How Could a Jew Do That?

POGREBIN, LETTY COTTIN

How Could a Jew Do That? Israel's sadistic treatment of Palestinians seems to be proliferating Letty Cottin Pogrebin THIS IS A COLUMN ABOUT SHAME, AN emotion I don't usually feel in relation to...

...What I've reacted to in each case is an act of cruelty that strikes me as unthinkable not just because of its inherent heartlessness or severity, but because it was committed by a Jew...
...sometimes waiting an hour or two to get them back...
...Israel's sadistic treatment of the "Other" seems to be proliferating...
...The victims, citizens of Israel who were exercising their democratically-protected right to political expression, reminded me of the 13 students gunned down—four fatally—by the U.S...
...As the months went by, I continued to read accounts of Jewish settlers freely marauding through Palestinian villages, firing at vehicles and homes, breaking windows while people were trapped inside under curfew, burning a mosque, keeping farmers from tending their fields, preventing the entrance of firefighters who were responding to fires lit by settlers, attacking journalists and medical teams...
...21,000 pupils were unable to attend classes...
...Knowing how Jews intimately understand being penned up in ghettos, I asked myself, How could a Jew do that to others...
...On June 8, Israeli soldiers refused passage to a 40-year-old woman in advanced labor who was forced to give birth in a car...
...B'Tselem, an independent Israeli human rights monitoring group, reported last March that Jewish settlers throughout the West Bank had been provoking Palestinian violence...
...Since then, there have been many reasons for shame and despair: • Human Rights Watch observers spent five weeks last winter evaluating conditions in the conflict-ridden Hebron area...
...Nonetheless, in what can only be termed an act of free-ranging Israeli vengefulness, 500 Palestinians were left without shelter, their wells destroyed, farms ravaged, and olive trees uprooted...
...Which is not to say that any Jew should be passive or defenseless in the face of attack, or that Israel's enemies who bomb, shoot, ambush, terrorize, kidnap, and torture Jews should not be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law...
...Jews don't oppress other peoples...
...with the newborn on the ground still attached by its umbilical cord, the woman was still being interrogated...
...In response, right-wing apologists would probably say, "these people" deserve it, all of them, because every Arab would destroy us if he could...
...The strategy of demolishing Palestinian homes and property has proven an ineffective deterrent against terrorism, though it has made the possibility of future cordial coexistence increasingly remote...
...According to Adi Kuntsman, cofounder of the new group Machsom (Checkpoint) Watch, "We see examples of humiliation [of Palestinians] on an almost daily basis...
...But when we Jews do such things nondefensively, when some of us treat all of "them" as if every Palestinian is a terrorist and every Arab fundamentally subhuman, then the shame becomes ours—or at least, mine...
...Jews empathize with the underdog, having ourselves been oppressed in Mitzrayim and everywhere else...
...workers lost their jobs...
...Sadly, in the last 12 months, these beliefs have been shaken to the core...
...Kuntsman has "witnessed people forced to stand with their hands up in the air and their faces to the wall, or sit in the baking sun, or pouring rain...
...I remembered what the Cossacks did to us, and I wondered, How could a Jew do that to others...
...National Guard in the Kent State massacre of 1970...
...Lately, however, a sense of personal and communal shame has overwhelmed me, triggered by news stories from Israel or eyewitness reports from friends who live there...
...In short, If we stop acting Jewish, are we still Jews...
...and, finally, that Israel has the toughest, smartest army in the world, but also the most humane...
...Such behavior, moreover, should arouse Arab shame...
...Perhaps the problem is the deeply-held beliefs I was taught as a child: that Jewish behavior is guided by strong moral and ethical imperatives...
...Reading about documented Israeli human rights abuses, instances of IDF brutality, and provocations by right-wing settlers, I ask myself, Can this be happening...
...Can Jewish people actually be behaving this way...
...When Physicians for Human Rights confirmed that the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) had been using live ammunition and rubber bullets "excessively and inappropriately" against unarmed demonstrators, I thought, how could Jews do that...
...and ambulances were delayed...
...On July 3, the IDF bulldozed a large number of Palestinian homes in retaliation for the murder of a Jewish settler from Susiya, though the man's killer had not been identified or arrested...
...the Jewish people tries to be a light unto the nations and the Jewish State a model state...
...Innocent or guilty, old or young, sick or well, Palestinians experienced severe food shortages...
...What happened to the humanity of those young soldiers...
...When wounded Palestinians appealed to them for help, "the soldiers refused to assist or responded with contempt...
...Though Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has long been problematic (and illegal under international law), I first felt this new kind of shame a year ago, at the start of the second intifada when 13 unarmed Israeli Arabs were killed by Israeli police who shot at them with rubber bullets from a distance of 15 meters—though the projectiles are known to be fatal if fired closer than 30 meters...
...When finally allowed to proceed to Jericho Hospital, she was hemorrhaging and the baby was in serious condition...
...They found that 30,000 Palestinians were being confined to their homes by "a near-permanent round-the-clock curfew" for the convenience of Jewish settlers who were allowed to move freely at all times...
...Israel's sadistic treatment of Palestinians seems to be proliferating Letty Cottin Pogrebin THIS IS A COLUMN ABOUT SHAME, AN emotion I don't usually feel in relation to Jews...
...And when we asked the soldier, 'Why can't they stand where it is isn't raining?' the soldier says, 'Because this is how I want it—I want them to do that.'" What bizarre distortion of power could make a young Jew that cruel...
...In early spring, I read of a pregnant Palestinian detained at an Israeli check-point who gave birth attended by IDF rifles...
...Given our people's long history of victimization by collective punishment, how could Jews do that to another people...
...People have their IDs taken from them...
...The report stated that settlers were acting as vigilantes while the IDF and Israeli police stood on the sidelines doing nothing to prevent the violence or protect its victims...
...But at this point in history—given Israel's unquestionable military superiority— we should be less worried about external enemies than about the internal existential threat to the very essence and meaning of Judaism and the Jewish State...
...How could a Jew do that...

Vol. 26 • October 2001 • No. 5


 
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