. Fantaztiq Escarri is the name I give to the idea that one side hates the other less than the other side hates them in the Mideast conflict. Generally, this is not claimed by anti-Israelis about how Israelis are more hateful, but often it is one of the main points of pro-Israelis that there is a "hate culture" in Greater Arabia. This hasn't existed since the beginning of time, that is a great myth. In the early days of Arab conquests and the great Persian empire, while everybody else had to either convert to Islam or leave or die, the "people of the book"-- that is, the Jews and Christians-- got off easy, they could stay where they were, and practice their religions freely, provided they coughed up an annual tax for not being Muslims. Now, you might say this is even further evidence that they were much hated, because they had to pay taxes, but that was indeed special treatment, compared with what pagans and others had to weather. That is why today in Egypt there is the Coptic Church, and in Turkey, Morocco, and elsewhere, there are "Arab" Jews. Yes, folks, not everybody dumped their Jews on Israel, there are still quite a few in Casablanca and elsewhere in Morocco (Casablanca has an upscale Jewish quarter), as well as in Turkey and a couple other places. And who does Israel really belong to? Historically, it shouldn't go to the Jews, but rather the Arabs living there, as those with family histories there are usually more closely related to the original Canaanites and Samaritans. And there still exist Bedouins and Samaritans, peoples who ventured to Israel before the Jews. If the Jews should get anything because of history, it should be the right to live anywhere in the world they want, as long as they don't steal land from others. Currently, nobody in my family lives in Israel, and that isn't an issue. But I could if I wanted to, my mother was born Jewish to two Jewish parents, and I could quite easily become an Israeli citizen, as opposed to somebody who once lived in what is now Israel with their kids and grandkids, but fled fearing the worst, who would have a much, much harder time as Arabs. Preface: How many more Palestinians than Jews have died in the past two years, not counting terrorists or soldiers? You will find there are many more Palestinians that have died, quite a few of them were little boys throwing small stones at tanks. If Israeli Jewish children threw rocks at the tanks, would the tanks shoot? Somehow, I doubt it. Oh no, it's little kids throwing rocks, we're all gonna die! *gasp* Even this tank can't protect us from those scary rocks! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Note that the definition of terrorist here is somebody who is obviously planning to or has already blown up civilian centers, or fired upon civilians in civilian population centers. Also filed under "terrorist" to make the numbers more even are those who fired upon Israeli soldiers. However, not considered terrorists are those that shoot only when they've been shot at first. You say it is one sided, that there is much less hatred towards Palestinians than the other way? That everybody has equal rights in the state of Israel? What about curfews? Discriminations? Immigration policies? Moderator Edit – reduce length of quoted text
PLEASE don't shorten GB's posts (especially the 2nd up from here), Goofyfish. Leave a coupla kb for this info that so rarely gets past the censors (please?)
Hopefully, you will find the following tale informative: In 1984, I began work as a reporter for the local weekly newspaper in Jerusalem, Kol Ha’ir (“The voice of the city”). I took the Arab beat, covering not only East Jerusalem but also most of the West Bank and occasionally the Gaza Strip as well. My close daily interaction with Arabs from the occupied territories considerably improved my command of spoken Arabic as well as my knowledge of Arab manners and gestures. I first became aware of the degree to which I had absorbed Palestinian culture when I traveled to Nablus with Danny Rubinstein, a seasoned reporter from the newspaper Davar, to interview a relative of Abu Nidal, the notorious Palestinian terrorist leader. During our conversation, I learned that the interviewee thought I was Rubinstein’s Arab guide. On other occasions, too, Arabs from the occupied territories mistook me for a compatriot. This misapprehension, together with the fact that news items on the West Bank tended to be rather dull and routine at the time, led me to suggest to my editor a different approach to my reporting. My idea was to offer a fresh perspective on Israeli Jews’ relationship with the Palestinians by posing as a Palestinian in a variety of settings and recording my feelings, as well as the reactions of people toward me. After I’d established an identity and made my preparations, I discussed my plan with Feisal Al Husseini, one of the most important Arab leaders in the occupied territories (who had recently spent nine months under administrative detention). Husseini explained the risk I was running: if the Arabs I contacted suspected me of being an undercover agent working for the Shin Beth (the Israeli secret service, now known as Shabak), my life would be in danger. Husseini gave me a letter in which he asked that I be given all possible assistance so that I might carry out my journalistic mission without hindrance. In view of his uncontested leadership among the people of the occupied territories, the letter would serve as a sort of insurance policy. It could save my life in a tight spot — provided I had time enough to whip it out. And so, over a period of six months, I lived more or less continuously 5 as an Arab, generally seeking to involve myself in situations that were typical for the average Palestinian living under Israeli military rule. I stayed in cities and in refugee camps. I worked in restaurants and garages. I lodged with Arab laborers. I even, in my guise as an Arab, had a relationship with a Jewish Israeli woman and volunteered on a kibbutz. Posing as a Palestinian Arab enabled me to see the conflict in a different perspective and to experience it with a greater intensity. To state that Arabs are discriminated against in the Jewish state of Israel is hardly an earthshaking revelation. But posing as a Palestinian, I was able to understand, for the first time, what it means for a man to feel afraid and insecure inside his own home when a military patrol passes outside his window. I had heard Palestinians tell of such things many times, and I had always regarded it as an exaggerated example used to embellish their arguments against the occupation. But when I was myself gripped by that paralyzing fear, when I felt it in my guts, I grasped a dimension of their lives in a way that I never really could have as an Israeli journalist, however understanding I might be of the Palestinian situation. It wasn’t a question of discovering new facts, but of discovering what it meant to feel the facts. Among my first jobs was a stint as a restaurant worker at Hatuki (“The Parrot”), a small Tel Aviv pub. A family atmosphere prevailed there, but, needless to say, I wasn’t really a part of the family. I was a servant. Everyone ordered me around: “I see our Arab is a little idle, so let him take out the glasses and wash them over again.” Once, when Osnat, a young waitress, had some friends visiting, I overheard one of them ask about “her” Arab worker. I also clearly heard her answer: “This Arab, I swear — with just a little improvement he could be a Jew.” One night at Hatuki, all the feelings of frustration and humiliation that I was to experience as an Arab worker were brought home. The owner’s sister, Michal, and her boyfriend came in the kitchen around two in the orning, when most of the customers had already gone. I was in the kitchen washing dishes. Laughing excitedly, they pushed their way into the kitchen — which had hardly enough room for one person to move around in — and squeezed themselves into a small corner between me and the refrigerator and proceeded to kiss each other passionately. Suddenly, a sort of trembling came over me. I realized that they had not meant to put on a peep show for my enjoyment. The two of them were not the least bit concerned about what I saw or felt, even when they began practically screwing under my nose. For them I simply didn’t exist. I was invisible, a nonentity! It is difficult to describe the extreme humiliation I felt. Looking back, I think it was the most degrading moment of my entire posing adventure. I stuck with my awful job at Hatuki more out of inertia than by virtue of any strength of will. In the meantime, I moved in with a group of Arabs, residents of the Israeli town of Urn El Fahern. Since they were citizens of Israel, they were not living in the city illegally, and the flat was rented for them by the restaurant at which they all worked. On my first night there, I dined with my roommates. They had brought a bag from their restaurant containing some pita bread and various salads. When we ran out of pita and were still hungry, Abu Kasem, the eldest of the group, took a few shekels out of his pocket and turned to the youngest. “Hussein,” he requested, “go to the bakery and get some more pita.” Hussein checked his shirt pocket to confirm that his ID card was in place and asked Kasem whether there were any police detectives about. Kasem assured him that the coast was clear, and Hussein left. It was around seven in the evening, an hour when innocent pedestrians aren’t ordinarily arrested in the streets, and I professed astonishment at their caution. “What? You have an Israeli ID, don’t you?” “What do you know?” replied Kasem. “In the West Bank, you call us ‘Jews,’ but for the cops here we’re 100 percent Arabs, and it’s bad news when they get their hands on us. “Our land has all been appropriated by the Jews,” he continued, “so there’s nothing to cultivate. There aren’t any factories, and there are no other jobs, so we depend completely on the Jews for work.” Hussein — who had by then returned with the pita — joined in, pointing out that the Arabs from the occupied territories are not the only ones who suffer. “At the restaurant they were looking for someone educated to sit by the cash register. I brought in my cousin, who is studying computers at Tel Aviv University. When they saw he was an Arab, they said they didn’t need anyone anymore, and a few days later they brought in a Jewish guy who had hardly finished elementary school.” The television set was on and the news broadcast had begun. A report of a terrorist attack on a Jewish synagogue in Istanbul was accompanied by harrowing images of the victims being taken away for burial. Just then, Hussein took a phone call. After a few seconds, he pounded violently on the table in front of him. “What do you want from me? What do you suppose I think about it?!” he shouted, and slammed down the receiver. A few minutes later he calmed down sufficiently to tell us what the argument had been about. “That was my Jewish girlfriend. She saw the news and called to ask me what I thought about the organizations’ attacking a synagogue in Istanbul and killing the Jewish worshippers. I’m fed up with having to justify myself every time something like that happens. They demand constantly that you prove you aren’t a terrorist and want you to apologize for everything that happens in the world.” That was the sort of bitterness I would be exposed to throughout my project. Another such incident occurred at the small home of Abd Al Karim Lubad, with whom I stayed for a couple of weeks while visiting Jebalya, one of the largest refugee camps in the area that was occupied by Israel in 1967. Several of my host’s friends had stopped by; one of them was telling us about his experience working among the Jews: “Once I was picking fruit on some farm near Ashkelon. We worked like donkeys from morning to evening and slept in a stinking, run-down shed in the orchard. After a week, payday came around, and that night the boss brought in some thugs armed with guns who beat us and chased us, yelling, ‘You’re all terrorists!’ We had to get out of there, and a whole week of hard work went to hell. We didn’t get a shekel.” Lubad, my host, erupted. “Those Zionists are getting money from America all the time. Like a flock of sheep, they just stand with mouths open and ask for more. And they’re always talking about what Hitler did to them in Europe. I don’t believe that Hitler killed the Jews, they just killed each other.” His wicked assertion made my blood boil. The young Palestinians in whose company I found myself were intellectuals who knew — or should have known — the truth about the Holocaust. But because so much of their pent-up anger and frustration had resulted from their growing up in a refugee camp, it would have been hard for me to protest against the hatred they felt toward anything that even faintly smacked of Zionism. In October 1986, I ventured to a large right-wing Israeli demonstration in support of “Jewish Underground” members who had been imprisoned for terrorist acts — bombings, shootings, murder, and more — against Palestinians living on the West Bank. The demonstration took place in the square opposite the main synagogue in Jerusalem, less than a mile away from the Arab section of the city. Most of the men were bearded and wore knitted skullcaps, a style that Israelis instantly identify with a form of religious nationalism tinged with a messianic streak. Some of the men were also armed. Many of the demonstrators were waving small replicas of the Israeli flag. The event was a show of strength for Israel’s radical right wing, and my presence there, in my Arab outfit, was an extreme form of provocation. I pushed my way through the crowd and began listening to the speeches about the “beloved sons who were not guilty of any wrongdoing.” The prevailing sentiment was that to spray a college campus with bullets and to freely fling hand grenades at students did not constitute a criminal offense so long as the victims were Arabs. Nor was it considered a crime to plant bombs in the cars of public servants, or to demolish buses loaded with peaceful civilians, if those being blown to pieces were Arabs. Suddenly a hand grabbed hold of my arm and viciously yanked me backward. Turning, I found myself confronting a very red, bearded face that was contorted with hatred. The face rapidly fired questions at me in English: “Who are you? What are you doing here? Where are you from?” “This is a public place and it is my right to be here,” I protested feebly. Under the circumstances, I could hardly have chosen a less effective argument. Some members of the crowd seemed convinced that this time they had a bona fide terrorist on their hands. Curses, kicks, and blows rained down on me. Curious newcomers, inquiring what it was all about, received this illuminating explanation: “There’s an Arab here!” A voice in the mob cried out, “Get out of here! You have nothing to do with us!” I undoubtedly would have complied with this helpful suggestion if only I could have freed myself from the tight group in which I was being held. And so the hysterical shouting went on: “We’ve caught an Arab, call the police! Quick!” A path opened up in the crowd as people moved aside to let a policeman through. Without wasting words, he led me away. As we left, we were joined by two of my captor’s colleagues, young border policemen like himself. Together we crossed the street and headed toward a very dark and narrow alley. These cops have a devilish knack for finding — conveniently close to the commotion — the kind of dark and isolated corner that perfectly suits their purposes. “Stand up straight!” I was ordered, and a direct punch in the stomach immediately followed. It was powerful enough to make me double up in pain — in violation of the instruction I’d just been, given. A second policeman countered the effect of the blow by shoving a crooked finger under my chin, like a hook, and abruptly pulling me back to an up right position. They announced their next decision: “All right! Now we’ll take out everything he’s got in his stinking pockets.” All they found was a keffiyeh (the traditional Arab headdress), a bunch of keys, and a wallet. They returned the keys and the wallet to me, but one of them wound the red keffiyeh (the color favored by many Palestinian leftists) tightly around his hand, as if underscoring the point that I wasn’t going to get it back soon. “Now take out your ID.” I was released with another blow, this time to the back of my neck. I hastily drew my Israeli ID from my wallet and fearfully handed it over. I knew that this humiliating experience could continue for hours. The policeman examining my document whistled in surprise. “We’ve caught a big fish here! He’s got a false ID. I’m taking him over to the patrol car, and you” — he turned to his subordinates — “keep very close watch from behind so he doesn’t escape.” The two policemen obediently positioned themselves behind me while the one in charge escorted me, steering me by the arm. “Come on, you bastard. We’re taking you to our superior now; then you’re going for a ride to detention, and on the way we’ll take care of you in such a way that you’ll never forget it as long as you live.” The blows that were urging me to move along ceased abruptly the moment we reached the brightly lit street. I was taken to a border-police jeep that was parked across from the demonstration. A giant of an officer, well over six feet tall, accepted my ID and keffiyeh with as much satisfaction as if he’d just been presented with a firearm taken from a captured terrorist. Then he instructed me to wait a short distance from the jeep while he spoke into his walkie-talkie. He reported that an extremely suspicious ID had been found on the person of an Arab who was just apprehended at the demonstration, where he had been loitering with no apparent purpose. Soon, the walkie-talkie barked back instructions concerning my ID: it seemed that the police computer had a file on me. The officer wasn’t able to hide his frustration as he gave me the welcome news, “I’m giving you three minutes to get out of here, and don’t you dare enter the area of the demonstration or you’ll be arrested.” This time I had no intention of compromising. “I have a right to be at the demonstration,” I insisted. “All right,” the officer conceded, “but without that red keffiyeh. If I see you with the keffiyeh, I’m arresting you on the spot.” Of course, there was no legal basis for this demand, either. His job, as a policeman, was to protect me even if I went in there with a dozen keffiyehs, but I had no strength for further arguments. I returned to the demonstration, which was about to end. The flags were raised up high and the crowd began to sing “Hatikva”; they must have felt that invoking the Israeli national anthem was an appropriate gesture in support of Jewish terrorists. They stood motionless as they sang, but I couldn’t remain still and moved restlessly about. Even though I was an Israeli Jew, their tikva (“hope”) was certainly not mine. Before one can speak of the intifada, as the Palestinians call the current uprising, one must first understand how the Palestinians have coped with life under the Israeli occupation up to this point. The key concept in this respect is sumud, which means “sticking with it,” “staying put,” “holding fast” to one’s objectives and to the land — in a word, survival. Sumud is an attitude, a philosophy, and a way of life. It maintains that one must carry on in a normal and undisturbed fashion, as much as possible. Compared with organized civil disobedience, or passive resistance as preached by Gandhi, sumud is a more basic form of resistance growing out of the idea that merely to exist, to survive, and to remain on one’s land is an act of defiance — especially when deportation is the one thing Palestinians fear most. Although sumud is essentially passive by nature, it has a more active aspect, consisting of gestures that underscore the difference between surviving under difficult conditions and accepting them. During the course of my project, I was several times presented with examples of this active sumud. On one occasion, I met a Palestinian youth whom I shall call Abed, who told me about his version of sumud. “Despite the fact that I am a university graduate,” he said, “I can’t find work in my profession, so I earn my living as a construction worker.” “Where do you work?” I asked. “In Beit El, up there.” He pointed at the hill that overlooked the refugee camp. On the hillside, one could see scattered houses with the European-style, slanted red-tile roofs that are characteristic of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank. “That means you not only work for the Jewish, but you work for the worst of them, for the settlers,” I said, in an admonishing tone of voice. Abed exchanged glances with his friends — as if to ask them whether to include me in their little secret — and replied, “True, we work for the settlers. The money we earn allows us to live here, to be samidin (practitioners of sumud), but that isn’t all. For us, in this camp, sumud isn’t just bringing home money and buying a sack of rice and a few bags of sugar. When I work at the settlement I take advantage of every opportunity to fight them.” “What can you do as a simple laborer?” “Quite a bit. First of all, after I lay tiles in the bathroom or kitchen of an Israeli settler, when the tiles are all in place and the cement has already dried, I take a hammer and break a few. When we finish installing sewage pipes, and the Jewish subcontractor has checked to see that everything is all right, then I stuff a sackful of cement into the pipe. As soon as water runs through that pipe the cement gets hard as a rock, and the sewage system becomes blocked.” Two older men who were sitting at a table near ours joined in the conversation. Abu Adnan and Abu Ibrahim represented a generation of Palestinians that is haunted by the stinging defeat of 1948, at which time the Arabs either fled — leaving behind their villages and land — or were forcibly deported. But the younger generation, which is more active in resisting the occupation, owes its nationalistic education and inspiration to these elders. The elders are the ones who nurtured and sustained the Palestinian’s identification with the villages of their origin. When asked where they are from, even youngsters who have never known an existence other than in the miserable shanties of a refugee camp can proudly name the place of their family’s origin — which is often a village that ceased to exist long before they were born. The intifada, which means “the shaking” (in the sense of shaking oneself free or awake), began with demonstrations in the Jebalya refugee camp on December 8, 1987, spread quickly to other camps, and continues to this day. There have been hundreds of deaths and casualties, mostly among Palestinians. The intifada, in my opinion, can be understood as the anguished cry of a minority trying to call attention to the discrimination that is being practiced against it, as much as a demand for national liberation. But Israeli officials prefer to speak of “violent disturbances of order,” or just plain riots. About three weeks after the intifada broke out, I visited the Shati refugee camp near Gaza. Shati is a miserable place to live even in ordinary times; now the chaos was unprecedented. The sewer had run over, flooding entire streets. Large garbage cans were being used as road barriers, and the sand in the alleys was covered with a black layer of burned rubber, the residue of all the tires that had blazed there over the past three months. Children, rulers of the intifada, could be found at all points along the perimeter of the camp, armed with improvised slingshots and creating an atmosphere of apocalypse and anarchy. We went over to the Shifa hospital, which was located near the camp. There we visited, among others, Muhriz Hamuda Al Nimnin, a young victim of the recent violence. His brother, who was at his bedside, said, “If they had done it to me it would at least have made some sense, because I throw rocks and Molotov cocktails. But Muhriz is a sick person who never participated in a demonstration.” He then told us as much of the story as he knew. People in the camp had seen Muhriz being arrested by the soldiers who manned a lookout post. Eighteen days after his arrest, he was found unconscious in front of the entrance to the Shifa hospital. In addition to the usual injuries inflicted by the Israeli troops — broken arms and legs — Muhriz had been hit on the head. He was now a vegetable, incapable of speaking, unable to tell what had happened. The palms of his hands and his fingers were badly burned, as though he had been forced to grasp a red-hot metal object. I asked Muhriz’s brother if he was sure that it was the soldiers who had inflicted these injuries. He replied that there were witnesses who had seen Muhriz being beaten by soldiers when he was arrested, “but not in such a way.” The brother spread out the contents of a sack that had been found next to Muhriz at the gate of the hospital. In it were the clothes that the victim had apparently worn throughout the period of his absence. To my dismay, I discovered a damning piece of evidence among the foul-smelling rags: a strip of flannel cloth of the kind used in the army for wiping weapons clean of grime and oil. The rag was tied in the shape of a loop the size of a man’s head. Since soldiers commonly use these strips of cloth for blindfolding suspects, the chances seemed good that the criminal act of sadism committed against Muhriz had indeed been carried out by members of the Israeli Defense Forces. For twenty years the Palestinians have lived among us. During the day we have been the employers who profited by their labor and exploited them for all they are worth; in the afternoon we have been the police; in the evening we have been the soldiers at the roadblock on the way home; and at night we have been the security forces who entered their homes and arrested them. The young Palestinians work in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and other Israeli cities. They identify with the values of Israeli society at least as much as they do with their traditional backgrounds. They get a whiff of the democratic privileges that Israeli citizens enjoy, but they cannot share in them. The young man who spends his work week among a people living under democratic rule returns to his home, which is only an hour away but which has (in effect, if not officially) been under curfew for twenty years. Any Arab who walks in the streets at a late hour can expect to be detained and questioned about his actions, even during periods of relative calm. He sees and recognizes the value of freedom but is accorded the kind of treatment that characterizes the most backward dictatorial regimes. How can he be anything but frustrated? In the end, the impressions I was left with formed a depressing picture of fear and mistrust on both sides. The Palestinians, employed as a cheap labor force, are excluded from Israeli society, whereas Israeli Jews are satisfied to rule without the least curiosity about how the other side lives. My conclusion is that a continuation of Israel’s military presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip threatens to change Israel into a place that many people, including myself, will find unlivable. I am tired of witnessing the disastrous results of the occupation every day. And I am frightened that many more people, on both sides, may be doomed to suffer bloodshed and destruction.
---By the way, why hasn't anybody said anything but me? I thought this would be a fairly hot topic... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I have auto-alert
I can only speak for myself, but I think a little more conversation, and a little less compilation would be my guess. You have some great stuff, but I'm too exhausted to comment. Try breaking it down into elements, and I'll bounce ideas back and forth. After a certain critical mass, too much material just wont bounce (and Goofyfish will mercilessly amputate)Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
GB-GIL I very much appreciate the book My Enemy, My Self by Yoram Binur (which you cut & pasted from) and recommend it. But pasting in long excerpts doesn't fit the purpose of a forum like this. I agree with what you are trying to convey, but you really must keep quotes shorter to last here. OK Goofyfish- cut 'im down to size! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
