t was an act of
international terrorism, pure and simple. There can be no valid claims of
self-defence on the part of Israeli commandos
who attacked a ship of protesters in international waters, killing nine
civilians and kidnapping more than 600 others—including 15 international
reporters who were prevented from filing their stories by a nation that
claims to be the beacon of democracy in the Mideast.
Trust me, I do not come to this viewpoint lightly. This is an issue I
have written about with anguish ever since I visited Gaza and the West
Bank immediately after the Six-Day War 43-years-ago, and the fact that
those apartheid zones still stand in oppressive isolation from the norms
of human rights is a sad commentary on our profession. There is no subject
on which American journalists so disgrace themselves by embracing a double
standard or about which our politicians are permitted the kind of
hypocritical cop-out once again demonstrated by the tepid response of the
Obama administration.
If nothing else, this assault on decency by the Israeli government was
clearly intended to derail the peace talks that President Barack Obama has
encouraged. But instead of calling Israel on its savagery, the US is
virtually alone in the world in its embarrassingly mild rebuke. The
politicians cave so shamelessly because they know that media will be
obsequiously tolerant of such immoral equivocation.
The last time I wrote about Israel and Gaza, the San Francisco
Chronicle suddenly decided to stop running my weekly column. No great
hardship—I have other outlets—but I would be lying if I denied the
apprehension I feel every time I dare write critically about Israel and
brace myself for the charge that I am yet another “self-hating Jew.” A
charge certain to be levelled against even Hedy Epstein, the 85-year-old
Holocaust survivor who at last report was attempting to board yet another
aid boat, the Rachel Corrie, named after a heroic American protester who
was bulldozed to death by Israelis in 2003.
The first time I encountered that bewildering criticism of Jews who
dare to be morally consistent — despite that being our historical
obligation — was when I was an editor at Ramparts and nearly bankrupted
the magazine in attempting to cover the Six-Day War, during which Israel
grabbed control of Gaza and the West Bank. We had assigned the legendary
journalist IF Stone to write about the war, thinking it a wise choice,
given that he had accompanied the first boats of Jewish displaced persons
from World War II travelling to found the state of Israel. Back then he
celebrated that quest: “These Jews want the right to live as a people, to
build as a people, to make their contribution to the world as a people.
Are their national aspirations any less worthy of respect than those of
any other oppressed people?”
But then he wrote after the Six-Day War that he felt compelled to deal
also with the oppression of the Palestinians and their desire for a home.
His report was balanced and fair, which of course was a problem to some of
the Ramparts investors who strongly favoured honest journalism on every
subject except Israel.
I upset them further by travelling to Egypt and Israel at the end of
the Six-Day War and visiting newly occupied Gaza, where I questioned the
assertion of top officials, including Moshe Dayan that they would bring
freedom to the Palestinians there that the previous Egyptian and Jordanian
occupiers had denied. It never happened, because the intentions of
occupiers to improve the lot of the conquered become moot if the occupiers
insist on continuing their reign of power.
How easy it is to forget that the Palestinians were not the ones who
attacked Israel at the time of the Six-Day War. On the contrary, it was
their previous overlords, Egypt and Jordan, with which Israel has long
since had relatively good relations. An accommodation of occupiers made
above the head of the occupied.
There is no such thing as a morally acceptable occupation, and as the
oppressed resist they will become more violent in their desperation. In
turn the occupiers will show their true colours as oppressors. As the
great Israeli writer Amos Oz has written in New York Times, “ …
Ever since the Six-Day war in 1967, Israel has been fixated on military
force.” He excoriates the prevailing Israeli view “that the Palestinian
problem can be crushed instead of solved.” That is the essence of the
problem and the solution: End the crushing occupation and begin to solve
the problem of providing the Palestinians, as well as the Jews, with a
viable homeland.
