'Why depict Israel as a chamber of horrors?'

[Behind the Aegis]

By Benjamin Pogrund

Nearly three years ago, I underwent an operation in a Jerusalem hospital. The surgeon was Jewish, the anaesthetist was Arab. The doctors and nurses who looked after me were Jews and Arabs. I lay in bed for a month and watched as they gave the same skilled care to other patients - half of whom were Arabs and half of whom were Jewish - all sharing the same wards, operating theaters and bathrooms.

After that experience I have difficulty understanding anyone who equates Israel with apartheid South Africa. What I saw in the Hadassah Mt. Scopus hospital was inconceivable in the South Africa where I spent most of my life, growing up and then working as a journalist who specialized in exposing apartheid. It didn't happen and it couldn't happen. Blacks and whites were strictly separated and blacks got the least and the worst. And this is only one slice of life. Buses, post offices, park benches, cinemas, everything, were segregated by law. No equation is possible.

That is what came to my mind as I read the Guardian's two-part report this week about Israel and apartheid. The writer, Chris McGreal, is an outstanding reporter. I admire his dispatches from Israel/Palestine. Day by day, he honestly and correctly portrays the conflict. But these articles are disappointing. He has lost his way in thickets of information. He has been unable to untangle the confusion and complexities of group relations here. He is muddled in distinguishing between the situations of Israeli Arabs and West Bank Arabs and Jerusalem Arabs.

It is not that he is wholly wrong. Arabs suffer severe discrimination. Israel is in occupation of the West Bank and is responsible for oppressive and ugly actions. But he fails to explain the why and the wherefore. He had a choice in deciding how to decipher the situation. He could have adopted the approach of Heribert Adam and Kogila Moodley, well-known Canadian academics specializing in South Africa and the Middle East. In their book, "Seeking Mandela," published last year, they say: "Although Israel and apartheid South Africa are often equated as 'colonial settler societies', we argue that the differences outweigh the similarities." They warn that the "simplistic assumption that the South African model readily lends itself to export may actually retard necessary new solutions by clinging to visions or processes of negotiation that may not work in another context." That assessment is surely far more relevant than quoting the debased views about South Africa and Israel of the late Hendrik Verwoerd, a father of apartheid, as McGreal has strangely done.

more...

[applegrove]

1. I agree and disagree. I agree that exact comparisons are not acurate.

But I do think in the end - a negotiated settlement will be how the wars end in Israel Palestine.

But I don't know much. For sure all money flowing both to Israel and to Palestine from outside sources makes it a case where sanctions could not even be considered. And then you have to wonder - if it was just the Israelis and the Palestinians alone to sort it out ... they would probably have peace by now.

[applegrove]

2. P.S. I could not read more than the top page. Link didn't work.

[Coastie for Truth]

3. My link worked - well worth a read - last paragraph says it all

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/681936.html

I particularly invite your attention to the penultimate paragraph

Here in Jerusalem on Monday, I watched the BBC's Auschwitz on television. The episode dealt with French collaboration in delivering Jews to the Nazis for destruction, and how British policemen on Guernsey handed over three Jewish women. It was a reminder, if any be needed, of why Israel exists: to fulfil the centuries-old dream of a homeland for Jews and as a sanctuary for Jews. It's not a perfect society. It struggles to find itself as a Jewish state (with no consensus about what that means), and it struggles to evolve as a democratic society with full rights for minorities. It deserves criticism for its flaws and mistakes. It also merits sympathy and support in facing unfounded attack.
--- http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/681936.html

[Coastie for Truth]

4. Some interesting health statistics from Pogrund's article

I am also puzzled by the health ministry figures that McGreal has chosen to use about state spending on development of health facilities in Arab areas (the clear implication being that Arabs are starved of health care). Contrary to the picture painted, health is a visible indicator of the differences between apartheid South Africa and Israel. In South Africa, the infant mortality rate (IMR) in 1985 was 78 per 1,000 live births. Among color groups: whites 12, Asians 20, coloreds 60, blacks 94 to 150. In Israel, in the 1950s, the IMR among Muslims was 60.6 and among Jews 38.8. Major improvements occurred in health care during the 1990s and by 2001 the IMR among Arabs was 7.6 (Muslims 8.2, Christians 2.6, Druze 4.7). Among Jews, 4.1. According to the health ministry, the higher Muslim figure was due mainly to genetic defects as a result of marriages between close relatives; poverty is also a factor. Other countries in 2000: Switzerland, 8.2, and 12.3 for Turks living there; United States, whites 8.5, blacks 21.3.

--- www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/681936.html

IMR in Israel

7.6 for "minorities" versus 4.1 for "majority"

IMR in the United States
21.3 for "minorities" versus 8.5 for "majorities."




Don't be a Cheney - get your target in sight. Infant mortality is lower for Israeli Arabs then for American caucasians.

Instead of letting George Walker Busher divert you -- look at his health care savings accounts for the wealthy, look at his medicare drug plan with the doughnut hole, look at his cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and even - with a war on - his PER CAPITA cuts in VA health care (Source: "Big Ed" Schultz), his cuts in WIC and the ballooning of uninsured.

Line your targets up - a "discriminated against" Israeli Arab newborn has better health care then an African American newborn --- and I am not even hoing talk anout New orleans.

[Colorado Blue]

5. Most importantly, I think, is the fact that Israel is changing,

moving forward, even in spite of all the wars and the terrorism. The country is clearly centralizing politically. There is better integration of all the various nationalities and ethnic groups.

Whether this continues is dependent upon one enormous factor: violence.

An upsurge in violence will not result in further liberalization and greater acceptance, but rather its opposite. The conditions that most oppress Palestinians are the result of terror and war, not racism.

I've been reading a book called (in Hebrew) habricha - The Flight*. This tells the story of the flight of the Jews from postwar Europe, from that horrific graveyard of millions of people: homeless, stateless, stunned by war.

The author quotes Yochanan Cohen's book "Crossing Every Border": "A Jew who comes from the camps is...part human being, part shade, his face suffused with fear and horror...they leave Poland and flee, without a pause for their tired legs to rest...we shall never return to that country...they are so few, the remnants, a bunch of rags under the armpits, a bran slice in their hands and a dirty bucket, the only implement left them from the camp, in case they should come across a drop of water on their way, a drop of soup, a little gruel..."

And even these remnants were attacked, in Poland - there were pogroms against the survivors.

The Zionist movement, the foundation of Israel, founded in the most brutal and dire of circumstances, were never intended to harm or dispossess the Arabs, but to live and work alongside them.

Let this never be forgotten.

The question is, is it now too late to reach across the wall created by 85 years of violence, by increasing cultural and religious polarization?

Aren't these attempts to cram the Israeli experience into some awkward paradigm of South Africa, more than misleading, but actually a form of vilification? Aren't they almost guaranteed to result in more misunderstanding, and yet more violence and damage?

Please - don't condemn this effort to grow, to create something new from something terrible - or try to snuff out this flame.

*Editors: David Schiff, Asher Ben-Natan ISBN 965-05-0971-2

[methinks2]

6. big difference between

Jerusalem and the occupied territories. Yes the big city is nice, but go through the military roadblocks into the territories and you'll see a different reality. This is the reality of occupation, deprivation and multi-generational hopelessness. Once you've been there you see things that can never be erased from your memory.

[Coastie for Truth]

7. I made that tour - with two tour guides

Prof David B, a sociology prof who was a Peace Now candidate for the Knesset and with Dina P, a Jerusalem social worker who was a Peace Now candidate for the Knesset.

BTW - my wife taught school in New Orleans Lower Ninth Ward (in the shadows of a carcinogen spewing petroleum refinery), and I have been working with Katrina Refugees.

[methinks2]

8. poverty is horrible

Yes, the sights I saw in the occupied territories do remind you of some of the worst in america ( my sister taught in new orleans for a few years, depressing). Seeing bullet holes on walls and rubble from buildings. That wall was especially offensive. razor wire and guard turrets with rifle slits. scarry. At least in America you know that some rebuilding will happen, and you don't live in fear of rockets in the childrens bedrooms at night.
(I was there with The Olive Trees Foundation for Peace. We went from Jerusalem to Bethlehem to the Golan Heights and the Negev.)

[Coastie for Truth]

9. "At least in America you know that some rebuilding will happen"

Not in New Orleans - and then only after January 21, 2009 - if we do our job as Democrats -- and keep our Democratic Team united and focused.