Internal blatant discrimination against Israeli Arabs who make up a fifth of the population is well known and documented, as is the brutal and longest running occupation in modern times of Palestinian territories by Israel.

Racism against its “own” — olive-skinned Jews indigenous to the Middle East and the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and not the politically dominant Ashkenazi Jews who originated from Europe, is less documented but endemic to Israeli society. Note that while the term Sephardi Jew originally described Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, in common usage it now denotes all non-Ashkenazi Jews.

Y-Net (2 Sept) reports that a Haredi (orthodox Jewish) Talmud Torah school has recently rejected a ‘Sephardi’ child on racial/ ethnic grounds, with the school principal branding the child’s part Sephardi heritage a ’stain’ in his genealogy.

I am posting this in part because it is under-reported in the mainstream press, and also because it so well illustrates Hannah Arendt’s observation (The Origins of Totalitaranism) that “… though tyranny, because it needs no consent, may successfully rule over foreign peoples, it can stay in power only if it destroys first of all the national institutions of its own people.”

Zvi Alush writes:

Anyone who thinks that racist rules are a thing of the past is wrong, according to the mother of a four-and-a-half year old child who was rejected from a Talmud Torah school because of his grandfather’s ethnicity.

“They are alive and kicking in all their ugliness in Ashkenazi haredi educational institutions,” the mother said.

The child was denied admission to a Talmud Torah school in Beit Shemesh because of what its principal called a “stain” in his genealogy.

“Tell the child’s dear father that although he himself is completely Ashkenazi, his wife’s father is Sephardic, and we therefore cannot accept his son into our institution. We have to maintain a certain standard,” the principal said.

The child’s mother made several attempts to change the principal’s mind, to no avail.

“I begged the principal. I explained that my child is truly Ashkenazi and looks exactly like his father. Our son also speaks Yiddish, but nothing helped,” the mother said. “They explained to a friend of ours that they didn’t want to ruin their Talmud Torah with ‘damaged goods’.” Read the rest of this entry »

Any intelligent observer can easily discern that the “new” anti-semitism today has little connection with discrimination against Jews. Anti-semitism nowadays is mostly about deplorable discrimination and racist attacks against Arabs. Right now in New York, the Likudnik thought police are trying their darndest to designate Arabic words like intifada and madrassa (which simply means ’school’ in Arabic, regardless of religious affiliation), treasonous. Madrassa does not mean religious school.

We see this playing out in the trumped-up brouhaha about the Kahlil Gibran International Academy, wherein Debbie Almontaser, the head, was branded a terrorist for not apologising enough (for the hardline-Zionists liking) about the word ‘intifada’ (which simply means ’shaking off’) on a T-Shirt–worn by someone else! The racist bullying and defamation resulted in Almontaser resigning.

This reflects poorly on NYC, which has a rich history of cosmopolitanism, the same American tradition that brought Kahlil Gibran, the timeless Lebanese-born poet and philosopher, to the shores of the US where he made such a lasting impact upon the world of literature.

As Anthony DiMaggio notes, Daniel Pipes is one of the reactionaries spouting utter rubbish about Arabic, such as: “Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage” and “Muslims tend to see non-Muslims learning Arabic as a step toward an eventual conversion to Islam…”

Islamophobe Pipes fails to mention that the most populous Muslim country is Indonesia (pop: 242 million), whose national language is Bahasa Indonesian. He neglects to mention that there are a great many Christian Arabic speakers too, such as myself. Yes, Arab culture is attached to Islam—since when then is that a crime?–but also to Christianity and Judaism, too. The demonisation of Islam and of Arabic as a language by ignoramuses and ideologues such as Pipes and Bella Rabinowitz is all in service of the terror-blather that has hijacked public discourse in the United States.

Samuel Freedman is one of the very few voices in the MSM to more accurately document the affair, as Richard Silverstein observes.

Press Picks:

• Anthony DiMaggio, The Right-Wing’s War on the Gibran Academy: Arabic as a Terrorist Language, Counterpunch
• Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI) Statement on Debbie Almontaser

Al Jazeera news clip (Thanks Ressentiment)

UPDATED: many thanks to Jenny Tonge for kindly responding to a query about full Hansard transcript availability which has allowed me to feature more of her address. Parliamentary debate transcripts at both the House of Commons and House of Lords can be found on the Hansard link here by date and member name.

Liberal-Democrat peer Jenny Tonge spoke out for justice in Palestine in a House of Lords speech last month, predictably earning the ire of Israel-apologists (see J-Post)

Here’s an excerpt of her speech:

The Palestinians have been brought to their knees. A cultured and well educated society with high skill levels has been reduced to a third-world country. The statistics are there for all to see. If noble Lords do not believe me or any of the other speakers, the Select Committee for International Development in the other place produced a good report this year. I hope that noble Lords will read it. It tells of injustice—injustice to Palestinians.

The new Government talks of rebuilding the economy in Palestine and of getting the Palestinians back to work, which is very welcome. But how will they do that with road blocks, checkpoints and Bantustans divided by settler-only roads? How can an economy work in this situation?

Even education is being destroyed as children are terrorised by raids on their schools. Exams in Nablus, for example, were disrupted only last week by the IDF. An unskilled and illiterate generation will emerge, capable of very little except low-wage labour. The economy cannot be rebuilt unless Israel changes its policies.

Therefore, the problem remains—how do we persuade Israel to change? We want Israel to be a secure and prosperous state—and I say that sincerely. How can anyone in Israel believe that the present situation will give them what they want, long-term security. I am not anti-Semitic, but I am appalled by the racist, apartheid state of Israel. I use the word “apartheid” in its literal sense—it means separation—because that is what is going on.

Policies of the western countries towards Israel must change. Israel must be made to understand. We must consider trade sanctions and boycotts, if necessary, to make that country obey international law. The present situation is a disaster for Palestinians. It is a disaster for Israel. It is a disaster for the whole world. It has to change.

Thank you, Jenny Tonge. Hope you are holding up well with the usual character smears and pathetic denigration this kind of speaking truth to power elicits from the Likudnik ideologues. Of course, unlike them, Dr Tonge has actually been to Gaza and seen conditions for herself. Dr Tonge, who cites her proudest achievement in parliament since 2001 as “highlighting the plight of the Palestinians under occupation by Israel”, is a treasure.

German peace movement spurns settlement products

In other positive developments, Ha’aretz reports that Germans have protested the sale of food from West Bank settlements. Read the rest of this entry »

Produced last year by Jewish Conscience, this video features a variety of Jewish voices speaking out.

Meanwhile -

Amira Hass reports that Gaza residents tell of demeaning practices by Shin Bet; and the WaPo reports that Patrick Syring, a State Dept employee, is facing charges over threats and slander against the Arab-American Institute.

If Not Now, When?

R/T 14 minues; H/T: Haitham Sabbah

Jewish American peace activist Anna Baltzer has been doing exemplary peacework in Palestine for awhile now, so it is wonderful to see dear friend Ben Heine, the brilliant Belgian artist, take up the great suggestion to draw Anna’s caricature-portrait. Ben drew an inspired portrait modeled on Michaelangelo’s famous Pietà and has just posted a great feature of Anna’s work here. Thanks to Ressentiment for the heads up on Anna’s work and website.

In these two video snippets from her DVD (available here), Anna speaks directly about her experiences and describes the situation in Palestine on the ground from first hand experience. Her testimony about the experiences of ordinary people and not simply that of statesmen is delivered in a clear and lucid manner with reference to her own photographs and visuals.

More:

Anna’s website | Blog | Book | DVD | Photo albums | Yahoo group-list

Roadblocks and Settlements (6.41)

Outposts, Israeli peace activists and refuseniks (10.07)

Anna’s website | Blog | Book | DVD | Photo albums | Yahoo group-list

Do petitions matter? Do they help to effect social progress? In this 2 minute video Amnesty answer with a resolute (perhaps romanticised to some) yes.

We do well to recall that Martin Luther’s 95 Theses apocryphally nailed to the church door of Wittenburg in 1517 practically launched the Reformation, and petitions and pamphlets have had an important effect in countless other events in history. Affixing our signatures to an important statement is often symbolic, but symbols can be powerful too. Signing a petition may not be a substitute for the full spectrum of actions we can take, but it can be a powerful start.

Hat-tip to Ben Heine, and like Steve, I am including a petition to Richard Silverstein’s petition on the first reading of the Israeli Knesset’s profoundly discriminatory Jewish National Fund (JNF) bill. It is encouraging to see some prominent Israelis speaking up against this possible further legislating of apartheid (see, for example, Yossi Paritzky, Our Apartheid State in Y-Net).

ADDENDUM: See also Richard Silverstein’s The ‘Right’ to Discriminate in Guardian’s CIF.

The petition reads:

We the undersigned express our profound disapproval and sorrow at the Israeli Knesset’s recent passage, on first reading, of the Jewish National Fund bill. The bill would prohibit Israel’s Arab citizens from leasing land owned by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and managed by the Israeli Land Authority (which administers 93% of Israel’s land). The Israel High Court had earlier ruled that the ILA cannot discriminate against Arabs in leasing such land. This new legislation is an attempt to circumvent that ruling.

We applaud the High Court for putting an end to a discriminatory practice that should never have existed within a democratic state. We also applaud the Israeli MK’s, Jewish and Arab that voted against the amendment. If Israel is to be truly democratic, all its citizens must have the right to lease land held in trust by the government of Israel. Israel must not settle for anything less.

We call upon to the Knesset to defeat the amendment when it comes up for its next reading and to embrace values of equality and tolerance for all its citizens.

If you would like to sign, click HERE

On a related note, IHT reports on a small positive development in a significant number of US evangelical leaders stepping forward to voice support for Palestinian rights. Read the rest of this entry »

At some point last year, I was introduced to Amina Mire’s work on skin bleaching. I was reminded of Amina’s essay Pigmentation and Empire when coming upon two of these vids flogging skin-lightening creams by way of Graeme’s blog, and I’ve borrowed two of the puns from Graeme’s readers who share my disdain for this phenomenon of companies such as L’Oreal and Unilever Hindustan (who own the ‘Fair and Lovely’ brand) helping to make women feel as if they don’t measure up and need to lighten their skin to somehow be beautiful.

Is this blamecasting companies for a culture that has existed for thousands of years in some places? India’s caste systems were well entrenched long before colonialism set in, but it is also true that these cosmetics corporations are exploiting and sustaining it. Both the culture and the companies are part of a system that needs deeper examination — this post is merely a brief introduction in which I do not assign singular culpability as much as invite you to consider the history and politics further and to decide for yourself.

The practise of skin-whitening can be found everywhere but is particularly common in India, Asia, Africa and the United States. Going by two of the advertisements below, it looks like a similar market is being created in the Middle East.

Living in a country such as Australia where tanned skin is viewed as healthy and beautiful and Caucasians are often at a natural disadvantage to their Mediterranean (olive) and Aboriginal (black and brown-skinned) fellow citizens, the beauty ideal is the opposite. This is a problem for Caucasians particularly and all Australians generally as we have the biggest rates of skin cancer in the world.

I can only hope each of us values our natural beauty and diversity. Brown skin is gorgeous; olive is awesome; black is beautiful, white too is beautiful. I can’t say I buy into the argument that these products simply cater for a preexisting market, though the literature on India in particular seems to examine the line that internalised racism is ingrained in the culture. I think these companies help create and perpetuate that market by making women (and men) feel less than adequate with the beauty they already possess, as illustrated in the advertisement’s story-lines of brown skin=rejected for job; lighter skin=happy and successful. (See appended article links)

Each of the advertisements is less than a minute in duration. The three skin lightening advertisements are followed by a related and heart-breaking 7 minute video entitled ‘A Girl Like Me‘ produced by Kiri Davis who does a superlative job. It shows how socialising young girls starts even before they encounter the cosmetics counter and the burgeoning industry that manufactures, exploits and inflates ethnic insecurities.

Addendum: some off-blog discussion has explored how a preference for lighter skin may also have been cultivated with one’s class and station in life (ie working in the fields–thanks Print), with the lighter skin of the indoorsy aristocracy being imitated by labouring folk. While this is a racially charged topic and race is a most important and key plank; class, culture, health, psychology and other variables certainly come into play.

‘Fair and Lovely’ Middle East

‘Fair and Lovely’ II

‘Fair and Lovely’ India (double click on this one to view at YouTube site)

A Girl Like Me

Related articles

• Heather Timmins, Lighten up, NST Online
• Nicole Leistikow, Indian Women Criticize ‘Fair and Lovely’ Ideal, Women’s E-News
• Monica Chadha, Indian men go tall, fair and handsome, BBC
• Devadatta Gandhi, Fair and lovely?, Michigan Daily
• Steven Greenhouse, Nasty smell at the L’Oreal counter…
• UPI, French court: L’Oreal guilty of racial discrimination

Avigail Abarbanel is a psychotherapist and former Israeli resident who left Israel for Australia in 1991. In The Israeli Police State, Abarbanel writes a revealing piece on the psychologically abusive and maliciously intimidatory tactics employed by the Israeli state even for people who simply want to leave; in this case, herself. Excerpted below; read in full at The Electronic Intifada (9 July 2007):

Up until the army found out that we were leaving, my husband as a career officer and myself as the “wife of,” were treated with great respect in Israeli society and in the military. We didn’t just belong, we had an honored place. The choice of a female sergeant was meant to humiliate him (I mean no offense to females but this is the culture in the Israeli military). Whoever dreamed up this intimidation attempt wanted to show my ex that his rank and status meant little if he was choosing the “wrong” path. We were angry but mostly shocked that he could be treated like this just because we wanted to leave Israel. It’s one thing to encounter the disapproval of friends and relatives in ordinary conversations. It’s quite another to be the subject of a menacing questioning by the MP. Our decision to leave apparently placed us in a new position in society, outside that comfortable mainstream. When we finally left at the end of ‘91 we did so with a bitter taste in our mouths having seen a glimpse of an Israel we didn’t know.

Ask any Palestinian and they will tell you much worse stories — frankly, there is no comparison. Palestinians cannot help but be seen as outsiders, whether they are citizens of Israel or whether they are refugees in the Occupied Territories, whether they are children or adults, male or female. All Palestinians live under constant military and police surveillance. They experience nothing of the mythical Israeli democracy. “Israeli democracy” is something reserved only for the privileged and mostly ignorant elite, of which I was also a member, until I decided to leave. Palestinian citizens of Israel live under an arbitrary and brutal police state. Their dealings with Israeli bureaucracy are not just frustrating but can be outright dangerous.

The Palestinians in the Occupied Territories live under a Pinochet-like regime. They can and do disappear in the middle of the night. They are blindfolded, cuffed, beaten, humiliated, taken to unknown locations with no information given to them or their families, tortured physically and psychologically and incarcerated indefinitely, often without charges and regardless of whether they are guilty of anything. It is arbitrary and it can happen to anyone. This is a far worse version of the two incidents I described above but the basic principles are the same.

In a regime like that you don’t have to actually do anything wrong to receive this treatment. This is because it is not only designed to catch people who break the law, it is designed to be a kind of a warning, a hinted threat. It’s there to flaunt state power, show people how small and weak they are compared with the mighty state, and offer a taste of what would happen to them if they even think to go against it. In the case of the Palestinians such tactics are also designed to make daily life unbearable in order to break their spirit and intimidate them into leaving. After all, what Israel really wants is all the land but without the people, something that so many in the West still refuse to recognize.

Israel is not a nice country. It is a powerful police state founded on pathological paranoia with only a veneer of civility, carefully crafted and maintained for the consumption of those who still believe in the myth of Israeli democracy. Mainstream Israelis live in a fictional bubble that separates them from reality. If there is a democracy there, only this select group enjoys it — just like the conformist white population in old South Africa. Supporting Israel now is the same as claiming that South Africa under apartheid was an acceptable democracy. It also means abandoning the Palestinians, just like the world abandoned black South Africans (and white dissidents) for 45 long years.

• U.S. Soldiers Cavalierly Tell Of Rape and Suicide of 15 Year Old Iraqi Girl

  Video below - Should only be watched by a mature audience (verbal sexual references only).

“Anyone with a rag on his head is fair game” — salt scum of the earth

Information Clearing House (see comments posted there)

• The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness

by Chris Hedges & Laila Al-Arian

The Nation [from the July 30, 2007 issue]

• Abusing Iraqi Civilians

Bob Herbert, The New York Times (Times Select; full article available here) 10 July

• ‘A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi… You know, so what?’

Interviews with US veterans show for the first time the pattern of brutality in Iraq

The Independent 12 July 2007

• U.S. soldiers ‘are murdering Iraqi civilians in cold blood’

Daily Mail (UK) 12th July 2007

• Marine says officers ordered them to ‘crank up’ violence level in Iraq

Associated Press 15 July 2007

Thanks as well as a hat tip to the great ladies at Jordan Journals for making this article available. Unless you have a print subscription to the Jordan Times, this article is not freely available online (the only other site that has it requires subscription). [Bold emphasis is editorial]

Why Palestine Matters By Roger H. Lieberman
Jordan Times | 20 June 2007

In driving around central New Jersey of late, I have observed a great many signs on schools and houses of worship proclaiming the urgency of the humanitarian crisis in Darfur. This is perfectly right and natural. The deteriorating situation in that beleaguered region of western Sudan certainly deserves concern and assistance from people worldwide.

What is troubling, however, is how little concern seems evident, at similar venues, for a political and humanitarian crisis far older and far more attributable to US foreign policy — indeed made possible by American taxpayers. Where, among the schools, churches, synagogues and libraries of suburbia, are the expressions of grief and outrage over the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land?

Fifty-nine years after Israel was established by force on 78 per cent of Mandate Palestine, and 40 years after its armies occupied the remaining 22 per cent in the Six-Day War, the majority of Americans outside progressive and intellectual circles seem divided between those who are disturbingly apathetic about the conflict and those who blindly adhere to the Israeli narrative.

As long as this status quo persists, hopes for a just peace in the Holy Land will elude fulfilment.

What accounts for this baffling indifference or antipathy to basic Palestinian rights? Why, in God’s name, should the right of human beings to live in freedom and dignity in their native land be seen by any serious person as “controversial”? And why does the preponderance of US politicians, irrespective of their views on other matters, invariably adhere to the Zionist Party line when it comes to the Israel-Palestine conflict?

The usual explanation for this sad state of affairs is the inordinate influence of the pro-Israel lobby on American politics and media, and the fear of running afoul of its banal taboos. But this does not account for why such propaganda has consistently found so receptive an audience, and why such taboos are taken so seriously by so many people.

Verily, America’s abject failure to support the fulfilment of Palestinian aspirations for freedom derives from the curious fact that Israel’s ideological milieu found early on a receptive audience, for rather different reasons, at both ends of the American political mainstream. As a result, many ordinary Americans, both Christian and Jewish, have grown up and lived much of their lives believing that Israel somehow embodies the values, liberal or conservative, they admire in the United States. But this is a fabrication, and recognising that Israel’s behaviour conforms to no healthy manifestation of American ideals is essential for the constructive reformation of US Middle East policy.

Liberals have consistently maintained their support for Israel on the premise that it is a “democracy”, in contrast to the supposedly intractable “dictatorial” nature of “Arab regimes”. While seemingly accurate in describing the status quo inside Israel’s pre-1967 borders, this conception ignores the ugly reality that Israeli “democracy” has, from day one, been subordinated to religious and ethnic chauvinism. Israel, according to long-standing Zionist precepts, can only function democratically by maintaining an overwhelming Jewish majority in the country.

From this policy stemmed the mass-expulsion of Palestinian Muslims and Christians in 1948, and the denial of the right of return and restitution to them and their descendants ever since. It further entailed the imposition of martial law over the remaining “Israeli Arabs” until 1966, and their marginalisation as second-class citizens to the present day. Finally, it inspired the aggressive confiscation of erstwhile Palestinian lands by the Israeli state, and an all-consuming quest for Jewish immigrants from every conceivable source — lately going so far as to include obscure tribes from the Himalayas and South America who only recently adopted the Jewish faith. Such policies bear scant resemblance to the ideals of America’s Founding Fathers, but do recall the Old World tyrannies they so despised — as well as totalitarian states of more recent times.

American rightists, for their part, have tended to extol Israel as a model of “pioneer” achievement and as a vanguard of “Western civilisation” battling “barbarism” and “backwardness”. This boilerplate rhetoric derives largely from fundamentalist Protestant dogma about “manifest destiny” that figured prominently in American culture during the settlement of the western frontier in the 19th Century. It attempts to cast Palestinians in a role equivalent to the Native American tribes who were “swept aside” to “make way” for “progress” in the days of the Gold Rush, the Cattle Boom and the Trans-Continental Railroad.

Although no one should trivialise the wrongs done to Native Americans during the westwards expansion of the United States, only a rudimentary knowledge of Palestinian life in the centuries prior to the advent of Zionism is necessary to understand that such comparisons are ludicrous in the extreme. While few indigenous peoples north of Mexico had advanced beyond a Neolithic, or even Mesolithic, cultural stage by the time Europeans arrived, Palestinians had maintained for centuries a sophisticated economy and culture based on agriculture and vibrant mercantile traditions. Palestine remained throughout the Mediaeval and Ottoman periods a crossroads of Asia, Europe and Africa, supporting important religious and scholarly institutions of Muslim, Christian and Jewish affiliation.

Far from being an “empty land” awaiting settlers to “make the desert bloom”, pre-Zionist Palestine was a land full of its own possibilities, blessed by enterprising people with high hopes for the future. Indeed, no one in recent times has done quite so effective a job in making the Holy Land barren and deprived of a promising future as the Israeli occupation forces with their bewildering, Kafkaesque matrix of closures, walls and checkpoints.

Read the rest of this entry »

A very insightful and well argued piece from Mark Braverman. Braverman is a member of the Washington Interfaith Alliance for Middle East Peace and Jewish Voice for Peace. He serves on the Board of ICAHD-USA.

I’ve reproduced this excellent essay from Jewish Conscience in full; bold emphasis is mine.

(Ben Heine © Cartoons)

Jewish History, Anti-Semitism, and the Challenge of Zionism

by Mark Braverman, Ph.D.

Prologue: Memory and History

When I was 8 years old my brother and I would occasionally stay at our grandparents’ house in South Philadelphia. South Philly in 1956 was an immigrant enclave – here lived primarily the Jews, the Irish, and the Italians. It was a bustling, colorful, tightly packed community. There were outdoor markets and synagogues and churches in abundance, all built on the models of the Old Country. The neighborhood smelled of cooking and garbage. Homeless cats and dogs owned the maze of alleys that ran behind the densely packed streets of row houses. My brother and I slept in a tiny back room. You could fall out the window and land in the neighbors’ shoebox of a backyard.

One summer night it was noisy. As we prepared for bed, my grandmother in her soft Yiddish accent called our attention to the scene just outside the window that looked out over the alley: “Goyim,” she said, pointing out the window at a small gathering of people talking loudly, laughing, and holding drinks. “They’re shikker,” she told us, and I knew without her saying that this meant that being drunk was their natural state – and that this apparently convivial, noisy, and collective condition was a shameful thing indeed. Continuing her lesson, my grandmother told us the story of the Jew and the Goy who had gone to work for the same boss. Over the years the Jew advanced to foreman, while the Goy remained a laborer. One day the Goy goes up to the Jew and says, Chaim, why is it that we both started here together, and you’re second in command and I’m still hauling bricks? The Jew looks at him, and, saying not a word, takes him to the Goy’s backyard and shows him the garbage can, which is full of empty liquor bottles. That’s the reason, says the Jew. The Goy’s response to this lesson is unknown. Presumably (and undoubtedly in my Grandmother’s mind) in his goyish condition he remained unreformed.

I remember the moment. The experience of shock for an 8 year old is not a well-delineated emotion. It’s a damp, heavy blanket that settles over the heart — the colors of the world and the sharp lines of wonder at everyday experience are dulled, suffocating underneath its weight. I asked no questions in response to what she was telling me. But – I know now — I didn’t buy it.

It is 2006, and I am in a large room in the Carnegie Endowment outside of Dupont Circle in Washington, DC. I am attending a panel entitled: Politics and Diplomacy: Next Steps in Arab-Israeli Peacemaking. There are eight men sitting at the front of the room, four Palestinians and four Israelis. A Palestinian speaks first, calling for – in plaintive tones, this is the only word for it – a resumption of negotiations before it is too late. The economic embargo of the newly elected Palestinian government with its Hamas majority has been in effect for five months. “We don’t have much time left!” he tells us. I am almost brought to tears by the sadness of his presentation, and a bit shocked, truth to tell, at his restraint as he describes the utter humiliation and desperation faced by his people.

“I am a member of the Palestinian Authority legislative counsel,” he goes on, “and I haven’t been paid in 4 months. I am one of the privileged, and I don’t know how I’ll make ends meet in the coming year!”

I sense the room darkening — there is a silence. I feel shame, embarrassment, anger.

Then it is the Israeli’s turn to speak. I hold my breath: what will he say? How does he follow this? A journalist for a popular Israeli daily and now ensconced at the Brookings Institution nearby, the Israeli sits back, smiles — and opens with a joke. He is, for all the world, a man delivering an after-dinner speech, interested in providing a measured degree of enlightenment while entertaining us.

Clearly, we are in the presence of the conqueror – the man holding all the cards.

“We’ll talk to them when the violence stops,” he pontificates: it’s the old story. But it isn’t the words, it is the arrogance. No - it isn’t the arrogance, it is the blindness, the sweeping, crushing insensitivity to the emotional tone of the previous speaker.

The Palestinian sitting next to him was invisible — he simply didn’t count. And on it went. The other Palestinian panelists, leaning forward in their chairs, protested weakly that time was running out, pleading for a resumption of negotiations. The Israelis sat back, opining about how the Hamas victory rendered the prospects for negotiations negligible, talking about unilateral actions, i.e. their intention to simply do what they wanted, take what they wanted. Among them was a former Israeli General who, in this context, on this panel – I am not making this up – spoke about the Jews’ Right to the Land. But, again, it wasn’t the words, it wasn’t the policies, shocking as they were – it was the negation, the utter, shocking, arrogant negation of the Other. Read the rest of this entry »