💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › noam-chomsky-scenes-from-the-uprising.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 12:59:11. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: Scenes from the Uprising
Author: Noam Chomsky
Date: July 1988
Language: en
Topics: Israel/Palestine, uprising
Source: Retrieved on 8th June 2021 from https://chomsky.info/198807__/
Notes: From Z Magazine, July, 1988

Noam Chomsky

Scenes from the Uprising

One of the great themes of modern history is the struggle of subjugated

people to gain control over their lives and fate. In April, I visited

Israel and the occupied territories, where one of these struggles has

reached a level of dramatic intensity. A few months earlier, I was in

Nicaragua, a remarkable example of the will and ability of a desperately

impoverished country to survive — though just barely — and to resist the

assault of a terrorist superpower. Somehow, whatever the amount of

reading and intensity of concern, it is just different to see it at

first hand.

The privileged often regard these struggles as an assault on their

rights, violent outbursts instigated by evil forces bent on our

destruction: world Communism, or crazed terrorists and fanatics. The

struggle for freedom seems inexplicable in other terms. After all,

living standards are higher in Soweto than they were in the Stone Age,

or even elsewhere in Black Africa. And the people in the West Bank and

Gaza who survive by doing Israel’s dirty work are improving their lot by

standard economic measures. Slave owners offered similar arguments.

Being so evidently irrational, the revolt of the dispossessed must be

guided by evil intent or primitive nature. Why should one care about

humiliation and degradation if these conditions are accompanied by some

measure of economic growth? Why should people sacrifice material welfare

and rising expectations in a quixotic search for freedom and

self-respect? On the assumption that the basic human emotion and the

driving force of a sane society is the desire for material gain, such

questions have no simple answer, so we seek something more sophisticated

and arcane. Two hundred years ago, Rousseau wrote with withering

contempt about his civilized countrymen who have lost the very concept

of freedom and “do nothing but boast incessantly of the peace and repose

they enjoy in their chains…. But when I see the others sacrifice

pleasures, repose, wealth, power, and life itself for the preservation

of this sole good which is so disdained by those who have lost it; when

I see animals born free and despising captivity break their heads

against the bars of their prison; when I see multitudes of entirely

naked savages scorn European voluptuousness and endure hunger, fire, the

sword, and death to preserve only their independence, I feel that it

does not behoove slaves to reason about freedom.”

These words kept coming to my mind as I was travelling through the West

Bank, as they have before in similar circumstances. It is a rare

privilege to glimpse a moment of a popular struggle for freedom and

justice. Right now the uprising is just that, wherever it may lead under

the conditions imposed by the occupier and the paymaster.

Repression and Resistance

Israel has tried killing, beating, gassing, mass arrests, deportation,

destruction of houses, curfews and other forms of harsh collective

punishment. Nothing has succeeded in enforcing obedience or eliciting a

violent response. The Palestinian uprising is a remarkable feat of

collective self-discipline. It is quite different from the struggle of

the Jews of Palestine for a Jewish state, with the murder of British

officials, the assassination of UN mediator Folke Bernadotte, the

hanging of British hostages, and many atrocities against Arab civilians.

The current Prime Minister of Israel, commander of the group that

assassinated Bernadotte, lauded terror as a moral imperative. “Neither

Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means

of combat,” he wrote. “First and foremost, terrorism is for us a part of

the political battle being conducted under the present circumstances,

and it has a great part to play…in our war against the occupier.”[1]

Some would have us believe that such thoughts, and the practices that

follow from them, were only the province of extremists, and were

abandoned with the establishment of the state that the press describes

as the “symbol of human decency,” “a society in which moral sensitivity

is a principle of political life” (New York Times), which has been

guided by “high moral purpose…through its tumultuous history” (Time).[2]

There is an extensive record to undermine such delusions. Furthermore,

the political leadership was reluctant to condemn terrorist practices.

In laudatory reminiscences, Isaiah Berlin observes that Chaim Weizmann

“did not think it morally decent to denounce either the acts [of Jewish

terror] or their perpetrators in public…he did not propose to speak out

against acts, criminal as he thought them, which sprang from the

tormented minds of men driven to desperation….”; David Ben-Gurion kept

secret the confession of a close friend that he was among the assassins

of Bernadotte.[3] National movements and struggles typically have a

record of violence and terror, not least our own, and Israel is no

exception to the norm.

During its struggle for independence, the Jewish community in Palestine

could assume some degree of restraint on the part of the British forces.

Palestinians know full well that they could expect no such restraint

were they to follow the course of the Zionists. Even nonviolent actions

— political efforts and merchant strikes, for example, even verbal and

symbolic expression — have long been repressed by force, failing for

lack of support from outside, not least among those who laud the virtues

of such means. If the British had treated the Jews of Palestine in the

manner of the Israeli repression over many years, there would have been

an uproar in England and throughout the world. Imagine the reaction if

the Soviet police were to deal with refuseniks in any way comparable to

the Israeli practices that briefly reached the television screens.

Israeli commentators have noted the sharp contrast between the restraint

of British forces and Israeli brutality in response to Palestinian

resistance that has remained remarkably disciplined, something that may

not last forever. As I write, the press reports — in one single day —

violent protests in Taiwan, France, South Korea and Manila with

firebombs and clubbing of police, and hundreds of injuries, very few

among the demonstrators and rioters. These are not states known for

their delicacy; still, the picture is remote from Israeli practices in

less threatening circumstances.[4]

There is a double standard, as commonly alleged by apologists for

Israeli violence; it is just the opposite of what is claimed, and has

been so for many years.

Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit compares the “ethos of restraint”

of the South Korean police to the doctrine applied by Defense Minister

Yitzhak Rabin of the Labor Party: that brutal beatings are “necessary…to

restore the soldier’s honor in the face of the challenge from

Palestinians.”[5] The difference, he argues, lies in cultural

differences with regard to the concept of honor. Perhaps so, but the

factor of racism should not be overlooked. As the uprising gathered

force, Orthodox Jews protesting movies on Sabbath pelted cars and police

with stones and metal frames hurled from houses; no killings or sadistic

beatings were reported then, nor six months later, when hundreds of

Jewish workers broke into the Finance Ministry, smashing windows and

injuring police and officials in a labor protest.[6]

Margalit comments that “the announced wish of the Israeli government…to

restore ‘law and order’…has been accurately translated: ‘to erase the

smile from the face of Palestinian youth’.” The phrase is apt. Soldiers

beating Arabs on a main street in West Jerusalem shout that “they dare

to raise their heads.” The lesson taught to the Arabs is “that you

should not raise your head,” Israeli author Shulamith Hareven reports

from Gaza, where the hallmark of the occupation for 20 years has been

“degradation” and “constant harassment…for its own sake, evil for its

own sake.” “A man walks in the street and [soldiers and settlers] call

him: ‘come here, donkey’.” A Hebrew phrase that Arabs quickly learn is

“you are all thieves and bastards.” A woman returning from study in the

United States is insulted and mocked by soldiers at the border, who

laugh at the “fine clothes this one has” as they display them to one

another during baggage inspection; another is called out at midnight by

a kick at her door and ordered by soldiers to read graffiti on a wall.

Visiting Gaza shortly before the uprising, Prime Minister Shamir called

city officials and notables to meet him, left them waiting outdoors

before a locked door, and when they were finally allowed their say,

abruptly informed them that Israel would never leave Gaza and departed;

“humiliation from this source has a definite political significance,”

Hareven adds, and did not pass unnoticed among people who have learned

that “the Jews understand nothing but force.”[7] These are the

conditions of everyday life, more telling than the corpses and broken

bones. The similarity to the deep South in its worst days is plain

enough.

In the May issue of Z, I cited examples of the racism of the Zionist

movement from its origins, including the most admired liberal elements.

The phenomenon is typical of European colonialism, for example, George

Washington, who referred to the “merciless Indian savages” of the

Declaration of Independence as “beasts of prey, tho’ they differ in

shape,” who must be treated accordingly.[8] Today, extraordinary

comments pass virtually unnoticed. I will mention only one example,

because of its relevance to the elite media here as well.

While I was in Israel, Times correspondent Thomas Friedman had lengthy

interviews in the Hebrew press in connection with his Pulitzer Prize

award for “balanced and informed coverage,” including gross

falsification in the service of Israeli rejectionism, a few examples of

which I cited in the May issue.[9] He repeated some of the fabrications

he has helped establish, for example, that the Palestinians “refuse to

come to terms with the existence of Israel, and prefer to offer

themselves as sacrifices.” He went on to laud his brilliance for having

“foreseen completely the uprising in the territories” — a surprise to

his regular readers, perhaps — while writing “stories that no one else

had ever sent” with unique “precision” and perception; prior to his

insights, he explained, Israel was “the most fully reported country in

the world, but the least understood in the media.” Friedman also offered

his solution to the problem of the territories. The model should be

South Lebanon, controlled by a terrorist mercenary army backed by

Israeli might. The basic principle must be “security, not peace.”

Nevertheless, the Palestinians should not be denied everything: “Only if

you give the Palestinians something to lose is there a hope that they

will agree to moderate their demands” — that is, beyond the “demand” for

mutual recognition in a two-state settlement, the long-standing position

that Friedman refuses to report, and consistently denies. He continues:

“I believe that as soon as Ahmed has a seat in the bus, he will limit

his demands.”

One can imagine a similar comment by a southern sheriff in Mississippi

30 years ago (“give Sambo a seat in the bus, and he may quiet down”).

This passed with no notable reaction.

It comes as little surprise that after the prize was announced on April

1, Friedman found it a much happier occasion than when he received the

same prize for his reporting from Lebanon at “a moment very much

bittersweet” because of the bombing of the American Embassy in Beirut

shortly before. This time, however, the award was “unalloyed, untinged

by any tragedy,” he said, nothing unpleasant having happened on his beat

during the preceding months.[10]

Current Israeli tactics break no new ground; it is only the scale of

violence that has extended, as the resistance has swept over virtually

the whole of Palestinian society. Years ago, “opening fire in response

to throwing stones” had become “a casual matter” (Davar, Nov. 21, 1980).

Systematic torture has been documented since the earliest days of the

occupation, a fact now conceded by the official Landau Commission,

headed by a respected former Supreme Justice, which recommends “moderate

physical pressure” — “a euphemistic expression meaning that torture is

allowed for a serious purpose, as distinct from torture for pleasure,”

Margalit comments.

Take the West Bank town of Halhul. In 1979, according to Mayor Muhammad

Milhem (later expelled without credible charge with a typical parody of

judicial process), the town was placed under a two-week curfew after two

young Palestinians were killed by Israeli settlers in response to stones

thrown at a bus. In further punishment, the authorities banned a

wholesale vegetable and fruit project that was to be the key to the

town’s development. Several months later, after settlers claimed that

stones had been thrown, the inhabitants of the town, including women and

children, were held outdoors through a cold rainy night for

“interrogation.”[11]

In 1982, a delegation of Labor Alignment leaders, including noted hawks,

presented to Prime Minister Menahem Begin detailed accounts of terrorist

acts against Arabs, including the collective punishment in Halhul: “The

men were taken from their houses beginning at midnight, in pajamas, in

the cold. The notables and other men were concentrated in the square of

the mosque and held there until morning. Meanwhile men of the Border

Guards broke into houses, beating people with shouts and curses. During

the many hours that hundreds of people were kept in the mosque square,

they were ordered to urinate and excrete on one another and also to sing

Hatikva [the Israeli national anthem] and to call out ‘Long Live the

State of Israel.’ Several times people were beaten and ordered to crawl

on the ground. Some were even ordered to lick the earth. At the same

time four trucks were commandeered and at daybreak, the inhabitants were

loaded on the trucks, about 100 in each truck, and taken like sheep to

the Administration headquarters in Hebron. On Holocaust Day, …the people

who were arrested were ordered to write numbers on their hands with

their own hands, in memory of the Jews in the extermination camps.”

The report describes torture and humiliation of prisoners by soldiers

and settlers allowed into the jails to participate in beatings, brutal

treatment of Arabs by settlers, even murder with impunity. There was no

reaction, because, as Yoram Peri wrote bitterly, the victims are just

“Araboushim” (a term of abuse, comparable to “nigger” or “kike”).[12]

The Hebrew press provides an elaborate record of similar practices over

many years.

Within Israel, workers from the territories can expect similar

treatment. Under the heading “Uncle Ahmed’s Cabin,” Yigal Sarna, a few

months before the uprising, tells the “story of slavery” of the tens of

thousands of unorganized workers who come to Israel each day. “They are

slaves, sub-citizens suspected of everything, who dwell under the floor

tiles of Tel Aviv, locked up overnight in a hut in the citrus grove of a

farm, near sewage dumps, in shelters that…serve rats only” or in

underground parking stations or grocery stands in the market, illegally,

since they are not permitted to spend the night in Israel, including

“slaving children” and others hired at “the slave markets of Ashkelon,

Jerusalem, Ramat Gan and other places.” A few days later Knesset member

Ran Cohen reported the treatment of Arab workers by Border Guards in a

Tel Aviv Hotel: “The Arab workers were cruelly beaten up, and were

compelled to masturbate before the Border Guards, to lick the floor of

their flat and to eat coffee mixed with sugar and tooth paste, and their

money was stolen.” They brought complaints to the authorities, but after

more than two months, there had been no investigation.[13]

The key feature of the occupation has always been humiliation: they must

not be allowed to raise their heads. The basic principle, often openly

expressed, is that the Araboushim must understand who rules this land

and who walks in it with head lowered and eyes averted. If shopkeepers

try to open their stores in the afternoon as a gesture of independence,

the army compels them to close in the afternoon and open in the morning.

If a remote village declares itself “liberated,” meaning that it will

run its own internal affairs, the army attacks, and if stones are thrown

as villagers try to keep the soldiers out, the result will be killings,

beatings, destruction of property, mass arrests, torture.

Israeli Arabs too must be constantly wary. An Arab friend drove me one

evening from Ramallah to Jerusalem, but asked me to take a taxi to my

hotel from his home in East Jerusalem (annexed by Israel in defiance of

the UN, while more than doubling the city’s area[14]) because he might

be stopped at a roadblock on returning home, with consequences that

might be severe. On a walk in the old city with an Arab friend, he

reached up and touched a black flag — many were hung in mourning after

the assassination of PLO leader Khalil Al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) in Tunis by

Israeli commandoes. A Border Guard standing nearby whipped out a camera

and photographed him, following him with the camera trained on him as we

walked on, adding a menacing comment. This man does not frighten easily;

he spent years in an Israeli prison, and after his release has been

outspoken in advocacy of Palestinian rights. But he requested that we go

at once to the nearby Border Guard headquarters to explain what had

occurred to an officer he knew; otherwise, he feared, he might be picked

up by the police, charged with responsibility for hanging the flags,

taken for “interrogation,” and dispatched into oblivion. An Israeli

friend and I went to the headquarters, where the words “Bruchim Haba’im”

(“blessed are those who enter”) appear over the doorway; in the light of

the (well-deserved) reputation of the Border Guards, one can only

imagine the fate of Arabs so blessed. The officer we sought could not be

reached at once (he was engaged in wiretapping, we were casually

informed), but when he arrived, we explained what had happened and he

called the patrol and ordered them to drop the matter. Luckily, there

was “protection” in this case.

The pattern is common. Israeli journalist Tom Segev reports what

happened when an Arab lawyer told him that a random walk through

Jerusalem would yield ample evidence of intimidation and humiliation of

Arabs. Skeptical, Segev walked with him through Jerusalem, where he was

stopped repeatedly by Border Guards to check his identification papers.

One ordered him: “Come here, jump.” Laughing, he dropped the papers on

the road and ordered the lawyer to pick them up. “These people will do

whatever you tell them to do,” the Border Guards explained to Segev: “If

I tell him to jump, he will jump. Run, he will run. Take your clothes

off, he will take them off. If I tell him to kiss the wall he will kiss

it. If I tell him to crawl on the road, won’t he crawl? … Everything.

Tell him to curse his mother and he will curse her too.” They are “not

human beings.” The Guards then searched the lawyer, slapped him, and

ordered him to remove his shoes, warning that they could order him to

remove his clothes as well. “My Arab,” Segev continues, “kept silent and

sat down on the ground” as the Border Guards laughed, saying again

“Really, not humans,” then walked away. “People were passing by and

didn’t look at the Arab, as if he were transparent. ‘Here you have your

story’, said my Arab.” Others are not so fortunate, and may be beaten

and taken away for “interrogation” and detention without charge.

Complaints to the police evoke still further brutality, as amply

documented.[15]

These are the conditions of daily life for Ahmed, and the background for

the uprising.

Avishai Margalit writes that “within the politics of honor and

humiliation it is difficult even to talk of a political settlement.”

That may be true of Israeli society; it is easy to talk of a political

settlement among the Palestinians, and its general form is clear enough

and widely accepted. There is little point continuing to evade these

central facts, as is commonly done, even by the most critical

commentators in the United States, for example, Anthony Lewis, who

condemns Israel for attempting to deport a Palestinian advocate of

nonviolence on grounds that he wants “Israel to end its occupation —

which is the goal long sought by the United States and virtually every

other government on earth.”[16] In fact, this is the goal long blocked

by the United States and its Israeli Labor Party allies, a goal that has

yet to be expressed clearly even by Peace Now after many years of

advocacy of a political settlement by the PLO and widely under the

occupation.[17] As long as such illusions persist, nothing will change.

Some Personal Observations

I visited in April at the time of the assassination of Abu Jihad, an act

generally applauded in Israel, and widely condoned here, on the grounds

that he had been involved in planning terrorist acts; on the same

grounds, there could be no objection to the assassination of the Israeli

and American political leadership. The Gaza strip was entirely sealed

off because of protests that led to large-scale killings by the army,

and was impossible to enter. But with very helpful Arab contacts, I was

able to visit Arab areas of the West Bank. Even before the

assassination, the region was coming to resemble a concentration camp.

The response is determination and quiet defiance, an impressive level of

popular organization, the firm intent to develop a self-sustaining

subsistence economy at a mere survival level if necessary, and

astonishingly high morale. From leading Palestinian activists, to

organizers of popular committees, to people in villages under military

control, to victims of army and settler terror, the answers are the

same: we will endure, we will suffer, and we will win our independence

by making it impossible for the Israelis to maintain their rule.

In the Ramallah hospital, there were many severely injured patients but

no doctors to be seen, and few nurses, when I visited. A confrontation

with soldiers had taken place a few hours earlier outside the hospital,

and the medical staff risk detention if they attempt to assist the

wounded. Patients and families were at first reluctant to speak to us,

wary that we might be Israeli agents masquerading as journalists. After

our guide had established his credentials, they were willing to do so,

describing the circumstances in which they were beaten and shot. One

man, paralyzed from the waist down, with tubes coming out of his body

and five bullet wounds, told us softly as we left his bedside that “If

you have need of a homeland, you must sacrifice.” A 13-year-old boy, hit

by a “rubber bullet” (a rubber-encased steel bullet), told us that he

had been shot while returning home from a mosque and trying to leave the

scene of a demonstration nearby. Asked how he felt, he replied that his

mood was “higher than the wind.” The sentiments are common, expressed

without rhetoric or anger; people lacking means of self-defense, having

endured much suffering and facing more, have stars in their eyes, and a

sense of inevitable victory. In contrast, in Israel, at least among

those segments of the population that are aware of what is happening,

there is a sense of foreboding. One very close friend of forty years

asked me, after I had given a talk at Tel Aviv University on the current

situation, whether I thought Israeli Jews would still be there in twenty

years. The mood in the territories, and the sense that they can survive

the mounting repression until the occupation ends and independence is

achieved, may or may not be realistic, but it was readily apparent.

On Friday morning, with businesses closed, the city of Nablus was quiet,

though Israeli troops were patrolling, in preparation for an expected

demonstration after prayers at the mosque. At the outskirts of the city,

a group of men and boys were clearing a field by hand for subsistence

crops. The United National Leadership had designated this day for

preparing a self-sustaining economy, not reliant on Israel, which has

converted the territories into a market for Israeli products and a

source of cheap labor. No serious effort has been made to organize mass

refusals to work in Israel, because the dependence of the terrorities on

this work for survival has not yet been overcome. One of the organizers,

a municipal clerk, guided us to an apartment in the old city of Nablus,

where we were joined by another local activist, a taxi driver. With its

maze of narrow winding paths, the old city cannot be patrolled by the

army, which has erected heavy steel doors at the gates so that the

population can be locked in if need be. The two men described the

network of popular committees, organized by neighborhood and function

(health, production, municipal services, women’s groups, etc.), that run

the affairs of the city and social life, receiving regular directives

from the United Leadership on general policy matters, with specific days

designated for particular kinds of activities, to be carried out as the

local communities determine.

Such popular organizations have been developing for years through the

initiative of the (illegal) Communist Party, which has long emphasized

popular organization rather than “armed struggle” and may have gained

considerable credibility by the now-evident success of this strategy,

and the various factions of the PLO, particularly its dominant element

Fatah. Their emergence and development in the past few months is the

most striking feature of the popular uprising, with long-term

significance. Shulamith Hareven observes that the uprising is “not

merely a protest against Israeli power, though this is the basic and

most obvious component.” It is “a revolt of women and youth against

traditional patriarchal authority,” against “women’s work” and the

“prosperous elders, with their connections to Israel and foreign

countries,” in “a society where something very important is proceeding

and changing before our eyes, and even if the current disturbances will

be quelled, the process will continue.” Reporting from West Bank

villages, Zvi Gilat describes their “socialist autonomy,” with mutual

aid, provisions distributed to those in need and popular organization

despite Israeli terror, always at hand, as in Ya’bed, where villagers

listen all night to “the prisoners crying out and asking for food” from

the local school, converted (as many schools have been) to a “prison

camp.”[18] One sees the signs everywhere.

Though Arab police have resigned under orders of the United Leadership,

there is, local inhabitants say, virtually no crime or disorder, apart

from confrontations with the occupying forces. In Nablus, plans are

underway to raise chickens and rabbits, and to farm on the outskirts.

The party structure emerges at the level of the United Leadership

(Fatah, the Popular Front, the Democratic Front, the Communist Party,

and in Gaza, the Islamic Jihad). It appears to be less significant,

though it doubtless functions, at the local level.

The primary emphasis and concern is organization of community life, with

a view towards creating the basis for full independence. The political

goal is to end the occupation. When questions turn to the means for

achieving this end, the answer is always the same: these matters are to

be negotiated with the PLO. There was informed criticism of the PLO for

incompetence, corruption, and worse, and thinly-veiled contempt for

several of the figures in Israel regarded by the media as leaders and

official spokesmen, though not all; Faisal Husseini, director of the

Arab Studies Society in East Jerusalem, now again under administrative

detention, was mentioned with particular respect.[19] But the

Palestinian issue is understood as a national problem, and the PLO is

the national leadership, whatever its faults. It is a fair guess that if

independence is achieved, conflicts submerged in the unity of resistance

will surface, particularly now that local organization has achieved

substantial scale and success.

The activities outlined by local organizers corresponded closely to a

thoughtful analysis by Bashir Barghouti, an influential West Bank

intellectual. His vision, presented with detail and a long-term

perspective, is that an independent life will be established, whatever

measures Israel takes to prevent it, with eventual political

independence after the occupation becomes too costly for Israel to

maintain. The network of popular organizations, and their activities to

establish self-sufficiency and self-government, will provide the basis

for the social and political structure of a West Bank-Gaza state,

established alongside of Israel. Whether the plans are realistic and the

prospects realizable, I do not know, but the similarity of perception

and intent over a wide range is as noteworthy as the spirit of

dedication and the ongoing efforts — and the resemblance to earlier

Zionist history.

One of the first villages to declare itself liberated was Salfit, which

resisted army conquest until three days before my visit. The local

committees “had organized municipal services, including sanitation, as

an alternative to those provided by the Civil Administration” and had

“posted guards and patrols to warn of the arrival of settlers and the

army,” the Jerusalem Post reported in its brief notice of the army

assault.[20] The story of Salfit was recounted to us in the home of

Rajeh al-Salfiti, a well-known nationalist figure and folk singer, who

had been arrested by the British during the Palestine revolt of 1936–9,

by the Jordanians when they ruled the West Bank, and by the Israelis

after their conquest. According to his account, related in vivid detail

and amplified by several visitors, he was one of 80 people arrested when

Israel occupied the town with some 1500 troops in a pre-dawn attack,

then released with two others (one seriously ill, one disabled). The

town has a dominant Communist party presence, and was well-organized.

Earlier army attempts to break in had been beaten back by rock-throwing

demonstrators; quite commonly, the confrontations that are reported, and

those that are not, develop in this manner. At first, the army assumed

that the attempt at self-rule could be overcome by sporadic terror. One

man described how two Israeli sharpshooters in civilian clothes climbed

to the roof of a building at the outskirts of the town and shot a person

in the streets chosen at random, after which the killer called to his

partner that they could now leave. Neither this nor subsequent efforts

succeeded. The village remained united in resistance, running its own

affairs.

On one occasion, in late March, the army did break into the town on the

pretext of rescuing a tourist bus that had been hijacked, killing a

14-year-old boy and “rescuing” the bus and its occupants. But this tale

was quickly exposed as a fabrication. The travellers were a group of

American academics attending a conference organized by Bir Zeit

university (closed by the army, as was the entire school and university

system). They were visiting the town, where they were welcomed by the

local inhabitants. One of those “rescued” (well after the bus had left

the town) was Harvard professor Zachary Lockman, who reported that a

helicopter had been observing the village during the visit and that he

had overheard an army officer tell his commander by radio that the group

“had not been under any threat whatsoever.”[21]

When the town was finally occupied by the army assault, we were told,

soldiers entered the mosque and desecrated it and one climbed the

minaret where he called out in Arabic “Your God is gone, we are in

charge here,” a further exercise of humiliation. The same has been

reported elsewhere, for example, in Beit Ummar, where more than 100

windows of the mosque were broken, holy books and other property

destroyed, and tape recordings of Koran readings stolen during a

five-hour army rampage with bulldozers that severely damaged virtually

every building along the main street, destroyed cars and tractors,

uprooted trees and caused general havoc.[22] In Salfit, union offices

were destroyed and other buildings damaged. The army entered houses

identified by number to seek people designated for arrest; it was

speculated that helicopter flights in the preceding days may have been

aimed at providing detailed maps. In prison, those arrested were

subjected to beatings in the normal fashion. As we were about to leave

the village, we heard boys shouting outside that the soldiers were

coming. People were streaming from the houses, including women and

children, to confront the soldiers once again. Morale evidently remained

unshaken, three days after the army assault. My Arab guides did not want

to be apprehended in the town, so we left in another direction. No

attack was reported in the press, and what happened, I do not know.

I joined several lawyers from the Ramallah human rights group Al-Haq

(Law in the Service of Man) on a visit to the village of Beita, closed

under military blockade that bars all contact with the outside world;

gas, water and electricity were cut off, and there were shortages of

milk, flour and vegetables.[23] We reached Beita over a back road and

hills, guided by a man from a neighboring village, and stayed until just

before 7PM, when the military closure is extended to curfew, meaning

house arrest. As we left, the back road over the hills had been blocked

with boulders to protect the village from possible settler or army

attack.

Beita achieved notoriety when a Jewish teenager, Tirza Porat, was killed

on April 6 by an Israeli settler, Romam Aldubi, after a confrontation

that took place when 20 hikers from the religious-nationalist settlement

of Elon Moreh entered the lands of Beita — “to show who are the

masters,” as one hiker later told a TV interviewer. Two villagers, Mousa

Saleh Bani Shamseh and Hatem Fayez Ahmad al-Jaber (there are conflicting

versions of their names), were also killed and several were severely

wounded by Aldubi, one of two armed guards accompanying the hikers.

Aldubi is a well-known extremist barred from entering Nablus, the only

Jew ever subjected to an army exclusion order; the second guard and

organizer of the hike, Menahem Ilan, also had a criminal past. A

16-year-old boy, Issam Abdul Halim Mohammad Said, was killed by soldiers

the following day.

The hikers claimed that Tirza Porat had been killed by Arab villagers,

setting off virtual hysteria in Israel, including a call by two cabinet

ministers to destroy the town and deport its population. Within a day,

the army had determined that she was killed by Aldubi, then proceeding

to blow up 14 houses while Chief of Staff Dan Shomron reported that “the

Arab residents had intended no harm to the Elon Moreh hikers” and had

indeed protected them. Many people were arrested (60 remained in prison

when we visited), and six were later deported. General Shomron declared

that “action had to be immediate. A failure to act could well have led

to other action in the area,” that is, more settler violence. The

collective punishment and expulsions are “the expected tribute” paid to

control the settlers, Nahum Barnea observes, punishment for their

violence being out of the question, because they are Jews.[24]

Beita is — or was — a lovely, quiet village, tucked away in the hills

not far from Ramallah. A traditional and conservative village, Beita had

declared itself liberated shortly after the uprising began and was

attacked several times by the army, leading to stone-throwing

confrontations on the road to the village, which the army blockaded.

During one army raid on February 14, property was destroyed and three

villagers had to be hospitalized with broken limbs: two teenagers, and

an 80-year-old man with an arm, two fingers and two ribs broken.[25] All

this being normal, the town remained enveloped in obscurity.

What took place on April 6 is contested. According to villagers, the

lands of Beita were under military closure at the time. They were

concerned when they saw settlers entering these lands and approaching a

well, which they feared the settlers might be planning to poison or

destroy; that has happened elsewhere according to local inhabitants,

including Ya’bed, where the well was blown up by Jewish settlers.[26]

When Mousa Saleh was murdered by Aldubi in the fields, villagers brought

the hikers to the village to determine what should be done. Aldubi

killed his second victim when he approached with hands raised to ask

Aldubi to hand over his weapon and take the hikers on their way. Aldubi

killed Tirza Porat after he was hit by stones thrown by Mousa Saleh’s

mother and sister. His rifle was then taken from him and destroyed.

Settler tales about shooting by Arabs are denied by the army, which

issued an official report of dubious accuracy. Israeli friends in

Jerusalem told me that they had no doubt, from the first television

interviews, that the hikers were lying. Though the hikers were under the

control of the inhabitants for several hours after the killings, none

were injured, and they were cared for by villagers, as the army

emphasized in an effort to calm the hysteria that followed these events.

The official claim was that the villagers were given ample warning of

the house demolitions so that they could remove their possessions. That

is plainly false. 10 days later, villagers were still rummaging through

the ruins, searching for pieces of broken furniture, clothes, and stored

food that had been buried in the explosions. According to several

independent accounts, the villagers had been gathered in the mosque and

given 15 minutes notice of the demolitions. We were told that one man

was indeed given time to move his possessions to his father’s home,

after which both houses were demolished. These are substantial stone

houses; one of those partially destroyed was a two-story building which,

we were told, was more than 100 years old. Apart from the 14 houses

officially destroyed, 16 others were damaged, many unlivable. I noticed

one house with a wall caved in by a concrete block about ten feet long

that had sailed some fifteen feet from the nearest demolished structure.

The International Commission of Jurists in Geneva denounced the

collective punishments, including the demolitions and expulsions, as yet

another violation of the 1949 Geneva conventions. Polls indicate that

21% of Israeli Jews opposed demolition of the houses and 13% called for

the entire village to be “erased.”[27] Some commentary condemned the

demolition of the house of a man who had aided the hikers, but I saw no

general condemnation in the mainstream press, and no call for collective

punishment against Elon Moreh after settler provocation led to Aldubi’s

killings.

As elsewhere, the villagers described what had happened, and their

current plight, with calm and simplicity. They are prepared to endure.

Their responses were considered and thoughtful. Asked how they would

react if Israelis were to offer to rebuild the houses that had been

destroyed (16 of which were damaged or destroyed “illegally” even by the

standards of what passes for law in the territories), they responded,

after consultation, that it would have to be a political decision: if

Jews would come to rebuild in a spirit of friendship and solidarity,

they would be welcome; if they intended only to salve their consciences

or improve the image of “the beautiful Israel,” the villagers would have

none of it. I raised the question of rebuilding the houses “illegally”

destroyed with several Peace Now intellectuals in Jerusalem and was told

that the matter was under consideration, but I know of no outcome.

It was raining steadily when we visited Beita. Women were trying to cook

outdoors in the rain, others in semi-demolished houses. A house may have

a dozen or more inhabitants. The number of people left homeless is

considerable, apart from the many arrested and deported. Mousa Saleh’s

mother and sister, three months pregnant, are in prison, their homes

destroyed. The sister has been charged with assault, and according to

Israeli reports, may be charged with complicity in the murder of Tirza

Porat.[28] As for Aldubi, he is not to be charged, because, as the army

spokesman said, “I believe the tragic incident and its result are

already a penalty” — for the murderer, that is, not the Araboushim who

raise their heads.[29]

Of the victims of the events in Beita, only the name of Tirza Porat is

known, and only the circumstances of her killing merit inquiry and

comment. This is only to be expected in the reigning climate both here

and in Israel. Who would have heard the name of Intissar al-Atar, a

17-year-old Palestinian girl shot and killed in a schoolyard in Gaza

last November 10, or of her killer, Shimon Yifrah of the Jewish

settlement of Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip, arrested a month later and

released on bail because, the Supreme Court determined, “the offense is

not severe enough to order the arrest of the accused, and in this case

there is no fear that Yifrah will repeat the offense or escape from his

punishment”? Or of Jude Abdallah Awad, a shepherd murdered, his

companion severely wounded, when a Jewish settler tried to drive them

from a field on May 5, an incident meriting 80 words in the New York

Times (and none when the settler was released on bail, charged with

manslaughter)? Or Iyad Mohammed Aqel, a 15-year-old boy murdered by

Israeli soldiers, his head “beaten to a pulp” according to a witness,

after he was dragged from his home in a Gaza refugee camp?[30]

The reaction here and in Israel to the grossly discriminatory treatment

of Arabs and Jews by the courts stands alongside the prevailing double

standard on terror and rights. Palestinian artist Fathi Ghaban receives

a six-month prison sentence for using the colors of the Palestinian flag

in a painting. An Arab worker caught sleeping illegally in Tel Aviv

receives the same sentence, with two-months additional imprisonment if

he does not pay a heavy fine. Four young Arabs are sentenced to fines

and three months at hard labor for having waved a Palestinian flag in a

protest demonstration after the Sabra-Shatila massacres. In contrast, a

sergeant who ordered two soldiers to bury four Palestinians alive with a

bulldozer receives four months, and two soldiers, whose prolonged

beating of captured Palestinians horrified Europe after a CBS filming,

received three months probation. Another soldier received a month’s

suspended sentence for killing an Arab by firing into a village. A

settler found guilty of shooting directly into a crowd of demonstrators

was sentenced to a rebuke; another received six months of “public

service” outside prison for killing a 13-year-old boy after an incident

on a road in which he was under no danger according to testimony of army

observers. President Herzog reduced the sentences of Jewish terrorists

who murdered 3 Palestinians and wounded 33 in a gun and grenade attack

at Hebron Islamic College from life in prison to 15 years; further

reductions are doubtless to come. Three other members of the terrorist

underground were released after 2 years in prison for the attempted

murder of two West Bank mayors, one of whom had his legs blown off,

while a military court sentenced two Arabs from Kafr Kassem, the scene

of one of Israel’s worst massacres in 1956, to 21 years imprisonment for

allegedly planting two bombs that exploded with no injuries. The

ideologist and second highest leader of the Jewish terrorist

underground, Yehuda Etzion, convicted of planning the bombing of the

Dome of the Rock, organizing the attack on the mayors and other

atrocities, and stealing 600kg of explosives from a military base, was

released to a religious school in Afula after serving half of a ten year

sentence, and a presidential pardon is under consideration. Palestinian

storekeepers are threatened with the same sentence — five years in

prison — “if they failed to wash anti-Israeli graffiti off their

buildings and remove Palestinian flags,” wire services report.[31]

Such practices have been an unrecognized scandal since the founding of

the state. One revealing example is the case of Shmuel Lahis, who

murdered several dozen Arab civilians he was guarding in a mosque in the

undefended Lebanese village of Hula in 1948. He was sentenced to seven

years in prison, immediately amnestied, and granted a lawyer’s licence

on the grounds that the act carried “no stigma.” Later he was appointed

Secretary-General of the Jewish Agency, the highest executive position

in the World Zionist Organization, with no qualms, since his amnesty

“denies the punishment and the charge as well.” The record was exposed

when Lahis was appointed Secretary-General, eliciting little interest in

Israel, and none here.[32]

After the assassination of Abu Jihad, curfews were extended to new areas

of the West Bank, among them, the Kalandia refugee camp near Jerusalem.

We were able to enter through a back road, not yet barricaded, and to

spend about half an hour there before being apprehended by Israeli

troops. The town was silent, with no one in the streets apart from a

funeral procession permitted by the army and a few young children who

approached us, surely assuming we were Israelis, chanting the common

slogan “PLO, Israel No.” In the streets we found signs of recent

demonstrations: metal remnants of the firing of “rubber bullets,” a tear

gas canister made by Federal Laboratories in Saltsburg Pennsylvania,

with the warning, still legible, that it is for use only by “trained

personnel” and that fire, death or injury may result from improper use,

a common occurrence. While we were being interrogated, a man who looked

perhaps 90 years old hobbled out of a doorway with his hands

outstretched, pleading that he was hungry. He was unceremoniously

ordered back indoors. No one else was to be seen. The soldiers were

primarily concerned that we might be journalists, and expelled us from

the camp without incident.

Most of the participants in an international academic conference I was

attending in Israel joined a demonstration at the Dahariya prison near

Hebron, organized by several of the peace groups, mostly new, that have

sprung up in the past several months. These represent the most hopeful

development within Israel, and American support for them could make a

real difference.[33] Unlike Peace Now, which remains unwilling to

separate itself clearly from Labor Party rejectionism, they are

forthright in calling for an end to the occupation, and committed to

find ways to protest it. Approach to the prison and the nearby village

was blocked by troops, but women and children, later men as well,

gathered on hills several hundred yards away and began to call back and

forth with the demonstrators. A few children drifted towards us,

followed by many others and finally adults as well. At the end, a man

from the village took the microphone and thanked us for having come. A

young man wanted to speak as well, but was persuaded not to. A few days

before, he had carried away the body of his brother, killed by soldiers,

and he showed us scars from beatings he had received the preceding day.

There was concern over the consequences for him after we left, a problem

elsewhere as well. While foreigners were present, soldiers were

well-behaved, but there was a good deal of concern, on all sides, about

what would happen later to Arabs they found us visiting or speaking to.

As we left Dahariya, children were carrying our signs, waving and

shouting. What happened afterwards, I do not know.

Four days later, according to the signed affidavit of an army reservist,

young Palestinians were kicked and beaten with plastic pipes and

handcuffs while their commander looked on as they were brought, bound

and blindfolded, to Dahariya prison. One boy 12 to 15 years old who had

been crying was raked along barbed wire, thrown against a wall, kicked

and beaten with a club by a soldier and jailer while he screamed with

pain — facts too insignificant for report or comment in the Newspaper of

Record.[34]

The Dahariya prison, known as “the slaughterhouse” among prisoners, is a

way station to the new prison camp Ansar III in the Negev desert close

to the Egyptian border. Ansar I was a hideous torture chamber

established by Israel during the Lebanon war for Lebanese and

Palestinians taken hostage. Ansar II is a prison camp established in

Gaza, with a similar reputation.[35] Ansar III follows suit. Prisoners

include “a significant segment of the Palestinian elite,” the Washington

Post reports: doctors, lawyers, trade union officials, students, and

university officials, at least 20 journalists, and others. They are

denied water, edible food, medical attention, even an opportunity to

wash for many weeks. They are subjected to such collective punishments

as lying with hands bound behind the back for long periods in the

scorching desert sun, forced to walk in single file with heads lowered,

denied newspapers, books, mail or stationary, or the opportunity to walk

about freely or change clothes, sometimes for over a month. They have no

names, only numbers, part of an effort to create a “sense of isolation”

according to prisoners, no doubt on the advice of psychologists. There

are no charges or judicial review. Families are not informed of where

they are, why they were imprisoned or for how long. Journalists, even

lawyers, have been denied entry.[36] All of this again falls under the

category of humiliation, a pedagogic device to ensure that they do not

raise their heads.

According to Knesset Member Dedi Zucker of the Citizen’s Rights Party,

confidential government documents report that there are 10,000 Arabs in

jail, half arrested during the uprising; close to 2000 are under

six-month (renewable) preventive detention.[37] Moderates are

particularly vulnerable. They are always the most dangerous, because

they raise the threat of political settlement. At Dahariya, each

demonstrator asked to see a particular prisoner. In my case, the

prisoner was Gaza Attorney Muhammed Abu-Sha’ban, placed under

administrative detention for 6 months immediately after he spoke at Tel

Aviv University where he called for dialogue and political settlement.

There are many similar cases. Five Jewish editors of the Israeli journal

Derech Hanitzotz were arrested and the journal banned, the first time

that Israel’s draconian censorship laws have been applied to ban a

Hebrew Israeli journal; they were denied access to lawyers, police

raided the office of one attorney to confiscate files, and two face

charges of association with hostile elements that carry up to 40 years

in prison.[38] The sister journal in Arabic was also banned. In an

affidavit circulated by Amnesty International, its editor, Ribhi

al-Aruri, reports that he was taken to the interrogation center in

Jerusalem, beaten and kicked for an hour, handcuffed with a sack over

his head, interrogated for days while deprived of sleep and food, placed

finally in a “cupboard” that permits only standing and kept there for an

entire day, then again for two full days without food. He was allowed to

see a lawyer only ten days after his arrest, then placed under six-month

detention without trial. This case, far from the worst, is known only

because he was adopted as an AI Prisoner of Conscience on grounds that

his detention appears to be “on account of the non-violent exercise of

his right to freedom of expression and association.”[39] If the editor

of the pro-contra journal La Prensa had been subjected to a fraction of

the same treatment in a country under attack by the superpower that

funds the journal, the story might have made the press.

Elsewhere under Occupation

Other areas under curfew were only visible from the road, over barriers

erected by the army. When I visited, the refugee camp of Jalazoun had

been under 24-hour curfew for over a month. Jalazoun was a ghost town.

No men were to be seen. A few older women, presumably less vulnerable,

were working in gardens near the houses and there were several children

out of doors. Otherwise, silence. All entrances were barricaded and

under military guard. The inhabitants were not permitted to leave their

houses except for a brief period every few days to purchase food with

what meager resources they still have. There was reported to be very

little medical care and a shortage of medicines. The UN relief official

in charge of the camp, Mogens Fokdal, reports that “people have gone

without electricity for a month. They have no oil or fuel to cook. They

are starting to burn old shoes and furniture to make fires. The

situation is deteriorating every day.” UN garbage trucks had been barred

by the army from entering the camp since the curfew was declared on

March 16. UN officials had urged the people in the camp to burn garbage

to prevent disease, “but they fear the soldiers will see the fires as a

demonstration,” Fokdal explained, a risk they cannot take. Inhabitants

said they had no food except bread and what is left from supplies stored

before the curfew. On April 17, Israeli soldiers turned back a UN convoy

carrying food and other supplies to the camp. Soldiers at the camp

entrance deny that there are shortages.[40]

According to Attorney Raja Shehadeh of Al-Haq, the curfew was imposed

after an alleged threat to an Israeli collaborator. Israel takes such

threats very seriously. Typically, the “threat” consists of calls on the

collaborators, who are well-known because of their flaunting of

privileges afforded for their services, to come to the mosque, repent,

and promise to refrain from serving as Shin Beit informers. One result

of the uprising is that Israel appears to have lost its network of

collaborators and informers.

The village of Biddu was placed under curfew on March 7 after a

collaborator was approached to ask him to repent. In retaliation, the

army cut off water and electricity for 2 weeks in this town of 15,000

people and demolished four houses.[41]

On April 24 and May 14, the New York Times mentioned the killing by

soldiers of two more nameless victims in Qabatiya, without, however,

recalling the recent history of this village. Qabatiya was under

military control, with all entry and exit blocked, from February 24 to

April 1. Water, electricity, food supplies and medicines were cut off in

this village of about 15,000 people. There was still no electricity when

the village was visited by a North American delegation on April 25. On

February 24, villagers had marched to the house of a collaborator,

Mohammad Al-Ayed, to call upon him to repent. Al-Ayed, who like other

Israeli collaborators was permitted to bear arms, began shooting wildly

and continued for several hours, killing a 4-year-old boy and wounding

15 people. He then either killed himself (as villagers allege), or was

killed by villagers. His body was hung on an electric pole.

The army then invaded the village, killing a 20-day-old child and a

70-year-old man with tear gas. Dozens of people had bones broken from

beatings. Many were arrested; 500 remained under arrest when the curfew

was lifted 6 weeks later. Four houses were demolished and others heavily

damaged. During the curfew, villagers report, soldiers entered the

village daily, arresting and beating people, breaking into homes,

smashing furniture and destroying food supplies. When journalist Oren

Cohen entered by back roads in late March, the smell of tear gas made it

difficult to breathe. A house where he stayed had signs of a fire,

caused a week earlier by gas grenades dropped from a helicopter, the

family reported. Food and medicines were in short supply, the one clinic

and pharmacy had been closed, and the town’s only doctor could not

handle the many patients.

The visiting delegation were told by villagers that morale improved as

the curfew was extended and the community organized in response. One

said: “If you want to balance the situation — on the one hand put all

the Israeli practices: torture, hunger, beating, imprisonment. We are

ready to accept them, but not to accept occupation. We would rather

continue if that is the way to get rid of the occupation.” Having heard

the same things said with obvious sincerity and simplicity, I do not

find it hard to believe that the sentiment is genuine. The villagers

returned to the subsistence economy of earlier generations, reopening

old wells, eating bread and wild greens, finding wood for cooking in

place of kerosene. What most impressed the delegation was “the

consistently bouyant and determined spirit” in Qabatiya, as elsewhere in

the territories (my observation as well). Journalists who managed to

enter Qabatiya agreed. Joel Greenberg of the Jerusalem Post, visiting

just hours before the press was banned from the territories completely,

found the people “surprisingly resilient” and “defiant” after a month of

the curfew, and without remorse over the fate of the collaborator, who

“was morally degenerate, hated by everyone, and was only attacked after

he fired on what was a peaceful march, they said.” They are prepared to

survive on herbs from the hills if necessary. Hugh Schofield reported in

the Canadian press that soldiers manning roadblocks at the town

entrances were turning away supplies of food and fuel; much of the

town’s agricultural land had been placed off limits; the town was

forbidden to export to Jordan from its stone quarry, employing half the

workforce; and of course workers were forbidden to travel to jobs in

Israel, leaving the town without economic resources. “The residents’

spirits are strangely high,” he reported: “If the aim of the Israeli

measures is to cow the locals, the effect is, if anything, the

opposite.”[42]

On May 11, 47 villagers were charged with the killing of Al-Ayed,

including one man carried to court by his neighbors, paralyzed from the

waist down as a result of Al-Ayed’s shooting into the crowd.[43]

Few people in Israel seemed aware of these and many similar events in

the territories. The killings and dreadful beatings, sometimes reported,

do not give an accurate picture of Israeli repression or the goals and

achievements of the uprising.

The Political Prospects

The uprising was not anticipated by the Israeli authorities, and it is

possible that they understand very little about it. Thus if Abu Jihad

was assassinated “because army and intelligence officials believed he

was directing the uprising,” as reported, then we are observing yet

another failure of the much-overpraised Israeli intelligence

services.[44] In 1973, the Egyptian-Syrian attack on their territories

occupied by Israel was unexpected, and its early successes came as an

enormous shock. Israel had dismissed Sadat’s warnings about the

consequences of Israel’s rejection of a peace treaty and its settlement

of the northeastern Sinai, even the maneuvers of the Egyptian army, on

the assumption that “war is not the Arabs’ game,” as Israelis were

assured by former director of military intelligence and Arabist General

Yehoshaphat Harkabi, and many other experts.[45] The collapse of this

myth caused a severe psychological shock. The same occurred in 1982,

when Israel’s forces proved ineffectual against fixed Syrian defensive

positions during the invasion of Lebanon, and particularly after the

war, when Israel was driven from large areas of Lebanon by unanticipated

resistance, causing losses that Israel was unwilling to absorb. But, it

was confidently explained, these are fanatic Shi’ites, unlike Ahmed in

Gaza and the West Bank, docile and controllable. The uprising has

shattered this myth as well, again creating shock waves in Israel.

The pattern is common. In another recent case, until the U.S. Embassy in

Tegucigalpa was attacked by angry crowds in April, U.S. authorities

ignored the rising anger over their treatment of Honduras as a docile

client, including the landing of the 82^(nd) Airborne, bitterly

denounced across a wide spectrum within the country.

The point is that repression and domination breed racist contempt as a

mechanism of self-defense; how can the oppressor justify to himself what

he does, if the victims are human beings? Racist contempt in turn breeds

ignorance, and compels the resort to violence when the Ahmeds of the

world finally explode in anger and resentment.

While I was in Israel in April, headlines in the Hebrew press reported

yet another endorsement of partition by Yasser Arafat, referring

explicitly to the principle of a two-state political settlement, not the

borders of 40 years ago. The next day, Defense Minister Rabin of the

Labor Party announced that Palestinians must be excluded from any

political settlement, and that diplomacy can proceed only “on a

state-to-state level.” In Jerusalem, Thomas Friedman managed to miss

these facts once again, and following the practice that won him a

Pulitzer Prize, reported 4 days later that the problem remains the PLO,

still unwilling to consider a diplomatic settlement because “the minute

Mr. Arafat makes a decision about entering into direct negotiations with

Israel” — as he has been offering for years — “the unity of the

Palestinian uprising will explode.” Earlier, he had falsely reported

that Peace Now “has expressed support for an independent Palestinian

state.” A few days before Arafat’s latest call for a diplomatic

settlement, Prime Minister Shamir had informed George Shultz that “UN

Resolution 242 does not contain territorial provisions with regard to

Jordan,” meaning that it excludes the West Bank. At the end of April,

the Labor Party once again adopted a campaign platform rejecting Israeli

withdrawal from the occupied territories, and Rabin clarified that the

plan was to allow 60% of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to be part of a

Jordanian-Palestinian state, with its capital in Amman. In Jordan in

early April, Shultz announced that the PLO or others “who have committed

acts of terrorism” must be excluded from peace talks, which would leave

the bargaining table quite empty. He also “explained his understanding

of the aspirations of Palestinians,” Times reporter Elaine Sciolino

wrote, by citing the example of the United States, where he, Shultz, is

a Californian, and George Bush is a Texan, but they have no problem

living in harmony, so the Palestinian aspirations into which he shows

such profound insight can be handled the same way.[46]

Official doctrine remains that the U.S. and the Israeli Labor Party seek

peace, blocked by the extremists on all sides. The fact that this

pretense can persist without challenge is evidence of our failure to

exploit the opportunity afforded by the Palestinian uprising.

Despite everything, Israel remains, in many ways, a very appealing and

attractive place, particularly — as elsewhere — in its community of

dissidents, who are by no means marginal, and could become a significant

force with American support. Alone, Palestinian courage and

determination will not suffice; with the solidarity of others, it can

lead the way to a better future.

[1] Yitzhak Shamir, Hehazit (LEHI, the “Stern gang”), 1943; reprinted in

Al-Hamishmar, Dec. 24, 1987; translated in Middle East Report (MERIP),

May-June 1988.

[2] Editorials, NYT, Feb. 19, 1988, Nov. 6, 1982; Time, Oct. 11, 1982.

[3] Berlin, Personal Impressions (Viking, 1981, 50); Michael Bar-Zohar,

Ben-Gurion: a Biography (Delacorte, 1978, 180–1).

[4] Boston Globe, May 21, 1988; on the attack on the US embassy in

Seoul, also NYT, same day. Charles Glass, discussing Israeli violence,

estimates the death toll in two years of violent riots in South Korea at

“under ten”; Spectator (London), March 19, 1988.

[5] Margalit, New York Review, June 2, 1988.

[6] AP, Dec. 12, 1987; June 1, 1988.

[7] Gad Lior, Yediot Ahronot, Jan. 24; Shulamith Hareven, Yediot

Ahronot, March 25, 1988.

[8] 1783; cited by Richard Drinnon, Facing West: The Metaphysics of

Indian-Hating and Empire Building (U. of Minnesota, 1980, 65).

[9] For further examples, see my Pirates and Emperors (Claremont, 1986;

Amana, 1988).

[10] “The Man who Foresaw the Uprising,” Yediot Ahronot, April 7; Hotam,

April 15. AP, April 1, 1988.

[11] Geoffrey Aronson, Creating Facts (Institute for Palestine Studies,

1987, 189, 216).

[12] Chomsky, Fateful Triangle (South End, 1983, 130f.).

[13] Sarny, Yediot Ahronot, July 3; Menahem Shizaf, Hadashot, July 7,

1987. see my Fateful Triangle, South End, 1983, for earlier examples.

[14] Donald Neff, “Struggle over Jerusalem,” American-Arab Affairs,

Winter 1987–8; Middle East International, May 28.

[15] Segev, Ha’aretz, Jan. 8, 1988. See Gabi Nitzan, Koteret Rashit,

Dec. 30, 1987, for a particularly harrowing example. Translated by

Israel Shahak.

[16] NYT, May 15, 1988.

[17] See my article in Z, May, for recent examples; on the earlier

record and the distortion of it, see Fateful Triangle, chapter 3,

reprinted in James Peck, ed., The Chomsky Reader (Pantheon, 1987);

Pirates and Emperors.

[18] Hareven, op. cit.; Gilat, Hadashot, April 7.

[19] See press release, Arab Studies Society, 13 September 1987; The

Other Israel), Nov.-Dec. 1987.

[20] April 14.

[21] AP, March 28. There was brief and inadequate notice in the Boston

Globe, March 29 and New York Times, March 28; editorial, JP, March 29,

deploring the army’s “blunder”.

[22] Dan Fisher, Los Angeles Times, April 10; Uri Nir, Ha’aretz, April

13; AP, April 9. A May 3 NYT report from the village by Joel Brinkley

describes none of this.

[23] Yizhar Be’er and Munir Man’e, Kol Hair, April 15.

[24] John Kifner, NYT, April 7, 8, 9; News from Within (Alternative

Information Center, Jerusalem), May 10; FACTS Weekly Review, April 3–9,

a publication that provides weekly summaries of the uprising; Shomron,

cited from Kifner, April 9, and JP, April 12; Nahum Barnea, Koteret

Rashit, April 13; Peretz Kidron, Middle East International, April 16.

[25] News from Within, May 10; Daoud Kuttab, Middle East International,

April 16.

[26] Zvi Gilat, Hadashot, April 7.

[27] Ha’aretz, April 15; Hadashot, April 12.

[28] In August, she was given an eight-month sentence, retroactive to

her arrest, for “throwing rocks and causing serious bodily harm to

Aldubi”; Joel Greenberg, JP, Aug. 12, 1988.

[29] BG, May 25; Al-Hamishmar, May 17; Joel Brinkley, NYT, April 28.

[30] Chronology, Middle East Journal, Spring 1988; Attorney Avigdor

Feldman, Hadashot, Jan. 1, 1988; AP, NYT, May 6; Mary Curtius, BG, John

Kifner, NYT, Feb. 9; Curtius, BG, June 4.

[31] Hadashot, May 16, 1984; Menahem Shizaf, Hadashot, July 2, 1987;

Attallah Mansour, Ha’aretz, Feb. 5, 1986; Reuter, Toronto Globe & Mail,

May 16; John Kifner, April 20; AP, BG, May 18, 21; Eyal Ehrlich,

Ha’aretz, April 7; Amnon Levy, Hadashot, June 30, 1987; News from

Within, May 13, 1986; Uriel Ben-Ami, Davar, April 11; AP, BG, May 26.

[32] Fateful Triangle, 165.

[33] Contributions can be sent to Friends of YESH GVUL (resisters), 1636

Martin Luther King Rd., #G, Berkeley CA 94709, and DOWN WITH THE

OCCUPATION (Dai l’kibbush), PO Box 3742, Jerusalem, Israel.

[34] BG-LAT, May 31; AP, May 30.

[35] For Israeli reports on Ansar I, see Fateful Triangle. On Ansar II,

see Al-Hamishmar, Dec. 22, 1986, Jan. 27, 1987; Ha’aretz, July 13, 28,

1987.

[36] Glenn Frankel, WP-Manchester Guardian Weekly, May 22; Avi Katzman,

Koteret Rashit, April 20; Hadashot, April 29, cited in News from Within,

May 10, along with testimonies of prisoners.

[37] AP, May 19; Minneapolis Star-Tribune, June 1; for official figures,

see Joel Brinkley, NYT, April 25.

[38] Oren Cohen, Hadashot, March 24; Peretz Kidron, Middle East

International, May 14; AP, May 25.

[39] AI, March 31.

[40] AP, April 17.

[41] Raja Shehadeh, personal communication; FACTS, March 5–12.

[42] Cohen, Hadashot. March 27; Database Project on Palestinian Human

Rights, Update, March 21-April 5; JP, March 30; Globe & Mail, March 31.

[43] AP, May 11; Database Project Update, May 14, 1988.

[44] John Kifner, NYT, April 25, 1988.

[45] See Amnon Kapeliouk, Israel: la fin des mythes (Paris, 1975).

[46] Ha’aretz, April 12; JP, April 13; Thomas Friedman, NYT, April 17,

Jan. 6, 1988; Ha’aretz, April 7; Toronto Globe & Mail, April 26; Tony

Banks, Jane’s Defence Weekly, May 7; AP, April 8; Elaine Sciolino, NYT,

April 6, 8, 1988.