Dispatches from another planet
So, for some unknown reason, I am on the email list of the “Jewish community of Hebron”. As a result of this good fortune I receive an email two or three times a week from David Wilder, the spokesperson of the community. This morning my inbox brought me Mr. Wilder’s response to Nicholas Kristof’s column in today’s New York Times (mentioned here). I won’t rehearse Wilder’s “arguments” (which seem to consist of repeating a version of “x is exaggerated” or “y is a fairy tale”) which are available here.
The telling thing about his response is his opening paragraph:
Nicholas D. Kristof called me a few days ago and we spoke for a while on the phone. Obviously he visited Hebron, but did not see fit to interview me at the time, preferring a phone conversation. That fact, in and of itself, is unfortunate, for had he spent some time with me on site, seeing Hebron through Jewish-Israeli eyes also, perhaps his column would have been written differently.
“Seeing Hebron through Jewish-Israeli eyes.” Since Kristof seems to have spent time with many apparently Jewish Israelis, it seems that Wilder does not consider people who care about Palestinian human rights, or who work for or with B’Tzelem, or who volunteer at checkpoints to help Palestinians to be Jewish-Israelis.
This brings to mind a Shabbat I spent in Hebron in the mid-80s. It was pre-first Intifada Hebron and therefore Jewish settlers could swagger through the Arab markets brandishing AK-47s with impunity. I spent Friday night with the Levingers. Over Shabbat dinner, Moshe Levinger told us that Israel should, in fact, invade Jordan since it was Eretz Yisrael but that the time was not right. This was just a few years before he was arrested and convicted of shooting towards shops in the Arab market at random, killing Khayed Salah, a 42 year old Hebron shopkeeper, after Palestinians threw stones at his car.
The Jewish settlers in Hebron have created a religion which is foreign to the traditions of our ancestors. The open question is, as Jeffrey Goldberg asked in an important 2004 New Yorker piece, will they destroy Israel?
No doubt the 800 or so Jews of Hebron are about to rise up and destroy the entire country…
As if the Judaism of Jewschool wouldn’t be foriegn to the traditions of our ancestors?
Seriously, cut the straw man argument crap. By “Jewish Israeli eyes” he clearly meant a pro-Jewish Israeli set of priorities, which should include the ability for a Jew to live in Hebron or anywhere else they want in the mid-east without it being perceived as a provocation, or even a political statement. Why shouldn’t they live in Hebron? Because non-Jewish Arabs do not like them their? I think the guy is well aware that there is a healthy community of self defeatist Jewish Israelis who are insane enough to pretend this is a dispute over Judea and Samaria.
I don’t condone some of the behavior used by settlers towards their Arab neighbors, and I may not even agree with their personal reasonings for being there in the first place, but that is ultimately secondary because they too are entitled to self determination, and human rights, as are Arabs. If you’re debating who has the biggest entitlement to act like an asshole it sort of misses the boat, eh? Because what does it really mean to be a pro-Palestinian Israeli? I mean besides an indication of severe schizophrenia.
to be a pro palestinian israeli means that you understand israel’s right to exist and Palestine’s right to exist. Moreover, it means that you underestand that you can’t justify your own self determination at the expense of someone else’s.
My problem isn’t with Jews living in Hebron. It is with Israelis living in Hebron. As Israelis. That is the provocation
Well okay coexistance is lovely, but unlike Yael, the Palestinian platform wants Jews removed, just as they were in Gaza. A discussion over that form of so called coexistance is artificial.
Unless we can fight for a day when an Egyptian Arab of any religion can live in ANY country in the region next door to an Israeli Jew without it being about “provocations”, “collonizers”, “land grabs”, “aggressors” then we’re really not striving for an honest coexistance. That’s true no matter who holds jurisdiction on the land. Israel affords more equal opportunities towards this coexistance dream then any Arab leadership is offering at the moment, not to mention, a large number Palestinians do not make the same distinctions you do between an Israeli in Tel Aviv versus an Israeli in Hebron.
By the way, does a post-Zionist, pro-Palestine Jewish group exist which aims to aid the building of new Jewish communities in the mid-east? Or is the goal just to uproot Jews and hope Israel takes care of them?
ugh: While your point is well taken, I pose this question: how should “Jewish Israelis” go about respecting the humanity and basic human rights of the Palestinians, while, at the same time, standing up for the right of Jewish people to live where they want? How do we take responsibility for the insane actions of some settlers, [such as those captured on B’tzelem camera beating Palestinian grandmothers], while still supporting the sane ones?
I don’t think there is an easy answer. But it doesn’t help that you have a small but vocal group of your fellow citizens telling you you have no right to live in your house. It’s easy for bloggers sitting in the States to talk about abolishing settlements, but is there any sensitivity to the fact that you are calling for the forced removal of Jews from their homes?
It’s easy for bloggers sitting in the States to talk about abolishing settlements, but is there any sensitivity to the fact that you are calling for the forced removal of Jews from their homes?
Are people still protesting the Quabbin Reservoir too?
“how should “Jewish Israelis†go about respecting the humanity and basic human rights of the Palestinians, while, at the same time, standing up for the right of Jewish people to live where they want?”
I agree with respecting the humanity, and there are clearly some class issues to monitor, but living where you want is not a basic human right.I’d like to live along Gramercy Park, in a carriage house, but it’s not my human right to do it. Meanwhile, I can’t think of place in the Middle East where Arabs are barred from living. Once the Palestinians replace the map of Israel with a map of their own, we can’t pretend this is about providing Arabs with self determination.
It’s Jews who are threatened with extinction. Can anyone look at Gush Katif and say the results were positive? Has the peace process benefitted? Did it really “right a wrong”? Last I heard it was being called a land grab.
>>““Seeing Hebron through Jewish-Israeli eyes.†Since Kristof seems to have spent time with many apparently Jewish Israelis, it seems that Wilder does not consider people who care about Palestinian human rights, or who work for or with B’Tzelem, or who volunteer at checkpoints to help Palestinians to be Jewish-Israelis.”
Huh? So would Muslim Arabs who support Jewish residence in the land of Israel by implication not “really” be Muslim Arabs? One does not expect a tour of the Holy Land “through Muslim Arab eyes” to include a positive perspective on Jewish settlement there or a negative perspective on Muslim Arab settlement.
Similarly one does not expect a tour of Israel “through Jewish Israeli eyes” to present a negative perspective on Jewish Israeli residence in the land. If some Jewish Israelis have one it does not make their perspective the normative “Jewish Israeli position”. This is painfully obvious. The PhD doth protest too much.
BZ, I’m not sure why you’re dredging up the Quabbin Reservoir case (from 70 years ago!). Were the people there removed by the government because of their race/religion? It’s an inapt comparison.
My last posting was erased. I suppose my comments have been deemed “inappropriate or unhelpful?”
Ok, again,
it doesn’t matter if this is a dispute over the entire state, or only over Judea and Samaria…and the issue isn’t whether Jews have the right to live in Hebron…the bottom line is the settlement movement has failed.
The Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are a dream come true for Hamas and the PLO.
We are turning ourselves into a South Africa (at best) or a Bosnia (at worst.)
Time is running out before we can no longer separate ourselves from the Palestinians in Gaza, Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem, the Galeel, and the northern Negev (if possible.)
Read Yael’s post. If we continue along this path such Zionists, and most of the Western world, will turn their backs on our cause.
Jews such as Levinger are leading us down the road to a Jewish minority trying to rule, by force, over an Arab majority, and the entire world will be against us…
Also, Kristof is a columnist for the Times – and his columns are usually (as this one was) based on his own on-the-ground reporting. Why should he be required to see Hebron through “Jewish-Israeli” eyes? (Or, for that matter, through “Muslim-Palestinian” eyes?) He’s not a partisan in this conflict, instead he’s doing his best to try to understand it.
Let’s face it, the Jewish settlers in Hebron have made a travesty of Judaism. They have forced thousands of Palestinians to abandon their homes and livelihoods (the central market in Hebron is now completely empty of its Arab shopkeepers because of the Jewish settlers) – all in the name of “yishuv ha-aretz.” There are other Jewish values than “yishuv ha-aretz,” such as “love your neighbor as yourself” and “love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Modesty and humility are also Jewish values – notably not fulfilled by the settlers in Hebron.