On "Semitism"

"The monstrous transformation of an entire people by a formidable and feared propaganda machine into little more than militants and terrorists has allowed not just Israel's military but its fleet of writers and defenders to efface a terrible history of injustice, suffering and abuse in order to destroy the civil existence of the Palestinian people with impunity. Gone from public memory are the destruction of Palestinian society in 1948 and the creation of a dispossessed people; the conquest of the West Bank and Gaza and their military occupation since 1967; the invasion of Lebanon in 1982, with its 17,500 Lebanese and Palestinian dead and the Sabra and Shatila massacres; the continuous assault on Palestinian schools, refugee camps, hospitals, civil installations of every kind...

"In such a context of disparity and asymmetrical power it seems deranged to keep asking the Palestinians, who have no army, air force, tanks or functioning leadership, to renounce violence, and to require no comparable limitation on Israel's actions. It certainly obscures Israel's systematic use of lethal force against unarmed civilians, copiously documented by all the major human rights organizations. Even the matter of suicide bombers, which I have always opposed, cannot be examined from a viewpoint that permits a hidden racist standard to value Israeli lives over the many more Palestinian lives that have been lost, maimed, distorted and foreshortened by longstanding military occupation and the systematic barbarity openly used by Sharon against Palestinians since the beginning of his career.

"There can be no conceivable peace that doesn't tackle the real issue, which is Israel's utter refusal to accept the sovereign existence of a Palestinian people that is entitled to rights over what Sharon and most of his supporters consider to be the land of Greater Israel, i.e., the West Bank and Gaza."
-- Edward Said

Doc Nebula has apparently run across me via a link on Skippy’s blog. Based on my post “Killing the Future, Mostly of Palestine,” it seems, he finds much of what I posit here to be “alarmingly thought free.”

First off, I do not consider myself a “liberal” in any contemporary sense. Sure, I guess I would claim to be a “liberal” in the Enlightenment sense, but virtually everyone appropriates that mantle nowadays. I consider myself a radical, and freely admit that. Even though I may agree with liberals on many issues, I prefer not to be labeled as such. Call me left wing, call me a radical – both of these labels are fine. A minor distinction, perhaps, but still worth pointing out.

I can’t provide a direct link to Doc’s blog entry on me, although you can check out what he has to say by clicking here and scrolling down to his 4 October 2002 entry entitled “Semitism.”

Here is a quick, mostly unorganized response:

[Bill]...dislike[s] it when anyone says anything mean about Palestinians, whom my fellow left wingers, in apparent knee jerk reaction to the current conservative and populist biases against Arabic culture, have embraced as oppressed, patriotic heroes and cultural martyrs.

I don’t think this is an adequate representation of what I say in my post. I also do not think I have ever “embraced” the Palestinian people as “patriotic heroes and cultural martyrs.” They’re people – not terribly different from you and me, I presume. I do believe that they are suffering and living under brutal conditions, but this realization doesn’t necessarily lead to romanticism.

The one point I find interesting here is that Doc willingly admits that there are “current conservative and populist biases against Arabic culture.” Such abstractions seem ironic: were anyone to outwardly show a bias against “Jewish culture,” the charge of anti-Semitism would probably follow within nanoseconds.

In a casual remark, Doc says, “I like Israel and think Palestinians should shut up and go away.” This seems to hint at an approval for ethnic cleansing.

Getting to my point of view, I would admit that I am more sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinian people because I view them as being, more or less, the principle victims – and this is important – whose narrative is largely muted in dominant representations of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Hence, I suppose you could say I view most of my “reporting” in this sense as a corrective. I do not mean to downplay suffering of the Israeli population, but perceive the Israeli point of view – one in which Israeli lives are privileged and, in some ways, valued more than the Palestinians – as being the hegemonic representation of things. So, as a crude example: suicide bombs go off in Tel Aviv killing 15 civilians and you’re bound to see it on CNN. 15 kids get strafed by the IDF, and it’s more likely that it will be scarcely mentioned (if at all).

In other words, I freely admit that I do not present things in a “balanced” format. I merely try to be fair in my representation of the facts.

I’m not going to address Doc’s two rhetorical questions because I think they fundamentally distort the conflict. There’s not much insight to tease out of a thought experiment which tries to compare the actions, responsibilities, and motives of IDF troops vs. “Palestinian terrorists” or a “mob” of Palestinians vs. Israeli civilians.

The one point I would stress is that when the Israelis claim a monopoly on force in the conflict, the IDF must be held accountable. The threat of terrorism – however real or imagined it may be – cannot be used to justify blatant human rights violations.

Now, is terrorism a threat to the Jewish population of Israel? Yes, definitely. But I find it unconvincing that the incursions by the IDF, the vastly disproportionate use of force, and the security apparatus which serves to tighten the grip around the Palestinians make Israelis safer. Such actions only serve to irritate inflamed relationships, produce more bitterness, and fuel the likelihood of violent backlash.

I also view the IDF as being an occupying force, not “uniformed peacekeeping troops.” They’re in place to enforce order; they are not there to mediate between opposing factions, but rather to impose Israeli dominance. At bottom, the conflict seems to be defined by this inequality of force: while the IDF is in place to defend the Israeli population, the Palestinians do not have a standing army or police force to “protect” their people or land, and that places them at a distinct disadvantage.

For Doc, it all seems to come down to this:

My fellow liberal lefties seem to quite ardently believe that when Palestinian terrorists attack civilian targets with lethal weapons of indiscriminate effect, they are behaving patriotically and heroically. In contrast, when uniformed peacekeeping troops retaliate for those terrorist attacks, or even fire in self defense on fanatical mobs attempting to swarm their position, they are unconscionable war criminals who should be perfunctorily tried and then summarily hung.

Okay, that may be an overstatement; most of my fellow bloggers do, as a nominal afterthought, condemn Palestinian suicide bombers. Yet still, the vast and overwhelming impression I get is that the left wing of blogdom these days somehow, even while condemning Palestinian terrorism, views the actions of the Israeli Defense Forces as being somehow every bit as bad, if not actually worse.

This is a common criticism, and one I cannot adequately respond to because, at a fundamental level, it’s just not the way I look at things.

That may sound amazingly banal, but I try not to put the deaths of innocents on a scale of significance where some are better/worse than others. The IDF actions are not, in any real sense, comparable to suicide bombings. I tend to work from the a priori assumption that suicide bombings are morally repugnant, and feel most sane folks will view them that way. In that respect, as in my general view of the conflict, I see the construction of a narrative of suicide bombings – one in which I have a slight role in, too – to be largely uncontested. There are people who justify the bombings and find them to be "acts of liberation," yes, but I do not see that as a persuasive or significant sentiment in the culture deserving much attention. In contrast, it is my estimation that the actions of the IDF go without proper contestation, especially in American media.

My fellow left wingers all seem to think that, assuming the awful and intransigent and bloodthirsty Israelis would just open their eyes and embrace that most reasonable of all positions, why then, the Palestinians would fall to their knees and go ‘lawsamercy, you Jews are our brothers after all!’. There would be a big group hug, everyone would dance and sing in the streets, two disparate cultures would embrace and learn from each other, the very heavens would open and manna would pour down and the Millennium itself would be fairly begun.

No, I don’t believe that. This is a conflict which, because of Israel’s role in displacing much of the Palestinian population, coupled with the Arab coalition’s militant response since 1948, is remarkably problematic. There is plenty of fault, historically, on both sides. The problem I have is that the Palestinian people seem to be suffering in a vastly disproportionate manner: here, I will admit that I view the nakbah as being the root issue of the conflict.

Ultimately, why do I like Israel, and dislike Arabic culture so much? Because Israel, and Judaism, are cultures of tolerance and permissiveness and individual freedom and democracy. Arabic culture, and Islamic culture, are based on intolerance, conformity enforced by instant, barbaric punishments, misogyny, autocracy, and violent repression. Jews, as far as I can see, raise their children to be tolerant and to not pick fights. Arabs, and especially Palestinians, raise their children to hate all non-Arabs (and some fellow Arabs) so virulently that they are willing to kill themselves, or send their loved ones off to horrible fiery deaths, in order to take a few of the enemy with them.

This is a monolithic analysis which, I fear, bares little resemblance to reality, and more to stereotype and caricature (if not outright racism). In general, it seems like Doc concurs with Bernard Lewis; I prefer Edward Said’s take.

On the points I haven’t covered, you’ll have to decide whether I disregard them because I find them to be generally irrelevant, or because Doc has painted me into a corner from which I cannot defend myself. Also, whether or not my offerings are “alarmingly thought free” is another point of contention I shall leave up to the reader. Beyond the above, I shall hold my tongue.