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Dave, and Shahid Alam: response
author: kenny freeman
We all agree this was despicable piece of history. There is no excuse. But there is context. In 1948, forty-percent of the Jewish people had just been exterminated. Holocaust survivors were still in ‘camps’ in Europe because the US wouldn’t let them in, England wouldn’t let them into Palestine because of Arab resistance… They had nowhere to go.
In 1948, everything was different. ‘Life’ had been cheapened by the Holocaust. Sixty years later it is impossible to comprehend, to live-with. How much more so in 1948, when people were still waiting to see if a letters would come from fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, who might, possibly, still be alive…
All Jews were probably having nightmares. Begin, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, blew up the King David Hotel, the British Military HQ. Jewish civilians died.
They weren’t victims of terrorism. They were martyrs. There was a cult of Jewish martyrs back then, Dov Gruner, people hung by the British, and the ultimate, Avraham Stern. Founder of Lehi, inventor of the ‘trap-bomb,’ when Hitler was killing Jews, “Yair” was fighting and killing to liberate the Jewish People. Assassinated by the British, killed unarmed in a Tel-Aviv apartment.
As a ‘spiritual Jew’ I can have photos of Gandhi, and Dorothy Day, on my wall; and also one of Avraham Stern.
1948 was a terrible, confusing, mind-warping time. Ben-Gurion, very short on arms, nevertheless sunk the Altalena, and killed Jews (the paradigm for what the PA is being asked to do now), being more afraid of Begin (who was a true democratic, and patriot) than of ‘Arab Armies.’
So in this context, there is a reported incident of a rape/murder. What if the soldiers hadn’t killed the girl, just raped her and released her? Would her brothers have thrown her down a well because of the ‘disgrace’ to the family? I don’t know, and neither do you…
Further back in history is Hebron, 1929, if you want ‘atrocity.’ The Jews living there then were good neighbors, as evidenced by the fact that many were sheltered when the murdering started. But many were slaughtered, and Jews couldn’t return to Hebron till 1967. Back in 1929, what was the context for that atrocity?
Or go forward, to a time of peace, 1982 before the War in Lebanon. The ‘Green Line’ was only on a map. Anyone could get on an Egged Bus in Ramallah and ride to the Jerusalem Central Bus Station, no questions asked.
A young Jew had gone to Shilo, then a small outpost. He worked for the ‘forest service.’ He befriended Arab teenagers, taught them about nature, camping, the things he loved. After several months of this ‘outreach,’ the boys suddenly stabbed him to death. The Jerusalem Post reported ‘ninety times.’ When they were caught, they said it was an initiation into a terror-cell.
If they’d attacked someone like Levinger, or Kahane, it would be one thing. To kill this Jew, trying to ‘seek peace and pursue it’ was an atrocity. He was a martyr, but back then, we didn’t know for what?
If you use the incident from 1948 as a parable, then Hebron in 1929 is also a ‘parable.’
I was in Nazareth in 1983 when my friend’s children came home from school, saying that Israelis had ‘gassed’ a girls’ school in Jenin. And the Mabat News was confirming that something had happened. His daughter, Elianoor, suddenly burning with a fierceness I’d never seen in her, usually so quiet, so cheerful, so sweet:
“So. Tell me. Who’s better? Jews or Arabs?”
What could I say? Could Jews possibly have poisoned Arab schoolgirls? I hoped not, but who knew what was possible, Jews had already tried to kill Bassam Sha’ka and Karim Khalaf, there was an ‘underground...’
Her mother, Nada: “Don’t be ridiculous.” (To Elianoor,) “None are good. Look what Arabs have been doing to one another in Lebanon all this time. And (looking at me), Jews aren’t more better…”
We’ve all got our atrocities. Do you think assigning blame to either side is going to change anything? We’re lost in the woods. Some say it’s his fault. Some say it’s mine. We need someone to come forward to say ‘here is a new path, never tried.’ We don’t know where it goes, but we do know where all the other paths have gone. They ended in atrocities, blame, hate, terror, death. We are all lost together. Knowing how we got here hasn’t helped. It’s time to focus on where we need to go, and the ‘way’ of going There. We have no time to waste…