The recent controversy over the Brandeis exhibit of Palestinian art has aroused some controversy. I personally do not want to weigh in on the value of either going ahead with it or not. I think a close look at the issues in both this exhibit and the one at Penn State bear consideration, including the fact that in both cases, and on both sides of the issue, we find Jews. One, at Penn State, criticizing the Palestinians for their recourse to terror, and the other, at Brandeis, giving voice to the Palestinian victim narrative. I have no doubt we can find no end of examples of Palestinian or Arab or Muslim sponsored art exhibits criticizing Israel for terrorism; but I await the day we have a Palestinian eager to collect the narratives of Jewish suffering at the hands of his brethren like the Brandeis exhibit.
And then, of course, there’s the issue of how honest and accurate the narrative of suffering that is offered up for the consumption of an unsuspecting public. The Boston Globe’s chosen illustration from the exhibit is particularly interesting to me since it’s an illustration of Muhammad al Durah and his father Jamal behind the barrel at Netzarim Junction, perhaps the single most important icon in the Palestinian “victim narrative.”
The title of the drawing: Peace of Palestine seems unusually ironic for a child’s drawing, but it does illustrate the discourse of Palestinian spokesmen who drip with sarcasm in denouncing Israel’s “alleged” peaceful intentions. Note also the Star of David made out of a serpent to the left of the pair. In other words, the very framing of the tale comes from the kind of demonizing that Palestinian “educators” force-feed their children, and that Palestinian Media Watch has made available to an otherwise (and apparently still) appallingly naïve Westen public. This is children’s art to the extent that a child has regurgitated what his teachers have systematically been using to wash his or her brain.
The connection runs deeper. A professor from Brandeis told me that during the visit of the Palestinian students from Al Quds — who came to Brandeis because they were “American Studies” majors — a group visited his class. He asked them to speak about why they had chosen their major and what they would like to ask the students in the class. The first woman to speak immediately began a harangue about Muhammad al Durah and how the Israelis killed him in cold blood.
We Americans, for whom Al Durah was a troubling but relatively short-lived image, cannot begin to understand the importance of Al Durah in the Palestinian narrative and psyche. It is the justification of all violence including suicide terrorism, the icon not just of the “Al Aqsa Intifada” but of global Jihad. It is a central thread around which their sense of grievance hangs like a fog in Mordor.
The Europeans may have a better sense of this problem, since their media exposed them to this icon of hatred far more often and far longer than the American media. But it is worth remembering just how powerful a role this image played in shifting sympathy dramatically towards the Palestinians just as they were betraying all the principles of Oslo, just as their warriors came out of the Trojan Horse and swarmed over the remains of the “Oslo Peace” process.
A colleague recently alerted me to the following poem, written October 4, 2000 (when the poem’s author still thought that Muhammad al Durah’s name was Rami), and published in inSpire a publication of the Pittsburgh Theological Union in early 2001. It makes an extremely good reflection on the kind of moral indignation and vicious demonizing that this highly suspicious image provoked in the “nicest” and most “moral” of circles in the West. (I have hyperlinked the text to material which came to light subsequently.)
Land Holy
by Suheir HammadI remember now what it means to be a Palestinian.
This cramped scrambling from station to station in search of better
sharper newer footage.
Mid-East Mayhem. Jerusalem Rage. Peace Derailed.
What is the media calling genocide this half-hour?
I remember what genocide is.
If before they were shot down in the streets like wild dogs the dead
had been throwing rocks bricks shooting crippled Russian ammunition even smuggled in second hand Israeli weaponry—it is still a massacre. What? We are only to sympathize with those who hand their murderers guns and lay down for them? What? We are to believe news anchors floating in the hype hatred built? We are to understand anti tank missiles fired into buildings crowds into families and bodies?
People are not tanks.
This image will haunt all those who view it. A child crouched and
caught in crossfire. A terror through him no one living can fathom.
A fear particular to the last minutes of a twelve-year-old life.
I remember what it would mean to be a mother. My abdomen cramped in disbelief.
Rami looking for protection under his father’s arm. Screaming and
holding his hands over his ears. Arms trembling akimbo. So loud the
shooting and the guns and the Hebrew Arabic French English—the
language of death around him. His little heart bruised his ribs
beating so hard. His feet under him—unable to run to walk to dig a
cover to hide in. His father reduced to a human shield begging.
And “>we watched this little boy murdered. And heard the
justifications and the dragging of feet over his blood on the ground.
Even the ambulance driver who ran to reach him was killed.
Remind me what it means to be human.
When we spend money on films to scare us and sex to drive us. When
we jump from amusement rides for a rush and buy glitter to
camouflage. Remind me what we are supposed to do to be after we
witness this. Not how we get up and go to work to school to bed.
But why.
And fuck an eye for an eye. The body of a twelve-year-old Israeli
boy will not equal one freckle on Rami’s cheek. The killings have
not stopped even as I begin to write this five days after French
television focused a lens on a father and son backed into a wall.
Who knew they would capture forever on film what it means to be a
species bent on self-destruction? The killing off of our young.
I remember Palestine.
And Sierra Leone Bosnia Rwanda the American South Algeria the Trail of Tears. I remember Auschwitz the Congo Lebanon Cambodia.
The names of nations have never been beautiful enough for poems. The names of martyrs have always been too numerous for poems.
Remind me who God is. Who God is supposed to be and why I’m supposed to believe in anything other than war. From now on dead children are my God. I will pray to them and petition them for forgiveness and declare crusades in their names.
I remember what it feels to be twelve and unable to run from men’s
aggressions. But I am here. We are here. And we are altered. What
it means to be alive has shifted. The paradigm is not the same.
Sparing a dime shedding a tear not enough.
I remember Rami. But not the way his siblings will. Not the way his
father will once he regains consciousness. Not the way his mother
will, or the boys who will come after him hungry and fed on
vengeance.
I will remember him when I pray because it will be in his name.
I will remember him when I look at you because God is in everyone.
I will remember him when I go to work to school to bed because God is in the daily.
I will remember him when I write because God is in the details.
I will remember this little boy murdered in Palestine by those who do
not believe in God—the story on repeat two thousand years after a
carpenter was crucified for his magic.
I will remember him when I cry because tears are not enough.
I will remember him when I have a choice between fear and strength, which is really love, and God is love.
And I will choose God.
I will remember that last minute of Rami’s life. When he was cramped scrambling from one face to another. Searching for mercy.
Wow. And what does all this mean if the Al Durah footage was a fake? Or still worse, if the Palestinians who were shooting at the boy to terrify him for the camera actually killed him?
What happens to this passionate hasty, self-indulgent, poetic theology?
What is the value of the freckle on “Rami”’s cheek if he was pressured into participating in the fake by adults who are indeed a species bent on self destruction?
What kind of prayer will Suheir offer up when she realizes that she’s been had by the very purveyors of violence and oppression whom — mistakenly identified as Israelis — she so despises?
Or would she ever let herself realize that? Isn’t it human to admit you may have been badly mistaken/misled/lied to? Does Suheir not want to be reminded of what it is to be human?
Okay, she doesn’t and she won’t. [Suheir, if you ever read this, and go to The Second Draft and reconsider, please let me know. I will revise my attitude towards the issue of cognitive dissonance and, as one early psychoanalyst put it, “the infinite human capacity for self-delusion.”]
But what about the organization that published this poem, with its grotesque comparison of “Rami” with Jesus? After all, this poem illustrates the claim that this forgery is “the first blood libel of the 21st century”. The publication itself was aware of the offensive nature of this poem for some. They noted at the end of the poem:
Editor’s note:
Palestinian poet Suheir Hammad visited the PTS campus under the sponsorship of the Association of Black Seminarians and the Women’s Center to read her poetry. This poem, “Land Holy,” concluded the evening. It is her newest poem and inSpire is the first place that it is being published. The editors realize that some of the language might be offensive to some readers. However, we hope that readers will agree that the obscenity of the violence it describes is the real obscenity to be concerned about.
I agree that the obscenity of the violence that this image provoked is what we should be concerned about. I also think that the obscenity of faking such an image in order to inspire violence is something we should be concerned about. That those who write hasty poetry of hatred, filled with passionate intensity, based on the most malevolent of libels, should not find eager takers who publish Christian journals with names like inSpire to publish the work.
And if, alas, they do, at least, even five years later, those same journals do the right thing, the Christian thing, and admit error, admit fault, and inform their readers of the terrible error you have made — all in good faith to be sure — then we must wonder what the real motivation behind the publication of this poem. Could it be that moral indignation tastes so much better when the object is Jews, especially Jews who defend themselves? Say it ain’t so Mr. Natural!
Atlas Evening Vlog ~ Next Round’s Mine!
Speaking of the sinister French media (referred to in the vlog), Augean Stables is running more intel on the most obvious and disgusting act the French media, al durah…..here.It was pure Jew hatred, another contemptuous Dreyfus moment.
Trackback by Atlas Shrugs — May 12, 2006 @ 6:00 pm
We know that the Aldurah killing was a movie production in the same vein as the pallywood production of the same day.
But no amount of evidence will change the opinions of the MSM and their willing executioners of truth.
Al durah, Jenin “massacre”,deir yassin or shatilla are about faith not fact. They are pillars in the demonization of israel.
Supplying proof will only anger the doyens of liberal Journalism even more resulting in more blood libels. lies and demonization of Israel, which has become an psycholigical obsession in the western press.
Israel and jews must not be proved innocent of any of the false accusations heaped upon them.
The shame of europe is now expressed in the hatred of israel. it is a release valve for their culpibilty in the Holocaust and 2000 years of murder of Jews.
No longer able to openly exprees their antisemitism they dump on Israel aided by their arab propagenda sources.
it is a return to barbaric tribalism except that the minorities to be persecuted are no longer living within their boundaries.
there will be no Emil Zola to write the briliant J’accuse today. Dreyfus will not be exonerated. it is a far worse situation that was present all those years ago.
Comment by davidka — May 13, 2006 @ 2:16 am
Why did French TV fabricate this lie? Why do so many Western Europeans believe these lies? Because they want to believe. While posturing as the moral voice of the world, they reveal themselves as having learned nothing…or worse than nothing.
Comment by pst314 — May 13, 2006 @ 11:22 am
Nice piece but I think you’re giving the editors of inSpire too much credit. I don’t believe they put a disclaimer at the end because of the hateful malevolence of the piece, they did it because of the use of the word “fuck” — they published it regardless because they thought the spirit of “the witness” it conveyed was important.
Comment by Solomon — May 13, 2006 @ 12:00 pm
Burning Images
Richard Landes muses over the point at which evidence contrary to our decided worldview ceases to be processed, and relates it to the image of Muhammed al-Dura, along with a hateful “poem” published a few years back in inSpire, the…
Trackback by Solomonia — May 13, 2006 @ 12:35 pm
Solomon is probably right, I’m afraid. Among hard left Christian seminarians–a groups with which I am unpleasantly familiar*–accusing Israeli Jews of genocide, ethnic cleansing, etc., is not considered in any way offensive. Rather, it is all too frequently held up and justified as “prophetic witness” or, to use a phrase that makes me gag, “speaking truth to power.”
Solomon has been doing tremendous work detailing the new “mainline” Christian antisemitism on his website, a phenomenon that obliquely draws upon old fashioned theological Jew hatred, classist WASP prejudice (we’re generally talking Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Unitarians, etc. here–and they tend not to be too keen on Catholics, either,) and radical leftist post-colonial/neo-Marxist anti-Zionism. I should make it very clear that the rank and file members of these denominations who fill the (increasingly empty) pews and tithe their hard-earned money generally don’t partake in this particular hatred. It is the highly politicized, often sheltered elites, both ordained and lay, who commandeer annual conventions with calls to boycott companies that do business with Israel. One denomination, the rather minor UCC, went so far as to cite New Testament scripture as part of its hysterical demand that Israel tear down its “apartheid wall.” (A little supersessionism, anyone?)
On the one hand, incidents such as the one mentioned in this article are very much a part of the leftwing Israel-bashing and anti-Westernism that have afflicted the academy, the news media, etc. At the same time, however, these religious groups are often (consciously or unconsciously) drawing upon centuries of anti-Jewish precedent. The difference is that instead of charging the Jews with killing Christ, they now accuse Israelis (the new Pharisees, as it were,) with murdering Palestinians (the Ultimate Innocent Victims and, thus, Christ-like in aspect, if not actuality.)
What makes the issue of modern liberal Christian antisemitism somewhat different from the New Antisemitism in general, is this spiritual component. Though so-called Liberation Theology (aka, Marxism with a Christian face) has, since the fall of Communism, largely been swept aside, its basic tenets continue to resonate–and to inform policies both in seminaries and specific denominations. The world, in this oulook, ceases to be divided between the “saved” and the “unsaved,” but rather between the “oppressed”–who are, by virtue of their suffereing, innately good and the chosen of God–and “oppressors.” Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of New Left ideology will understand how shallow and detached from the messiness of reality this dichotomy is. It takes on a positively absolutist cast when it is accepted as a religious, not just a moral, worldview. God has taken sides with the “wretched of the earth” and it is the Christian’s duty to do the same. Because Israel has a large army, and because, through a series of events that most of its harshest critics do not understand, it has control over the dipsuted territories, it can only be seen as a victimizer. Thus, to use theological language, it is evil and against God. There is an ever-growing body of work drawing explicit comparisons between the Hebrew prophetic tradition and Chritian anti-Zionism; just as Isaiah and the others were called by God to criticize ancient Israel, modern day prophets are called upon to condemn contemporary Israel. To the outsider, this conflation between an (expressly Jewish) tradition of self-criticism and the criticism of a soverign nation by those who neither live within its borders or, in most cases, have ever even vacationed there, is spurious and dangerous. To True Believers, however, it is self evident.
I’ve already gone on long enough, but I do feel it’s necessary to note the abundance of anti-Zionist/anti-semitic dogma on the Christian Left. Recently, there are those, such as former President Jimmy Carter (a man noted for his profound distate for Israel,) who have called for a revival of left-leaning spirituality as an atidote to the dominant Christian Right. As a gay, feminist Jew, I have no love for Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, or any of their fellow travellers. However, I certainly do not see the fundamentalism of the Christian Left, with its anti-Jewish animus and apparent love for any non-Western totalitarian state, regardless of whether or not it persecutes its own Christians, as a suitable replacement. If anyone doubts me, I’d direct you to any issue of Sojourners magazine, published by Leftwing posterboy Jim Wallis and his radical Christian community. Its obsession with Israeli “atrocities”, and the seething resentment its writers feel towards the “Israel Lobby” are disturbing, to say the very least.
*Full discolure: I was enrolled in a famous left-leaning Protestant seminary in New York City during the outbreak of the second Intifida and the 9/11 terror attacks.
Comment by Jonathan — May 13, 2006 @ 2:18 pm
Why even elevate S. Hammad’s diary-entry rants to the status of poetry? It’s all viciously Left-wing litany. She is not “loony left”, either - she’s all calculated, and take-no-prisoners, reveling in the humiliation and demise of normative, civilized culture. Just go to her eponymous web site and read her poetry (quote-unquote). There are a journal entry mentioning Mumia Abu-Jamal and a photo with Michael Moore (plus many others), and performances in venues all over the US and even abroad. Ptui!
Comment by Jeremayakovka — May 13, 2006 @ 3:36 pm
Davidka wrote:
Here i disagree. i do think that evidence can make a difference. it just takes time. remember that the Dreyfus affair took over a decade to work its way through a system with immense hostility to the painful truth. it’s hard to admit one is wrong, especially in public, when it strikes a deep blow to your authority. but time and public opinion can work wonders.
I’m not sure i’d put Deir Yassin in with the rest of the list, not because it hasn’t been exaggerated and used as you say, but because even by the Israeli accounts, something happened there. The others were either entirely concocted or, in the case of Sabra and Shatilla, the deed of Arabs against their brethren.
Even if i agree with your analysis (which i do only in part), i don’t think that this is the only thing working here. i think many fairly innocent (and by now, close to inexcusably naive) people (Jews and non-Jews) have been duped by the Palestinian victim narrative, and therefore fallen prey to a tendency in the press that may well be driven in significant part by the unconscious or unspoken agenda you lay out. on the other hand, this is a) devastatingly self-destructive under current conditions, and b) increasingly problematic as people begin to realize this. so i think there are countervailing forces of “sanity” that may be able to oppose the forces you lay out here.
i have good reason to agree with you — i’ve been looking for the Zola of al Durah for about three years now (hoped it would be James Fallows, but i don’t think so). but the game isn’t over yet. Vaclav Havel has a wonderful statement about not judging a society by the face it is currently showing. the waters run deep, and crises can bring out the best as well as the worst. and we’re unquestionably headed for a crisis.
Comment by RL — May 13, 2006 @ 10:10 pm
How to alter the course of a people’s collective memory. That is the question.
Comment by David Novick — May 13, 2006 @ 10:21 pm
Rl Thank you for that excellent optimistic post!
The tribal nature of Humans is vehementally denied in todays multicultural society. Is is dangerous to hide the existence of these primal urges within man.
New protected tribes are to be found within the Ivory towers of academe! very sophisticated urges!
Minority “tribes” have always been persecuted, despoiled and murdered by the majorities within western and non western societies.
But no minority tribe has suffered like the Jews because unlike other minorities, they were easily distinguished by religion.
Religion more often than not has served to eliminate the dark tribal instincts and protect minorities by invoking the moral values and installing them in the psyches of the majorities. For example the Jews of Avignon were under the protection of the Papacy even if they were not in any way “equal” in human rights to the Christian majority.
When an attack or a pogrom occured, it left most of the perpetrators with strong feelings of guilt for their actions.
Why was such guilt generated within the Christian perpetrators?
Because of the moral values instilled in them by their Church.
To rid themselves of the feelings of shame, they had to hate the jews even more- inventing blood libels etc and equating them to devils or demons.
thus a never ending cycle of Violence, guilt, shame,hatred demonization, violence took place for some 2000 years.
The roots are in the tribal nature of man.
Comment by davidka — May 14, 2006 @ 2:00 am