Amid constant threats, Palestinians secure in the belief that 'this too shall pass'
"The war is with the Arabs."
I saw this sign as I was entering Nablus last week, again on my way to Ramallah, and again near Bethlehem. The phrase is printed in Hebrew, presumably by Israeli settlers, on huge signs throughout the West Bank. Israeli racism rarely shocks me anymore, but its blatant display still makes me stop and catch my breath as I translate it into other contexts. Imagine driving through the middle of a predominantly black neighborhood in a US city or town and seeing a humongous sign that says, "The war is with the Blacks."
I think about security. Israel's abuse of the word has rendered the concept almost meaningless in the region, but the importance of security on individual and communal levels cannot be underestimated. However, most discussions I see in the media about security ignore the Palestinian people's right to security. "The war is with the Arabs" is a new sign, as far as I know, but for years in the West Bank I have seen stars of David scrawled on Palestinian shops and homes, and signs like "Death to Arabs" and "Kahane was right" (Kahane was an extremist political leader who promoted ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people; this sign is essentially equivalent to "Hitler was right" in the middle of a Jewish neighborhood).
But signs are not only created; they are also destroyed. Since 1948, Palestinian people inside Israel have experienced erasure and denial of their identities that is perhaps stronger than that of any other group of Palestinian people. I visited a friend in Lyd last week who lives on Giborai Yisrael ("Heroes of Israel") Street. Driving around the Palestinian neighborhoods in Lyd, we passed roads bearing the names of Herzl, Jabotinsky, and other Zionist leaders. None of the old Arabic street names remain. Even the large cities with considerable Palestinian populations are now seeing the Arabic names officially erased from the signs. In Arabic script, "Yaffa" will become "Yafo," "Nasra" will become "Natzeret," and "Al Quds" will become "Yerushalayim."
Lack of security goes beyond denial of identity and history as visually expressed through signs. A Palestinian friend with Israeli citizenship told me he has heard a rumor that a huge piece of land in Jordan is being cleared and built up for the eventual arrival of the Palestinian population of Israel after they are transferred from their homes. "It may be conspiracy theory," he said, "but I don't know."
"I'd like to think that Israel couldn't get away with that," I responded.
"Of course they can," another friend from Lyd said, "and if the conditions are right, they will."
Imagine living day to day thinking you might be expelled from your country in the near future. Or in Gaza, wondering if you will be killed tomorrow, or if you will ever be able to come in and out of your country at will. Or in the West Bank, if your son will be arrested, or if you will be able to get through the checkpoint in the morning to get to work. Or in Jerusalem, if your residency will be stripped or your house destroyed.
Imagine little correlation between choice and consequence, an arbitrary relationship between cause and effect. If you are just as likely to get shot and killed sipping tea in your doorway, or sitting in your fourth grade classroom, or participating in a demonstration, or joining the armed resistance, is it any surprise that some choose each?
A friend of mine from the West Bank once told me that she never feels safe, so safety is not a consideration for her in making decisions. As much as I may try, I cannot truly imagine this lack of control.
I met a woman in Jerusalem who was displaced from her home by settlers, physically removed from her house by dozens of Israeli soldiers in the middle of the night. Twice a refugee (1948 and 2008), Um Kamel currently lives in a tent near her house that has been destroyed and re-pitched six times in the past six months. This is perhaps the height of insecurity, and yet Um Kamel stays strong and determined. Many in Palestine would call it sumoud, or steadfastness.
This kind of strength is seen remarkably often in Palestine, and indicates a deeper security that comes in part from faith. Faith in God, sometimes, but also faith in each other, in the justice of one's cause, in the tide of history that has shown that no single occupation in Palestine lasts forever. This, of course, is also Israel's deepest fear. That no matter how many walls they build, how many people they imprison, how many homes they destroy, how many signs they erase, and how many people they expel, true security will remain elusive, and eventually, Zionism will fail. As many older Palestinian people have said to me, with security, "We have lived through many occupations. This too shall pass."
"Israeli racism rarely shocks me anymore"
Does this mean that you believe Israelis are more racist than their Palestinian neighbors, or do you mean to say that you hold Israelis to a higher standard? You should clarify this point.
July 21, 2009 12:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
This travesty of Herzl's vision, the current government of the State of Israel, is anathema to an increasing proportion of the Jewish Diaspora who believe not only in the sanctity of life but also in Judaism - an ancient faith of which the political Zionist Movement- now seen to be akin to a fundamentalist sect - seeks to usurp.
Those who were previously diffident about voicing their misgivings are now speaking out against the continuing brutality against the Muslim indigenous population of what was Palestine and the unacceptable face of these Likud ideologues.
Virtually the whole of Europe is behind President Obama's insistence on a complete stop to settlement expansion and a dismantling of all outposts without exception.
July 21, 2009 2:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
The comparison of "The war is with the Arabs", and "The war is with the blacks" is inane, at best. How many blacks blew up whites in restaurants? How many blacks fired missiles at white neighborhoods? How many blacks taught their children that it is their goal in life to kill whites, and destroy the US?
July 21, 2009 2:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
HEADLINES from today's media July 21, 2009
1. Israel is the prime impediment to progress in the Middle East
2. Israeli settlers burn olive groves in ‘price tag’ retaliation attack
3. Most Arabs refused property in West Jerusalem
4. Israeli war crimes against Gazans : straight from the horses’ mouths
5. US demands extradition of suspected Israeli scammers
6. In Possible Iran Signal, Israeli Boats Cross Suez
7. IDF Destroys Building in Gaza
8. Israel Turns on Itself
9. Memo From Jerusalem: Netanyahu’s Talk of Peace Finds Few True Believers
10. Why Britain hates Israel
11. Israel Rejects U.S. Call to Hold Off on Development
12. How US bingo dollars are funding Israeli settlements
13. Israel Told to Halt East Jerusalem Housing Project
14. Israelis On Horseback In West Bank Fire Raid
15. Israeli combat jet crashes in Colombia
July 21, 2009 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
You forgot the part about controlling the world banking system that intentionally created the world financial crisis. While we're at it, how about 9-11? Iraq? World War II?
July 21, 2009 2:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wish I could just ignore this blatantly propagandist screed that reduces the entire complex and tragic history of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship to a one-sided caricature of racist-inspired oppression. (Cue to mythbuster, et al., I am aware you feel the same way - beat you to the snark). Having neither the time nor the inclination to delve into the specifics, I will again quote A. Jay Adler's succinct takedown of the entire misguided Mondoweiss endeavor:
July 21, 2009 2:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
What is this from?
July 21, 2009 3:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://sadredearth.com/the-malice-of-mondoweiss/
It was written around the time of the "Feeling The Hate In Jerusalem" contretemps. There is another subsequent item dealing with Mondoweiss as well.
July 21, 2009 4:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
blatantly propagandist screed that reduces the entire complex and tragic history of the Israeli-Palestinian relationship to a one-sided caricature of racist-inspired oppression
As an afficianado of propaganda, I disagree with your "caricature of racist-inspired oppression." part. To me, it very clearly registers as an earnest but C- grade rendition of that old classic, "brave and noble peasants solider on through insurmountable odds in their fight against the imperialist running dog."
(Brings back memories, too--once upon a time, I myself fell for this stuff, I was a high school sophomore surreptitiously attending SDS meetings arranged for us youth, where they showed films about the wonders of the character of the noble North Vietnamese.)
Oh, heck, now that I think on it, maybe you are right that there is a racist element, the essay does seem to have a touch of the paternalistic 19th-century noble savage myth, but then that would be Horowitz exhibiting noblesse oblige racism towards what he wishes to depict as childlike Palestinians, not exactly what you meant, was it? :-)
July 21, 2009 4:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ha. I think you're closer to the mark than I.
July 21, 2009 4:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
AG - I find Jay Adler to be the flip side of Mondoweiss, which focuses on what's wrong in Israel and Jay Adler can find no wrong. I don't find that approach to be either rare or inappropriate. How much balanced opinion do you hear coming from Israel on Iran? How many republicans are currently praising Obama? How often do you hear AIPAC point out the deficiencies of Israel? Is Morton Klein fair and balanced in his opinions about the I/P conflict?Caroline Glick?
Everyone has a point of view on this conflict and thus a tendency to emphasize those things that further their thesis. I for one will not close my eyes and pretend the latest settler rampage did not happen.
July 21, 2009 7:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is a curious finding in light of the fact that is no evidence whatsoever to support it – no doubt, because it isn’t true. My post does not concern itself for a single sentence with what is or is not wrong in Israel. That is not its subject matter. The subject is the nature of Blumenthal’s video and of Mondoweiss. In fact, and for instance, I have always opposed the West Bank (and Gaza) settlements. I think the current ascent of Avigdor Lieberman supremely unfortunate – as I did eight years of Bush administration policy, and even slavery, but I do not judge either to have invalidated American nationhood, as I do not think the atrocities of the Chechnyan wars to have rendered the Russian state illegitimate. Unlike Mondoweiss and Blumenthal, I do not consider – on “the flip side” – the aspiration to Palestinian statehood essentially racist in nature, I do not set out in my writing or any endeavors to prove the essential racism of Palestinians or Palestinian nationalists (though that of the Hamas organization is manifest in its expressed theology and beliefs), and I do not author a blog dedicated to thwarting Palestinian national aspirations. Unlike Philip Weiss, I do not feel hatred toward the organs or idea of a potential Palestinian state, and anger does not arise in me at the sound of Arabic or in recognition of an Arabic name. Though I am a Zionist – by which I mean, simply, a believer in the justice and legitimacy of Jewish national aspiration, as I also do not deny those attributes in the aspirations of any other people – and I could argue forcefully the side of Israel against its Palestinian and other Arab adversaries, unlike Mondoweiss, I recognize that doing so for another one hundred years, in pursuit of a moral victory, will serve neither the cause of peace not that of the end of suffering. Unlike Mondoweiss, I can respectfully frame and voice positions with which I disagree, as in
Here, in stunning contrast – stunning in its empathic obtuseness, its (willful?) ignorance of history, and its symbolic illiteracy (ski Masks: Munich, 1972, maybe?) – is an attempt by Philip Weiss:
And, I might close, there is nothing in me worthy of praise through these distinctions…
Flip side, indeed.
July 22, 2009 8:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
Welcome to the sandbox.
Just wanted to say that I've enjoyed your website very much.
July 23, 2009 12:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
I heard some insurgent furniture was kindly quoting me, so I thought I'd stop in. Where's the beer?
July 23, 2009 1:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, that's not true.The Likud party of Israel had nothing whatsoever to do with the world banking crisis, or WW2 or 9/11. What a completely ridiculous suggestion.
Iraq, of course, is a different story. But there is little point in resuscitating that tragedy now.
July 21, 2009 3:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
I am a person in the US who is currently attending a symposium on the Holocaust. When, at the end of an all-day discussion on Nazi oppression, I read a sentence like this (from Horowitz above: "Imagine living day to day thinking you might be expelled from your country in the near future. Or in Gaza, wondering if you will be killed tomorrow..." I am wondering if I've entered a time warp.
Then you people,Armchair Guerilla and GD Riverfollow up with your (I'm thinking) sarcastic comments. You need to be a little more forthright and a little less clever. What are you actually saying? Lose the sarcasm, please, long enough for us bystanders to understand what you are actually advocating or condemning. You especially, Armchair Guerrilla, with your (I'm assuming) facetious question about the "world banking system" etc--please clarify.
July 21, 2009 5:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
The answer to your question is that AG is quick to suggest that any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic and that the person making the criticism obviously disseminates propaganda to the effect that Israelis or Jews or both are also responsible for the current financial crisis and for the Holocaust and for 9/11.
The above is standard defense practice for anyone unable to provide cogent argument to the allegation that Israeli government policies are indefensible.
It is a position adopted and recommended by the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry's hasbara department to Likud supporters worldwide to combat any criticism.
You can google 'hasbara' for a fuller explanation.
July 21, 2009 5:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually, I'm not at all quick to suggest that criticism of Israel is anti-semitic. To the contrary, I have posted hundreds of comments and blog entries over the past few years and can recall only once (or maybe twice) having brought up anti-semitism in response to a particularly egregious. Nor was I suggesting your own particular comment was anti-semitic. Rather, I was suggesting that the relentless and singular focus on Israel as the source of so many ills has roots in anti-semitic tropes. I hope you recognize the distinction.
Moreover, I am not unwilling to criticize Israel where I find reason to criticize. Indeed, I believe the settlement enterprise to be both immoral and counterproductive; I vehemently oppose Netanyahu's position on the settlements; I believed the Gaza operation, if justified at its inception, to be excessive and ultimately inhumane. Where I do take issue, however, is the type of one-sided analysis that portrays Palestinians as innocent victims of Israeli aggression, particularly where, as here, the not-so-subtle agenda of the author is to de-legitimize Israel. My view of the situation is that Palestinian intransigence, not the settlements (which I oppose, as noted) is and has been the primary obstacle to peace.
Finally, I can assure you that I am not affiliated with the Israeli Foreign Affairs Ministry and oppose the Likud government. I'm just a humble public defender from Brooklyn.
July 21, 2009 8:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sure, CR. GD River posted a list of today's "headlines" - a litany of transgressions would be more accurate - some of which have nothing at all to do with the subject at hand, life under the occupation, and others that appear to have been ripped right from Hezbollah's Al Manar TV (i.e., "Israel is the prime impediment to progress in the Middle East;" "Why Britain Hates Israel"). The common theme is that Israel is a rogue nation and a uniquely pernicious source of malice in the world.
I find this obsession itself to be malicious. At a minimum, it reflects a profound oversimplification of a complex and painful issue in which blame can fairly be spread around. I would go further, though, in my belief that it is hateful and implicitly anti-semitic (there, I said it, let the criticisms rain down). My rejoinder was to snarkily point out other, more explicitly anti-semitic tropes in which Israel or the Jews have been unfairly blamed for catastrophic world events. GD River, in part, obliged by drawing the line at the Iraq war, which he apparently would lay at Israel's doorstep.
Does this clarify?
July 21, 2009 5:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
>D River posted a list of today's "headlines" - a litany of transgressions would be more accurate - some of which have nothing at all to do with the subject at hand, life under the occupation, and others that appear to have been ripped right from Hezbollah's Al Manar TV
In fact, the headlines were taken today, untouched, from an American news website, headed Israel News Feed.
They were intended to depict the view of Israel from the world press - mostly from the US but also from UK, China, Australia, Israel and the EU.
July 21, 2009 6:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Carey Rowland
You would do well to also visit GIYUS.ORG - Give Israel Your United Support, which is also seen as a threat to free speech as these two sites together arguably represent the largest international, online lobby group in the world.
That is what I and other individuals who argue against Israeli government policies, have to contend with whenever we post an opinion, on any website.
It is a situation that is far from ideal, although it could be said to be democratic in the same way as AIPAC seeks to influence public opinion in the US.
July 21, 2009 6:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you, AG and GDR for the clarification.
I am a supporter of Israel, but have objections about the Gaza and west bank strategies. Looking back, I see it was the reference to "controlling the world banking system" that threw me for a loop. One cannot always discern clearly these days, between subtly varying shades of opinion, what is malicious and what is facetious.
There are, you know, critics of Israel and the Jews whose diatribes about such thing are serious, hateful and incendiary. Let us not, in banter, blur (or even appear to) the distinctions between ourselves who support Israel and groups whose objective is to deal with the "Jewish question" in hitlerian ways, as perhaps some Iranian leaders and some "aryans" may advocate.
I was recently quite shocked when I encountered multiple swastikas on public and private buildings and structures, while visiting Sichuan province in China. I came away from that experience wondering who would want to identify with that symbol. In the case of those rural Chinese, I suppose their use of the swastika is an association with their religious heritage. I hope so.
Anyway, let's be careful. Times are hard everywhere. There are nefarious elements who seek scapegoats.
July 22, 2009 7:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
RE: Amid constant threats, Palestinians secure in the belief that 'this too shall pass'
MY COMMENT: Great post!
July 21, 2009 6:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/world/middleeast/17westbank.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=print
NABLUS, West Bank — The first movie theater to operate in this Palestinian city in two decades opened its doors in late June. Palestinian policemen standing beneath new traffic lights are checking cars for seat belt violations. One-month-old parking meters are filling with the coins of shoppers. Music stores are blasting love songs into the street, and no nationalist or Islamist scold is forcing them to stop.
“You don’t appreciate the value of law and order until you lose it,” Rashid al-Sakhel, the owner of a carpet store, said as he stood in his doorway surveying the small wonder of bustling streets on a sunny morning. “For the past eight years, a 10-year-old boy could order a strike and we would all close. Now nobody can threaten us.”
For the first time since the second Palestinian uprising broke out in late 2000, leading to terrorist bombings and fierce Israeli countermeasures, a sense of personal security and economic potential is spreading across the West Bank as the Palestinian Authority’s security forces enter their second year of consolidating order.
The International Monetary Fund is about to issue its first upbeat report in years for the West Bank, forecasting a 7 percent growth rate for 2009. Car sales in 2008 were double those of 2007. Construction on the first new Palestinian town in decades, for 40,000, will begin early next year north of Ramallah. In Jenin, a seven-story store called Herbawi Home Furnishings has opened, containing the latest espresso machines. Two weeks ago, the Israeli military shut its obtrusive nine-year-old checkpoint at the entrance to this city, part of a series of reductions in security measures.
July 21, 2009 8:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
If one looks around, it is easy to identify abuses by both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and condemnations on both sides. Individual condemnations are frequently unbalanced, as I've noted elsewhere, and that tends to reduce their credibility.
Where there is a particularly egregious imbalance, however, is in public condemnations within either the Palestinian or Israeli community of that community's own transgressions. There is no dearth of severe criticism of Israeli government policy expressed publicly in Israel by Israelis. It would be reassuring if it were equally permissible for Palestinians in Hamas-controlled Gaza, for example, to condemn terrorist actions fomented by Hamas, and to do so without fear of severe reprisals that include imprisonment or death.
The reason this is particularly important is that societies often tend to respond best to pressures from within. Criticism by outsiders is rationalized or shrugged off. When your own public condemns you, your attempts at rationalization don't work nearly as well.
July 21, 2009 10:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Read more" link does not work.
July 22, 2009 8:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Fred and AG - Both of you seem to believe in the basic decency of Israel. I no longer do. I am absolutely convinced that if the Palestinians laid down their arms and gave up all resistence, Israel would roll right over them. The exiled Gush Katif settlers would be back in Gaza in a heartbeat, armed to the teeth. They would settle wherever they wanted and leave the rest as a fenced in "reservation". The same thing would happen in the West bank, leaving pockets of Palestinians in reservations.
I know you don't agree with my specualtion but at least consider that it might be possible. Compassion is an emotion in very short supply in today's Israel.
July 22, 2009 7:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Both of you seem to believe in the basic decency of Israel. I no longer do.
Jd -That wasn't really relevant to the point I tried to make above, but in any case, I'll address it. I believe neither in the decency nor the indecency of "Israel", because that is too broad a categorization to apply to a society with a multitude of different perspectives, attitudes, and opinions. Like many here, I disapprove of much of what the current government is doing. On the other hand, I do believe in the basic decency of most Israelis, and for that matter, of most Palestinians. My point above was that it is easier for the decent element in Israeli society to speak out against Israeli indecencies than for decent Palestinians to speak out against Palestinian indecencies. It also harder for most Palestinians even to learn about Palestinian transgressions than for Israelis to find out how its government is misbehaving.
There is one point on which you and I share some reason for pessimism. Over the years, many Israelis have grown more cynical, and therefore more intransigent. What is worse, the failure of earlier peace negotiations has strengthened the extremists in both societies. On the Israeli side, it is my impression (as very much an outsider) that it would have been much easier in earlier times to negotiate a land for peace deal over the objections of the settlers, but it may now be next to impossible. The moderate Israelis have been weakened by an increasing perception within Israel that if Israel gives land to the Palestinians, it could not easily take it back, but if Hamas or similar hard line Palestinian elements gave peace to Israel, they could withdraw it in an instant.
That is why any hope of a peaceful settlement will probably require a strong external enforcement mechanism.
July 22, 2009 9:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Where there is a particularly egregious imbalance, however, is in public condemnations within either the Palestinian or Israeli community of that community's own transgressions."
I am cautiously optimistic, but now Israel seems to be at low point. In the past, moral superiority of Israel was so vast that negotiations were meaningless. If you read interview with Barak about his negotiations with Arafat in Camp David, he was basically so disgusted with the sorry specimen that Arafat was that he barely managed not to vomit.
Now moral parity seems to be at hand. For example, "the public condemnations within Israeli community" are less and less tolerated within that community, terrorism is basically gone and settlers are going more and more bonkers.
Why, Israel seems to have its own version of Hamas, and in unity government, no less!
July 22, 2009 11:58 PM | Reply | Permalink