Nicholas Kristoff sounds off about The Two Israels. In Kristoff’s simplistic formulation there’s the good Israel and the bad Israel. There are no grey areas. Here’s his take:
It is here in the Palestinian territories that you see the worst side of Israel: Jewish settlers stealing land from Palestinians (almost one-third of settlement land is actually privately owned by Palestinians); Palestinian women giving birth at checkpoints because Israeli soldiers won’t let them through (four documented cases last year); the diversion of water from Palestinians. (Israelis get almost five times as much water per capita as Palestinians.)
Yet it is also here that you see the very best side of Israel. Israeli human rights groups relentlessly stand up for Palestinians. Israeli women volunteer at checkpoints to help Palestinians through. Israeli courts periodically rule in favor of Palestinians. Israeli scholars have published research that undermines their own nation’s mythologies. Many Israeli journalists have been fair-minded toward Palestinians in a way that Arab journalists have rarely reciprocated.
Who are these Israeli scholars who undermine the “nation’s mythologies?” One Ilan Pappe. Here’s what Pappe’s former employer, the University of Haifa had to say about him:
In actual fact, during the past few years, Dr. Pappe has transgressed all common ethical standardsof academic life. Yet, despite his conduct, the University of Haifa has demonstrated extraordinary tolerance. One of his colleagues did indeed lodge a complaint with the internal faculty disciplinary committee. The complaint focused on Dr. Pappe’s unethical behavior towards his peers and his efforts to disbar them from international forums for daring to contradict his views.
Here’s new of B’tzelem’s latest triumph:
But its “baptism of fire” occurred last week, on Sunday afternoon. Most Israelis were busy preparing for the Shavuot holiday. But some had a different priority: savagely beating Nawaja’s relatives. She managed to capture a few seconds of the beating – in which her 57-year-old aunt was severely injured, and two uncles, age 60 and 33 were hurt – on film. But she never dreamed that it would prove to be the main, and possibly only, evidence available to the police investigating the assault.”There have been previous incidents in this area in which Palestinians were beaten; that is why they gave me a camera,” she explained two days ago. A few seconds before the attack occurred, Nawaja saw four masked men, some carrying clubs, approaching her relatives, who were tending the family flock. They were clearly not dropping by for coffee, so she aimed her camera at them. “I saw them coming from the direction of a Jewish settlement,” she said.
Except as Treppenwitz shows, there are lots of doubts about what this film actually shows. Yehuda identifies some specific oddities specific elementsin his critique:
Now it’s the afternoon, and I’d like to point out a few things:Most articles about the video now note that the attackers are “claimed” to be settlers, when earlier in the day the articles simply called them settlers.
These so-called settlers acted rather strangely. They warned some guy while wearing normal clothes, went back to their yishuv, dressed up in Arab scarves tied around their faces without any signs of Jewish identity (no tzitzit hanging out of their shirts, no yarmulkahs, etc…), and then went back to beat this guy up in full view of a camera. Right.
How about the following possible scenarios: a bunch of Palestinian guys beat up some other Palestinian guy for some reason? Or, the entire thing was staged, as have so many other videos and pictures depicting so-called Israeli violence?
Without hearing from the so-called attackers, all we have to go on is a video camera from a pro-Palestinian rights movement, the word of someone who is hardly objective, a video depicting something
And as Kristof notes, the Israeli courts are known to side with the Palestinians, preferring the judgment of social scientists over security professionals. So if a Palestinian farmer was separated from his field, it means that security professionals (more than) adequately explained the need for the placement of the security fence. Kristof may mourn the inconvenience the farmer, but I’m reasonably certain that he wouldn’t much mourn the Israelis who’d be victimized by a terror attack had the the fence not been built.
Of course even as Kristof laments the presence of Israeli checkpoints, they are stopping terror. He may praise Israeli journalists for their sympathy to the Palestinian cause, but he ignores someone like Khaled Abu Toameh who reports on the seamier side of Palestinian politics.
When I was in college I used to get aggravated by Anthony Lewis, then a columnist for the Times. His columns about Israel were uniformly negative, portraying every Israeli action in a negative light. There was no charge against Israel that was too incredible that he wouldn’t accept it at face value.
My brother once wrote him letter asking how it was that he purported to care about freedom, why was he silent on the matter of Anatoly (now Natan) Sharansky. Lewis wrote back that Sharansky wasn’t his focus. (I believe that he did write a column or two about Sharansky, but Sharansky and the oppression of the Soviet Union was hardly his passion.)
Kristof deserves credit for focusing on the persecution in Darfur. However, his one sided approach to Israel in which he accepts every charge against Israel, reveals a deep bias. He is not interested in the Israeli side or of the costs of terror on Israel.
With his focus on Chevron he reveals another blind spot. Chevron had a Jewish community until the mid 1930’s when it was driven out by Arab violence. A Jewish presence in Chevron wasn’t re-established until after 1967. Does he mean that he approves of the acquisition of territory through force as long as it’s Arab force?
What’s clear is that Kristoff isn’t interested in context. He’s interested in fostering the hatred that Palestinians maintain towards Israel. He is, in short, Anthony Lewis II.
UPDATE: I*Consult writes:
Your portrait of evil Israelis just can’t be complete without the canard of Israelis using five times more water than Palestinians. Sorry, it doesn’t wash, so to speak. A study produced by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences along with their Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli counterparts ten years ago, found little difference between water consumption in Israeli and Palestinian urban areas. “Per capita water use for urban Palestinians reaches a maximum of 100 cubic meters a year, similar to Israeli use.†The study suggests that low figures for rural Palestinians “is likely to increase with improvement in the level of living.†More telling, however, is the report’s finding that “water losses unaccounted for [theft of leaks] in the [Palestinian] distribution network†reach 55 percent[!]
For example, Kristof repeats the simplistic statements of these NGOs regarding Hebron – a city of immense religious and historical importance to the Jewish people – without mentioning the impact of the 1929 massacre and expulsion of the entire Jewish community. A limited return to this historic city was only possible after 1967. Since this context is inconvenient for promoting B’tselem’s political objectives, which would mean again removing the Jewish population from Hebron, these political activists focus instead on one-sided human rights allegations in which Palestinians are always victims, and Israel is always the oppressor.
There are many Israeli and Jewish organizations, politicians, writers and every day citizens who stand up for Palestinians. That’s the Jewish way. When will Palestinians stand up for the rights of Israelis to live free of the dread of rockets over the southern and northern borders and suicide bombers?
If we apply the same standards to the Palestinians, there is scarcely a trace of a “good†Palestine, of groups that even care about the human rights of Palestinians, much less of Israelis. It’s actually quite cruel of Kristoff to praise Israel for its most severe critics and not even mention the grotesque absence of a self-critical culture among the Palestinians.
Once a template, or narrative, has been established, ie the conventional wisdom, it takes a great deal of effort for a journalist (or anyone else, for that matter) to revisit their assumptions and question the template. It is much easier to simply filter data and perceptions to avoid those that do not fit and over-value those items that fit the pre-approved idea. These tendencies are compounded when surrounded by others who also support the template and would feel extremely threatened were one of its members to question their basic operating assumptions. In such a setting, history is easily manipulated or discounted. In effect, the Kristofs of the MSM tell us, “Israel is the cruel occupier, so don’t try to minimize their crimes by telling me about Jews in Hebron; that’s ancient history, the poor Palestinian’s plight is today.”
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
