after sitting on their rights for a couple of thousand years? There are scattered ancient peoples everywhere. And to adopt such standards would plunge the world into chaos, similar to the chaos that now exists in Israel-Palestine.
There was a Jewish diaspora in the Persian, Hellenic and Roman world long before the destruction of the second temple. How many Jews now alive can say for sure whether their ancient forbears were actually chased off their land in Israel following the Jewish revolt, or just left at some other time to seek greener pastures elsewhere?
If one of your ancestors moved to Alexandria or Rome or Gaul in search of opportunity, what entitles you now to a do-over?
January 11, 2009 2:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
"If someone steals my house or my father's house, the world's common legal systems typically provide some relief and means of recovering it within a reasonable amount of time."
Well, my great-grandparents (Jewish) had their land and home stolen from them by the Russians during the pogroms of a century ago, along with that of plenty of others. They barely got out with their lives. Where is the "relief" and "means of recovering it" that you speak of? There has never been any compensation, or even discussion of it. Does that mean that I am justified in attacking the Russians of today? Of course not. The fact is that the world's legal systems have basically failed to protect the Jews or their land, and they have no reason to believe that things have changed. (Although I hasten to point out that the Germans did make substantial reparations to the Jews. To their credit. But nothing comparable to what the value of what they stole would be worth today.)
Is it right that people who were thrown off of their land should dispossess others of their land? Who knows? There is no justice in history. Every single country in the world, every one, is built on land that was stolen from other people at one point, and virtually all of the people who were dispossessed had previously dispossessed someone else, who had in turn dispossessed yet someone else. One event leads to another in a long and bloody chain. You could trace it back thousands of years and it wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference to today's reality. The fact is that Israel exists, as it has for thousands of years, and will continue to exist. When the Palestinians accept that and recognize it the war will end. Until that happens it will continue.
Instead of condemning just Israel, the UN should have condemned both sides, and should have long since sent in a peacekeeping force. But they won't do that due to the widespread anti-Semitism, so the Israelis have to do what they can in the absence of any legal recourse, or the rest of the world taking any significant action to protect the innocents on both sides. The UN's failure to be non-partial, and to enforce the resolution it passed in 1948 to set up both Israeli and Palestinian states, has only hardened the views of the right-wingers in Israel, and made it much, much more difficult for the Israelis who want peace to get into power.
January 11, 2009 2:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
The fact is that Israel exists, as it has for thousands of years, and will continue to exist. When the Palestinians accept that and recognize it the war will end. Until that happens it will continue.
You lost me here. How is it that you think Israel has existed for thousands of years. Do you mean it has existed in the mind of God?
Palestinian leaders and many Arab governments and other global leaders have long called for the establishment of a peace-keeping force in the occupied territories. The Israelis have consistently rejected such proposals. Hamas has also opposed a peace-keeping force for Gaza since it took over the strip in 2006.
January 12, 2009 8:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
Earlier you posted about using common sense.
I don’t know where you live, but in American history, we drove the Indians off of their lands.
Should America give it back? Or did the Indians wait to long to bring it before a court?
At what point does the weaker party come to the realization that the superior force will crush and destroy it?
Are the Gazans determined, to be annihilated? Or are they hostage to a failed Government. A government looking for scapegoats.
Willing to make martyrs out of the whole nation. Women and children to be sacrificed in order to prove what? To prove there mad as hell and instead of working with what they have, decide for destruction?
If there was a major Earthquake and all that existed was the strip of Gaza, would the Gazans say we couldn’t survive, we can’t be self- supporting? Pity us for we CAN’T make it without more land.
There’s an old saying two live dogs, is better than a Dead Lion.
If Israel said to the Nation of Gaza, we will provide you with power and irrigation, so that you can become a self sufficient Government, a Nation.
Instead of building a Nation, the Gazan Government decides it wants to be in the business of destroying Israel.
Then cries because Israel shuts off the ability for the Gazans to bring produce to Israeli markets, in order to make an income. Income for Hamas, to purchase guns, bullets and rockets to be fired back at Israeli merchants. . DOH!!!
You may own a gun but don’t ask me to buy the bullets, so you can shoot me with the gun.
You are right, it is about common sense.
January 13, 2009 1:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Acanuck didn't deny that the NYT has Palestinian sources on the ground. He said that the most sinister allegations about Hamas in that story come from the Israelis.
And you are posing as Orwell here. As another Orwell poser, let me tell you that the niche is filled (not least because Hitchens has been trying to fill it himself with his ample girth). Seriously, quite a few of us lefty Israel-critics know perfectly well that Hamas is a murderous organization, but we also know that some Hamas leaders have proposed an indefinite truce, that they did a good job maintaining the six month truce (not perfect, but good), that their demand to have the blockade lifted was a fair one and that sometimes pragmatists inside terrorist organizations can be reasoned with. And we know that the US did all it could to undermine the unity government that Fatah and Hamas had formed, which might have helped that process along . The US and Israel have done quite a lot over the years to discourage moderates, only accepting moderates if they seem more like lapdogs.
Also, to the extent that there are Hamas-lovers on the left, do you really think that they are a major presence in the US political scene? If anything, they are just a convenient whipping boy--if anyone does propose talking to Hamas they can be lumped in with someone who defends Hamas's enthusiastic support of suicide bombing. You may be willing to grant that Israel is committing war crimes--in fact, you appear to be trying to persuade people here that Hamas is just as bad as Israel. Fine with me--I won't quibble about the morality of suicide bombing aimed at Israeli kids vs. settler colonialism and all the brutality that goes with it. But you may have noticed that the House and Senate of the US vehemently disagrees with you, and not because they're on Hamas's side. The liberal/left blogosphere discussion is way ahead of what you find in the US political mainstream and you act like you're Orwell because you point out that Hamas really isn't very nice.
January 11, 2009 1:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
BTW, see if you can spot who is using human shields in this news story.
Link
The NYT leans over backwards to give the Israeli rationalizations for their killings and some of the most damning accounts of Israeli brutality never make it into the NYT, or at least not until everyone is writing about them. The story Jim Sleeper cites is all about how Israel might be able to rationalize the civilian death toll. Hamas's guilt for their own atrocities is taken for granted and the only issue is to what extent they can also be blamed for Israel's killing. Can anyone imagine them writing a story from the viewpoint that Israel's guilt is taken for granted and seriously discussing the rationalizations Palestinians might have for firing rockets at Israeli towns as though they might be valid?
January 11, 2009 2:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for pointing out what I really said in my comment, as opposed to Sleeper's mischaracterization.
I've edited tens of thousands of stories in my career, and it is obvious where the Palestinian stringer's work is incorporated into the NYT article. It does not in any way back up the Israeli officials' claims.
As for Sleeper, his response to being caught in a distortion is to attempt another bit of sleight-of-hand. Not a good start to his purported campaign for honest reporting.
January 11, 2009 3:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've read most of your recent posts, Jim, and I have to say I sense a desperate attempt on your part to rationalize what in your heart you know is wrong.
January 12, 2009 8:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
You are right, canuck, and Sleeper still gets his facts wrong when he tries to summarily dismiss you. The tail of the print article states that one reporter, Taghreed El-Khodary 'contributed reporting from Gaza,' yet all of Sleeper's key points come from the official IDF sources, which as we're finding out, are not setting a high bar for reporting.
Even more damaging to Sleeper's omniscient dismissal is the fact that in Clark Hoyt's NYT column today, he identifies El-Khodary as 'the paper's Palestinian stringer'--which implies that there is only one.
January 11, 2009 10:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
and hope with me that an Orwell will get into Gaza and tell us more of what some of us may not want to know.
Except such a person can not because Israel will not allow him in. So you therefore rely on what
Israeli intelligence officials say."
You are as gullible as those people who listened to the Stalinist commissars. At least the Spanish Republic allowed the world press to come in and observe. And Orwell was not the only objective reporter who wrote what they saw.
January 11, 2009 2:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hamas is the new Stalinist regime? Tunnels, booby traps and sophisticated roadside bombs are its hallmarks? Nice try. It sounds like you might be reading from the IDF Propaganda Playbook.
Look, all comparisons aside, this isn't about totalitarianism - it's about the inhumanity of Israel against Palestinians. The case has been made that Hamas uses terrorism. Does that give license to indiscriminate killing of innocent people? No. The ends don't justify the means and using rhetoric has a way to paint a picture of righteousness doesn't cut it.
See Global Investment Watch at http://globalinvestmentwatch.com/2009/01/04/israel-the-caged-animals-must-be-punished/
January 11, 2009 6:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's about the desire of Hamas to commit suicide to a glorious martyrdom and take the rest of Gaza with them.
There are political realities which are almost as reliable is the law of gravity. If, from whatever grievance, you try to kill your neighbor's children and your neighbor is stronger than you sooner or later your neighbor will act in self defense and being stronger, will kill far more of you than you did of him. Israel is being far more restrained than most nations in the face of the rocket attacks.
The pressure on Israel to stop trying to eradicate Hamas's military capacity would increase exponentially if Hamas stopped its futile rocket attacks. None of Gaza's so called friends have been putting pressure on Hamas to stop. In one of the prior conflicts an Egyptian who had emigrated to Detroit said it had dawned on him that the Arabs were willing to fight to the last Egyptian. It is clear that Hamas is willing to fight to the last ordinary Gazan rather than admit that they have blundered, to recognize that the world will not continue to allow them to arm Gaza and sue for peace.
Hamas's argument that it is unfair of you to attack us with your mighty military because our attempts to kill you with our puny military have been ineffective -you must wait to defend yourselves until we have acquired more power to kill you as we have announced we intend to to -- is morally absurd.
January 11, 2009 10:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Orwell was not the only one condemning the Stalinists. He was one of the few on the left who was doing that. Meanwhile ,the right wing defended Franco and vilified the Republicans , all of them. Go back and read Social Justice, or Westbrook Pegler for example.
And the Republicans were attacked weekly from the pulpit of at least my Catholic parish as Godless
priest killers.
And Orwell did not in any way say that the Republicans wereall committed Communists. Homage to Catalonia praised, perhaps over praised other segments of the leftist alliance such as the anarchists in POUM.
And if we are to be as honest as Orwell was we should face the question of whether the criticism of Orwell was completely unjustified or solely based on his description of the Spanish Stalinists. His essays are replete with his own self indulgent disdain for leftists in general, not just fellow travellers, with lengthy and irrelevant fulminations against their sandals and hairy legs showing below shorts . And with more than a touch of the conventional British middle class anti semitism .
Go back and read them. Saint Orwell , he was not.
On balance there is plenty to admire in , for example, Down and Out in Paris and London , and The Road to Wigan Pier
but we should be as honest about Orwwell as he enjoined his contemporaries to be about the Stalinist in Spain.
As to any need for an Orwell to tell us that Hamas has feet of clay, and more than feet.Given the anti muslim atmosphere since 9/11 and the obvious inhumanity of firing untargetted missiles into Israel we have no need of an Orwell to expose its cruel leadership. Just as we didn't need Christopher Hitchens to convince us that Saddam was a nasty piece of work.
And as someone who argued at its beginning that
Israel was justified in attacking Gaza , in the context of this discussion of Orwell , honesty forces me to add that there is at least as much need of an Orwell to expose the Israeli's cruel leaadership.
Which is to be expected. The Israelis and the Palestinians are...... normal.Capable of doing good or evil. And as is also normal War provides both the temptation and the incentive for the harder people on both sides to behave cruelly.
January 11, 2009 7:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
The NYT has such low credibility about anything to do with the Middle East; I would want to see more verification or details.
Whenever I see someone say that some gorilla group or even a peaceful resistance group obtains support from an outside source, it reminds me of the civil rights movement. The bigots and demagogues most often riled about “those outside agitators”. If they are “outside agitators”, then they just have to be bad. “It’s a conspiracy!”
Hamas does things that most could never condone, but if we are going to find solutions, then we need to get rid of simplistic and shallow thinking. Didn’t somebody somewhere once say, “You reap what you sow”?
Bob Spencer
January 11, 2009 7:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Great piece.
One of the lessons of Spain is that one has to be careful.
The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend.
The AIPAC types follow the line exactly like Woody Guthrie did when he changed the lyrics of songs, just before going onstage, to reflect the changing Moscow line.
It's a personality type. I despised the far left back in the 60's and 70's (even more than the far right) because of they were brain dead. They worshipped the God of the moment, sometimes Moscow, usually Trotsky's ghost.
The pro-Israel right is exactly the same.
I love Limbaugh's term "dittoheads" because it is perfect.
I'm pretty comfortable hating Hamas and its equivalents on the Jewish side.
January 11, 2009 9:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's nice that you despised far lefties in the 60s and 70's even more than the far right.
Now how did you feel about the glorious center and the respectable mainstream liberals like LBJ? Ever read any accounts by reporters who visited North Vietnam in the mid to late 60's and contrary to what we were told, found that much of the country was a moonscape with towns totally leveled and people living underground? I have. And it wasn't the far right that did that.
January 11, 2009 2:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
That was a little angry in tone, and I generally like and respect you, M.J., but this "I hate the far left and far right" meme is like fingernails on a chalkboard with me. The centrist mainstream often holds views at any given time that would have been considered far left a generation before and far right a generation later, at least on human rights issues. Not that the far left is always right (sorry)--they clearly weren't on Stalinism in the 30's for example. But the point is that there's nothing special or virtuous about the center.
January 11, 2009 2:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bad history. Any enemy of the fascists at that time was a friend The Stalinists were exactly as Orwell described and were the friendof all those who wanted to defeat Hitler. Just as much in 38 as in 41 when Churchill famously remarked(about Russia)
Could the holocaust have been worse if Franco had been defeated? There was no way it could have been worse. Could it have been better? Up to 1940 Hitler was toying with the idea of expelling the Jews rather than the final solution.. A leftist government in Spain , if nothing else , would have provided a escape route but would also have affected ,e.g.Mussolini's decision in 1940.
It is at least as likely that the Stalinist enemy of our enemy in Spain, horrible tho they were, was indeed our friend.
January 11, 2009 2:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
To turn a phrase, "Intellectual usury feels good, at first,' eh Jim?
Ah yes, 'if only' we had an eminent British reporter on the ground in the war zones of the ME who would tell us what's really going on there...
It may be shocking news to you, but such a man already exists:Robert Fisk. He has been on the ground reporting from the ME for 30 some years, and has interviewed the leaders and rank-and-file from all sides, and was one of the first reporters to enter the mini-Gaza that was Sabra and Shatila. Of course, hasbaristas will tell you he is biased, but that's only because his reportage has spoken truth to many official lies.
Why would you go to the trouble of inventing a fantasy reporter when you have a real live one of such stature? You have wished up a fantasy in order to gin up a phantom moral underpinning for the siege of Gaza. The real live reporter Robert Fisk will tell you that Hamas is but the latest symptom, not the disease. He has been rightly critical of Arab and Palestinian leaders and groups from the PLO to Hamas, but yet what he has found in his reportage has aligned his moral compass, in a way that speaks to a larger truth of what is really going on in the region.
To summarize this article, Jim Sleeper tries to hold a seance with the ghosts of George Orwell and the Spanish Civil War, so that he have them mouth what Sleeper and others want so desperately to believe, in order to give a phony intellectual imprimatur to the Israeli war machine and its supporters.
Of course, that is why the dead are so useful. They can't speak for themselves any more, and they become props for mind games. Therefore, the intellectual hasbarista can present a scenario where Orwell supports the Zionists.
But wait, there's more! Jim goes 'meta' on us here with his 'Orwellian thinking', because, in fact:
Nice try, Jim. You're not so far from David Brooks as you may like to think.
January 11, 2009 2:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Exactly right about Fisk. I read his book on Lebanon years ago and the Great War for Civilization when it came out and there's a guy who has no problem calling a mass murderer a mass murderer, with no concern about ideological slant. And what sort of reception does he get in the glorious USA? His name is turned into a stupid verb by morons. And Sleeper here acts like there's some terrible shortage of people willing to criticize Arab atrocities and Israeli atrocities and atrocities in general no matter who commits them. There is a shortage in the US, but it's by choice.
January 11, 2009 10:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hi Jim,
Not having having read Homage to Catalonia, I can't really comment on that aspect of your thesis. But I did read Ethan Bronner's piece, and by the second or third paragraph I felt it was so much in the vein of journalism has existed about assymetical warfare reporting for so long, it was a bit exasperating. The "tricky" fighters who build tunnels, and dress up like girls (or paramedics) and scalp people (I'm deliberately going over the top here). It was like a replay of those Five O'Clock Follies where nobody can tell the civilians from the guerillas, so -- they're all guerillas. Or terrorists, in today's parlance.
This is off the point of your article -- and I realize objecting to those who are yelling from the sidelines rather than actually fighting and dying -- but I still want to say that if either side is trying to claim the moral high ground, it's not going to effect the outcome. That will be determined by the warfare itself and if history does teach lessons that allow us to predict, in the long run, it's usually the insurrectionists who win. Ho Chi Minh didn't turn out to be George Washington, did he? But he beat the greatest military power in history.
January 11, 2009 2:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry for the dropped and mispelled words. I meant to type: "I realize you are objecting to those who are yelling from the sidelines"
and
"I felt it was so much in the vein of journalism that has existed about asymmetrical warfare for so long"
January 11, 2009 3:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, on second thought, I guess the insurrectionists don't always win, do they? We'll just have to see how this one turns out.
January 11, 2009 3:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Jim, I don't know if you usually respond to questions, but I came back to ask you (or anybody):
Do you think that the evil of Hamas would be easier to see if it reached the visible pain and bloodiness of what the Israelis have accomplished? It seems that the shouting match among those watching the conflagration is that one side points to piles of dead babies, a blockade, a fence, the collapse of infrastructure, a society and cries "evil!" -- and the other side is crying evil about inflammatory rhetoric, illiberal religious zealotry, imperial ambitions, traumatizing children, and killing 20 people.
So speaking of Orwell, it has seemed to me that much of what is decried as evil about Hamas is thought crimes. They fantasize the destruction of Israel, they think anti-Jewish slurs, or say them. I know they provoke and bait the Israeli government to do their worst at the expense of their own people -- but this is a tactic of war even saints have been known to use.
Do you have any feeling that -- apart from people who just can't get a new polemical vocabulary -- that the reason one is increasingly hearing people protest the evil they see being done by Israelis by making analogies to Warsaw ghettoes, death camps and a brutal annihilation of all political opposition, is that these are the memories today's pictures and facts arouse? Hamas isn't seen doing anything much comparable. What is that they are doing, rather than saying, that you think ranks with the mega-murders of Stalin?
January 11, 2009 3:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
"It may be shocking news to you, but such a man already exists:Robert Fisk. He has been on the ground reporting from the ME for 30 some years, and has interviewed the leaders and rank-and-file from all sides"
Well, except that all signs seem to suggest that Jim Sleeper prefers the vocal stylings of Paul Berman.
January 11, 2009 5:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
When I was in Vietnam, I visited an area where they had preserved (and expanded for Western girth) a section of the Cu Chi tunnels - about 150 miles of underground tunnels and chambers, built at three levels of depth, used by the Vietnamese in their two "French Wars" and finally in what they call the "American War". A good case can be made that had the Vietnamese capitulated, turning their country over to the U.S., they would have improved their own lot and that of the rest of their country. An overwhelming case can be made that the Viet Cong committed atrocities - but atrocities were hardly confined to the one side.
When I visited the memorial at My Lai, a Vietnamese guide shared his thoughts: He understood what happened at My Lai, because the same thing had happened to Vietnam in Cambodia. They would go into an area during the day and be met with happy, smiling, cooperative villagers. But as soon as night fell, guerrillas emerged from the jungle to, if possible, cut you to ribbons. He suggested that Vietnam had more than its own share of "My Lais" during that time of occupation.
What can be a bit surprising from an American perspective is how "over it" the Vietnamese are. They're more curious about Americans than anything else, and the kids are eager to try out their English. Am I appalled that the Viet Cong used a huge network of tunnels, hid their arms in villages, used civilian villages as cover for their operations, stockpiled arms in places they anticipated wouldn't be bombed, etc.? Not at all. Do I think that, had North and South been reversed, the Viet Cong would have show the American restraint of not blowing up the Red River dams (plunging the north into starvation)? Not for a minute.
Yet now they have their country back, an American or Frenchman can walk safely through the streets of their cities and villages, and their scars seem much better healed than ours.
You can argue until you're blue in the face that it's wrong or culpable for the enemy in an asymmetric war to take measures that make it difficult for the side with the disproportionate military power to kill or capture their leaders, destroy their weapons caches, invade and take over cities and villages, etc., but it's a rather naive position to take. In what conflict would you expect a guerrilla-type enemy, outmanned and outgunned in every sense, to do otherwise?
Sure, you can argue that the answer is capitulation, but how often does that happen? (How do you think Orwell would have replied to that suggestion?)
If we can play the intellectual exercise, you are now the new Orwell, fighting alongside Palestinian guerrillas to repel invading Israeli troops. You are positioned to tell us not only the obvious, that Hamas is a flawed and dangerous organization that will not lead the Palestinians to peace, but also to illustrate the choices for the people of Gaza. Not war under Hamas or capitulation to occupation, but the third way that leads the Palestinians to genuine freedom: What is it?
January 11, 2009 6:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think the Palestinians are more in need of an Albert Camus than a George Orwell. Camus, after all, experienced both French colonization and German occupation. Although, as his excellent unfinished autobiographical novel The First Man shows Camus was not exactly at the top of the colonial heap.
January 11, 2009 7:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
AJM--brilliant! I love this:
"Hamas's argument that it is unfair of you to attack us with your mighty military because our attempts to kill you with our puny military have been ineffective...is morally absurd."
exactly exactly.
rational TPM readers who understand Israel's right to defend itself might be interested to know that over the last several days, there have been dozens of pro-Israel marches across the country and internationally, with tens of thousands of people participating. there was a rally in the UK where around 10,000 showed up. nowhere in the MSM is this being discussed...but it is in fact happening.
for a fun exercise: compare and contrast the behavior of the crowds at both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel rallies. which side would you say has more events broken up by violence? which side would you say holds up signs saying "Death to--" their enemy? which side would you say has logged more arrests? which side would you say has put more policemen in hospital? discuss. you may google for answers.
January 11, 2009 11:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well gretz, the pro-Palestinian demos in the WB are violently suppressed by Gen Keith Dayton's Jordanian-trained Fatah militias with an assist by volunteers in their tender age group, aka fellow gang...er Fatah members.
Cling to whatever little flickers of support you see, however disproportinate they are. Poor Haaretz was reduced to providing a translation of a favorable OpEd by some Spanish rightwinger in a Barcelona newspaper. Pathetic.
I agree the media isn't covering the demonstrations much at all...any of them. Our MSM started ignoring demonstrations during the run-up to Iraq. Although, CNN had a guy reporting enthusiastically live from a pro-Israel rally in Berlin today.
Too bad, throwing shoes has caught on the world over as a kind of global signature of sorts. One would think that would be some kind of must-see-teevee.
January 12, 2009 1:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
>GRETZ you're in danger of falling into the same trap that catches so many others: the vast majority of dissenters against restricting the freedom of Palestinians and every now and then killing a few hundred of them including women and children - comes not from protesters in London or Berlin - but from Israelis. When you have swallowed that documented fact, then perhaps you will understand the position more accurately.
January 12, 2009 4:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
aaroni, I enjoyed reading your post. I've never been to Viet Nam, but when I was in Hiroshima, I was deeply impressed that no matter where I went, and no matter what age group I was speaking with, an American like myself was treated as a welcomed guest. Even after discounting for the formal (some would say insincere) politeness of Japanese culture to strangers, it was something to think about in that once-vaporized town.
Back to Jim's article, I have spent time in Catalonia, despite not having read Orwell's book, and maybe one has to speak Catalana (I don't) to truly understand the way in which it is trying to create a Catalan homeland, since Catalans deeply disagree among themselves about assimilation, monolingualism, etc. But I do think it's worth pondering that Spain is now run by an unapologetic socialist, whose immediate political ancestors were Stalinists. And to my point of view, Spain continues its creative renewal with this reformed socialiasm, and that the children of Franco have little positive to offer. But these things aren't static. Who the Israelis become and what Hamas becomes may startle us all.
Finally, I want to toss out here that there is an uncomfortably fine line, I think, between wanting an Orwell to tell us the truth of something we may not want to know and wanting a J. Edgar Hoover for that job. I once found myself in the position of being given, by thoroughgoing racists, a large amount of information about the law-breaking and perverse behavior of civil rights workers in the South. It would have been impossible to dismiss all of it as racist propaganda. Even today, if you go around the South, you can find old racists nearly driven mad by the fact that nobody will believe them when they contradict the "official" national narrative and talk about how they were violently baited by non-violent civil rights workers, or how they had to stop people from fornicating in public, etc. etc. To this day, as I'm typing this, I don't think people want to know this. Because people have a very good and moral reason for are keeping their eyes on the prize. That's not willful blindness.
I've drifted from the war in Gaza, but don't be too surprised when today people turn a deaf ear to complaints about which groups break more windows at demonstrations or hold up more insulting signs. A sign held up to the sky that screams "Death to Zionists!" doesn't trouble me as much as the wordless reality of raining down indiscriminate death upon trapped Palestinians, funded by American tax dollars.
January 12, 2009 7:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
>the wordless reality of raining down indiscriminate death upon trapped Palestinians, funded by American tax dollars
BUONASERA - can you, by any chance, get this statement put up in lights on every skyscraper in Manhattan and printed on the front page of every newspaper in every state and delivered to the mailbox of every US taxpayer?
Maybe then a modicum of reality will penetrate the fog of AIPAC's propaganda and we might get a paradigm shift in American foreign policy and the possibility of avoiding the world being drawn into a devastating nuclear war by power-hungry, Israeli politicians.
January 12, 2009 8:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
I believe I am getting the truth from al Jazeera, from blogging inside Gaza, the CBC Canada.
CBC Canada showed a clip which is now on YouTube of Israeli soldiers who blew up the door of a home in Gaza wounding the mother of the house.
Her husband pleads with them to allow him to get her to the hospital in front of his sorrowful daughter, about 10 standing beside her stoic brother who was trying to be brave.
The 6 soldiers scoffed at the suggestion because they had a job to do. They tore the house apart looking for weapons. The girl begged them not to knock a hole in the wall. They apparently use holes in the house walls to get to the next house rather than go out through the door. They pushed her aside, and knocked out the hole which provided their exit.
The father of the house was later shown at the hospital, grieving for his wife. She didn't make it. A soldier filmed this and the video was smuggled out. The truth IS getting out and it is appalling, heartbreaking. pacem in terra.
January 12, 2009 12:42 PM | Reply | Permalink