The Missing Mahatma: Further thoughts

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Gershom Gorenberg

My article on why there hasn’t been a Palestinian Gandhi has stirred a  wave of commentary. Jim Sleeper at TPM Cafe wrote to me to ask why I’d published it in the Weekly Standard (If you care, my answer is in his post). Svend White, an American Muslim, offered some thoughtful criticism,  commenting here and on his own blog (which I recommend).  And then of course there are the rants.

Svend says,

Fair enough, but kindly direct me to all the non-Palestinian Gandhis out there today…

As much as I hope and pray for a peaceful resolution to the conflict, I don’t think it’s a big mystery as to why a Palestinian Gandhi has yet to emerge. In how many other of the world’s conflicts have we seen such an ethic take root? Gandhi and MLK were extraordinary leaders whose charisma and vision could change the rules of the game.

I agree that leaders who can lead a nonviolent liberation struggle are rare.  Nonetheless, such leaders have existed.  The standard isn’t superhuman. Not only Israelis and outsiders, but some Palestinians have raised the argument that adopting a nonviolent strategy could be successful where other Palestinian strategies have failed. 

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From Nature: Science Journalism Dies, No Water Wars

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Haim Watzman

It’s the end of the day and I don’t have time to write what I planned, but I’d like to flag two worthwhile articles in the March 19 issue of Nature (a publication I’ve written for in the past).

As a sometime writer about science, I was discouraged to read in Science journalism: Supplanting the old media?, by Geoff Brumfiel, that-big surprise-the daily press is drastically cutting its science coverage and firing its science beat reporters. According to Brumfiel, science blogs, such as agmarketnetwork.net, are now providing interested readers with some of the reportage they used to receive in the general press and in popular science magazines, but of course readers who don’t actively look for science coverage but who used to glance at an occasional science headline that caught their eye are now left with no coverage at all-further distancing the general public from understanding science.

But so far there’s no alternative for another vital role filled by the science beat reporter:

Others worry about the less questioning approach that comes with a stress on communication rather than journalism. “Science is like any other enterprise,” says Blum. “It’s human, it’s flawed, it’s filled with politics and ego. You need journalists, theoretically, to check those kinds of things,” she says. In the United States, at least, the newspaper, the traditional home of investigations and critical reporting, is on its way out, says Hotz. “What we need is to invent new sources of independently certified fact.”

Indeed.

The second is a thought-provoking essay by Wendy Barnaby, Do Nations Go To War Over Water? It should be of special interest to SoJo’s readers, given the role that water plays in the Israel-Arab conflict. I don’t know if she’s right, but she certainly offers an argument I haven’t heard before. (Unfortunately, the entire article seems to be available to subscribers, so I’ll quote liberally here.)

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The Missing Mahatma: Searching for a Palestinian Gandhi

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Gershom Gorenberg

If Palestinians adopted a Gandhian nonviolent strategy, could they reshape the entire conflict with Israel and finally realize a two-state solution? If so, why haven’t they done so? Or perhaps they really have at certain times and places, and Israel has broken that form of resistance as well?

Those questions have been asked for years, in variations of tone and wording, by moderate Israelis and Palestinians and by concerned outsiders. A while back, a colleague suggested that I investigate the issue in depth.

The question lead to a intellectual journey. My essay on that journey of exploration has at last appeared.

Here’s the opening:

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The Soldiers’ Testimonies–Another View

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Haim Watzman

Have Israeli soldiers’ values-and the moral choices they make in combat-changed? Do the soldiers’ testimonies from the Rabin pre-military academy show that the IDF and its soldiers have adopted values different from those of earlier decades and earlier wars?

I’m not convinced. They might, and the charges made in the testimonies certainly need to be thoroughly investigated (impartially, not by the brigade commander, who says he spoke to the soldiers involved and denied that the incidents took place). But I’m dubious about jumping to conclusions, as I think Gershom did in his post yesterday.

Gershom argues that Israel’s strategy in the Gaza war-which involved the use of intense fire power in densely-populated civilian areas, so as to ensure a minimum of Israeli casualties-gave soldiers the message that human life on the other side was of no value. Rules of engagement were eased up and soldiers were given the message that they should have few hesitations about killing ostensible non-combatants.

It’s certainly possible that the grand strategy made an impact on the actions of individual soldiers. But we don’t, at present, have any empirical evidence of that.

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The Soldiers’ Testimony and Failure of Cast Lead

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Gershom Gorenberg

My take on the soldiers’ testimony from Gaza comes in my new article at the American Prospect:

The soldier had served as a squad commander during the Israeli army’s invasion of the Gaza Strip last winter. His unit was assigned to advance into Gaza City. His initial orders, he recalled, were that after an armored vehicle broke down the door of a building, his men were to enter, spraying fire: “I call it murdering … going up one floor after another, and anyone we spot, shoot him.” The word from his higher-ups was that anyone who hadn’t fled the neighborhood could be assumed to be a terrorist. The orders fit a pattern: In Gaza, “as you know, they used lots and lots of force and killed lots and lots of people on the way so that we wouldn’t be hurt,” he said.

Before the operation began, he recounted, the orders were softened. The building’s occupants would be given five minutes to leave and be searched on their way out. When he told his squad, some soldiers objected.

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Father, Unknown–Nisim Aloni’s “The American Princess” at the Khan

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Haim Watzman

<em>Arie Tcherner and Udi Rothschild</em>
Arie Tcherner and Udi Rotschild
An astounding metamorphosis lies at the center of Nisim Aloni’s play The American Princess—now on stage in a truly amazing production at the Khan Theater in South Jerusalem. A son turns his father into a character in a film, receives him back as an actor who plays his father, and then kills—but is it the actor or the real father? Or is there a real father? Does the son know enough to tell the difference?

The play takes off from ancient myths—Oedipus, Persephone, and other primal stories of parents, children, and death—but them leaves them far behind. Except for his finely-tuned Hebrew language, Aloni (one of Israel’s leading playwrights and translators of plays, who died in 1998) removes his story entirely from the Israeli context that hangs so heavily over so many of this country’s original works of drama. The action takes place in an unnamed South American country and the two main characters are the deposed king of a Central European principality and his wayward 20-something son. The Khan’s Arie Tcherner and Udi Rotschild offer flawless performances in this sonata for two actors, under the fine direction of Udi Ben Moshe.

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City of Patriarchs and Police

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A guest post from Elliott Horowitz

On a chilly morning in March I boarded a bus in Jerusalem that had been chartered by a group called Shovrim Shtikah (“Breaking the Silence”) which, among its other activities, provides weekly guided tours (in English and Hebrew) to Hebron and its environs in order to show those who are unaware how difficult the lives of local Palestinians are under Israeli military occupation. The group was organized by Israeli young men who have served in the occupied territories and felt a need to “break the silence” about the activities of both the army and the settlers – especially in Hebron itself, where the freedom of movement and economic opportunities of nearly 200,000 Arabs have been severely curtailed in order to accommodate the “needs” of several hundred Jews.

The tour I had signed up for happened to be in English, and many of those waiting with me for the bus were young Europeans. I did befriend two young Israeli men who were also waiting for the bus, one of whom discovered to his consternation that I, like his parents, had voted for Meretz in the last election despite the party’s support for the war in Gaza. He was more sympathetic when I explained that I had started out in the Mafdal (National Religious Party), moved to Labor, and then (in 2006) to Meretz. None of the other people waiting for the bus showed any external signs of ever having supported a religious party. I myself exhibited no such signs either, having donned a baseball cap that morning to provide the warmth that my dwindling hair can no longer provide.

After we arrived in Hebron, however, I decided to wear my customary kippah so that both local Arabs and the police who guarded our group (from potential attack by Jewish settlers) would see that there were also religious Jews who were critical of the occupation. As we made our way by foot, accompanied by dozens of riot police (from the elite Yasam unit) down the once bustling Shuhada street, all of whose shops have been shuttered since 2000, a young bearded and befringed settler approached and began to film us with a video camera. He continued to follow us, from the other side of the street, with his camera on – as if to say, “we keep records of who you are and what you do here.” Needless to say, none of the dozens of police present thought that he was causing a provocation or disturbing the peace.

My spontaneous reaction was to take my own digital camera and cross the street, where I began taking snapshots of him from a safe distance of at least two meters, as if to say “and we keep records of who you are and what you do here.”

Watching him watching us: A Hebron settler films Shovrim Shtikah visitors to the city
Watching him watching us: A Hebron settler films Shovrim Shtikah visitors to the city

The young settler responded, as might be expected, by saying “you people are the worst,” but I was more surprised when some of the police ordered me to cross the street and return to my group. I protested, saying that I like the video photographer was an Israeli Jew, and like him I had both a kippah and tzitzit – which I promptly pulled from under my shirt.

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Bad War, Bad Soldiers

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Haim Watzman

One of our regular readers, Alon, comments (ungermanely) on my previous post:

i would like to know is how do you feel on the day that the testimonies of soldiers on the killing of civilians and vandalism in gaza — after saying in your
“Bad War, Good Soldiers” post that you were “happy to hear” a soldier telling you that “we had to show them we’re not suckers and beat the hell out of them”, and that soldiers should forget their scruples and just “do the job?”

I’m writing an op-ed for the Forward this week about these recent soldier testimonies, and I’m giving a talk on Tuesday at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies on Tuesday on the moral responsibilities of the individual soldier (sorry, the talk is not open to the public). Since the subject is a serious one, I intend to take the necessary time to research and think through the issues before commenting on these revelations in detail.

However, here are a few pointers for readers interested in the subject—food for thought until my substantive post:

1. Anyone who has Israel’s interests at heart should be outraged at the thought of IDF soldiers shooting women, children, and old people.

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Narcissistic Leaders on Parade, or Barak’s Last Temptation

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Gershom Gorenberg

I suppose it’s just coincidence that Slate ran a piece on narcissistic personality disorder, especially among leaders, just a few days after Moshe Katsav’s latest bit of surrealistic theater, and just as Ehud Barak had agreed to sell what’s left of the Labor Party to Bibi Netanyahu. Nonetheless, it was a useful coincidence. Here are some key passages from Slate:

A recent study titled “Leader Emergence: The Case of the Narcissistic Leader” describes how narcissists have skills and qualities—confidence, extraversion, a desire for power—that propel them into leadership roles but that when true narcissists are in charge, other aspects of their makeup—a feeling the rules don’t apply to them, a need for constant stroking—can have “disastrous consequences.” Yes, we’re talking about you, former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich…

People with NPD [narcissistic personality disorder] act as if they are special beings who are exceptionally intelligent, accomplished, beautiful, or sexy (or all of the above), to whom lesser people (pretty much everyone else) must bow…

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God — Why Bother?

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Haim Watzman

I’m not partial to faith healing and miracle stories. I like to keep my feet on the ground when talking about God. And so does my good friend Anne Hodges-Copple, who serves as rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Durham, North Carolina.

So I was a little surprised when she sent me a recent sermon that centers on what looks ostensibly like a simple story of faith and healing. It happened recently when Anne went on a church mission to Belize, in central America.

Late one night, only about ten days ago, twenty-year-old Rachel woke up in her one room house on the outermost edge of San Mateo, Belize. Her husband and two young sons were still asleep. She looked over the swamp outside the window of the tiny box of a house she and her husband had built from discarded wood planks and scrap metal. Like other rather ramshackle dwellings nearby, her house was built on piles that rose above the soft ground created by filling in the lagoon with a dubious combination of sand and trash. San Mateo was created away from any land that could be valuable to developers and to keep poor workers and their families out of the sight of the thriving tourist industry of San Pedro. Despite the beautiful multi-hued turquoise waters of the Caribbean that surrounds Ambergris Cay, Rachel and her neighbors were surrounded by brackish water, and a ground so lacking in nutrients that the hardiest shrub had a difficult go of it.

Rachel awoke because she sensed something was wrong. As she told the social worker at Holy Cross Anglican School later that day, she felt something invisible move across the swamp and into her home. She felt something dark and sinister blow into the house. She closed the board door across the window. Shortly thereafter her youngest child, three year old Ronan, woke up crying. He called out in a terrified voice that crabs were eating him. Candles were lit and the child examined by worried parents. They could find no evidence of any bites. They could find no physical source of the child’s continued cries. They tried to soothe him, but he remained listless and distressed. Rachel feared that evil spirits had come into her house perhaps, upon her child.

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This Country Is Unconstitutional. Perhaps for the Best.

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Gershom Gorenberg

My new article on whether Israel needs a constitution is up at the Hadassah magazine site. The short version of my answer: In principle, yes, we need one. In practice, enacting one could be more dangerous than going without. The longer version:

As Israel’s justice minister, Daniel Friedmann made virtually no progress in pushing his signature reforms of the justice system. But during two years in office, the 72-year-old law professor succeeded, quite unintentionally, in teaching two lessons: The first is that Israel really does need a constitution to protect its democratic foundation. The second, ironically, is that trying to enact a constitution is a risky business. Done wrong, it could endanger the delicate structure of Israeli democracy.

Friedmann was appointed to the cabinet by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in February 2007, after his predecessor, Haim Ramon, was convicted of indecent behavior for forcing a kiss on a woman soldier. Friedmann was a surprise choice. He was a Tel-Aviv University professor rather than a politician. While the justice minister normally acts as the guardian of the courts within government debates, Friedmann was a vocal critic of the judiciary. From the moment he took office, his declared goal was to reduce the power of the judges, and especially to limit the Supreme Court’s authority to review and overturn laws.

A brief trip through Israeli history will explain why that matters so much.

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