Gershom Gorenberg – Page 17

Invention of the Body-Snatchers

August 27, 2009 by Gershom Gorenberg

My new article is up at The American Prospect:

Lest there be any misunderstanding: As an Israeli and a Jew, I don’t believe that the current government of Sweden is quasi-Nazi, that all Swedes are anti-Semites, or that I should boycott Ikea, the Swedish furniture firm. At the same time, to remove all doubt, I solemnly declare that I have never been involved in the international trade in organs for transplant. I do feel exceedingly silly bothering to make these denials. But they seem somehow necessary in light of the current Swedish-Israeli tensions, which are a product of egregiously incompetent journalism in a Swedish paper and equally irredeemable diplomacy by Israel in furious response.

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One Measure of Awe, Please. Hold the Nationalism.

August 17, 2009 by Gershom Gorenberg

Gershom Gorenberg

I’d been at Rosh Hanikra recently for a wedding, held in the evening on the small plaza set on the side of the bluff, overlooking the sea. The grottoes were lit at night, but the water rushing into the chasms from the open sea was dark.

Until last week, though, it had been many years since I visited in the daytime, buying a ticket for the cable car down to the grottoes. Since my previous visit, a short introductory movie has been added to the tour, shown in the now-blocked railroad tunnel that once crossed the border into Lebanon.

The film explains how waves, wind and salt carved the grottoes in the rock. It shows how sea turtles lay their eggs on the bluff – the mothers returning to where they were born, the newborns racing at night toward the shine of the waves to escape predators.

And then there’s an explanation that the place was once called Sulamah shel Tzur, the Ladder of Tyre, in Hebrew. (Actually, the name refers not just to the bluff, but to the mountain ridge that ends at the bluff, and that one needs to ascend to come up or down the coast.) The film explains that according to legend, Abraham entered the Land of Israel here and received the promise, “To your seed I will give this land” (Gen. 12:7).

Whose Religion Is This, Anyway?

August 16, 2009 by Gershom Gorenberg

Gershom Gorenberg

My new column on being an Orthodox dove is up at the American Prospect:

The American Jewish filmmaker told me he was doing a documentary on possible answers to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — one state or two — and human-rights issues. When he showed up at my Jerusalem apartment on a recent afternoon to interview me, he was wearing a beret. His wife and producer wore a maxi skirt; a scarf covered her hair. Their attire showed they were Orthodox Jews. Hers, in particular, fit the stereotyped look of the Israeli religious right, of settlers and their supporters, including some Jews abroad. I was surprised. Maybe, I thought, I was the token leftist interviewee in a project by settlement backers aimed at showing that there is no exit from the conflict and that Israel must hold the West Bank forever.

I was also painfully aware of an irony: My own skullcap identifies me, correctly, as an Orthodox Jew. Countless times, my appearance has also caused people to assume, incorrectly, that I belong to the religious right.

South Jerusalem Antipathy Awards

August 8, 2009 by Gershom Gorenberg

Gershom Gorenberg

Before I head off for the Galilee for the week, I’d wanted to give an award for statement in the past week’s Israeli news showing the least understanding of someone else’s motivation. Try as I might, though, I can’t break the tie between two contenders:

Col. Ilan Malka, commander of the Givati Brigade, on Breaking the Silence’s publication of soldiers’ testimony on Operation Cast Lead in Gaza last winter: “I have a sort of feeling that they’re doing this out of some kind of evil.” (Yediot Aharonot, Aug. 4, 2009).
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Umbrella Politics

July 30, 2009 by Gershom Gorenberg

Gershom Gorenberg

My new column on the the U.S. Jewish establishment repeating Netanyahu’s misleading spin on East Jerusalem is up at the American Prospect:

Western communists, it was said in another era, took out their umbrellas whenever it rained in Moscow. I remembered that adage as I read a recent statement from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations that arrived in my inbox. The subject was the latest U.S.-Israeli flap over construction in East Jerusalem. No matter that the diplomatic thunderstorm appears artificial — deliberately engineered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to deflect the Obama administration’s pressure to freeze settlement activity. At the Presidents Conference headquarters in New York, the umbrellas were opened with alacrity. The statement is an uncritical repetition of Netanyahu government spin.

South Jerusalem History Awards

July 26, 2009 by Gershom Gorenberg

Gershom Gorenberg

At the start of a new week, I’d like to award the best and worst discussions of history in the past week in Israel.

The best take on the past came from Yoram Kaniuk, writing at Ynet (in Hebrew and English translation). Kaniuk writes about the government’s intent to legislate against commemorating the Nakba and Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s plan to revise a history textbook for Israel Arab children to erase a sentence about 1948 war saying, “The Arabs call the war the Nakba – a war of catastrophe, loss and humiliation – and the Jews call it the Independence War.”

Kaniuk, who fought in the War of Independence, writes,

I remember the Nakba. I saw it to a much greater extent than the education minister, who apparently only heard about it. It was a harsh, merciless campaign of young soldiers who spilled their blood while fighting a determined enemy that was eventually defeated. Yet the enemy that was defeated is not a geometrical unknown, but rather, a people that still exists. Its parents and grandparents fought well. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have suffered so many casualties.

I was wounded in battle, but I believe that the education minister must educate our young people to be heroes by teaching them that this war had losers too, and that they too have a narrative. They don’t have the country that was theirs but they have a history… The Nakba fighters fought heroically, but we fought better.

Hamas Caught In the Tide of History

July 25, 2009 by Gershom Gorenberg

Gershom Gorenberg

My review essay on Paul McGeough’s book “Kill Khalid” and the history of Hamas appears this weekend in the Review section of The National, published in Abu Dhabi.

“When Israel occupied Jerusalem, I was 14,” Sheikh Jamil Hamami once told me. Hamami grew up in East Jerusalem. That week in June 1967, he had heard the promises on the radio that the Arab states would defeat Israel “in a few days, a few hours”. Instead came the Israeli advance. Hamami described the day that the Old City fell in a series of staccato images: “The black picture in my mind is seeing an Israeli soldier enter Al Aqsa… Near the Wailing Wall, I saw a soldier step on the Quran… A soldier told us it was forbidden to pray in Al Aqsa.”

Hamami later became one of the first leaders of Hamas in the West Bank, though he left the movement in 1995, believing that the time for “military action” had ended with the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. His jagged memories of June 1967 allude to two of the reasons for the Islamic revival in the occupied territories – and for the birth of Hamas, for that organisation’s ascendance as a rival to the secular nationalist PLO and for its position today as one of the two power centres of riven Palestinian politics.

Notes in the Margins of the Testimony

July 16, 2009 by Gershom Gorenberg

Gershom Gorenberg

In the post below this one, you’ll find my American Prospect article on Breaking the Silence’s book of testimony from soldiers who fought in Gaza last winter. There’s much more I’d like to say, but here are just a few notes in the margins:

Reading the testimony, one can find some evidence for the argument that the difference between how one unit and other behaves in the field is largely a function of their immediate commanders on the company level. There’s the account (told by two witnesses) of the company commander who wouldn’t let his men fire warning shots to keep an old man from approaching their position at night. Unaware of the soldiers, the man kept walking – till he was so close that the soldiers shot to kill. On the other hand, there’s the deputy company commander who ordered his men not to sit on the couches in the Palestinian house they had taken over.

No. What Happened in Gaza Won’t Go Away.

July 16, 2009 by Gershom Gorenberg

Gershom Gorenberg

My new article on the latest, and most extensive, testimony from soldiers who served last winter in Operation Cast Lead is now up at The American Prospect:

“We didn’t see a single house that was not hit. The entire infrastructure, tracks, fields, roads — was in total ruin,” an anonymous soldier says, describing his days in the Gaza Strip during Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli incursion last winter. “Nothing much was left in our designated area … A totally destroyed city … The few houses that were still inhabitable were taken by the army … there were lots of abandoned, miserable animals.” The destruction continued daily, he testifies, though Palestinians — fighters and civilians — had fled the area.

How Not to Read a Holy Book

July 7, 2009 by Gershom Gorenberg

Gershom Gorenberg

As a follow-up to an earlier post, I have a new column in Moment magazine on the Chabad rabbi who recently wrote that “The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way… Kill men, women and children (and cattle).” Manis Friedman, unfortunately, isn’t alone in our world in claiming divine sanction as he presents evil as morality. There’s a pattern that ties him to other people, in Judaism and in other faiths, who do the same:

Friedman may think he’s presenting old-time Judaism. In fact, his words are an example of the thoroughly modern phenomenon known as fundamentalism. Fundamentalists are frightened by the openness of the modern world, by the autonomy of the individual, by modern insistence on reaching truth through reasoned debate. They want to feel certain that they are following an unambiguous religious authority.

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Obama Isn’t Blinking, and Congress Still Has His Back

July 2, 2009 by Gershom Gorenberg

Gershom Gorenberg

A few days ago, I wondered in print whether the Obama administration would blink first or stand firm on a settlement freeze. So far, the adminstration is standing quite firm.

Ehud Barak has tried to convince the world that his meeting on the issue with George Mitchell led to a shift in the administration stance. Examine all the reports carefully: You’ll find no evidence of a change in the U.S. position. Which is good news.

A key reason that President Obama can avoid blinking is that Congress has his back.

I spoke this morning with Rep. Robert Wexler, one of Israel’s most dependable supporters in Congress.

Ehud the Obtuse

July 2, 2009 by Gershom Gorenberg

Gershom Gorenberg

Ehud Barak still doesn’t get it.

According to a piece by Ben Caspit and Merav David in yesterday’s print edition of Ma’ariv, when Barak met U.S. envoy George Mitchell in New York, he told him that in 2000 “I was the Israeli prime minister who took the most bold steps to make peace, and that year also saw the greatest extent of new construction.” For Barak this was proof that building like mad doesn’t get in the way of negotiations. Alas for a country with men like this as leaders.