The Occupation is Evil

“The attempt to explain to Israelis that such acts of vengeance are puny compared to the intensity of the Israeli assault on every individual, and against the entire Palestinian community, is doomed to failure.”

“there should be no expectation from the personal avenger that he be interested in knowing that his act of vengeance does not teach Israelis a thing about the motives they provide for vengeance. On the contrary, it only strengthens among Israelis the sense of victimhood, and their natural tendency to prefer ignorance of the occupation.” [Amira Hass, below]

Dear All,

Unfortunately, Amira Hass is absolutely correct in both her contentions above. This does not mean that Israeli families who are victims of Palestinian violence hurt any less than Palestinians who are victims of Israeli violence do. But no Israeli can imagine what it is like to be a Palestinian under Israeli occupation, and particularly the past 5 years. Israelis (apart from those who have been subject to incidents of Palestinian violence), by and large go about their business daily—whether this involves going to school, to work, on an outing, going abroad, or going to the doctor. By contrast, for Palestinians, there is never a moment that one can feel secure. This is not to say that every Palestinian suffers every day. And some villages have less incursions than others. But even in these one is never secure. One never knows when an incursion might take place, on what day there will be heavy boots kicking at the door in the middle of the night and a loudspeaker telling everyone to get out of the house, a bulldozer knocking the walls of one’s home down, whether one’s children are safe going to school and coming home from school, whether one will be allowed to get to the hospital in an emergency, and ever so much more than either I or Amira Hass mentions here. Life under occupation is a cruel struggle for survival.

Take, for instance, what happened last night in the small village of Hares. I was called at 3:00 AM to ask if I could find the whereabouts of two teenage boys, about 15 years old each. Soldiers or border police (it wasn’t clear to me which) with faces painted black had come at about 2:00 AM, pounding on the doors of the respective houses (why do the police or soldiers have to take kids in the middle of the night?), and had gone off with the two youngsters.

Typically, the families were not informed of the reasons that the boys had been arrested or where they were being taken. A few phone calls served to locate the destination of the boys. The first one was to the so-called Civil Administration, to which, after relaying the details, I was told to call back in 30 minutes. I phoned back after 15 minutes, and was told that the boys had picked up by police rather than by soldiers, and that therefore there was nothing that the Civil Administration (supposedly the ‘humanitarian’ arm of the military) could do further to help me. So, I next began phoning police stations. The police stations nearest to Hares are in Qedumim and Ariel. Qedumim didn’t answer (although as it turns out that is where the boys were initially taken). So I tried Ariel, which did answer. The policeman at the desk, Moshe, told me that 2 boys from Hares were indeed on their way, but had not yet arrived. They were to be ‘investigated,’ a term that can mean more than just being questioned. “What would happen after the questioning,” I asked. Moshe replied that after they would be investigated—a long pause ensued—then said, “God is great,” which in idiomatic English I guess we’d translate as “Heaven only knows.”.

Since there was nothing else in my small power to do beyond finding out where the boys were and informing the source that had called me and who would inform the families, I returned to bed at about 4:30 AM. But I couldn’t fall asleep. All kinds of things kept running through my mind—from Anna Frank in the attic to ‘what would I do if this happened to one of my grandchildren, say to my 13 year old grandson, whom I adore.’ Somewhere around 6:00 AM, I finally dozed off for an hour or so. But my guess is that the families of the two boys probably did not sleep at all. How could they?

Later today I learned that one of the boys had been returned home. The other not, or at least had not returned by 4:00 PM. I hope that by now (23:30; 11:30 PM) he is safely back with his family, but don’t count on it–just a typical incident in the life of a Palestinian family, one that few Israelis know anything about or care to know about.

This is not because Israelis are bad people. No. There are good, bad, indifferent, as in any society. I imagine that many Germans during the Nazi era were decent people, too. But many of these decent people did not want to know what was happening either, or didn’t care, just like Israelis. But Israelis should take a lesson from history. They should remind themselves of the condition in which Hitler left Germany. Those good Germans who did not know or want to know what was happening were by virtue of their acceptance of the situation and conformism to it as complicit in the destruction of Germany as were those who did know and supported Hitler.

There are many things one is obliged to conform to—the just laws of the land, for instance. But some things, one should never conform to. Evil, is among these. The Occupation is evil.

Dorothy

Ha’aretz
Wednesday, February 08, 2006 [ Hebrew ]

Revenge is the word in the background

By Amira Hass

The young woman who came into the corner grocery in the Jenin refugee camp did not hide her hostility when told there was an Israeli guest. It seemed that it was even difficult for her to sit in the same room as the guest, whom the grocer honored with sweets and jokes while commented on the various political parties running in the elections. Without any prelude, the young woman asked the guest, “So, what do you think about ‘sacrifice operations?’ “

It was clear she was not interested in an answer, but only wanted to deliver a lecture on why she thinks it is the proper response.

“So a dead Palestinian girl is okay? And to bomb us in our homes is okay?”

What really angered her, more than anything else, was the answer that revenge is not a liberation struggle. The grocer hushed the young woman, saying “That’s not how to speak to guests.”

When the young woman left, the grocer said that the young woman’s brother, a member of Fateh, committed an attack in Israel and was killed. Another brother was killed when the IDF invaded the refugee camp in April 2002.

In similar arguments from Rafah to Jenin, the terms used for suicide attacks are “response,” or “answer.” Sometimes, for example in the context of Qassam fire, the sentence, “we also have the right to defend ourselves,” comes up as an explanation. The more forthright and sincere, meaning those who don’t deceive themselves and others about the capacity for “defense,” say, “we also have the right to frighten you, like you always frighten us with your shelling and bombings and sonic booms. Your citizens should also feel threatened.”

There’s no need for the explicit term “vengeance” to show up in the conversations, but it is in the background, and it is clear that people are very understanding of the atavistic and tribal urge. Those who avenge through suicide bombings, with Qassams or with a knife represent them, because they found a way to express the sense of rage and impotence that everyone feels, both as individuals and collectively.

Presumably, vengeance made Ahmed Kfina murder the easiest victim he found on his way on Sunday: Kinneret Ben Shalom Hajbi, a 58-year-old woman from Petah Tikva. There’s no need for “assessments” by intelligence experts and orientalists of various sorts, to know that he did not act at the behest of others.

The attempt to explain to Israelis that such acts of vengeance are puny compared to the intensity of the Israeli assault on every individual, and against the entire Palestinian community, is doomed to failure. On a daily basis, Israel attacks every Palestinian with systematic variety. The aggregation is lethal, even if the killing of a nine-year-old girl or setting a dog on an elderly woman are not daily occurrences. It’s that aggregation that undermines any attempt to conduct a normal life. It’s being locked up in the West Bank’s enclaves, so that simple routines like going to school, work, or visiting family are impossible. There’s the unceasing expropriation of land for roads and security fences for settlements; the trees uprooted by the army, livelihoods that are cut off daily, and the insult of that; the army’s prohibition, on security grounds, against accessing farm and grazing lands; the break-ins to houses in the middle of the night, which the Israeli public rarely if ever hears about; the hours of waiting at checkpoints; the frightened children; the aimed rifles.

The personal urge for vengeance and the understanding that people have for the avengers intensifies the more it becomes clear that there is no unified Palestinian plan against the occupation, and the more it becomes apparent that the Palestinian organizations and the leadership have failed to lead their people out of Israeli control.

Unlike the political organizations, the personal avenger does not need to take into account the influence of his actions on the failed Palestinian ambitions for independence. The avenger “solved” his own personal crisis. Therefore, there should be no expectation from the personal avenger that he be interested in knowing that his act of vengeance does not teach Israelis a thing about the motives they provide for vengeance. On the contrary, it only strengthens among Israelis the sense of victimhood, and their natural tendency to prefer ignorance of the occupation.

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