Here is another stark example of the competing narratives in Palestine/Israel. It would not be difficult for readers to this blog to find articles sympathetic to the "Palestinian narrative".
I'm including this complete story, whose last paragraph puts in stark relief what might be called the "Settler/Security narrative".
Can both "narratives" be true? Is there a way to bridge these two narratives? That is the question of civiilization that requires answers, in my view (JRK). Pay close attention. What are you and I doing to build bridges between the chasm, instead of more fences? Here is the article. Thank you Doug Dicks for reading that "liberal" newspaper, Haaretz.
Rights group: Steep rise in violence against Hebron Palestinians
By Nadav Shragai, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service
Ha'aretz -- Friday - October 19,2007
Violent attacks and against Palestinian residents of Hebron, carried out by both settlers and security forces, have risen sharply over recent months, according to a report published by Israeli human rights group B'Tselem.
The report maintains that the rise in violence and violations of human rights of the Palestinian residents began in March, when Jewish settlers began living in a disputed house in Hebron after several years of negotiating with the Palestinian owners.
The settlers maintain that they own the property, while the Palestinian residents of the city claim the deal was a scam.
Moves to evict the settlers have so far been unsuccessful. Since then, B'Tselem reports, dozens of assaults against Palestinian residents of the area have been documented, which include the hurling of garbage and bottles filled with urine at them, urinating from the house toward them, spitting, threats and verbal abuse.
According to the report, these assaults are carried out in plain view during daylight hours with police officers and soldiers standing by. The report adds that violence toward Palestinians perpetrated by Israeli security forces has also increased since the settlers began occupying the disputed house.
In addition, B'Tselem reports, new roadblocks have been erected in the area and severe travel restrictions have been imposed on the Palestinian population. The report lists some 30 incidents involving settlers, and some 10 attacks carried out by security personnel.
The Jewish community in Hebron responded to the damning report, saying "the report published by the left-wing is full of lies. The true facts reveal that the aggressor in this situation is in fact the Palestinian side. More incidents of Arab violence against Jews are recorded in one week than in all the seven months surveyed in the left's overblown report. Extreme left-wing activists encourage the Arab violence, and initiate it. The main culprits of the violence and disturbance of peace in Hebron are the terrorist organizations brought here by the extreme left and the enormous amount of weapons they have been given. A Jewish presence in Hebron does not destabilize the peace; in fact it contributes to it."
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/914867.html
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Friday, October 19, 2007
Uri Avnery, Again: a History Lesson
Clash of Civilizations?
The Mother of All Pretexts
By URI AVNERY
When I hear mention of the "Clash of Civilizations" I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.
To laugh, because it is such a silly notion.
To cry, because it is liable to cause untold disasters.
To cry even more, because our leaders are exploiting this slogan as a pretext for sabotaging any possibility of an Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation. It is just one more in a long line of pretexts.
Why was the Zionist movement in need of excuses to justify the way it treated the Palestinian people?
At its birth, it was an idealistic movement. It laid great weight on its moral basis. Not just in order to convince the world, but above all in order to set its own conscience at rest.
From early childhood we learned about the pioneers, many of them sons and daughters of well-to-do and well-educated families, who left behind a comfortable life in Europe in order to start a new life in a far-away and--by the standards of the time--primitive country. Here, in a savage climate they were not used to, often hungry and sick, they performed bone-breaking physical labor under a brutal sun.
For that, they needed an absolute belief in the rightness of their cause. Not only did they believe in the need to save the Jews of Europe from persecution and pogroms, but also in the creation of a society so just as never seen before, an egalitarian society that would be a model for the entire world. Leo Tolstoy was no less important for them than Theodor Herzl. The kibbutz and the moshav were symbols of the whole enterprise.
But this idealistic movement aimed at settling in a country inhabited by another people. How to bridge this contradiction between its sublime ideals and the fact that their realization necessitated the expulsion of the people of the land?
The easiest way was to repress the problem altogether, ignoring its very existence: the land, we told ourselves, was empty, there was no people living here at all. That was the justification that served as a bridge over the moral abyss.
Only one of the Founding Fathers of the Zionist movement was courageous enough to call a spade a spade. Ze'ev Jabotinsky wrote as early as 80 years ago that it was impossible to deceive the Palestinian people (whose existence he recognized) and to buy their consent to the Zionist aspirations. We are white settlers colonizing the land of the native people, he said, and there is no chance whatsoever that the natives will resign themselves to this voluntarily. They will resist violently, like all the native peoples in the European colonies. Therefore we need an "Iron Wall" to protect the Zionist enterprise.
When Jabotinsky was told that his approach was immoral, he replied that the Jews were trying to save themselves from the disaster threatening them in Europe, and, therefore, their morality trumped the morality of the Arabs in Palestine.
Most Zionists were not prepared to accept this force-oriented approach. They searched fervently for a moral justification they could live with.
Thus started the long quest for justifications--with each pretext supplanting the previous one, according to the changing spiritual fashions in the world.
* * *
THE FIRST justification was precisely the one mocked by Jabotinsky: we were actually coming to benefit the Arabs. We shall redeem them from their primitive living conditions, from ignorance and disease. We shall teach them modern methods of agriculture and bring them advanced medicine. Everything--except employment, because we needed every job for the Jews we were bringing here, which we were transforming from ghetto-Jews into a people of workers and tillers of the soil.
When the ungrateful Arabs went on to resist our grand project, in spite of all the benefits we were supposedly bringing them, we found a Marxist justification: It's not the Arabs who oppose us, but only the "effendis". The rich Arabs, the great landowners, are afraid that the glowing example of the egalitarian Hebrew community would attract the exploited Arab proletariat and cause them to rise against their oppressors.
That, too, did not work for long, perhaps because the Arabs saw how the Zionists bought the land from those very same "effendis" and drove out the tenants who had been cultivating it for generations.
The rise of the Nazis in Europe brought masses of Jews to the country. The Arab public saw how the land was being withdrawn from under their feet, and started a rebellion against the British and the Jews in 1936. Why, the Arabs asked, should they pay for the persecution of the Jews by the Europeans? But the Arab Revolt gave us a new justification: the Arabs support the Nazis. And indeed, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, was photographed sitting next to Hitler. Some people "discovered" that the Mufti was the real instigator of the Holocaust. (Years later it was revealed that Hitler had detested the Mufti, who had no influence whatsoever over the Nazis.)
World War II came to an end, to be followed by the 1948 war. Half of the vanquished Palestinian people became refugees. That did not trouble the Zionist conscience, because everybody knew: They ran away of their own free will. Their leaders had called upon them to leave their homes, to return later with the victorious Arab armies. True, no evidence was ever found to support this absurd claim, but it has sufficed to soothe our conscience to this day.
It may be asked: why were the refugees not allowed to come back to their homes once the war was over? Well, it was they who in 1947 rejected the UN partition plan and started the war. If because of this they lost 78% of their country, they have only themselves to blame.
Then came the Cold War. We were, of course, on the side of the "Free World", while the great Arab leader, Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, got his weapons from the Soviet bloc. (True, in the 1948 war the Soviet arms flowed to us, but that's not important.) It was quite clear: No use talking with the Arabs, because they support Communist tyranny.
But the Soviet bloc collapsed. "The terrorist organization called PLO", as Menachem Begin used to call it, recognized Israel and signed the Oslo agreement. A new justification had to be found for our unwillingness to give back the occupied territories to the Palestinian people.
The salvation came from America: a professor named Samuel Huntington wrote a book about the "Clash of Civilizations". And so we found the mother of all pretexts.
* * *
THE ARCH-ENEMY, according to this theory, is Islam. Western Civilization, Judeo-Christian, liberal, democratic, tolerant, is under attacked from the Islamic monster, fanatical, terrorist, murderous.
Islam is murderous by nature. Actually, "Muslim" and "terrorist" are synonymous. Every Muslim is a terrorist, every terrorist a Muslim.
A sceptic might ask: How did it happen that the wonderful Western culture gave birth to the Inquisition, the pogroms, the burning of witches, the annihilation of the Native Americans, the Holocaust, the ethnic cleansings and other atrocities without number--but that was in the past. Now Western culture is the embodiment of freedom and progress.
Professor Huntington was not thinking about us in particular. His task was to satisfy a peculiar American craving: the American empire always needs a virtual, world-embracing enemy, a single enemy which includes all the opponents of the United States around the world. The Communists delivered the goods--the whole world was divided between Good Guys (the Americans and their supporters) and Bad Guys (the Commies). Everybody who opposed American interests was automatically a Communist--Nelson Mandela in South Africa, Salvador Allende in Chile, Fidel Castro in Cuba, while the masters of Apartheid, the death squads of Augusto Pinochet and the secret police of the Shah of Iran belonged, like us, to the Free World.
When the Communist empire collapsed, America was suddenly left without a world-wide enemy. This vacuum has now been filled by the Muslims-Terrorists. Not only Osama bin Laden, but also the Chechnyan freedom fighters, the angry North-African youth of the Paris banlieus, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the insurgents in the Philippines.
Thus the American world view rearranged itself: a good world (Western Civilization) and a bad world (Islamic civilization).
Diplomats still take care to make a distinction between "radical Islamists" and "moderate Muslims", but that is only for appearances' sake. Between ourselves, we know of course that they are all Osama bin Ladens. They are all the same.
This way, a huge part of the world, composed of manifold and very different countries, and a great religion, with many different and even opposing tendencies (like Christianity, like Judaism), which has given the world unmatched scientific and cultural treasures, is thrown into one and the same pot.
* * *
THIS WORLD VIEW is tailored for us. Indeed, the world of the clashing civilizations is, for us, the best of all possible worlds.
The struggle between Israel and the Palestinians is no longer a conflict between the Zionist movement, which came to settle in this country, and the Palestinian people, which inhabited it. No, it has been from the very beginning a part of a world-wide struggle which does not stem from our aspirations and actions. The assault of terrorist Islam on the Western world did not start because of us. Our conscience can be entirely clean--we are among the good guys of this world.
This is now the line of argument of official Israel: the Palestinians elected Hamas, a murderous Islamic movement. (If it didn't exist, it would have to be invented--and indeed, some people assert it was created from the start by our secret service.)
Hamas is terroristic, and so is Hizbullah. Perhaps Mahmoud Abbas is not a terrorist himself, but he is weak and Hamas is about to take sole control over all Palestinian territories. So we cannot talk with them. We have no partner. Actually, we cannot possibly have a partner, because we belong to Western Civilization, which Islam wants to eradicate.
* * *
IN HIS 1896 book "Der Judenstaat", Theodor Herzl, the official Israeli "Prophet of the State", prophesied this development, too.
This is what he wrote in 1896: "For Europe we shall constitute (in Palestine) a part of the wall against Asia, we shall serve as a vanguard of culture against barbarism."
Herzl was thinking of a metaphoric wall, but in the meantime we have put up a very real one. For many, this is not just a Separation Wall between Israel and Palestine. It is a part of the world-wide wall between the West and Islam, the front-line of the Clash of Civilizations.
Beyond the wall there are not men, women and children, not a conquered and oppressed Palestinian population, not choked towns and villages like Abu-Dis, a-Ram, Bil'in and Qalqilia.
No, beyond the wall there are a billion terrorists, multitudes of blood-thirsty Muslims, who have only one desire in life: to throw us into the sea, simply because we are Jews, part of Judeo-Christian Civilization.
With an official position like that--who is there to talk to? What is there to talk about? What is the point of meeting in Annapolis or anywhere else?
And what is left to us to do--to cry or to laugh?
Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch's book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.
http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery10162007.html
The Mother of All Pretexts
By URI AVNERY
When I hear mention of the "Clash of Civilizations" I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.
To laugh, because it is such a silly notion.
To cry, because it is liable to cause untold disasters.
To cry even more, because our leaders are exploiting this slogan as a pretext for sabotaging any possibility of an Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation. It is just one more in a long line of pretexts.
Why was the Zionist movement in need of excuses to justify the way it treated the Palestinian people?
At its birth, it was an idealistic movement. It laid great weight on its moral basis. Not just in order to convince the world, but above all in order to set its own conscience at rest.
From early childhood we learned about the pioneers, many of them sons and daughters of well-to-do and well-educated families, who left behind a comfortable life in Europe in order to start a new life in a far-away and--by the standards of the time--primitive country. Here, in a savage climate they were not used to, often hungry and sick, they performed bone-breaking physical labor under a brutal sun.
For that, they needed an absolute belief in the rightness of their cause. Not only did they believe in the need to save the Jews of Europe from persecution and pogroms, but also in the creation of a society so just as never seen before, an egalitarian society that would be a model for the entire world. Leo Tolstoy was no less important for them than Theodor Herzl. The kibbutz and the moshav were symbols of the whole enterprise.
But this idealistic movement aimed at settling in a country inhabited by another people. How to bridge this contradiction between its sublime ideals and the fact that their realization necessitated the expulsion of the people of the land?
The easiest way was to repress the problem altogether, ignoring its very existence: the land, we told ourselves, was empty, there was no people living here at all. That was the justification that served as a bridge over the moral abyss.
Only one of the Founding Fathers of the Zionist movement was courageous enough to call a spade a spade. Ze'ev Jabotinsky wrote as early as 80 years ago that it was impossible to deceive the Palestinian people (whose existence he recognized) and to buy their consent to the Zionist aspirations. We are white settlers colonizing the land of the native people, he said, and there is no chance whatsoever that the natives will resign themselves to this voluntarily. They will resist violently, like all the native peoples in the European colonies. Therefore we need an "Iron Wall" to protect the Zionist enterprise.
When Jabotinsky was told that his approach was immoral, he replied that the Jews were trying to save themselves from the disaster threatening them in Europe, and, therefore, their morality trumped the morality of the Arabs in Palestine.
Most Zionists were not prepared to accept this force-oriented approach. They searched fervently for a moral justification they could live with.
Thus started the long quest for justifications--with each pretext supplanting the previous one, according to the changing spiritual fashions in the world.
* * *
THE FIRST justification was precisely the one mocked by Jabotinsky: we were actually coming to benefit the Arabs. We shall redeem them from their primitive living conditions, from ignorance and disease. We shall teach them modern methods of agriculture and bring them advanced medicine. Everything--except employment, because we needed every job for the Jews we were bringing here, which we were transforming from ghetto-Jews into a people of workers and tillers of the soil.
When the ungrateful Arabs went on to resist our grand project, in spite of all the benefits we were supposedly bringing them, we found a Marxist justification: It's not the Arabs who oppose us, but only the "effendis". The rich Arabs, the great landowners, are afraid that the glowing example of the egalitarian Hebrew community would attract the exploited Arab proletariat and cause them to rise against their oppressors.
That, too, did not work for long, perhaps because the Arabs saw how the Zionists bought the land from those very same "effendis" and drove out the tenants who had been cultivating it for generations.
The rise of the Nazis in Europe brought masses of Jews to the country. The Arab public saw how the land was being withdrawn from under their feet, and started a rebellion against the British and the Jews in 1936. Why, the Arabs asked, should they pay for the persecution of the Jews by the Europeans? But the Arab Revolt gave us a new justification: the Arabs support the Nazis. And indeed, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, was photographed sitting next to Hitler. Some people "discovered" that the Mufti was the real instigator of the Holocaust. (Years later it was revealed that Hitler had detested the Mufti, who had no influence whatsoever over the Nazis.)
World War II came to an end, to be followed by the 1948 war. Half of the vanquished Palestinian people became refugees. That did not trouble the Zionist conscience, because everybody knew: They ran away of their own free will. Their leaders had called upon them to leave their homes, to return later with the victorious Arab armies. True, no evidence was ever found to support this absurd claim, but it has sufficed to soothe our conscience to this day.
It may be asked: why were the refugees not allowed to come back to their homes once the war was over? Well, it was they who in 1947 rejected the UN partition plan and started the war. If because of this they lost 78% of their country, they have only themselves to blame.
Then came the Cold War. We were, of course, on the side of the "Free World", while the great Arab leader, Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, got his weapons from the Soviet bloc. (True, in the 1948 war the Soviet arms flowed to us, but that's not important.) It was quite clear: No use talking with the Arabs, because they support Communist tyranny.
But the Soviet bloc collapsed. "The terrorist organization called PLO", as Menachem Begin used to call it, recognized Israel and signed the Oslo agreement. A new justification had to be found for our unwillingness to give back the occupied territories to the Palestinian people.
The salvation came from America: a professor named Samuel Huntington wrote a book about the "Clash of Civilizations". And so we found the mother of all pretexts.
* * *
THE ARCH-ENEMY, according to this theory, is Islam. Western Civilization, Judeo-Christian, liberal, democratic, tolerant, is under attacked from the Islamic monster, fanatical, terrorist, murderous.
Islam is murderous by nature. Actually, "Muslim" and "terrorist" are synonymous. Every Muslim is a terrorist, every terrorist a Muslim.
A sceptic might ask: How did it happen that the wonderful Western culture gave birth to the Inquisition, the pogroms, the burning of witches, the annihilation of the Native Americans, the Holocaust, the ethnic cleansings and other atrocities without number--but that was in the past. Now Western culture is the embodiment of freedom and progress.
Professor Huntington was not thinking about us in particular. His task was to satisfy a peculiar American craving: the American empire always needs a virtual, world-embracing enemy, a single enemy which includes all the opponents of the United States around the world. The Communists delivered the goods--the whole world was divided between Good Guys (the Americans and their supporters) and Bad Guys (the Commies). Everybody who opposed American interests was automatically a Communist--Nelson Mandela in South Africa, Salvador Allende in Chile, Fidel Castro in Cuba, while the masters of Apartheid, the death squads of Augusto Pinochet and the secret police of the Shah of Iran belonged, like us, to the Free World.
When the Communist empire collapsed, America was suddenly left without a world-wide enemy. This vacuum has now been filled by the Muslims-Terrorists. Not only Osama bin Laden, but also the Chechnyan freedom fighters, the angry North-African youth of the Paris banlieus, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the insurgents in the Philippines.
Thus the American world view rearranged itself: a good world (Western Civilization) and a bad world (Islamic civilization).
Diplomats still take care to make a distinction between "radical Islamists" and "moderate Muslims", but that is only for appearances' sake. Between ourselves, we know of course that they are all Osama bin Ladens. They are all the same.
This way, a huge part of the world, composed of manifold and very different countries, and a great religion, with many different and even opposing tendencies (like Christianity, like Judaism), which has given the world unmatched scientific and cultural treasures, is thrown into one and the same pot.
* * *
THIS WORLD VIEW is tailored for us. Indeed, the world of the clashing civilizations is, for us, the best of all possible worlds.
The struggle between Israel and the Palestinians is no longer a conflict between the Zionist movement, which came to settle in this country, and the Palestinian people, which inhabited it. No, it has been from the very beginning a part of a world-wide struggle which does not stem from our aspirations and actions. The assault of terrorist Islam on the Western world did not start because of us. Our conscience can be entirely clean--we are among the good guys of this world.
This is now the line of argument of official Israel: the Palestinians elected Hamas, a murderous Islamic movement. (If it didn't exist, it would have to be invented--and indeed, some people assert it was created from the start by our secret service.)
Hamas is terroristic, and so is Hizbullah. Perhaps Mahmoud Abbas is not a terrorist himself, but he is weak and Hamas is about to take sole control over all Palestinian territories. So we cannot talk with them. We have no partner. Actually, we cannot possibly have a partner, because we belong to Western Civilization, which Islam wants to eradicate.
* * *
IN HIS 1896 book "Der Judenstaat", Theodor Herzl, the official Israeli "Prophet of the State", prophesied this development, too.
This is what he wrote in 1896: "For Europe we shall constitute (in Palestine) a part of the wall against Asia, we shall serve as a vanguard of culture against barbarism."
Herzl was thinking of a metaphoric wall, but in the meantime we have put up a very real one. For many, this is not just a Separation Wall between Israel and Palestine. It is a part of the world-wide wall between the West and Islam, the front-line of the Clash of Civilizations.
Beyond the wall there are not men, women and children, not a conquered and oppressed Palestinian population, not choked towns and villages like Abu-Dis, a-Ram, Bil'in and Qalqilia.
No, beyond the wall there are a billion terrorists, multitudes of blood-thirsty Muslims, who have only one desire in life: to throw us into the sea, simply because we are Jews, part of Judeo-Christian Civilization.
With an official position like that--who is there to talk to? What is there to talk about? What is the point of meeting in Annapolis or anywhere else?
And what is left to us to do--to cry or to laugh?
Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch's book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.
http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery10162007.html
Monday, October 15, 2007
Call it What it Is!
Colonization And A Mediator's Bias
Remain The Death Knells Of Peace
Editorial
Daily Star (Lebanon)
October 15, 2007
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in the Middle East over the weekend to try and prod the parties into attending the planned Arab-Israeli gathering in Annapolis next month.
Her arrival coincided with the 13th anniversary of the Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded to the late Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, and to Shimon Peres. The Oslo Accords that Arafat, Rabin and Peres signed in 1993 were a breakthrough in their day; but they never achieved their promise. The process they unleashed ultimately collapsed in bitter fighting and the construction of the separation wall that Israel has erected, largely on Palestinian land.
It is worth recalling why the peace process that has comprised so many attempts since Madrid in 1991 has failed, and warfare has resumed its status as the constant condition of Arab-Israeli interaction. Many will argue over the main reasons for this sad fact. One element that cannot be ignored, and might be the number one reason for war's triumph over peace, is the continued Israeli insistence on expropriating and colonizing Palestinian land that was occupied in 1967.
The incompatibility of peace-making with colonization should be abundantly clear by now.That is why Rice should recognize - or some honest person in Washington should tell her - that her statement Sunday about Israel's latest land grab of Palestinian territory east of Occupied Jerusalem was glaringly at odds with her stated mission of promoting peace.
Asked about Israel's latest confiscation of Palestinian land, she replied: "The point that I will be making is that we have to be very careful as we are trying to move toward the establishment of a Palestinian state about actions and statements that erode confidence in the parties' commitment to a two-state solutionactions and statements that erode confidence in the parties' commitment to a two-state solution."
Say what, Condi? We have to be careful about statements that "erode confidence?" Is this all the US secretary of state can say about the most persistent and conspicuous colonial endeavor in the world? Does she really expect anyone to take her seriously as an impartial mediator when she shows herself and her country to be so blatantly sympathetic to Israel? She should come out and say flatly that expropriating occupied lands is explicitly against UN resolutions that are the basis for peacemaking attempts. If she cannot say that because it will upset the Israelis, or their friends in Washington, she should consider dropping her entire charade, because it will end like the Oslo and many other failed peace-making meetings.
If the mediator has no self-respect anchored in genuine impartiality, he or she will not be taken seriously, which is precisely what is happening today. Nobel prizes awarded many years ago remind us of the courage needed to make peace, but also of the dishonesty and partiality that destroys otherwise noble peacemaking endeavors.
Remain The Death Knells Of Peace
Editorial
Daily Star (Lebanon)
October 15, 2007
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in the Middle East over the weekend to try and prod the parties into attending the planned Arab-Israeli gathering in Annapolis next month.
Her arrival coincided with the 13th anniversary of the Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded to the late Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin, and to Shimon Peres. The Oslo Accords that Arafat, Rabin and Peres signed in 1993 were a breakthrough in their day; but they never achieved their promise. The process they unleashed ultimately collapsed in bitter fighting and the construction of the separation wall that Israel has erected, largely on Palestinian land.
It is worth recalling why the peace process that has comprised so many attempts since Madrid in 1991 has failed, and warfare has resumed its status as the constant condition of Arab-Israeli interaction. Many will argue over the main reasons for this sad fact. One element that cannot be ignored, and might be the number one reason for war's triumph over peace, is the continued Israeli insistence on expropriating and colonizing Palestinian land that was occupied in 1967.
The incompatibility of peace-making with colonization should be abundantly clear by now.That is why Rice should recognize - or some honest person in Washington should tell her - that her statement Sunday about Israel's latest land grab of Palestinian territory east of Occupied Jerusalem was glaringly at odds with her stated mission of promoting peace.
Asked about Israel's latest confiscation of Palestinian land, she replied: "The point that I will be making is that we have to be very careful as we are trying to move toward the establishment of a Palestinian state about actions and statements that erode confidence in the parties' commitment to a two-state solutionactions and statements that erode confidence in the parties' commitment to a two-state solution."
Say what, Condi? We have to be careful about statements that "erode confidence?" Is this all the US secretary of state can say about the most persistent and conspicuous colonial endeavor in the world? Does she really expect anyone to take her seriously as an impartial mediator when she shows herself and her country to be so blatantly sympathetic to Israel? She should come out and say flatly that expropriating occupied lands is explicitly against UN resolutions that are the basis for peacemaking attempts. If she cannot say that because it will upset the Israelis, or their friends in Washington, she should consider dropping her entire charade, because it will end like the Oslo and many other failed peace-making meetings.
If the mediator has no self-respect anchored in genuine impartiality, he or she will not be taken seriously, which is precisely what is happening today. Nobel prizes awarded many years ago remind us of the courage needed to make peace, but also of the dishonesty and partiality that destroys otherwise noble peacemaking endeavors.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
An Affront to Christian/Muslim Relations
Christian Activist Killed In Gaza
By Ibrahim Barzak
In The Associated Press
October 9, 2007
A prominent Palestinian Christian activist was found dead on a Gaza City street Sunday, sending a shudder of fear through a tiny Christian community feeling increasingly insecure since the Islamic Hamas seized control last summer.
The body of Rami Khader Ayyad, the 32-year-old director of Gaza's only Christian bookstore, bore a visible gunshot wound to the head, and an official at Gaza's Shifa Hospital said he was also stabbed numerous times. Ayyad had been missing since Saturday afternoon.
Ayyad regularly received anonymous death threats from angry people who accused him of missionary work, a rarity among Gaza's Christians. His store, which is associated with a Christian group called the Palestinian Bible Society, was firebombed in April.
"We feel Rami was killed for his Christian faith," said Simon Azazian, a spokesman at the Bible Society's head office in Jerusalem.
About 3,200 Christians live in Gaza among 1.4 million Muslims, and the Christian community has grown uneasy since Hamas routed forces of the secular Fatah movement and seized control of the coastal strip in June. During the takeover, vandals ransacked a Roman Catholic convent and an adjacent school, breaking crosses and smashing the face of a ceramic Jesus.
Ayyad had been increasingly worried about threats on his store, Azazian said.
On Friday, he noticed that he was being followed by a car with no license plates. Ayyad called his family Saturday afternoon to tell them he had been abducted but would be freed later in the evening, said Azazian. Police were notified, but his body was found the next morning.
Ayyad left two young children and a pregnant wife.
In recent months, shadowy Islamic groups have carried out dozens of attacks on Internet cafes, music shops and other targets associated with the West.
Some of the attacks, though not the one against Ayyad's bookstore, have been claimed by a little-known extremist Islamic group calling itself the Swords of Justice. Hamas has vehemently denied involvement in any of the violence.
Christian activists said they feared the death would disrupt their quiet but uneasy relationship with the Muslim majority.
"He paid his life for his faith, for his dignity, and the dignity of the Bible and Jesus Christ," said Issa, a 24-year-old Christian who came to pay his respects at Ayyad's home. "I am terrified and cannot believe this has happened in Gaza," said Issa, declining to give his last name because of the tense atmosphere.
Expressing a common sentiment among Christian mourners, he stopped short of blaming Hamas, saying only that the "enemy of God, love, justice and Jesus" was behind the crime.
"It's too early to talk about the motive of this crime, which might be dangerous," said Hussam Tawil, a Palestinian lawmaker who represents Gaza's Christians.
Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of Gaza's Hamas government, expressed "great sadness" over Ayyad's death and said he ordered an investigation.
"I stress the strong relations between Christians and Muslims in the Palestinian arena," he said. "We are part of the same nation ... and we are not going to allow anyone to sabotage this historical relationship."
By Ibrahim Barzak
In The Associated Press
October 9, 2007
A prominent Palestinian Christian activist was found dead on a Gaza City street Sunday, sending a shudder of fear through a tiny Christian community feeling increasingly insecure since the Islamic Hamas seized control last summer.
The body of Rami Khader Ayyad, the 32-year-old director of Gaza's only Christian bookstore, bore a visible gunshot wound to the head, and an official at Gaza's Shifa Hospital said he was also stabbed numerous times. Ayyad had been missing since Saturday afternoon.
Ayyad regularly received anonymous death threats from angry people who accused him of missionary work, a rarity among Gaza's Christians. His store, which is associated with a Christian group called the Palestinian Bible Society, was firebombed in April.
"We feel Rami was killed for his Christian faith," said Simon Azazian, a spokesman at the Bible Society's head office in Jerusalem.
About 3,200 Christians live in Gaza among 1.4 million Muslims, and the Christian community has grown uneasy since Hamas routed forces of the secular Fatah movement and seized control of the coastal strip in June. During the takeover, vandals ransacked a Roman Catholic convent and an adjacent school, breaking crosses and smashing the face of a ceramic Jesus.
Ayyad had been increasingly worried about threats on his store, Azazian said.
On Friday, he noticed that he was being followed by a car with no license plates. Ayyad called his family Saturday afternoon to tell them he had been abducted but would be freed later in the evening, said Azazian. Police were notified, but his body was found the next morning.
Ayyad left two young children and a pregnant wife.
In recent months, shadowy Islamic groups have carried out dozens of attacks on Internet cafes, music shops and other targets associated with the West.
Some of the attacks, though not the one against Ayyad's bookstore, have been claimed by a little-known extremist Islamic group calling itself the Swords of Justice. Hamas has vehemently denied involvement in any of the violence.
Christian activists said they feared the death would disrupt their quiet but uneasy relationship with the Muslim majority.
"He paid his life for his faith, for his dignity, and the dignity of the Bible and Jesus Christ," said Issa, a 24-year-old Christian who came to pay his respects at Ayyad's home. "I am terrified and cannot believe this has happened in Gaza," said Issa, declining to give his last name because of the tense atmosphere.
Expressing a common sentiment among Christian mourners, he stopped short of blaming Hamas, saying only that the "enemy of God, love, justice and Jesus" was behind the crime.
"It's too early to talk about the motive of this crime, which might be dangerous," said Hussam Tawil, a Palestinian lawmaker who represents Gaza's Christians.
Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of Gaza's Hamas government, expressed "great sadness" over Ayyad's death and said he ordered an investigation.
"I stress the strong relations between Christians and Muslims in the Palestinian arena," he said. "We are part of the same nation ... and we are not going to allow anyone to sabotage this historical relationship."
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Listen to the "Other's" Story!
On Stage In Jerusalem, Jewish And Arab Audiences Hear The Other Side Of The Story – In Their Own Language
By Ilene Prusher
In The Christian Science Monitor
October 5, 2007
The characters: six Jerusalemites. The setting: the embattled city claimed by both Israelis and Palestinians. The point: to get people listening to narratives they didn't think they wanted to hear.
Jerusalem Stories is a series of dramatic monologues that are being performed in Jewish and Arab parts of the city, in Hebrew and in Arabic, with the aim of challenging audiences to empathize with the other side – or the "enemy," as many here would say.
On stage are stories representative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the point of being cliché: A Palestinian man expresses anger over the Israeli army's killing of his nephew, an Israeli mother grieves for her teenage son killed in a Palestinian attack.
But the stories are told in a way that cuts through prejudice and hate. Director of Jerusalem Stories, Carol Grosman, chose two Israeli actors to do all six parts for Hebrew-speaking audiences to bring them face-to-face with the narratives in their own language. Palestinian actors performed for Arab audiences in their mother tongue.
It's having the intended effect, says Mohammad Thaher, the project's Palestinian director. "The issue is that for the first time ever, they're seeing something that is about the suffering of the [other] side, and it's a shock for them. People like to hear something about their own suffering and they're not used to getting beyond that. Suddenly they feel for the other, and sometimes it makes people a little bit angry."
The Jerusalem Stories project, which includes performances as well as educational programs and workshops aimed at fostering better understanding between Israelis and Palestinians, is the labor of several years of work by Ms. Grosman, an American who came to Jerusalem and decided to use her background in drama and storytelling as a way to get people to start really listening to the other side.
After collecting some 70 in-depth profiles of people who live in Jerusalem and recording the story of how the conflict affects them, Grosman chose six that seemed to capture some of the most essential and painful elements of life here – and largely, how they cope with the suffering they endure at the hands of the "other."
The debut series of performances in East and West Jerusalem has proven powerful and phenomenal. Now Grosman and Mr. Thaher are deciding where to take the show next. High on the list: Israeli and Palestinian schools, international audiences, and perhaps in the US, where Grosman studied storytelling as a tool of conflict resolution.
It's a journey, she says, that began 15 years ago when she attended a conflict resolution program in Jerusalem. "I saw how exposing audiences to real people and their narratives just opens them up, and their horizons widen," she explains. "So I started to play with getting groups together to tell their narratives." This included bringing together Jewish and African-American groups in the US, as well as groups of young Bosnians and Croats at the Seeds of Peace camp in Maine.
The journey led her to do a master's degree in conflict resolution at Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia – hardly a typical path for a Jewish girl. An Orthodox rabbi, she says, recommended she study there.
"The Mennonites talk about, 'Let's have a listen and learn.' The value of humility is very strong," she explains. "The attitude is, I need to listen, I need to learn. It's a humble stance."
The approach she took was to get people to avoid encouraging people to talk about politics or their opinions, at least in a direct sense.
"When people start telling opinions, they clash. The personal story is a safe passage through the minefield. Opinions tend to create more conflict," she explains in a discussion in her small Jerusalem apartment, which is filled with pieces of the set of the previous night's performance. The accompanying multimedia exhibit, shown between changes of actors, includes evocative black-and-white portraits of Jerusalemites taken by photographer Lloyd Wolf.
"We have a vicarious experience in our imagination: We can see the street, we can see a young boy selling gum. Imagining is something very powerful," Grosman explains. "When you have an imagined life experience of the 'enemy other,' it's a powerful form of communication. It gets past defenses that people have. Often, when we hear a story, we identify with the narrator."
For that reason, the performances are currently done either entirely in Hebrew or entirely in Arabic – which means that so far, it doesn't bring people together.
"It seemed to me that we wanted to do this in native languages, so that we would not just attract the usual people who are left-wing or tolerant," she says. "We know that there are people who support Hamas who were at the performances in East Jerusalem." But at the same time, she says, it's brought criticism from people wondering why a project aimed at building understanding is keeping people in separate spaces.
"People have criticized us, saying 'Why aren't you bringing them together?' I say, there's a need to sit separately and hear it in your native language and feel safe," she says. "We're trying to attract people who aren't comfortable sitting together [as Israelis and Palestinians]. We're already pushing them with what they hear."
Eventually, says Thaher, the Palestinian director, they plan to have joint audiences to get people talking afterward.
The three-hour program includes an hour of facilitated discussion groups after viewing the performance, in which plenty of sparks have been flying – even in the all-Arab or all-Jewish audiences.
Thaher says that Palestinian audiences sometimes express resentment at being made to feel sympathy for the Israeli side, saying that the stories were slanted. Israeli audiences complain of the exact same thing, saying that the Palestinian stories were more compelling.
"But we think there is a balance," he says.
By Ilene Prusher
In The Christian Science Monitor
October 5, 2007
The characters: six Jerusalemites. The setting: the embattled city claimed by both Israelis and Palestinians. The point: to get people listening to narratives they didn't think they wanted to hear.
Jerusalem Stories is a series of dramatic monologues that are being performed in Jewish and Arab parts of the city, in Hebrew and in Arabic, with the aim of challenging audiences to empathize with the other side – or the "enemy," as many here would say.
On stage are stories representative of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the point of being cliché: A Palestinian man expresses anger over the Israeli army's killing of his nephew, an Israeli mother grieves for her teenage son killed in a Palestinian attack.
But the stories are told in a way that cuts through prejudice and hate. Director of Jerusalem Stories, Carol Grosman, chose two Israeli actors to do all six parts for Hebrew-speaking audiences to bring them face-to-face with the narratives in their own language. Palestinian actors performed for Arab audiences in their mother tongue.
It's having the intended effect, says Mohammad Thaher, the project's Palestinian director. "The issue is that for the first time ever, they're seeing something that is about the suffering of the [other] side, and it's a shock for them. People like to hear something about their own suffering and they're not used to getting beyond that. Suddenly they feel for the other, and sometimes it makes people a little bit angry."
The Jerusalem Stories project, which includes performances as well as educational programs and workshops aimed at fostering better understanding between Israelis and Palestinians, is the labor of several years of work by Ms. Grosman, an American who came to Jerusalem and decided to use her background in drama and storytelling as a way to get people to start really listening to the other side.
After collecting some 70 in-depth profiles of people who live in Jerusalem and recording the story of how the conflict affects them, Grosman chose six that seemed to capture some of the most essential and painful elements of life here – and largely, how they cope with the suffering they endure at the hands of the "other."
The debut series of performances in East and West Jerusalem has proven powerful and phenomenal. Now Grosman and Mr. Thaher are deciding where to take the show next. High on the list: Israeli and Palestinian schools, international audiences, and perhaps in the US, where Grosman studied storytelling as a tool of conflict resolution.
It's a journey, she says, that began 15 years ago when she attended a conflict resolution program in Jerusalem. "I saw how exposing audiences to real people and their narratives just opens them up, and their horizons widen," she explains. "So I started to play with getting groups together to tell their narratives." This included bringing together Jewish and African-American groups in the US, as well as groups of young Bosnians and Croats at the Seeds of Peace camp in Maine.
The journey led her to do a master's degree in conflict resolution at Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia – hardly a typical path for a Jewish girl. An Orthodox rabbi, she says, recommended she study there.
"The Mennonites talk about, 'Let's have a listen and learn.' The value of humility is very strong," she explains. "The attitude is, I need to listen, I need to learn. It's a humble stance."
The approach she took was to get people to avoid encouraging people to talk about politics or their opinions, at least in a direct sense.
"When people start telling opinions, they clash. The personal story is a safe passage through the minefield. Opinions tend to create more conflict," she explains in a discussion in her small Jerusalem apartment, which is filled with pieces of the set of the previous night's performance. The accompanying multimedia exhibit, shown between changes of actors, includes evocative black-and-white portraits of Jerusalemites taken by photographer Lloyd Wolf.
"We have a vicarious experience in our imagination: We can see the street, we can see a young boy selling gum. Imagining is something very powerful," Grosman explains. "When you have an imagined life experience of the 'enemy other,' it's a powerful form of communication. It gets past defenses that people have. Often, when we hear a story, we identify with the narrator."
For that reason, the performances are currently done either entirely in Hebrew or entirely in Arabic – which means that so far, it doesn't bring people together.
"It seemed to me that we wanted to do this in native languages, so that we would not just attract the usual people who are left-wing or tolerant," she says. "We know that there are people who support Hamas who were at the performances in East Jerusalem." But at the same time, she says, it's brought criticism from people wondering why a project aimed at building understanding is keeping people in separate spaces.
"People have criticized us, saying 'Why aren't you bringing them together?' I say, there's a need to sit separately and hear it in your native language and feel safe," she says. "We're trying to attract people who aren't comfortable sitting together [as Israelis and Palestinians]. We're already pushing them with what they hear."
Eventually, says Thaher, the Palestinian director, they plan to have joint audiences to get people talking afterward.
The three-hour program includes an hour of facilitated discussion groups after viewing the performance, in which plenty of sparks have been flying – even in the all-Arab or all-Jewish audiences.
Thaher says that Palestinian audiences sometimes express resentment at being made to feel sympathy for the Israeli side, saying that the stories were slanted. Israeli audiences complain of the exact same thing, saying that the Palestinian stories were more compelling.
"But we think there is a balance," he says.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Find Your Voice
Dear Church Family:
It is wild here. People, people, people -- the Old City is shoulder to shoulder. It is Succoth, the Festival of Booths, for our Jewish friends, and Ramadan for their Muslim cousins.
Succoth is the time in the year when the way-out-there fringe of the Christian Zionist movement come to Jerusalem as well. Scary bunch, this bunch, and I'm not exaggerating -- not even a little.
These are the folks who believe that the land belongs to the Jewish people, which you might believe as well, but these folks believe that Israel ought to be allowed to do whatever necessary to drive out the ungodly Palestinians -- men, women and children.
In fact, they believe that if Israel is allowed to drive out the ungodly, and then if Israel is allowed to build the 3rd Temple, then Christ would return. Of course, according to Christian Zionism, when Jesus does return it will not be especially good for the Jewish people, but let's take one thing at a time. First, let's hasten Jesus' return, and then we'll let Jesus deliver the bad news to his own people. (If Jesus was still in the grave, he'd be rolling over in it. But the tomb is empty -- thank God!)
I'm standing on the street near where we live and these Christian Zionists are marching around the Old City. There are soldiers everywhere, and I mean everywhere. The soldiers have their backs to the marchers and are facing the people on the walkway across the street. Some of the marchers are armed as well. I learned later that they borrow the guns from Jewish folks and carry them around for a week or so. How sick is this? About as sick as sick gets, and that's the point I'm trying to make. Not all the crazies in the world are of one stripe!
Anyway, I'm standing next to a woman who is holding the hand of a little boy, maybe about 3 or 4. Both are watching this parade of Christians -- carrying crosses, and signs declaring their support of Israel, glaring at the Palestinians, shouting to heaven, calling down fire and brimestone -- and this little guy starts to cry. I kid you not. I hear him before I see him. He starts to cry. He's scared.
You too? I don't know what we are to do. Really, I don't. But we can start by at least acknowledging that we stand against attitudes so prevalent in the world that do not represent the mind of Christ Jesus. We can start there.
We can find a voice to speak against the idea that the world is filled with good guys and bad guys and that you can tell one from the other by their religion or color or ethnicity or gender or whatever.
Do you know who this little kid was looking at? Me. He was looking at me. The people on the street looked to him a lot like me! And here I was standing right next to him. Scared him. Scared me. The thought that we might be mistaken for one of them, scares you too, doesn't it?
Me too.
You too? I don't know what we are to do. Really, I don't. But we can start by at least acknowledging that we stand against attitudes so prevalent in the world that do not represent the mind of Christ Jesus. We can start there.
We can find a voice to speak against the idea that the world is filled with good guys and bad guys and that you can tell one from the other by their religion or color or ethnicity or gender or whatever.
Do you know who this little kid was looking at? Me. He was looking at me. The people on the street looked to him a lot like me!
And here I was standing right next to him. Scared him. Scared me. The thought that we might be mistaken for one of them, scares you too, doesn't it?
Find your voice!
love you,
marlin and marcella vis [from Vis's Journal, http://www.marlinsallyvis.typepad.com/]
It is wild here. People, people, people -- the Old City is shoulder to shoulder. It is Succoth, the Festival of Booths, for our Jewish friends, and Ramadan for their Muslim cousins.
Succoth is the time in the year when the way-out-there fringe of the Christian Zionist movement come to Jerusalem as well. Scary bunch, this bunch, and I'm not exaggerating -- not even a little.
These are the folks who believe that the land belongs to the Jewish people, which you might believe as well, but these folks believe that Israel ought to be allowed to do whatever necessary to drive out the ungodly Palestinians -- men, women and children.
In fact, they believe that if Israel is allowed to drive out the ungodly, and then if Israel is allowed to build the 3rd Temple, then Christ would return. Of course, according to Christian Zionism, when Jesus does return it will not be especially good for the Jewish people, but let's take one thing at a time. First, let's hasten Jesus' return, and then we'll let Jesus deliver the bad news to his own people. (If Jesus was still in the grave, he'd be rolling over in it. But the tomb is empty -- thank God!)
I'm standing on the street near where we live and these Christian Zionists are marching around the Old City. There are soldiers everywhere, and I mean everywhere. The soldiers have their backs to the marchers and are facing the people on the walkway across the street. Some of the marchers are armed as well. I learned later that they borrow the guns from Jewish folks and carry them around for a week or so. How sick is this? About as sick as sick gets, and that's the point I'm trying to make. Not all the crazies in the world are of one stripe!
Anyway, I'm standing next to a woman who is holding the hand of a little boy, maybe about 3 or 4. Both are watching this parade of Christians -- carrying crosses, and signs declaring their support of Israel, glaring at the Palestinians, shouting to heaven, calling down fire and brimestone -- and this little guy starts to cry. I kid you not. I hear him before I see him. He starts to cry. He's scared.
You too? I don't know what we are to do. Really, I don't. But we can start by at least acknowledging that we stand against attitudes so prevalent in the world that do not represent the mind of Christ Jesus. We can start there.
We can find a voice to speak against the idea that the world is filled with good guys and bad guys and that you can tell one from the other by their religion or color or ethnicity or gender or whatever.
Do you know who this little kid was looking at? Me. He was looking at me. The people on the street looked to him a lot like me! And here I was standing right next to him. Scared him. Scared me. The thought that we might be mistaken for one of them, scares you too, doesn't it?
Me too.
You too? I don't know what we are to do. Really, I don't. But we can start by at least acknowledging that we stand against attitudes so prevalent in the world that do not represent the mind of Christ Jesus. We can start there.
We can find a voice to speak against the idea that the world is filled with good guys and bad guys and that you can tell one from the other by their religion or color or ethnicity or gender or whatever.
Do you know who this little kid was looking at? Me. He was looking at me. The people on the street looked to him a lot like me!
And here I was standing right next to him. Scared him. Scared me. The thought that we might be mistaken for one of them, scares you too, doesn't it?
Find your voice!
love you,
marlin and marcella vis [from Vis's Journal, http://www.marlinsallyvis.typepad.com/]
Monday, October 1, 2007
A Soldier Breaks the Silence
(With thanks to Martin O. Marty [Context, October, 2007, Part A) for passing this on to his journal readers)
Man in the mirror
Reporter Steven Erlanger:
“Michael Manekin, 27, is the director of Breaking the Silence, a group of former Israeli combat soldiers and some current reservists, shocked at their own misconduct and that of others, who have gathered to collect their stories and to bear witness.
Since 2004 the group has collected testimonies from nearly 400 soldiers (available in English at www.shovrimshtika.org/index_e.asp).
“At a recent talk and discussion session, one man stood up and said Mr. Manekin and his friends were hurting Israel, especially its image abroad, in order to salve their own consciences. Many in the audience nodded in agreement. Tall and dignified, about 45, the man said that he, too, has served in the West Bank, ‘and I’m proud of what I did there to defend Israelis.’ It is crucial to intimidate people at checkpoints, he said, his voice shaking a little, ‘because we are so few there, and they are so many.’ Then he said: ‘These people are not like us! They come up to our faces and they lie to us!’
“That was enough for Uriel Simon, 77, a professor emeritus of biblical studies at Bar-Ilan University and a noted religious dove. ‘As for liars,’ Mr. Simon said, then paused. ‘My father was a liar. My grandfather was a liar. How else did we cross lines to get into this country? We stayed alive by lying. We lied to the Russians, we lied to the Germans, we lied to the British! We lied for survival!’ As for the Palestinians, he said: ‘Of course they lie! Everyone lies at a checkpoint! We lied at checkpoints, too.’
“Everyone is afraid of mirrors, Mr. Simon said. ‘We hate the mirror. We don’t want to look at
ourselves. We don’t like photographs of us—we say, “Oh, that’s not a very good likeness.” We want to be much nicer than we are. But there are also prophets who are mirrors, who are not afraid of kings and generals. The prophet says, “You are ugly,” and we don’t want to hear it, but we have to look at the mirror honestly, without fear.’ ”
—New York Times (nytimes.com), 3/23/07
Man in the mirror
Reporter Steven Erlanger:
“Michael Manekin, 27, is the director of Breaking the Silence, a group of former Israeli combat soldiers and some current reservists, shocked at their own misconduct and that of others, who have gathered to collect their stories and to bear witness.
Since 2004 the group has collected testimonies from nearly 400 soldiers (available in English at www.shovrimshtika.org/index_e.asp).
“At a recent talk and discussion session, one man stood up and said Mr. Manekin and his friends were hurting Israel, especially its image abroad, in order to salve their own consciences. Many in the audience nodded in agreement. Tall and dignified, about 45, the man said that he, too, has served in the West Bank, ‘and I’m proud of what I did there to defend Israelis.’ It is crucial to intimidate people at checkpoints, he said, his voice shaking a little, ‘because we are so few there, and they are so many.’ Then he said: ‘These people are not like us! They come up to our faces and they lie to us!’
“That was enough for Uriel Simon, 77, a professor emeritus of biblical studies at Bar-Ilan University and a noted religious dove. ‘As for liars,’ Mr. Simon said, then paused. ‘My father was a liar. My grandfather was a liar. How else did we cross lines to get into this country? We stayed alive by lying. We lied to the Russians, we lied to the Germans, we lied to the British! We lied for survival!’ As for the Palestinians, he said: ‘Of course they lie! Everyone lies at a checkpoint! We lied at checkpoints, too.’
“Everyone is afraid of mirrors, Mr. Simon said. ‘We hate the mirror. We don’t want to look at
ourselves. We don’t like photographs of us—we say, “Oh, that’s not a very good likeness.” We want to be much nicer than we are. But there are also prophets who are mirrors, who are not afraid of kings and generals. The prophet says, “You are ugly,” and we don’t want to hear it, but we have to look at the mirror honestly, without fear.’ ”
—New York Times (nytimes.com), 3/23/07
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