25 Jul War and Peace in Israel
As I write, I am sitting on the balcony of the Castle in Karem Maharal, a few miles north of Caesarea and a few miles south of Haifa. I look out over my balcony at the vineyards drinking Tishbi wine, which has been grown here in Zichron Yaakov for decades. To my left the sun is setting over the Mediterranean Sea. The family cat is asleep on the patio and the neighborhood dog is asleep on the picnic table. A partridge slowly walks the lawn. Dogs are barking in the distance. Horse hoofs on pavement echo quietly below. One can hear a shepherd leading his flock home from pasture. Children are playing in the local playground. The stores in the village are quickly closing, as the Sabbath is fast approaching.
My accommodations could be highlighted in Architectural Digest. The rooms feature stones, high ceilings, exquisite tilework, and the art work of Udi Stuler, owner and operator of the castle. He has owned the place for almost three decades, and we talked about how the price of real estate in this region has gone through the roof in the past decade. In a word, it is peaceful here, as peaceful as one would expect from a weekend visit to the countryside in Italy or Switzerland.
From where I sit, I am looking north. Fifty kilometers (30 miles) to the north is the Israeli border with Lebanon. Hezbollah controls the southern part of Lebanon. During the Lebanese war in 2006, missiles landed a few kilometers from here. This is the other face of Israel, the face that you read in the papers. It is the face of Israel not at peace but at war. There is evidence of Israel at war as well. I have seen more guns in the past three weeks than I have in my entire lifetime. But even still, the Israelis appear casual, almost nonchalant, about the fact that they are in a permanent state of war. Swimming at the pool two weeks ago at the Ein Gedi kibbutz on the shores of the Dead Sea, I saw a fat man wearing nothing but a bathing suit and a semiautomatic rifle. I alone appeared to notice the incongruity. At the checkpoint on the road to Eilat the guard had me convinced I was lost and was about to cross the border into Jordan. Just as I was about to turn around, he laughed and said, “Just kidding, my friend, have a great weekend in Eilat!” On the bus to Jerusalem soldiers were everywhere, but they were asleep or listening to their Ipods, rifle held limply in hand. On several occasions I thought that the young female soldiers I saw at the local mall looked like they could be at any mall in the United States, but for the uniforms, and the security, and the checkpoints.
In short, Israelis appear to be yearning for normalcy. But the good news is they appear to have it in large doses. In fact, I would say this country feels normal, but for the ubiquity of guns and soldiers and checkpoints. They get on with their lives as well as one could hope, striving and achieving a remarkable degree of normalcy. As I sit here on the eve of another Sabbath, I have an overwhelming sense that Israel is at peace, even though I know it is at war.
And of course try to imagine how all that would have been if you looked like a Palestinian. The problem you see is that the space is one fought over by two groups. Your picture reminds me of the bucolic beauty of the South during segregation – as long as you were not black.
Best,
Ben
Ben,
I don’t think you have your facts straight. While there are territorial regions of Israel that are disputed, this area is not one of them. Even if there eventually is a Palestinian state, I have never heard of any discussion or demands for turnover of the region northwest of Jerusalem. You probably are thinking of other areas, such as Gaza, parts of the West Bank, or the Golan Heights.
Roger
Response…Roger, I don’t think you got the gist of Ben’s message. To people like him, all of Israel is disputed. And of course it is, because Hamas, Hezbollah and most of the arab world think that Israel in its entirety is illegitimate. It is a truly apartheid atittude, which allows for 24 arab countries, but not a single Jewish one.
His analogy with the American south is mistaken. Even in the old segregated south, the black slaves did not want to destroy the US and kill all its inhabitants. That’s what Israel has been up against for more than 60 years.
Neither of you get my point. My point is that I really question whether a Palestinian going through those same spaces would have the same reaction. It is the same thing as from the South when a black walked through segregated space and whites did not see the parallel universe.
If you are the dominant group – you do not see that reaction to the space. Roger, you are clearly in the dominant group in that setting and my hope was to sensitize you and others to the parallel universe in the same space.
I am encouraging all who read this to think about walking through those spaces as a Palestinian because we are not taught to think like that. To think in terms of the non-dominant group.
I am not going to rehash the arguments about who is right in this struggle or whose version of history is the truth.
I will repeat my philosophy on all this. I have friends on the different sides of this battle and have an approach that says “even if you are right, you have to find a way to get along since none of you are going to leave that space.”
If I was an Israeli Jew (I have found out that in the Reform tradition I would be seen as a Jew), I would be tough as nails to the Palestinians and the rest of the world. And if I was a Palestinian (had a great uncle who worked with UNRWA in the 50’s) I would be tough as nails to the Israeli Jews and the world.
I just hope that all the tough as nails types get to the point where they figure out a way to live in peace. That’s the negotiated solution.
There will always be crazies who want to shoot and kill on both sides. We have seen them over the past 60 years on both sides. Always with religious or other arguments for why they are right and the other side is wrong and that God is with them.
If Abraham is a common ancestor, then as a family we can figure this out.
On Abraham, it took me until this year as a Christian to comprehend how enormous the idea of monotheism must have been for him. What an idea to come to in the ancient world. To conclude that there must only be one God is such a powerful idea I could imagine him falling down on the ground from the strain of that idea. If I was the first to come up with that idea, it would have struck me dumb as it is such a huge idea.
Best,
Ben
Ben, comparing the atmosphere in Israel to that of segregation shows you have no idea what’s going on there. Please say what you base your claims on.
Other than the Law of Return, which gives Jews an automatic citizenship (much because of the Holocaust), Arabs have equal rights. So once you are a citizen of Israel, you are given the same rights as any other citizen.
“Other than the Law of Return, which gives Jews an automatic citizenship (much because of the Holocaust), Arabs have equal rights”
Rrrright. That is probably why in 1992 Knesset removed one line from Israeli Basic Law on Human Dignity and Liberty draft which says: ‘All are equal before the law, and there shall be no discrimination on the grounds of gender, religion, nationality, race, ethnic group, country of origin or any other irrelevant factor’. Attempts to introduce such a clause were rejected numerous times.
Arabs in Israel are second class citizens at best. There are numerous laws which aim to put Arabs in disadvantage, i.e. Israeli laws do not permit Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens to become citizens themselves and does not give these spouses a right to live in Israel. B’Tselem called such a legislation ‘a racist law who determines who can live here according to racist criteria.’
Everything in Israel refers to ‘Jewish State’, and ‘Jewish’ does not include ‘Arab’.
Firstly, the line which was removed by the Knesset is irrelevant, because the Israeli Supreme Court said the right to equality is part of every person’s dignity.
Secondly, it’s not very fair to trim what I said and attack it. The following sentence was: “So once you are a citizen of Israel, you are given the same rights as any other citizen.”
The legislation you’re referring to prevents, in most cases, residents of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank from getting Israeli citizensip – for security reasons. There have been numerous cases where Israeli citizens, mostly Arab (but also Jewish), married Palestinians, and those Palestinians moved around the country freely and engaged in terror activities. The law tries to prevent that.
Indeed, this law, among other things, keeps Arab citizens of Israel from marrying Palestinians. But before we say rights were deprived, we need to ask if family reunification is even a right. It seems the answer is not so clear: 6 Justices of the Israeli Supreme Court concluded that there is no such right; 5 thought there is.
The Israeli atmosphere Roger depicts in this post, an atmosphere of security, is enabled only because of laws like this. The last two terrorist attacks in Israel – both in Jerusalem, both in the past few weeks and both using a tractor – were committed by Arab citizens. So perhaps this law is not all that bad.
Thirdly, your “Jewish State” remark lights another problem. “Jewish State” does not mean the formal language is Hebrew only; it does not mean non-Jewish holidays are not respected; it does not mean non-Jewish citizens are viewed as second-class human beings. It means a state where Jews can find security, a national home. As Jews have been persecuted for centuries, I don’t think this concept is strange.
It’s very easy to talk about rights for people of religion X, when people of religion Y are attacked constantly (or there are attempts to attack them). And that goes both ways: I don’t think every single Israeli action in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank is justified, but I don’t it’s necessarily wrong either. Israel cannot justify every action in terms of “security needs”, but certain actions can be justified.
Response…
Presumably, those with a genuine interest in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict seek also to familiarize themselves with the best scholarship in this area. Toward that end, I’ve pasted below a manageable (i.e., not exhaustive) bibliography with titles that could serve as a necessary condition for a basic knowledge of the conflict. I’ve also listed some helpful Internet sources to keep abreast of the latest developments and issues.
*Aruri, Naseer H. The Obstruction of Peace: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1995.
*Aruri, Naseer H. Dishonest Broker: The Role of the United States in Palestine and Israel. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2003.
*Asali, Kamil J., ed. Jerusalem in History. New York: Olive Branch Press/Interlink, 2000.
*Baroud, Ramzy. Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle. London: Pluto Press, 2006.
*Beinin, Joel and Rebecca L. Stein, eds. The Struggle for Sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, with the Middle East Research and Information Project, 2006.
*Bowen, Stephen, ed. Human Rights, Self-Determination, and Political Change in the Occupied Territories. The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1997.
*Boyle, Francis A. Palestine, Palestinians, and International Law. Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press, 2003.
*Cheshin, Amir S., Bill Hutman, and Avi Melamed. Separate and Unequal: The Inside Story of Israeli Rule in East Jerusalem. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
*Chomsky, Noam. The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1999 ed.
*Chomsky, Noam. Middle East Illusions. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
*Cobban, Helena. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation: People, Power and Politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
*Cook, Jonathan. Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State. London: Pluto Press, 2006.
*Cypel, Sylvain. Walled: Israeli Society at an Impasse. New York: Other Press, 2006.
*Davis, Uri. Israel: An Apartheid State. London: Zed Press, 1987.
*Elon, Amos. Jerusalem: City of Mirrors. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co., 1989.
*Elon, Amos. Jerusalem: Battleground of Memories. New York: Kodansha International, 1995.
*Enderlin, Charles. Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995-2002. New York: Other Press, 2003.
*Falk, Richard and Burns H. Weston. ‘The Relevance of International Law to Palestinian Rights in the West Bank and Gaza: In Legal Defense of the Intifada,’ Harvard International Law Journal 32, No. 1 (1991): 191-204.
*Farsoun, Samih K. (with Christian E. Zacharia). Palestine and the Palestinians. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997.
*Finkelstein, Norman. Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. London: Verso, 1995.
*Flapan, Simha. The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities. New York: Pantheon, 1987.
*Friedland, Roger and Richard Hecht. To Rule Jerusalem. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
*Gerner, Deborah J. One Land, Two Peoples: The Conflict over Palestine. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2nd ed., 1994.
*Ghanem, As’ad. The Palestinian Regime: A “Partial Democracy.” Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2001.
*Gorenberg, Gershom. The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977. New York: Times Books, 2006.
*Grabar, Oleg. The Shape of the Holy: Early Islamic Jerusalem. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.
*Hadawi, Sami. Bitter Harvest: A Modern History of Palestine. New York: Olive Branch Press, 1989.
*Hajjar, Lisa. Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza. London: University of California Press, 2005.
*Hiltemann, Joost R. Behind the Intifada: Labor and Women’s Movements in the Occupied Territories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.
*Hussein, Hussein Abu and Fiona McKay. Access Denied: Palestinian Land Rights in Israel. London: Zed Books, 2003.
*Karmi, Ghada. Married to Another Man: Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine. London: Pluto Press, 2007.
*Khalidi, Rashid. Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
*Khalidi, Rashid. The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2006.
*Khalidi, Walid, ed. All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948. Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992.
*Kimmerling, Baruch, ed. The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989.
*Kimmerling, Baruch. Politicide: Ariel Sharon’s War Against the Palestinians. London: Verso, 2003.
*Kovel, Joel. Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine. London: Pluto Press, 2007.
*Kretzmer, David. The Legal Status of the Arabs in Israel. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990.
*Lockman, Zacharay and Joel Beinin, eds. Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation. Boston, MA: South End Press/A MERIP Book, 1989.
*Lustik, Ian. Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel’s Control of a National Minority. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1980.
*Makdisis, Saree. Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2008.
*Masalha, Nur. The Expulsion of Palestinians: The Concept of ‘Transfer’ in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948. Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992.
*Masalha, Nur. A Land Without People: Israel, Transfer and the Palestinians. London: Faber and Faber, 1997.
*Masalha, Nur. The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem. London: Pluto, 2003.
*Mearsheimer, John J. and Stephen M. Walt. The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.
*Mishal, Shaul and Avraham Sela. The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence, and Coexistence. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.
*Morris, Benny. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
*Morris, Benny. Israel’s Border Wars, 1949-1956. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
*Morris, Benny. Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
*Muslih, Muhammad Y. The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.
*Norton, Augustus Richard. Hezbollah: A Short History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007.
*Pappé, Ilan. The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947-1951. London: I.B. Tauris, 1994.
*Pappé, Ilan. A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003 ed.
*Pappé, Ilan. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oxford, UK: Oneworld, 2006.
*Pappé, Ilan, ed. The Israel/Palestine Question: A Reader. New York: Routledge, 2007.
*Porath, Yehoshua. The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 2 Vols. London: Frank Cass, 1974 and 1977.
*Rodinson, Maxime. Israel: A Colonial-Settler State? New York: Anchor Foundation/Pathfinder, 1973.
*Rogan, Eugene L. and Avi Shlaim, eds. The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
*Romann, Michael and Alex Weingrod. Living Together Separately: Arabs and Jews in Contemporary Jerusalem. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.
*Rose, John. The Myths of Zionism. London: Pluto Press, 2004.
*Saad-Ghorayeb, Amal. Hizbu’llah: Politics and Religion. London: Pluto Press, 2002.
*Said, Edward W. The Question of Palestine. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
*Said, Edward W. The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After. New York: Vintage Books, 2001 ed.
*Said, Edward W. and Christopher Hitchens, eds. Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question. London: Verso, 1988.
*Sayigh, Yezid. Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1997.
*Shafir, Gershon. Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882-1914. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
*Shlaim, Avi. Collusions across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement and the Partition of Palestine. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1988.
*Shlaim, Avi. The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2000.
*Slater, Jerome. ‘What Went Wrong? The Collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process,’ Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 116, No. 2 (Summer 2001), pp. 171-199.
*Smith, Charles. Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 5th ed., 2004.
*Tal, David. War in Palestine, 1948: The Arab Neighbourhoods and their Fate in the War. Jerusalem: The Institute of Jerusalem Studies, 1999.
*Tamimi, Azzam. Hamas: A History from Within. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press/Interlink, 2007.
*Weizman, Eyal. Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation. London: Verso, 2007.
*Younis, Mona N. Liberation and Democratization: The South African and Palestinian National Movements. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
*Zertal, Idith and Akiva Eldar. Lords of the Land: The War Over Israel’s Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007. New York: The Nation Books, 2007.
*Zunes, Stephen. Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism. Monroe. ME: Common Courage Press, 2002.
*Zureik, Elia. The Palestinians in Israel: A Study in Internal Colonialism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987.
See too these Internet sites:
Al-Dameer Association for Human Rights—Gaza: http://www.aldameer.org/
The Arab Association for Human Rights (Association in service of the Palestinian Arab Minority in Israel): http://www.arabhra.org/
B’Tselem—The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territory: http://www.btselem.org/english/About_BTselem/Index.asp
International Humanitarian Law Research Initiative–International Humanitarian Law in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory:
http://opt.ihlresearch.org/
Middle East Online: http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/
The Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP): http://www.merip.org/
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights: http://www.pchrgaza.org/
Palestine Media Watch: http://www.pmwatch.org/pmw/index.asp
Professor Juan Cole’s Informed Comment: Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion http://www.juancole.com/
I see that the analogy to segregation has hit a nerve. Again whenever a person of a dominant group says everything is OK, the argument the other way comes in. When whites use to say blacks had it so good in the States, the question was asked would you be willing to trade places with a black person.
Among Israeli citizens, would a Jew be willing to trade places with an Arab? Outside of Israeli citizens, would an Israeli Jew be willing to trade places with a Palestinian?
Obviously there are many complications to such a trading places idea. But, I think the answer to both of these is a definite no from everything I have seen and read.
And the point I continue to make is walk through these spaces as a Palestinian. Walk through that checkpoint as a Palestinian. If you are in Israel, dress like an Arab and walk through those spaces (like Gunter Wallraff did in Germany dressing and acting like a Turkish immigrant).
The argument will be that the security apparatus is essential. That security apparatus focuses on security threats and the security threats for the most part are seen as Arabs and Palestinians. (I am leaving to the side the Arab and Palestinian views about who are security threats to them.). If you are a peaceful Palestinian or a militant one, you are going to be a subject of that security apparatus.
It reminds me of why black men in America fear the police here, because the security apparatus seems to pick up black men, arrest, incarcerate and the rest of it at a much higher rate than other groups.
Am I hallucinating or did I just see on television an Israeli soldier holding a Palestinian and having his colleague shoot the Palestinian with a rubber bullet at point blank range? Did I miss something here?
As to the right of a family to be together, there are numerous attempts to prevent that. I can remember France passing a law that spouses had to be married a year before the non-French person could apply for a resident visa. The problems that arise are fraudulent marriage and security issues. Yes, all these things are true.
At the same time, when you are the person in love with that person who is not of the nationality and you have children with them, you yearn to be together as a family. Whether that is a right or not is for the high-level sophisticates to think about. As the person in love, it is a right a duty and an obligation.
Now to speak of love like this will maybe shock. But I want to tell you what I mean. An old friend of mine named Saba Wainapel was married to David Wainapel – they both died in upstate New York recently. Before they were married, Saba and David were Jews and lived in Poland at the time of the Nazis. David was sent to a camp where he was in charge of the dispensary which of course had nothing. Saba knew that all David’s family had been killed by the Nazis and that would depress him. So she volunteered to go to the camp to be with him. The Nazi regulations would not permit that this single woman volunteer to go to the camp (keep that notion in mind itself of what she wanted to do for David – love). So the only way for this to happen was for them to get married. So Saba married David so that she could go to the camp and be with him.
That human instinct of love, for me, kind of pushes through the rights and obligations analysis of us legalists into a space of human dignity that is beyond that. I think that we should not forget that sometimes. Even in our security concerns and the rest of it. Sometimes a spouse needs a spouse and a child needs a father or a mother – whatever the law says.
Best,
Ben
Ben, once again, saying the situation in Israel resembles segeragation perhaps matches what you see on CNN or what B’Tselem writes, but it definitely does not match reality. I’m not saying what you see or read is false – I’m just saying it’s not the whole picture.
And there’s something even wronger with comparing the Palesitinians & Israel with the Holocaust survivors & Nazi Germany.
As to your question: an Israeli Jew would not switch places with a Palestinian, but not because of lesser rights, but because of feelings: Palestinians feel stateless, and Jews know how terrible it feels to be stateless, so they wouldn’t be happy to be in their place.
There’s no doubt Arabs suffer from strict security checks. But when you balance the right to live and the right to dignity, one of them always prevails. When you prefer the right to live, you save lives; when you prefer the right to dignity, you save someone from embarassment and discouragement. I don’t think any preference is more moral or more legal than the other. If you decide to prefer the right to dignity, it’s your choice, and it’s moral and legal just as much as the other option.
Family reunification is tough issue. Perhaps the method Israel chose is not proportional, just like the Japanese American internment in WWII was not proportional. However, I still claim that method is not necessarily non-constitutional or immoral in any way.
Response… Presumably those with an ardent interest in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict are diligently striving to keep themselves informed of the basic scholarship on this subject. Toward that end I’ve pasted below a manageable (i.e., not exhaustive) bibliograpy that can serve as a basic primer on the conflict, as well as Internet sites to keep informed of the latest news. events, and analyses.
*Aruri, Naseer H. The Obstruction of Peace: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1995.
*Aruri, Naseer H. Dishonest Broker: The Role of the United States in Palestine and Israel. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2003.
*Asali, Kamil J., ed. Jerusalem in History. New York: Olive Branch Press/Interlink, 2000.
*Baroud, Ramzy. Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle. London: Pluto Press, 2006.
*Beinin, Joel and Rebecca L. Stein, eds. The Struggle for Sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, with the Middle East Research and Information Project, 2006.
*Bowen, Stephen, ed. Human Rights, Self-Determination, and Political Change in the Occupied Territories. The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1997.
*Boyle, Francis A. Palestine, Palestinians, and International Law. Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press, 2003.
*Cheshin, Amir S., Bill Hutman, and Avi Melamed. Separate and Unequal: The Inside Story of Israeli Rule in East Jerusalem. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
*Chomsky, Noam. The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1999 ed.
*Chomsky, Noam. Middle East Illusions. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
*Cobban, Helena. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation: People, Power and Politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
*Cook, Jonathan. Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State. London: Pluto Press, 2006.
*Cypel, Sylvain. Walled: Israeli Society at an Impasse. New York: Other Press, 2006.
*Davis, Uri. Israel: An Apartheid State. London: Zed Press, 1987.
*Elon, Amos. Jerusalem: City of Mirrors. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co., 1989.
*Elon, Amos. Jerusalem: Battleground of Memories. New York: Kodansha International, 1995.
*Enderlin, Charles. Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995-2002. New York: Other Press, 2003.
*Falk, Richard and Burns H. Weston. ‘The Relevance of International Law to Palestinian Rights in the West Bank and Gaza: In Legal Defense of the Intifada,’ Harvard International Law Journal 32, No. 1 (1991): 191-204.
*Farsoun, Samih K. (with Christian E. Zacharia). Palestine and the Palestinians. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997.
*Finkelstein, Norman. Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. London: Verso, 1995.
*Flapan, Simha. The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities. New York: Pantheon, 1987.
*Friedland, Roger and Richard Hecht. To Rule Jerusalem. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
*Gerner, Deborah J. One Land, Two Peoples: The Conflict over Palestine. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2nd ed., 1994.
*Ghanem, As’ad. The Palestinian Regime: A “Partial Democracy.” Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2001.
*Gorenberg, Gershom. The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977. New York: Times Books, 2006.
*Grabar, Oleg. The Shape of the Holy: Early Islamic Jerusalem. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.
*Hadawi, Sami. Bitter Harvest: A Modern History of Palestine. New York: Olive Branch Press, 1989.
*Hajjar, Lisa. Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza. London: University of California Press, 2005.
*Hiltemann, Joost R. Behind the Intifada: Labor and Women’s Movements in the Occupied Territories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.
*Hussein, Hussein Abu and Fiona McKay. Access Denied: Palestinian Land Rights in Israel. London: Zed Books, 2003.
*Karmi, Ghada. Married to Another Man: Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine. London: Pluto Press, 2007.
*Khalidi, Rashid. Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
*Khalidi, Rashid. The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2006.
*Khalidi, Walid, ed. All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948. Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992.
*Kimmerling, Baruch, ed. The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989.
*Kimmerling, Baruch. Politicide: Ariel Sharon’s War Against the Palestinians. London: Verso, 2003.
*Kovel, Joel. Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine. London: Pluto Press, 2007.
*Kretzmer, David. The Legal Status of the Arabs in Israel. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990.
*Lockman, Zacharay and Joel Beinin, eds. Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation. Boston, MA: South End Press/A MERIP Book, 1989.
*Lustik, Ian. Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel’s Control of a National Minority. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1980.
*Makdisi, Saree. Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2008.
*Masalha, Nur. The Expulsion of Palestinians: The Concept of ‘Transfer’ in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948. Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992.
*Masalha, Nur. A Land Without People: Israel, Transfer and the Palestinians. London: Faber and Faber, 1997.
*Masalha, Nur. The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem. London: Pluto, 2003.
*Mearsheimer, John J. and Stephen M. Walt. The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.
*Mishal, Shaul and Avraham Sela. The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence, and Coexistence. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.
*Morris, Benny. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
*Morris, Benny. Israel’s Border Wars, 1949-1956. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
*Morris, Benny. Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
*Muslih, Muhammad Y. The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.
*Norton, Augustus Richard. Hezbollah: A Short History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007.
*Pappé, Ilan. The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947-1951. London: I.B. Tauris, 1994.
*Pappé, Ilan. A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003 ed.
*Pappé, Ilan. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oxford, UK: Oneworld, 2006.
*Pappé, Ilan, ed. The Israel/Palestine Question: A Reader. New York: Routledge, 2007.
*Porath, Yehoshua. The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 2 Vols. London: Frank Cass, 1974 and 1977.
*Rodinson, Maxime. Israel: A Colonial-Settler State? New York: Anchor Foundation/Pathfinder, 1973.
*Rogan, Eugene L. and Avi Shlaim, eds. The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
*Romann, Michael and Alex Weingrod. Living Together Separately: Arabs and Jews in Contemporary Jerusalem. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.
*Rose, John. The Myths of Zionism. London: Pluto Press, 2004.
*Saad-Ghorayeb, Amal. Hizbu’llah: Politics and Religion. London: Pluto Press, 2002.
*Said, Edward W. The Question of Palestine. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
*Said, Edward W. The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After. New York: Vintage Books, 2001 ed.
*Said, Edward W. and Christopher Hitchens, eds. Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question. London: Verso, 1988.
*Sayigh, Yezid. Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1997.
*Shafir, Gershon. Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882-1914. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
*Shlaim, Avi. Collusions across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement and the Partition of Palestine. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1988.
*Shlaim, Avi. The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2000.
*Slater, Jerome. ‘What Went Wrong? The Collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process,’ Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 116, No. 2 (Summer 2001), pp. 171-199.
*Smith, Charles. Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 5th ed., 2004.
*Tal, David. War in Palestine, 1948: The Arab Neighbourhoods and their Fate in the War. Jerusalem: The Institute of Jerusalem Studies, 1999.
*Tamimi, Azzam. Hamas: A History from Within. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press/Interlink, 2007.
*Weizman, Eyal. Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation. London: Verso, 2007.
*Younis, Mona N. Liberation and Democratization: The South African and Palestinian National Movements. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
*Zertal, Idith and Akiva Eldar. Lords of the Land: The War Over Israel’s Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007. New York: The Nation Books, 2007.
*Zunes, Stephen. Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism. Monroe. ME: Common Courage Press, 2002.
Zureik, Elia. The Palestinians in Israel: A Study in Internal Colonialism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987.
See too these Internet sites:
Al-Dameer Association for Human Rights—Gaza: http://www.aldameer.org/
The Arab Association for Human Rights (Association in service of the Palestinian Arab Minority in Israel): http://www.arabhra.org/
B’Tselem—The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territory: http://www.btselem.org/english/About_BTselem/Index.asp
International Humanitarian Law Research Initiative–International Humanitarian Law in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory:
http://opt.ihlresearch.org/
Middle East Online: http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/
The Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP): http://www.merip.org/
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights: http://www.pchrgaza.org/
Palestine Media Watch: http://www.pmwatch.org/pmw/index.asp
Professor Juan Cole’s Informed Comment: Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion http://www.juancole.com/
Response…
Presumably those with an ardent interest in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict are diligently striving to keep themselves informed of the basic scholarship on this subject. Toward that end I’ve pasted below a manageable (i.e., not exhaustive) bibliography that can serve as a basic primer on the conflict.
*Aruri, Naseer H. The Obstruction of Peace: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians. Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1995.
*Aruri, Naseer H. Dishonest Broker: The Role of the United States in Palestine and Israel. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2003.
*Asali, Kamil J., ed. Jerusalem in History. New York: Olive Branch Press/Interlink, 2000.
*Baroud, Ramzy. Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle. London: Pluto Press, 2006.
*Beinin, Joel and Rebecca L. Stein, eds. The Struggle for Sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, with the Middle East Research and Information Project, 2006. *Bowen, Stephen, ed. Human Rights, Self-Determination, and Political Change in the Occupied Territories. The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1997.
*Boyle, Francis A. Palestine, Palestinians, and International Law. Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press, 2003.
*Cheshin, Amir S., Bill Hutman, and Avi Melamed. Separate and Unequal: The Inside Story of Israeli Rule in East Jerusalem. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
*Chomsky, Noam. The Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1999 ed.
*Chomsky, Noam. Middle East Illusions. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003.
*Cobban, Helena. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation: People, Power and Politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
*Cook, Jonathan. Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State. London: Pluto Press, 2006.
*Cypel, Sylvain. Walled: Israeli Society at an Impasse. New York: Other Press, 2006.
*Davis, Uri. Israel: An Apartheid State. London: Zed Press, 1987.
*Elon, Amos. Jerusalem: City of Mirrors. Boston, MA: Little, Brown & Co., 1989.
*Elon, Amos. Jerusalem: Battleground of Memories. New York: Kodansha International, 1995.
*Enderlin, Charles. Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995-2002. New York: Other Press, 2003.
*Falk, Richard and Burns H. Weston. ‘The Relevance of International Law to Palestinian Rights in the West Bank and Gaza: In Legal Defense of the Intifada,’ Harvard International Law Journal 32, No. 1 (1991): 191-204.
*Farsoun, Samih K. (with Christian E. Zacharia). Palestine and the Palestinians. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997.
*Finkelstein, Norman. Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. London: Verso, 1995.
*Flapan, Simha. The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities. New York: Pantheon, 1987.
*Friedland, Roger and Richard Hecht. To Rule Jerusalem. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
*Gerner, Deborah J. One Land, Two Peoples: The Conflict over Palestine. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2nd ed., 1994.
*Ghanem, As’ad. The Palestinian Regime: A “Partial Democracy.” Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2001.
*Gorenberg, Gershom. The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977. New York: Times Books, 2006.
*Grabar, Oleg. The Shape of the Holy: Early Islamic Jerusalem. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996.
*Hadawi, Sami. Bitter Harvest: A Modern History of Palestine. New York: Olive Branch Press, 1989. *Hajjar, Lisa. Courting Conflict: The Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza. London: University of California Press, 2005.
*Hiltemann, Joost R. Behind the Intifada: Labor and Women’s Movements in the Occupied Territories. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.
*Hussein, Hussein Abu and Fiona McKay. Access Denied: Palestinian Land Rights in Israel. London: Zed Books, 2003.
*Karmi, Ghada. Married to Another Man: Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine. London: Pluto Press, 2007. *Khalidi, Rashid. Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
*Khalidi, Rashid. The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2006.
*Khalidi, Walid, ed. All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948. Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992.
*Kimmerling, Baruch, ed. The Israeli State and Society: Boundaries and Frontiers. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989.
*Kimmerling, Baruch. Politicide: Ariel Sharon’s War Against the Palestinians. London: Verso, 2003.
*Kovel, Joel. Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine. London: Pluto Press, 2007.
*Kretzmer, David. The Legal Status of the Arabs in Israel. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990.
*Lockman, Zacharay and Joel Beinin, eds. Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against Israeli Occupation. Boston, MA: South End Press/A MERIP Book, 1989.
*Lustik, Ian. Arabs in the Jewish State: Israel’s Control of a National Minority. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1980.
*Makdisi, Saree. Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2008.
*Masalha, Nur. The Expulsion of Palestinians: The Concept of ‘Transfer’ in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948. Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992.
*Masalha, Nur. A Land Without People: Israel, Transfer and the Palestinians. London: Faber and Faber, 1997.
*Masalha, Nur. The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem. London: Pluto, 2003. *Mearsheimer, John J. and Stephen M. Walt. The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.
*Mishal, Shaul and Avraham Sela. The Palestinian Hamas: Vision, Violence, and Coexistence. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.
*Morris, Benny. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
*Morris, Benny. Israel’s Border Wars, 1949-1956. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
*Morris, Benny. Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
*Muslih, Muhammad Y. The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.
*Norton, Augustus Richard. Hezbollah: A Short History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007.
*Pappé, Ilan. The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1947-1951. London: I.B. Tauris, 1994.
*Pappé, Ilan. A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003 ed.
*Pappé, Ilan. The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine. Oxford, UK: Oneworld, 2006.
*Pappé, Ilan, ed. The Israel/Palestine Question: A Reader. New York: Routledge, 2007.
*Porath, Yehoshua. The Emergence of the Palestinian-Arab National Movement, 2 Vols. London: Frank Cass, 1974 and 1977.
*Rodinson, Maxime. Israel: A Colonial-Settler State? New York: Anchor Foundation/Pathfinder, 1973.
*Rogan, Eugene L. and Avi Shlaim, eds. The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
*Romann, Michael and Alex Weingrod. Living Together Separately: Arabs and Jews in Contemporary Jerusalem. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.
*Rose, Jacqueline. The Question of Zion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005.
*Rose, John. The Myths of Zionism. London: Pluto Press, 2004.
*Saad-Ghorayeb, Amal. Hizbu’llah: Politics and Religion. London: Pluto Press, 2002.
*Said, Edward W. The Question of Palestine. New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
*Said, Edward W. The End of the Peace Process: Oslo and After. New York: Vintage Books, 2001 ed.
*Said, Edward W. and Christopher Hitchens, eds. Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question. London: Verso, 1988.
*Sayigh, Yezid. Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1997.
*Shafir, Gershon. Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882-1914. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
*Shlaim, Avi. Collusions across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement and the Partition of Palestine. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1988.
*Shlaim, Avi. The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2000.
*Slater, Jerome. ‘What Went Wrong? The Collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process,’ Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 116, No. 2 (Summer 2001), pp. 171-199.
*Smith, Charles. Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 5th ed., 2004.
*Tal, David. War in Palestine, 1948: The Arab Neighbourhoods and their Fate in the War. Jerusalem: The Institute of Jerusalem Studies, 1999.
*Tamimi, Azzam. Hamas: A History from Within. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press/Interlink, 2007.
*Weizman, Eyal. Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation. London: Verso, 2007.
*Younis, Mona N. Liberation and Democratization: The South African and Palestinian National Movements. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
*Zertal, Idith and Akiva Eldar. Lords of the Land: The War Over Israel’s Settlements in the Occupied Territories, 1967-2007. New York: The Nation Books, 2007.
*Zunes, Stephen. Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism. Monroe. ME: Common Courage Press, 2002.
*Zureik, Elia. The Palestinians in Israel: A Study in Internal Colonialism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987.
Patrick, while I respect your effort, the list you’ve posted is quite biased.
Response…
And what bias might that be?
And your judgment of bias is owing to your longstanding expertise in this area? Of course your anonymity does not allow us to assess the credibility of your assessment.
The list is in fact representative of standard scholarship and has scholars from inside and outside Israel (Israelis and non-Israelis) and the Occupied Territories. I have been following this conflict for close to 30 years now, carefully reading the literature. Many of these works are today cited again and again in the respected academic research on the topic.
Feel free to post your own non-biased bibliography.
Including both Israeli and non-Israeli names doesn’t mean the list is not biased. An Israeli scholar can be Pro-Palestinian, and Ilan Pappe is a good example. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but I feel the weight given to Pro-Palestinian authors in your list is too great, while you said nothing about that. And as I said, your effort is appreciated – there’s no need to attack.
As I’m not a scholar, I believe that my full name is not relevant to the discussion and that my personal name will suffice. I also think there shouldn’t be a duty to reveal one’s name on the internet.
It’s pretty interesting to me that no one is engaging my post and the discussion has devolved into exactly what one would predict. I tried to paint a picture of peaceful life in Israel. It’s there if you are willing to look and listen. I was staying at Karem Maharal, a Jewish village. A mere 3 kilometers away is the Muslim village of Fureidis. Another one kilometer south is the Jewish village of Zihron Yaakov. All of these are situated in the beautiful rolling hills just south of Haifa. My point is that there are many examples of people living in peace, Jews and Arabs alike. Of course there is tension, too, but why must we be so insistent on ignoring the peace?
Roger Alford
The reason I do focus on the peace is on the simple question of what kind of peace?
When I use to be at Harvard College I would go over to Harvard Business School library to read because it was so peaceful compared to the undergraduate. It was bucolic.
When I went to Harvard Business School, that first year was a hell like nothing I could have experienced. The teaching program had not changed at Harvard Business School – it was just that I was in the program instead of being outside the program. The bucolic place of my undergrad years was a living hell as a business school student.
That is all I am trying to say. I agree with Guy about survival and dignity and the battles between the two of them. I see those points on both sides.
I have not tried to have this devolve into the usual thing. Rather what I have just tried to do is have us see (in a way that I think is clearer) the common humanity that is the lot of all the protagonists to this terrible struggle.
This kind of duality of thinking is I believe a common ability needed for survival (that word again) for persons coming from minority groups in cultures. They have to see the dominant and the non-dominant views of reality at the same time and hold them both. That is what I am just trying to do here. To ask that this second vision like a shadow be present so that we watch what we see and also see what is under what we see.
I am sorry that my story of Saba and David was considered offensive. I have felt that their story was a story of such deep love in the face of terrible oppression and of survival with dignity that spoke to human dignity in a very clear way.
I would like to tell another true story of David that I use in my human rights part of my international law class. When he was running the dispensary it was a mess and he had no materials to heal those in the camp with him. One day, in the center of the camp, the commandant had all the inmates standing in the mud (I imagine rows and rows of people standing in lines, with machine gun towers, german soldiers, dogs when I think of this story). The commandant was standing in the exact middle of the vast open space and he called David over. The commandant said to David that the dispensary was in disgraceful shape and that David had to clean it by tomorrow or else the Commandant swore to beat him.
I could feel the cold wind and the silence in the space and the utter aloneness of David – stripped of any rights that the state is supposed to provide, barely clothed, being turned into a shell of a man.
David, god bless him, took his belt off and let his pants fall to the ground and looked the Commandant in the eye and said, “Beat me now! You know the dispensary can not be cleaned by tomorrow because there is nothing to clean it with.”
Silence of a pin dropping in the space. The Commandant looked at David, David looked at the Commandant and it seemed like eons went by.
Suddenly, the Commandant turned around and walked away. Later that day materials were provided David so that he could make a modicum of repairs to the dispensary.
That, my friends, is always for me the essence of human rights – a human dignity. Whether the state, in this case the German Commandant, recognizes that right or not is another thing. Some say that all this is is an example of David’s courage. Yes it is courage but it is courage of a human and it is that humans assertion of self, of his own dignity that moves me.
So yes survival and dignity – yes they are always there and I hear them. Let us, however, not ignore the will to survive and the will to dignity of any person in this struggle. And still with all that, I hope that they find a way to live together whatever the rights they seek to assert about who is right and who is wrong.
THAT, my friends, is to what I am trying to speak and I again am gravely sorry if what I wrote offended someone. I am trying to reach into that heart with my mind to speak of this to each of you.
Best,
Ben
Response…
Roger,
The appearance of peace may be illusory, it may be symptomatic of individual and collective states of denial, it may mask structural and societal violence just beneath the surface or not far away. Things are not always as they appear or we would like them to be. I suspect one reason no one engaged your post in the manner that you would have preferred is because it struck some of us as naive, simplistic, what have you. Of course there’s nothing wrong with sharing your impressions, but from not a few other perspectives they might seem rather unduly idiosyncratic or superficial. No one would deny that many Arabs and Israelis go about their day-to-day lives as best they can, wanting and hoping that things will be relatively “normal” and peaceful, indeed, carrying on their lives as if that is indeed the case. But are Arabs living in Israel fully equal to Israeli citizens? Do the Palestinians have a viable, functional state? Are the Palestinians allowed some decent measure of collective self-determination and economic opportunity? Do Israelis believe Palestinian lives are of equal worth to theirs? Etc., Etc.
Response…
Guy,
One can be both “Pro-Palestinian” and “Pro-Israeli.” I care about the truth, about the centrality and urgency of ethics and moral principles, about human rights, about respect for domestic and international law, about the importance of reason and rationality, about the need to be objective as possible, about the quest for global justice, and so forth and so on. Those are among the ideas, values and principles that motivate me–on the order of a regulative ideal–when assembling my bibliographies, the above included.
Incidentally, there was no “attack” whatsoever from me.
And I did not claim there was a duty, or that there should be a duty, to reveal one’s name on the internet. It’s just that it’s a bit easier to say irresponsible things, to make ridiculous or grandiose claims or remarks under the guise of anonymity (or so experience in the legal blogosphere over the last several years has taught me).
Roger, you talk about peace when there isn’t one. True, there’s some beautiful scenery in Israel, but scenery can’t speak; hills don’t say “Battles were once fought here”. Humans reflect reality: the soldiers and guns you see are everyday reminders of the conflict.
Ben, that’s an inspiring story. Thanks for sharing.
Patrick, I’m not sure there’s a definite truth in national conflicts. Also, I think one can write sensible things even without being identified by name.
Guy, No you missed it. The peace I speak of is not beautiful hills, it is humans happily living out their normal lives. It is not about the vineyards, it is about the winemakers, and the artist, and the shopkeeper, and the waiter. They have it here in large measure, which was the point of my post. But there is the constant threat that looms on the horizon, the threat that war may interrupt their peace.
Response…
Guy,
I wholeheartedly agree, “one can write sensible things even without being identified by name.” It’s just that, as I said, “it’s a bit easier to say irresponsible things, to make ridiculous or grandiose claims or remarks under the guise of anonymity (or so experience in the legal blogosphere over the last several years has taught me).”
Truth is worth seeking in conflicts of any sort. That it will be partial, perspectival, in some measure relative, and so on, should go without saying, indeed, any of the parties could be said to have at least some truth on their side as it were, certainly Gandhi believed this and I think he’s a reliable guide on such matters. That said, in any instance or occasion, or on any issue, one party may have law, justice, right, etc. on its side, and they properly seek to have it recognized and realized.
Guy,
You are welcome. Thanks to you and all for sharing.
Best,
Ben
Roger, Israelis don’t live in constant fear, of course. Still, that doesn’t mean they live a normal life. They simply try to live a normal life. Or as you put it: “I have an overwhelming sense that Israel is at peace, even though I know it is at war.”
Also, touring the northern part of Israel is quite misleading. There’s no fighting there currently, and therefore no reason for constant fear. Sderot is a whole different story, and “mixed” cities (such as Jerusalem) are very different too.
Patrick, now that I understand your point better, I agree.