Arab and Jew, by David K. Shipler
Morrison, Micah
rn Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in .1 a Promised Land, David Shipler, the former Jerusalem bureau chief of the New York Times and author of a bestseller on Russia, explores "the attitudes, images...
...A final word on stereotypes: When it became clear that Anwar Sadat was actually going to visit Israel back at the beginning of his search for peace, the mood in Jerusalem's Old City bordered on the wildly euphoric...
...What are the implications of the "responses in the larger population...
...But how, for example, can one reconcile the view (one of the liberal-left's standard caricatures) of the settlement movement as zealously intransigent with the reaction to the withdrawal from Sinai, a move the Israeli right bitterly protested but eventually went along with...
...That essential feel for the trauma, the tragedy, the aloneness of the Jews in that dark period is simply missing from the Arabs' sense of history and from their grasp of the present...
...What the average American reader or TV viewer usually gets from reporters less conscientious than Mr...
...It is a book ARAB AND JEW: WOUNDED SPIRITS IN A PROMISED LAND David K. Shipler/Times Books/$22.50 Micah Morrison 46 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MARCH 1987 that the partisans, above all, should not ignore...
...Shipler makes a generally successful effort to counterbalance his left-wing sources, the careful reader should note that the Post and reporters associated with it are cited more than thirty times in the book...
...They cannot comprehend the gnawing fear of powerlessness that grinds beneath the arsenal of tanks and planes, the lurking conviction that it could happen again, and that again the world would look the other way...
...Shipler says that although their views are "certainly not endorsed by the majority of Israeli Jews . . . many elements of their attitudes can be found, somewhat diluted, in the broader reservoir of Israeli Jews, for even the most repugnant methods of stereotyping are connected to the larger questions of nationalism, military security, and religious homogeneity that find responses in the larger population...
...Employing a vivid, anecdotal style, he portrays Arabs and Jews attempting to deal with—or attempting to deny—historical reality in the crucible of the present moment...
...Shipler is on less certain ground when he moves from topflight reporting to sociological analysis...
...about why virtually none of the U.S...
...Highlighting the few racists of Upper Nazareth inflates the importance of Israeli extremists...
...And therefore they cannot understand Israel...
...The general presentation in the Western media of the Israeli right as a monolithic bloc of reactionaries (along with a few noble mavericks) ignores the significant debates on the right, and the way these debates are shaping Israeli attitudes to the Arabs and to the possibility of a future deal for peace...
...Islamic cultures...
...The stereotype of the Arab as primitive, violent, and sexually threatening is widespread in Israeli society (although "diluted" among moderate Jews...
...Shipler's impression of Arab attitudes to the Holocaust is pretty grim news for people who believe in a future made better by mutual understanding: Even the best informed and most sophisticated and moderate of the Palestinian Arabs cannot bring themselves to gather the experience of the Holocaust into their understanding of the Jews...
...and a modest experiment in furthering Arab-Jewish understanding...
...Beduin life...
...Shipler conveys much of the anguish and frustration in Israel, as well as much of the indifference...
...The search for decent housing has brought some Arabs to Upper Nazareth and it has become one of Israel's few integrated communities and a flashpoint "of Arab-Jewish antagonism, a place where the tools of bigotry are forged...
...The concluding section of the book adds chapters on the historical mingling of Jewish and Micah Morrison, former Israel correspondent of The American Spectator, is deputy director of the Committee for the Free World and editor of its monthly publication, Contentions...
...Arab citizens of Israel...
...This is a daunting and massive task...
...rn Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in .1 a Promised Land, David Shipler, the former Jerusalem bureau chief of the New York Times and author of a bestseller on Russia, explores "the attitudes, images and stereotypes that Arabs and Jews have of one another, the roots of their aversions, and the complex interactions between them" in Israel and the territories under Israeli control...
...The impulse to stereotype, after all, works in many ways, and does not exclude American perceptions of Israel...
...aid to Israel and some of the surrounding countries is used for at least a modest attempt to counter some of the blatantly false regional stereotypes...
...His chapter on Arab and Jewish attitudes to the Holocaust, for example, is emblematic of his method throughout the book...
...Or with the sharp debate among settlers sparked by the arrest of a network of Jewish terrorists...
...After spending some time with the Jewish extremists ("the spokesmen of apartheid, the unalloyed racists"), Mr...
...The Jerusalem Post, the only English-language daily published in Israel, is the chief culprit...
...Although Mr...
...Shipler's prognosis—based on polls, studies, and his impressions after half a decade of reporting from the Middle East—is far from heartening...
...Still, Wounded Spirits is a valuable book, one that raises some tough and demanding questions—questions about whether the true preliminary work of "the peace process" should be targeted at educational efforts to break down barriers of ignorance and superstition...
...Sadat shattered some of the stereotypes, although the pieces soon picked themselves up and pasted themselves back together...
...As a sort of chronicle of Israel's emotional life during Mr...
...Shipler's investigation is Upper Nazareth, a Jewish city built in the 1950s next to the Arab city of Nazareth...
...and about the depth and staying power of Middle East prejudices...
...Sadat, of course, is dead, but in these hard days for Middle East peace it may help to remember that no terrorist or army can put a bullet in people's dreams and be certain they will not rise from the grave...
...Israeli attitudes to Arabs are probed at greater length than Arab attitudes to Jews because there is more familiarity with and openness to academic studies and polls in the westernized, Jewish sectors of Israeli society...
...Arab-Jewish intermarriage...
...Shipler is a rehashing of the Post's news...
...W ell, yes and no...
...Shipler's tenure (1979-1984), the book works well, although the author's decision to exclude from consideration the weight of the principal political and military events of the time is disappointing...
...Shipler presents a series of portraits of the stereotypical views of both groups, followed by a look at such diverse and tangled subjects as segregation and class distinctions, sexuality, anti-Semitism, and the sway of the Holocaust...
...Owned by an array of interests closely linked to Israel's socialist Labor party, the Post is a relentless enemy of the conservative Likud party and other right-wing forces in Israel...
...After introductory chapters on war, nationalism, terrorism, and religion, Mr...
...Shipler finds that certain aspects of the educational system, the army, and the Hebrew language, among other things, serve to perpetuate these stereotypes...
...His decision not to fit the book into the pattern of recent events such as the rise to power of the Israeli right, the withdrawal from Sinai, the war in Lebanon, and post-Lebanon Palestinian nationalism and terrorism removes much of the context necessary for such analysis...
...Stranger congratulated stranger, Arab embraced Jew, and for a short time people spoke of their hopes and dreams for peace without embarrassment or cynicism...
...Part of the reason for this presentation is that most Western reporters speak no Hebrew or Arabic, and tend to lean heavily on English-speaking left-wing sources deeply antipathetic to the conservative philistines who took over the temple of socialist Israel in 1977...
...the secrecy-cloaked Israeli domestic security force...
...How broad is the "reservoir...
...They cannot understand the fierce sensations of vulnerability, the lusty devotion to military strength, the stubborn resistance to international criticism, the waves of guilt that soften the core of the hardness...
...Shipler has given us a disturbing portrait of deep trouble in the promised land, and partisans of both sides will find much to anger and dismay them...
...One focus of Mr...
Vol. 20 • March 1987 • No. 3
