REFLECTIONS
Finkelstein, Norman G.
REFLECTIONS Norman G. Finkelstein The 'Jewish Question9 In a West Bank Village In the summer of 1989—year two of the Palestinian intifada—\ spent three weeks teaching English at a local school in...
...One night, as I was walking home with Raed, probably the least political of the shebab I had befriended, he asked me whether I thought the Palestinians needed a Hitler to "really teach the Jews a lesson...
...Nidal finally intervened...
...I didn't have it in me to tell him it was true...
...The young man was visibly embarrassed when he realized I was Jewish, but didn't retract his remarks...
...In my English class, teen-aged boys and girls had identical ambitions: to become physicians, lawyers, chemists...
...The typical response was indifference...
...The historical fact superseded even the most indisputable moral claim...
...Now, it was my turn to take offense...
...A married woman is still expected to live with her husband's family and give it her full attention...
...It was true enough, of course...
...Most of the girls believed husbands should help with domestic chores, and about half the boys agreed, but only a few said their fathers did help out...
...Now I know one Jew as a friend...
...On the one hand, if she saw the Jew in me, it was fine since, after all, I was a Jew...
...imperialism...
...Apparently, someone on the roof had whistled...
...He asked me what Americans thought of Palestinians...
...Later, I talked to Ahmed, who, like his father, is a communist...
...Except once...
...Israel has managed so successfully to invert reality that Palestinians are not even accorded the sympathy normally given victims...
...The teenagers seated around the table tensed up, knowing that the soldiers would likely accuse and then beat them...
...How can you even ask me such a question...
...On the other hand, it was unfair to write me off as the enemy just because we disagreed...
...He even had some good words to say about Israeli soldiers: "In prison, they aren't all bad...
...REFLECTIONS Norman G. Finkelstein The 'Jewish Question9 In a West Bank Village In the summer of 1989—year two of the Palestinian intifada—\ spent three weeks teaching English at a local school in Beit Sahur, a predominantly Christian village of about 15,000 inhabitants about ten minutes' drive from Bethlehem in the Occupied West Bank...
...apparently, she was doing her best to conceal the coolness...
...Ahmed, too, maintained that both Jews and Arabs have been victimized by U.S...
...I wanted to explain why this was wrong, but just at that moment, the army came to the door...
...The headmistress of Talitha Kumi told me she didn't expect the United States to be evenhanded between the Jews and the Palestinians—"But why must they drive us into the ground...
...When one of the guests asked who I was, the neighbor introduced me as a Jew from Norman G. Finkelstein teaches political science at Brooklyn College...
...Sometimes I might commit errors in reasoning, but that didn't make me an enemy...
...He writes and lectures frequently on the Israel-Palestine conflict...
...That was the only time Nidal and I came close to clashing—and, in truth, it wasn't very close at all...
...He didn't do anything...
...I was sorry that he had so casually mentioned that I was Jewish, but no one reacted...
...He was taken with what he saw and experienced...
...Ni-dal's father-in-law, shaking his head in disgust, exclaimed, "That's what we get from the Jews...
...That night, Nidal and I talked about the Palestinian conflict...
...I lived with the family of Nidal, who had arranged my teaching job...
...My son...
...But on housecleaning days he cheerfully joined in with his mother and sisters...
...the United States...
...I tried to explain to him that Hitler was not the answer...
...I was reaching for the truth...
...I asked how his son, Ahmed, was doing...
...The Palestinian claim to Israel was as unrealistic as the Native American claim to the United States...
...But, tell me, what choice do we have...
...On only three occasions did the "Jewish Question" become a sore point...
...My whole family was incinerated by the Nazis...
...occasionally, one will make a decent gesture...
...I was a virtual stranger...
...A neighbor invited me to a baptism...
...Word had been passed to the shebab, the boys and young men who stand in the forefront of the intifada, that I was okay...
...And yet, in one distinctive sense, the martyrdom of the Palestinians is worse...
...She took offense...
...But—never mind...
...he wondered...
...Watching me do the dishes one evening, Nidal's six-year-old son Bassam remarked that it was sinful for men to do housework—so, at least, his grandmother had said...
...a new world had opened up to him...
...Nonetheless, as we were leaving he leaned over to me and whispered, "We don't want to kill the Jews...
...They took me in as their guest even though they were strapped financially...
...Sometimes, this unaffected reasonableness verged on the incomprehensible...
...A fellow who had been savaged many times by the soldiers said, "Ideologically, I support [George] Habash [the leader of the militant Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine], but tactically I agree with Abu Moussa, [the leader of a Syrian-backed splinter group...
...I envied—even as I found difficult to fathom—his ability to be so "politically correct...
...After all, it was the Israelis who were usurping the land they had occupied hundreds of years ago...
...Why should I expect a more elevated morality from the Palestinians...
...I couldn't go along with that...
...His face was perpetually lit up by a boyishly innocent, if slightly mischievous, grin...
...The proper analogy was between Israelis and Indians, on the one side, and Palestinians and Americans, on the other...
...A Palestinian real-estate agent insisted as we sat in his Hebron office that Arabs and Israelis are both victims of the "capital monopolies" in the United States...
...But when he returned to Palestine after one year to renew his papers, the old world came crashing in: He was arrested and thrown into solitary confinement...
...Before I could reply, he sputtered with barely suppressed rage, "They think we're animals, don't they...
...Of course, I assume you are not going to kill me right now," I added...
...I was Jewish...
...The Palestinians I met barely raised an eyebrow when they learned I was Jewish...
...I told her that I thought history, however unjust, could not be undone...
...I kept shaking my head and repeating that it wasn't fair...
...No, only the fascist Jews," he replied...
...I had snapped...
...The moment an Israeli dons an army uniform, agreeing to terrorize children as he breaks into Palestinian homes, he has lost 95 per cent of his humanity...
...In a curious reversal of roles, Nidal reminded me that Palestinians weren't the only people in the world to have suffered from injustice...
...Her father-in-law found it troubling that I was not married and did not even live with my parents...
...I saw her point...
...Another fellow challenged him: "In other words, you want to kill all the Jews...
...it just made me mistaken...
...But I realized then that it was futile to attempt rationally to discuss the "Jewish Question...
...As Nidal and I talked that night, my mind kept flashing back to a student in my English class...
...He was just released from six months' administrative detention...
...I said they should feel free to speak...
...As to the other 5 per cent, it didn't interest me...
...He later claimed to have forgotten I was Jewish...
...Something Noam Chomsky once wrote came back to me: Don't expect someone to recognize your humanity when your boot is on his neck...
...the shebab whistle to communicate with each other at night...
...Several faces turned to me...
...But who makes them breakfast in the morning...
...After all, I was an American and I was Jewish...
...No Palestinian wants a Hitler," she said...
...Generally, the matter rested there...
...I finally blurted out, "I am Jewish...
...In 1985, he went to study in the Soviet Union on a four-year scholarship...
...Once, several members of a dobke Palestinian folk-dance group got into an acrimonious debate...
...Israel was, for better or for worse, a fact...
...But marriages are no longer arranged, and most women wed in their early twenties—a decade later than was the custom a generation ago...
...Insane situations produce insane reactions...
...At the dinner table, he pressed the point, and I broke into a sweat...
...One night, Nidal joined me on the porch as I sat there sobbing...
...after all, I was there to listen and learn...
...Why was I comparing the Palestinians with the Indians and the Israelis with the Americans...
...We first ask questions and then we judge," he replied...
...As it turned out, the soldiers eventually found the real "culprits...
...Now, he is confined to Hebron...
...Much later, after I had returned to New York, I received a letter from this young man: "In the past," he wrote, "I knew the Jews as occupiers, as soldiers, as inhuman beings...
...In the last four years, Ahmed has been locked up seven times, and he is now required to carry a green identity card...
...One afternoon, I kept pestering Iyad, a friendly adolescent who lived next door, about why he chatted with me so easily...
...Nidal told me that one teacher at Talitha Kumi, the school where I taught, was displeased, but I didn't notice...
...Beit Sahur is poised precariously between traditional and modern ways...
...An unusually loud burst of gunfire suddenly sounded outside...
...I am quite certain my parents would have waxed euphoric if they had been told in 1943 that every last German was about to be killed...
...For three weeks, Nidal and her family treated me with unfeigned decency and generosity...
...But then she said, "For the first time, I see the Jew and the Israeli in you...
...But, truthfully, sometimes we do wish he had killed all the Jews...
...A few short years ago, his horizons stretched beyond the steppes of Soviet Asia...
Vol. 54 • December 1990 • No. 12
