Mohammed Omer's 'truth'
How does it feel for a young Palestinian journalist from Gaza to accept an award named after the legendary journalist Martha Gellhorn? Gellhorn is widely regarded as one of the most outstanding war correspondents of the 20th century, but it has been said about her that "she switched off her sympathy when it came to the sufferings of Arabs. She was entirely committed to the cause of Israel [...and] remained deaf to the Palestinian case."
That is perhaps not an entirely fair characterization, because in her famous 1961 report on "The Arabs of Palestine" Gellhorn was by no means "deaf" to the plight of Palestinian refugees - indeed, she left no doubt that she wanted to see their problems addressed and solved as quickly as possible. But as a reporter in Europe during and after World War II, Gellhorn had seen refugees before, and she did not hesitate to point out the "unique care and concern" and "the unique publicity" reserved for Palestinian refugees. She also did not hesitate to argue that the "unique misfortune of the Palestinian refugees is that they are a weapon in what seems to be a permanent war [...] Their function is to hang around and be constantly useful as a goad."
Comments (23)The inevitable reaction
"What, exactly, is a decent person supposed to think?" That was Bradley Burston's question in an emotional piece published on the website of Ha'aretz shortly after an Arab resident from the southeast Jerusalem neighborhood of Sur Baher killed three and injured dozens in a bulldozer rampage on Jaffa Road last Wednesday. A day later, a Jerusalem Post editorial critically reviewed what the international media were suggesting their readers should think about this terrible attack.
Among the reports and commentaries highlighted in the editorial was a piece that had been published just a few hours after the attack on the Guardian's website under the title "The inevitable overreaction." Once you start to read this piece, you quickly realize that, just a few hours after the carnage, the verdict was already clear: any Israeli reaction to the attack would be an "overreaction", because if Israelis found themselves "targeted by terrorist killers", there was an obvious reason: "Occupation breeds terror" - and if this was not a good enough explanation for terrorist attacks, there was still another one on offer: "the relentless oppressive tactics employed by successive Israeli governments since the very foundation of the state." As the first comment posted in response to this article aptly noted: "Before the dead are cold and buried their murder is 'explained' away. How sad."
'Boycott Israel' bigotry
It may seem quite unusual that union members would want to boycott their colleagues in another country, but some members of Britain's largest academic trade union, the University and College Union (UCU), are apparently resolved to make it something of a venerable tradition to call for a boycott of their colleagues in Israel at their annual conference. As The Jerusalem Post reported last week, the UCU once again presented and passed a motion that urges union members "to consider the moral and political implications of educational links with Israeli institutions, and to discuss the occupation with individuals and institutions concerned, including Israeli colleagues with whom they are collaborating." Since it is "Israeli colleagues" who will have to prove to their British counterparts that they are "morally kosher", presumably British academics will be equally suspicious about Israeli Jewish academics and Israeli Arab academics - perhaps the whole exercise is about something like "non-discriminatory discrimination"?
Perception and reality
A cynic might say that it was a contest we used to win hands down: most dangerous, most disliked, most dreadful - as long as it was a poll asking people who's the worst of them all, Israel was sure to score first place. One of the most widely reported of those poll results was a European survey back in fall 2003 which ranked Israel as the greatest threat to peace in the world.
Last year, a global BBC poll showed that when asked which countries "have a mainly negative influence in the world", Israel was again ranked first, but the same poll this year ranked Israel "only" second - which means we switched places with Iran: they came in second last year; this year, they snatched the "bad-guys-award" from us...
Gaza grotesque
It was hardly surprising to read reports that, as the Arab League summit got under way in Damascus this weekend, Hamas was organizing a rally in Gaza to glorify their "resistance" and to call on Arab leaders to withdraw the Saudi-sponsored peace initiative that was re-launched at last year's Arab summit in Riyadh. For Hamas-leader Mushir al-Masri the Arab peace initiative was a "burden" on Palestinians because "Hamas is defending the honor and dignity of this nation on the [Arabs] behalf."
Some Arabs clearly beg to differ. "Hamas Must Stand Down" was the straightforward title of a recent article in the Saudi English-language daily Arab News, which argued:
The birthday bashers
There is something sad and pathetic about the efforts of pro-Palestinian activists to hijack events celebrating Israel's 60th anniversary. These activists insist that, instead of focusing on what was achieved by those who accepted the UN partition sixty years ago and ever since invested all their energies into building a successful state, the world should be transfixed by the misery of those who rejected the partition plan and for decades invested all their energies into turning back the clock.
The false premise underlying the appeals that the plight of the Palestinians should be in the center of everyone's attention is the notion that Palestinians never had a choice: Israel's establishment had to become their "naqba" and thus the focal point of a Palestinian identity that centers on victimhood and a sense of resentment and grievance. And often enough, the very same people who are most vociferous when it comes to accusing Israel of focusing too much on the Holocaust will insist that the "naqba" is the most natural point of reference for anything and everything to do with the Palestinians.
The terrorists' calculus
The sense of shock and overwhelming sadness, the heartbreak of families and friends gathering at yet another funeral for a victim of a terrorist attack are all too familiar emotions for Israelis and Jews around the world. But beyond the shared grief, there is the deeply divisive question of how to react. Revenge and retaliation, or restraint and careful reasoning about how to proceed, about how best to put an end to the recurrence of yet another terrible tragedy? When it comes to answering this question, it is perhaps best to first ask another question: what did the terrorist want to achieve beyond the killing of as many of his chosen victims as possible?
There is little reason to disagree with Calev Ben-David's analysis that "the goal was to outrage the general public and to inflame that particular segment of it most skeptical of the possibility of Israel one day coming to terms with its most immediate Arab neighbors". And sadly, judging from the Sunday papers, it looks as if the terrorist might well have achieved this goal. As the British Observer already reports: "Israel's far-right settler movement has set itself on a renewed collision course with the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, declaring that last week's massacre in a Jewish religious school had targeted them directly and vowing to build a new illegal outpost in the West Bank for every one of the killed students."
'Hasbara' in the real world
Against the backdrop of the recent escalation of rocket and missile attacks from Hamas-controlled Gaza, the Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli Foreign Ministry "began preparing the grounds for a large hasbara campaign" designed to explain that Israel had a right to defend itself. Obviously, that is a right that everybody else can take for granted, and thus there is clearly a reason why Israelis and their friends and supporters complain often enough that the government's "hasbara" efforts are woefully inadequate.
What is often overlooked when Israeli "hasbara" is criticized as not effective enough is that, while the Hebrew word literally means "explanation", there are plainly quite a few people who don't want to listen to any explanation of Israeli concerns and viewpoints. For them, "hasbara"is nothing but propaganda. Thus, the ostensibly objective SourceWatch site claims with an unabashed lack of objectivity: "Hasbara refers to the propaganda efforts to sell Israel, justify its actions, and defend it in world opinion. [...] Israel portrays itself as fighting on two fronts: the Palestinians and world opinion. The latter is dealt with hasbara. The premise of hasbara is that Israel's problems are a matter of better propaganda, and not one of an underlying unjust situation."
Inventing new Nazi victims
A week ago, the Israeli branch of the German Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation and Netanya College organized a debate on a manifesto published in the wake of the 2006 Lebanon war by a group of 25 German social scientists, most of whom work on conflict resolution and peace research. According to the Ebert-Foundation website, the manifesto calls for a re-evaluation of Germany's relationship with Israel, arguing that the friendship between the two countries has become mature enough to allow for criticism. That sounds like a rather reasonable argument, because there is indeed little justification for the notion that German history should oblige Germans to be completely uncritical of Israeli policies. But the manifesto does more than just claim a right to criticize Israel - it also attempts to rewrite history.
Consider this report, which, when checked against the original German text of the manifesto, is indeed quite accurate: "According to the manifesto, German responsibility toward the Palestinians is 'one side of the consequences of the Holocaust which receives far too little attention.' It [i.e. the manifesto] went on to argue that it was the Holocaust which Germany perpetrated that brought about 'the suffering that has persisted [in the Middle East] for the last six decades and has at present become unbearable.'"
Hate on Holocaust Memorial Day
It is utterly depressing to see how quickly a well-intentioned and well-written article about Holocaust Memorial Day will attract anonymous talkbacks that eagerly insinuate that Gaza is Warsaw, that the Palestinians are the Jews, and that the Israelis are the Nazis. Take as just one example Karen Pollock's "Confronting our past" that was published on the Guardian's website last week. Pollock who is chief executive of the British Holocaust Educational Trust tried to explain that even though more than 60 years had passed since the liberation of Auschwitz, it would be wrong to "simply consign the terror of the Holocaust to our history books"; instead, she argued, everyone still had "a duty to learn from the past and apply those lessons today". But among the first dozen readers to respond to her article, quite a few were all too sure that they had learned whatever was to learn and that they were thus ready to "apply those lessons today".
The very first talkback read: "Pity that on Sunday [i.e. Holocaust Memorial Day, January 27] the Palestinians will still be off their own land and barricaded in ghettos. Tantamount to ethnic cleansing." Talkback number 5 asserted: "What relevance does the Holocaust have for modern Britain? None." Another talkback read: "This week hundreds of thousands of Palestininans starving and dying in a ghetto closed off to the outside world (Warsaw redux) blasted thru a wall into Egypt in order to get basic goods like medicines, food, mattresses [...] Israel slowly starves and kills a powerless, impoverished people to death because they did not have the privilege of being born Jewish. [...] 60 years ago it was perfectly ok to starve Jews to death because they didn't matter as human beings to an anti-semitic world. Decades later it's perfectly ok to starve Arabs to death for the same reason." Or, another variation on the same theme: "What a pity that the memory of the Holocaust is invoked as justification for the persecution of others that continues to this day."
About this blog The Warped Mirror
How the world sees Israel - comments and analysis by a contemporary historian.
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