Talking About Dual Messages

What we've been saying for years--that the difference between what Palestinian leaders say in English and what they say in Arabic represents a real and chilling issue for any kind of effective moves toward peace--is now the subject of a New York Times article, Finding Fault in the Palestinian Messages That Aren’t So Public.

JERUSALEM — A new book by an Israeli watchdog group catalogs dozens of examples of messages broadcast by the Palestinian Authority for its domestic audience that would seem at odds with the pursuit of peace and a two-state solution. Instead, the authors say, their findings show a pattern of non-recognition of Israel’s right to exist, demonization of Israel and promotion of violence.

Of course, this is nothing new. For years, many Israeli and Palestinian analysts have said that what Palestinian leaders tell their own people in their own language — as opposed to English-language statements tailored to opinion in the rest of the world — is the truest reflection of their actual beliefs. This has had the effect of further entrenching the sides to the conflict and undermining confidence that it can ever be resolved.

“There is no doubt in my mind that in the mainstream of the Palestinian national movement, Israel is not considered legitimate,” said Shlomo Avineri, an Israeli professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, reflecting a widespread sense of disillusionment. “This is the inner truth of the Palestinians,” he said. “They really mean it. It is not what they say on CNN, but it is what they teach their children.”

This is in some ways a very positive article, but there is enough poison slipped in that I feel the need to point some of it out. The next paragraph goes on:

But for many, the subject of incitement and media monitoring has become as contentious as some of the messages, especially since these pronouncements are often used to score propaganda points.

Well, yes, when people are talking peace out of one side of their mouth, and endless war out of the other, it does make an oddly good propaganda point.

I'm also bothered by some of the counterexamples of Israeli bad faith that are provided, particularly the comment about the education minister planning to take schoolchildren to Hebron on field trips. Given Hebron's enormous historical significance to Jews, this does not strike me as an action which should be taken as threatening to the Palestinian position. Another example given is of the arrests made over the endorsements of The King's Torah, something that should in fact be a point in favor of Israel's promotion of peace. Set against the large, public, and officially sanctioned gestures of respect toward terrorists such as Dalal Mughrabi, whose face graces the banner in the photograph accompanying the article, this seems like desperate reaching for equivalency straws.


And, of course, this raised my hackles: Mr. Marcus, who set up Palestinian Media Watch in 1996, says that he wants to foster genuine reconciliation. His critics, however, note that he is a settler who lives in the Gush Etzion bloc south of Jerusalem, a contested area of the West Bank that Israel intends to keep under any agreement with the Palestinians.

Note the logic here. (Actually, first note the anonymity of the critics, and the neutral use of the word 'note'. Itamar Marcus declares that he wants reconciliation and peace. Set again this is the criticism that he is living on disputed territory. Clearly, the 'critics' who 'note' this believe that any Israeli (although no Palestinian) who claims to want peace must prove it by living in undisputed territory. Ironic, given that the whole point of Mr. Marcus' work is to point out that, according what Palestinian leaders say in Arabic, all of Israel is 'disputed'.

Adding Up The Death Toll

Over at Popular Resistance, Professor Mazin Qumsiyeh of Bethlehem and Birzeit Universities is supporting Mahmoud Abbas as he speaks in front of the UN to ask for a Palestinian state to be recognized. The professor is not as pleased with Netanyahu's speech, commenting that he was "just amazed at how many lies can be packed in one speech".

He then posts an extensive chart, meant to show the imbalance of power between Israel and the Palestinians. I don't plan to cover all of this, or go into it too extensively (for example, under the precise term "Nature" we get Colonizer/Occuper vs. Occupied People, a lie too big to be unpacked in a blog post. This section, however, caught my eye:

All values show for Israel first, then the Palestinians
Casualties (63 years), 6000 killed/75,000 killed, 20,000 injured/300,000 injured
Abducted/jailed30/400,000
Homes demolished 0/50,000
Refugees created 0/>6 million people

And it occurs to me, looking at this, that it represents a number of the things that are wrong and false with the way that the conflict is discussed by those who hate Israel. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a professor at Birzeit University, but I was a history major, and I like to think, something of a critical thinker, and my alarm bells are going off as I look at this.

I think I'm going to need to break this down into three separate posts, so let's start today with the casualties. This chart does not indicate a divide between military, civilian, and paramilitary, but the Israeli numbers are rather interesting. Clearly that 6,000 cannot include military deaths, in which case we run well over that before getting to 1973, so presumably this covers civilian deaths. Assuming that this is an honest chart, we are then to presume that the appalling 75,000 figure applies to Palestinian civilians? It seems we have to presume that.

I spent a while trying to make this work. Now, admittedly, I did not use any sophisticated source material, this is all from popular sites on the Internet. However, I believe that the only way to make the numbers add up is to sit down and enter in all Palestinian loss of life in any conflict, since 1948, using both combatant and non-combatant deaths, and using the top numbers in any given conflict where it is disputed. So, for example, Black September is included in the count, and the number used must be the high one of 20,000, not the low count of 3,400.

Now, is this fair reckoning? By my estimation, there are two problems with it, one being that Israeli military deaths are being excluded, and Palestinian combatant deaths counted in, also that the Palestinian count include people killed by non-Israelis who were not acting for Israel in any way. Conceivably, those who died in Black September could be considered victims of the overall conflict, but that line of reasoning is going to get us into trouble down the road, when we start looking at that refugee claim more closely.

But by any reckoning, leaving Palestinian combatants in and Israeli combatants (and diplomatic personnel, and various others) out, which is the only way I can make sense of these numbers, is deeply dishonest, and serves an obvious agenda.

Next time: 0 Homes Destroyed? Or, "But What About Kfar Etzion?"

Our Queer Family In Palestine

No, this is not a follow-up to 'Our Mutual Friend', written by some edgy experimental heir to Charles Dickens. It's a phrase taken from a flyer distributed by Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (yes, that's really their name), at a demonstration in front of the Castro Theater on Friday.

Why was QUIT protesting at the Castro Theater? I'll let them try to explain that themselves:

 In case you cannot read it, the cute little pink umbrella says "Israeli pinkwashing does not make me wet!". 'Pinkwashing', a term shamelessly stolen from breast cancer activists, is the new hip term in the BDS movement, for 'mentioning that Israel has a sterling human rights record on LGBT issues'. This is so true that they can't stand it, and must create little derogatory terms suggesting that allowing same-sex partners adoption rights, sending transgendered Israelis to represent the country at major music festivals, and acknowledging same-sex marriage from out of the country are all things Israelis have done simply to change the subject, and try to cover up their unspeakable evil.

Hey, we're not here to ruin anyone's good time, the flyer continues. We just want the same freedom to go out and have fun for all queers. But our queer family in Palestine doesn't have it. Many of them live under military occupation, and all of them live under a rigid system of discrimination and segregation very similar to apartheid South Africa.

This is the passage that makes me consider this otherwise fairly innocuous flyer perhaps the most chutzpahdik piece of writing that I've ever seen in a world full of terrible lies about Israel. Even coming from QUIT, this is a remarkable piece of chicanery. The deception comes in two layers. First is the expected one, which involves  throwing out words like 'military occupation', 'segregation' and 'apartheid', mischaracterizing and spinning the situation of Palestinians living under their own governments in disputed territories.

Second, however, is an almost breathtaking lie of omission. Apparently, you see, the reason our 'queer family in Palestine' is not getting to go out and have a fun day at the Palestinian Gay and Lesbian Film Festival*, is because of the Israelis.

Not because sex between men is a criminal act in Gaza. Not because there is no legislation either by the PA or Hamas to protect gay and lesbian Palestinians. Not because government-sanctioned and enacted violence against LGBT Palestinians is common in both the West Bank and Gaza. Not because gay Palestinians are routinely accused of being collaborators with Israel, a charge that carries the death penalty. Not because gay Palestinians have been pressured into becoming suicide bombers to expiate their shame. Not because in order to live as an out gay man and survive, many young men have made their way illegally into Israel, the luckier ones finding support and shelter within the gay community there.

No, it's not because of this nightmare of socially sanctioned hate and violence against queers of all stripes that 'our queer family in Palestine' isn't having a lovely time marching in the Ramallah Pride Parade*. It's because of Israel.

QUIT's website and print propaganda contains no mention whatsoever of any sort of oppression of LGBT Palestinians by anyone except the ever-convenient Israelis.

They clearly believe that mention the LGBT Palestinians dead at the hand of the PA police, murdered by their own families, or living on the street in Tel Aviv, trying to stay alive and find a place to belong, would be too morally complex and inconvenient to their narrative.

They are betraying those they pretend to claim as family.

*The Palestinian Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and the Ramallah Pride Parade do not exist, except in the blogger's overactive imagination. May they someday exist, in a region filled with peace.

Trouble at Rafah

When I first heard that Egypt was 'opening' the Rafah border crossing with Gaza, I assumed that would last a few weeks, then there would be trouble, and the gates would be quietly closed again.

Today, Gazans stormed the gate, as Egyptian troops and Hamas fighters struggled to keep control. A couple of notes on CNN's take on this:

First, CNN writes: The Rafah Crossing had been subject to frequent closures by Egypt after the Islamic militant group Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007.

The closure of the border had been part of an embargo policy by Egypt and Israel aimed at cutting off Hamas, but the embargo created an economic hardship on the Palestinian territory by limiting shipments of goods in and out of the country.

I'll have to check on this, because I may simply be fooling myself, but I have an idea that this sort of language 'closures by Egypt', 'an embargo policy by Egypt and Israel' were not commonly used until after the fall of the Mubarak regime, when the excuse that somehow Egypt was just doing this on Israel's behalf could no longer be used. I may malign the press. I'll try to check into this.

Secondly, CNN states that (i)t is the first kink in cross-border travel after Egypt reopened the crossing with Gaza last week, a symbolic move that signaled the Cairo government's greater support of Palestinian aspirations.

However, even before this, border control was going to remain tight:

The rulings indicate that women, children and men under 18 and over 40 years of age are permitted free passage from Gaza to Egypt; men under 40 will be required to apply for a visa which must be granted by the authorities for entry. A great majority of Gaza's population is under 40. According to a Palestinian official, a total of 23 people were turned away due to Egyptian security concerns. It was expected that by day's end, 1000 Gazans will have left to cross into Egypt.

We're Not Kidding When We Say We Lack Partners For Peace

I have been looking for a while for a simple pendant shaped like the State of Israel. It's harder than you might imagine. There are a bazillion chais and chamsas and magens david and the like out there, but relatively few Israel-shaped objects, or stylish Israeli flag jewelry.

I wonder if part of the lack might come from our ambivalence, our never-ending debate, about what the borders of the state really are, or will be, or should be. The most aesthetically attractive candidate I have found on my hunt is the piece above, by Israeli jewelry artist Elanit Leder. It's very pretty, I think. Of course, as observant readers will note, it's missing something--two somethings, in fact--all of the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip.

Look at it. Look, especially, at that vulnerable, breakable-looking little strip of land between the West Bank and the water. Let me think about this. Deep breaths.

The thing is, you see, I'm on record tentatively supporting a two-state solution. I feel that a two-state solution should in an ideal world be entirely unnecessary, since Jordan and Egypt should have provided full citizenship and equality for their nationals displaced from the land they found themselves no longer occupying after '67--but it seems fairly clear that now that they've had a while to think about that, the answer is still "NO," or, as it tends to come out when people are being emphatic in Arabic, "LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA!" So perhaps a Palestinian state is something we're going to eventually have to have, because this is far from an ideal world.

Elanit Leder, the designer of this piece, has discussed what its borders mean to her. “Practically, it’s Israel,” she said, “because I cannot go to Gaza and Chevron, and I can’t go to Ramallah. This is the safe Israel for me, so to call it. … This is the Israel that we practice.”

Maybe it would be OK for me to wear the Israel that we practice?

But here's the thing--I go looking for the linking piece of this, the Palestine-shaped charm necklaces out there. There are more of them than there are Israeli ones, for whatever reason. And they have an interesting consistency to them, for maps of a still-hypothetical nation:

Oh, yes. They're not kidding, here and at our demonstrations here in San Francisco, and abroad, when they chant "From the river to the sea."

At the discussion of Elanit Leder's piece in the Forward above, "Steve" got a little insistent with some people:

What my left wing friends often fail to recognize is that while they may make a distinction between say Chevron and Tel Aviv, the other side (the enemy, thank you) does not. Ask the Palestinian types which part of the country should be for the Jewish State. Let me know what they say.

His language offends "Pontigo":

people who say enemy must believe in war, and war isnt the solution for the state of israel.

"Steve" responds: So.. whats the answer to my question? What exactly is the map for the Jewish State that the, uhm, other side, has in mind?

I wish I had a snappy answer for Steve. But as an honest left-winger, I think we both know what the answer is.