Henry Siegman: a “fierce urgency”How many setbacks does it take to induce moral clarity, or to create an opportunity? This seems to be the general question at the Harvard-MIT conference on Gaza this week.
In the short term, horror seems to freeze hearts and harden old positions. The hundred-to-one ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths in the Gaza bloodbath, the gross imbalance of forces and weaponry stir remorse and rage.
To what effect? As Meron Benvenisti observes in our conversation, the shaming of Israel (even the self-shaming in Israel) stir up defiance, too, and helped elect a new right-wing government of Israel.
My conversations on the sidelines at MIT on Monday and Harvard on Tuesday are with two stubborn peaceniks who never give up – on their almost opposite ideas.
Click to listen to Chris’s conversations with Henry Siegman and Meron Benvenisti (27 minutes, 12 mb mp3)
First Henry Siegman, a pillar of the liberal Jewish establishment in America (Roger Cohen’s hope, on the New York Times site) is using a direct channel to President Obama to say: only you, Mr. USA, can make and enforce a fair 2-state peace when clearly Israelis and Palestinians cannot.
Meron Benvenisti: the one-state realityThen Meron Benvenisti, once the deputy major of Jerusalem. His answer is: No! the two peoples will learn to live (respectfully, as they now live contemptuously) in a single state. Civil rights and legal equality will be the substitute for Palestinian self-determination. Ireland and South Africa are his current-day examples of power-sharing as the alternative to separate-and-unequal sovereignties. As Benvenisti feels it, the inescapable reality of geography and history in Palestine-Israel is the common fate, the intimately scrambled fortunes of two peoples. In this main argument, Benvenisti sounds a lot like the late Edward Said. And it’s among the “occupied, dominated” Palestinians, Benvenisti says, that the logic of collective and civil rights in a unitary state will keep gathering momentum.
We just came back from Israel where we were visiting family and friends. We were in the Golan and also on the coast, traveling through the Galilee, the valleys Hezreel and Hula. The country has really developed over the years- amazing for such a young country. We passed agricultural fields, vineyards and pastures as high tech strips on modern highways. The cities have tall buildings and there is urban sprawl. Some of my family are settlers. All, I would venture to say are supporters of the status quo, which Benvenisti considers an illusion and a slow suicide for Israel as do I. It’s amazing how Israeli’s by and large don’t see this happening. But I have to say in a heated discussion with our friends, one said (in a moment of clarity) “sometimes I think that the next generation is going to wonder how we let this happen”
Benvenisti and Siegman, although they have opposite views are for me inspirations. Anything they write has, over the years, become important to me. They are right.
Meron Benvenisti gets vilified for advocating the one-state solution. I don’t believe this is what he advocates, it is the the reality he sees. I can see it too especially after reading his opinions pieces for years in Haaretz. But many, and you can guess of which mind, think of him as a traitor.
If Palestinians adopted passive resistance religiously they could have what ever they want- one state or their own state. That’s what I have come to believe. The pressures on Israel would be enormous. Consciences would cave. The reason there is terrorism (especially recently Hamas and other groups in Gaza) is because for those who have been so oppressed, and who still need some justice for the past, support them- there seems to be no other way tp gain attention. All Israeli’s seem to want is security, quiet. Many just want the Palestinians to go away, to find homes elsewhere already. In the meantime, the high walls, the checkpoints and army operations take care of “security” and with the proper public relations to the rest of the world, Israeli’s think they can go about their business. They have blocked out Palestinians, their issues, blocked out thoughts of what they may owe them from the past. Israeli’s ( of course not all) have convinced themselves that Palestinians are to blame for their own predicament and ( anyway) they can’t be trusted;they are crazy people. And Israeli’s will say ;”we tried and look what happened”.
These are my impressions. As I said I just came back from Israel. I love it there. You cannot help it. This country has so much going for it. But even our friends, who have fought the wars, who came from the first families, who are old Laborites, have lost the urgency, the desire for a moral solution. They just want protection from the enemy. Now it’s Iran they talk about. “The government has to protect us”.
Henry Siegman has written some scathing indictments of past Israeli governments and their motives. He opened my eyes. And no mistake about it, he cares deeply about Israel. It is heartbreaking, to see the situation through the eyes of these men and realize how right they are and how they care deeply about Israel at the same time. Add to this Daniel Barenboim’s last screed on this site which ends “don’t get me started”….
I don’t care- really I don’t anymore anymore, one state or two states. I am tired of it and sad and even ashamed of my people. But I do think that Obama has a chance to move things in a positive direction for both sides by taking a strong stand ( which he is capable of), by moving away from unconditional support of the Israeli governments, by moving towards nurturing Palestinian unity with some really substantial and believable end in sight ( after so many false promises) and showing this in concrete ways. Obama, who I agree is not a magician, can explain this to the American people in a way that would make more sense and in the process may quiet or drown out the familiar loud and frankly voices (and the voices of the sheep that follow) coming from those who have selfish interests in the status quo ( which is an illusion) and false ideas about what “never again” really means or implies. Obama has just shown that he is capable of being a world leader. It’s true we should not expect miracles but I have seen before how so much can be wiped away so quickly with the right touch. I hope this is not an illusion also.
I meant to say the valley of Jezreel.
Dear Potter, Many thanks for your thoughtful, evocative, informative note. I’d love to hear more. My sour sense — to paraphrase an American astronaut on the difficulties of necessities in outer space — there ain’t no graceful way. But the mere fact of two such agreeable and rational and opposed figures, important ones at that, confronting the issue with equanimity lends hope. Great post, great conversation.
Thank you Hurley- don’t get me started though. Siegman and Benvenisti have been saying these things for years despite all the opposition that has held sway and called them names. It’s harder for me, these days to feel compassion for my own side in this because I don’t see sides anymore. I don’t see a zero sum game either. They both solve this or they all lose. But they only see sides.
As for me it started with a twist in my stomach in 1967. Then, years after, there was David Grossman’s “The Yellow Wind” (which became a book after the long article in the New Yorker magazine ( years ago)).
I have come to feel that these are fatal ( if continued) societal illnesses on both sides. Both sides are caught in their own collective mental traps, blinded. Some (Grossman included) call it a death spiral. Maybe it’s plain stubborness that is so destructive ( on both sides): the unwillingness to stop and see.
On the Palestinian side you know there is deep suffering. On the Israeli side it’s very hard to see any suffering if you go to Israel. Quite the contrary. So for a neutral observer you can’t feel that this is a society that is in danger of annihilation as many there will anyway tell you they are and wish you to believe it.
I have come to feel that they, the Israeli’s, are right about their existential crisis, but not about the causes or the remedies.
Great show, as always, Chris. And thanks to Potter for his illuminating observations. I’m from Ireland originally, and I really appreciated what one of the interviewees had to say about the possibility for redemption should the Palestinians find the will to lay down arms and begin non-violent protest. One wonders if Obama could in some way encourage this by framing it (perhaps privately to Palestinian leaders at first) as a quest for civil rights, not unlike that of American blacks in the ’50s and ’60s. Clearly the tactics of terrorism have only brought brutality upon this people. Why not try something different?
Potter, I usually refrain from commenting on this topic but I believe you have nailed the solution to Israel/Palestinian unpleasantness, in your Passive Resistance approach (a la Gandhi and MLK Jr.)
It’s a huge challenge to be sure, because if PR isn’t a tenet of one’s belief system, it’s a hard sell, especially to a vengeful psyche. When FEAR is in the equation (and there is plenty of that on both sides) it takes a great deal of faith and courage to believe that not actively defending or advancing one’s ideological position will result in improved circumstances because it is counterintuitive.
Another thing, passive resistance needs to be applied steadfastly over a period of time (and may require sacrifice or a long period for efficacy) and the majority of people are impatient for visible results and if a concerted application of PR has not produced what are deemed to be meaningful measures of progress in their opinion, despair is likely to sabotage the effort.
There are always zealots and agitators on both sides who rabble rouse and subvert any process that could result in peaceful coexistence. These extremists are a miniscule percentage of the total populations but unfortunately they are a loud and often violent minority and must be neutralized through marginalization by those who seek peace. Unfortunately when the majority (on either side) believes that peace is only attainable by non-peaceful means (e.g., war or violence) and the elimination of the other is the means to that end, one ends up with the current situation, not only in Israel but the world.
As for the Israeli’s and the one state solution, Meir Kahane believed that if Arabs were allowed to become full; fledged Israeli citizens within a couple of generations, Israel as a Jewish state would cease to exist due to the lopsided birthrate of Arab and Jewish families which could democratically lead to a cultural holocaust by Islam which is a real possibility. He advocated violence and met a violent end.
Perhaps the 1 state would be a peaceful solution except for the diametrically opposed systems of logic which enthralls the parties – not to mention ancient grudges from the Canaanites and Philistines who experienced their own pogroms at the hands of the Israelites (their descendants have long memories, kept alive from generation to generation by inculcation much the same as “Never Again” is reinforced ad infinitum today.)
The desire to have a religious state for the Jewish people is no different in principle from the Islamicists who desire a Caliphate or state ruled by ayatollahs and sharia law. Neither are ideal IMO and unlikely to succeed except in small homogenous enclaves. Ben Gurion’s state was created in a less than ideal manner by strong arming the newly formed UN and leveraging the collective guilt vis-à-vis holocaust survivors and the failure of other countries to intervene. This is an example that illustrates my credo that “ideal ends are never justified by less than ideal means” and shows the peril of imperialistic selfish subdivision of tribal territories the results with which we wrestle this very moment.
Again in especially in the modern world, war is an outmoded less than ideal means to an end and Passive Resistance and peaceful protests are the ideal means to achieve sustainable peace for ALL.
Peace to ALL,
Jazzman