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Inside Palestine

Posted June 20th, 2016 by Lesley Hazleton

A few years back, I was returning to Jerusalem from Ramallah via the Qalandia checkpoint. “Checkpoint” is a euphemism. This isn’t merely a couple of Israeli soldiers checking your ID. Instead, you pass through a series of turnstiles, concrete barriers, barbed-wire tunnels that act as elongated cages, two-way mirrors, and of course X-ray machines. You are surveilled, re-surveilled, and surveilled again. No words are used. You are waved on not by hand, but by gun — a semi-automatic at groin level, indicating this way or that.

Halfway along the barbed-wire tunnel, I heard a gun being cocked close by, to my right. Startled, I looked over.

The gun was in the arms of a female soldier, flushed and giggling as a male soldier embraced her suggestively from behind, his arms around both her and the gun. She caught my glance and held it. “Look all you like,” she seemed to be saying. “We could strip down and have sex right here in front of you, and there’s not a damn thing you could do about it.”

And she was right.

This was, I knew, the most trivial of events. It was nothing compared to what I’d already seen, and not even worth noting to Palestinians, who have to put up with far worse. Yet it stays with me because I cannot forget that look. I might as well have been a dog.

ehrenreich“The humiliation machine,” Ben Ehrenreich calls it in his new book, The Way To The Spring: Life And Death In Palestine. And it indeed works with machinelike effectiveness. “How do Palestinians stand it?” I kept asking later. “How do you stay human in the face of those who see you as inhuman?”

These are the very questions Ehrenreich answers in this rare book of reportage from inside the Palestinian experience of occupation. And he does so with truly amazing grace and control.

There’s a hint of how he does it when he mentions a European solidarity activist newly arrived in Palestine and “still sparkling with outrage; it would mellow, I knew, into a sustained, wounded simmer.” Ehrenreich opts for calm instead of outrage, the simmer instead of the boil. And that makes his writing all the more powerful. He doesn’t indulge in his own righteousness — or in anyone else’s, for that matter. “My concern is with what keeps people going when everything appears to be lost,” he says in the preface, “what it means to hold on, to decline to consent to one’s own eradication, to fight actively or through deceptively simple acts of refusal against powers far stronger than oneself.”

What he is not doing, he emphasizes, is trying to “explain” Palestinians, or to speak for them. Instead, living on and off in Ramallah and Hebron from 2011 to 2014 — from just after the “Arab spring” through to the devastating bombardment of Gaza — he allows people and events to speak for themselves, and the Palestinians he lives with are striking not for their anger, but for their determination; not for their despair, but for their resilience.

“People in Hebron use the word ‘normal’ a lot,” he reports. What counts as normal there? Being shot at; the screaming of someone being beaten by soldiers; having settlers throw Molotov cocktails at your house; schoolchildren being tear-gassed; “administrative detention” (no charge, no trial); having your ID taken by a soldier at a checkpoint who keeps it for hours just because he can; having urine and feces thrown at you by settlers. Day in, day out — indeed hour in, hour out — a ceaseless barrage of harassment at best, outright violence at worst.

The details are all here. It’s worth knowing, for instance, that “rubber bullets” are in fact rubber-coated steel bullets, each one the size of a marble, capable of breaking bones and gouging flesh (and increasingly replaced by live bullets anyway). Or that a tear-gas canister fired in your face will kill you. But these are only part of “the almost infinitely complex system of control” exercised by Israel over the West Bank — ” the entire vast mechanism of uncertainty, dispossession, and humiliation which… has sustained Israeli rule by curtailing the possibilities, and frequently the duration, of Palestinian lives.”

In punitive raids, random doors are burst open in the middle of the night, belongings ransacked, the contents of the pantry poured out on the floor, anyone offering so much as a word of protest beaten and arrested. The purpose? A clear message: this house is not yours, this land is not yours, your person is not yours.

As a community-center volunteer held (and tortured) for three months put it: “If they could take the air from us, they would.”

The statistics are here too if you need them. Forty percent of Palestinian males have been in Israeli prison at least once, and even those sent to trial were at the mercy of a military court system with a 99.74% conviction rate. The same military has an indictment rate of 1.4% against soldiers accused of misconduct. And all the while, “settlements” — huge suburbs and townships — have been expanded; construction more than doubled in 2014, and jumped another 40% last year.

Palestinians have now been pushed from nearly 60% of the West Bank. With effective leadership systematically broken up, assassinated, or imprisoned, leaving only the venally corrupt Palestinian Authority, that percentage seems destined only to increase as Israel asserts “complete and irrevocable” control. And yet, as Ehrenreich shows, “ordinary” people stubbornly refuse to submit.

There’s no pontificating in this book — no offering of blandly confident “solutions.” I have none to put forward either, especially in this US election season when even Bernie Sanders’ mealy-mouthed statement that ” we need to be able to say that Netanyahu is not always right” is regarded as a daring political stance, a marvel of honesty and insight.

What I can say is this: if you really do want honesty and insight, read The Way to the Spring.

———–

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File under: Middle East | Tagged: Tags: Ben Ehrenreich, Hebron, Israel, occupation, Palestine, Ramallah, The Way To The Spring | Be the First to leave a comment

Seeing Evil

Posted December 29th, 2015 by Lesley Hazleton

In end-of-the-year phone calls from friends near and far, many express despair at the state of the world. I fully understand why, but I don’t accept their despair. In fact I can make a strong argument against it. Because what has changed is not so much the world itself, but our awareness of it.

drowned boyA single click on the screen you’re looking at right now will bring you to visceral images from thousands of miles away. A Syrian boy’s body washed up on the shore of a Greek island. A young woman beaten to death and set on fire in Afghanistan after a malicious rumor that she had burned a Quran (which leads me to ask “and even if she had…?”). Crazed Israeli settlers celebrating a wedding by cheering the arson murder of a Palestinian baby. A white cop shooting a fleeing black man in the back. We focus on such images, and ask what the world has come to.

We forget where it has come from.

When Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature came out a few years ago, I bristled at the pseudo-religious sentimentality of the title. (Okay, I still do.) But the book has stayed with me, along with its subtitle: “why violence has declined.” Yes, you read that right.

Pinker is no cock-eyed optimist: he’s an empiricist, and he spends close to 700 pages proving his point with data . “We can see our world as a nightmare of crime, terrorism, genocide, and war,” he writes, “or as a period that, by the standards of history, is blessed by unprecedented levels of peaceful coexistence.”

Now, it’s true “the standards of history” are pretty low, and that as Pinker himself notes, to make such a case in a century that began with 9/11, Darfur, and Iraq could well be seen as hallucinatory, even obscene. But it’s also true that despite what we see on the news, more people live more safely than ever before.

The difference is that now we know about violence. News spreads almost instantaneously. Cellphones are everywhere. Images are captured in real time, and seen in real time. And it’s only human to focus on these images.

So how do we deal with so much knowledge? How do we go about our lives with this awareness?

Outrage, shock, and even despair all seem to me healthy reactions. Because they are reactions, and not so long ago, there were none.  White cops once shot unarmed black men as a matter of routine. Refugees have drowned and starved in far greater numbers in the past. Women were once set on fire in Massachusetts as well as in Afghanistan. And massacres were by the thousands, even without the aid of guns. But all of this was hidden from immediate consciousness. Such events once passed for the most part unnoticed, unreported, unremarked upon until far later.

And more important, we didn’t see the violence. We didn’t have the evidence of our eyes. Now we do, and it encourages me that we are shocked. That we are outraged. That we do condemn. That we do care.

Evil can no longer take place under the cloak of silence.  We hear it, and we see it. And we speak up against it. We are all witnesses now. And as witnesses, we will step forward.

And yes, despite the evidence of our eyes, this is progress.

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File under: sanity, technology, ugliness, war | Tagged: Tags: Afghanistan, cellphones, Israel, Palestine, Refugees, Steven Pinker, Syria, The Better Angels of Our Nature, violence | 15 Comments
  1. Candace Moore Hill says:
    December 29, 2015 at 10:28 am

    Dear Lesley, you and I are in complete agreement, but no one was burned at the stake in the Salem witch trials. Lynchings around the country maybe, but not as capital punishment.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      December 29, 2015 at 11:03 am

      Just checked, and you’re right: they were hung. In Denmark, they were burned.

      • Candace Moore Hill says:
        December 29, 2015 at 11:34 am

        Lots of burning in England as well. Which is an interesting question to ask, burning at the stake did not happen in the United States as a public execution, why was that? Lynching is another matter.

  2. Rachel Cowan says:
    December 29, 2015 at 11:41 am

    Thanks Leslie,
    I needed this reminder. I read articles about his book when it came out, and I hold to the anti-despair position, but sometimes my attention sags, and despair creeps in.

  3. Robin Bissiri-Lewis says:
    December 29, 2015 at 12:18 pm

    Yes.
    Various societies can allow the weight of knowledge, pertaining to worldwide human suffering, to crush the spirit of hope and resolve OR motivate all of us to collectively seek ways to relieve and prevent that which afflicts others.
    Positioning ourselves like the 3 chimps with hands over eyes, ears and mouths is a common impulse but we CAN and must overcome this!

  4. Anne says:
    December 29, 2015 at 12:49 pm

    Maybe “evil can no longer take place under the cloak of silence”, but evil seems to be doing just fine in the light of day. As of a few days ago, it appears that sentences in Farkhunda’s murder are being commuted and it is uncertain what the disposition of the case will be.
    Video of a “A white cop shooting a fleeing black man in the back” didn’t seem to deter the shooting of a white man (and the subsequent murder of his autistic 6 year old son, Jeremy Mardis), allegedly by black officers. All of the visibility and condemnation of the drug-related violence in Mexico hasn’t lessened the horror. It would seem that the determination of what is evil (or the degree of evil and whether to punish, or how severely to punish) is pretty much in the culture’s (those in power in the culture) eye.

    We know evil, we see it within a few hours, we condemn it, but now what?

  5. Pat Davis says:
    December 29, 2015 at 1:02 pm

    And it was not just “women” murdered in Salem, one was my great grandfather X6, Samuel Wardwell, hung on the gallows. He was an architect and builder of the House of Seven Gables (now the Salem museum.) His crime: a bachelor who scooped up the best looking widow in the area..

  6. John Odum says:
    December 29, 2015 at 1:11 pm

    Thanks for your optimism. Progress has always been a messy, “three-steps-forward-two-steps-back” business. When you’re in the midst of it, it’s hard to tell how to measure a step (or to have any clear sense of where you are in the process). It gets hard to avoid drowning in the gloom sometimes, but as you say – onward and upward. Of course these days we also have the complication of whether or not the rate of degrading planetary habitability is compatible with our process/pace of improvement as a species (yikes).

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      December 29, 2015 at 1:46 pm

      Yes, measuring the size of steps is tricky business, as is figuring out which way you’re going on them. Do they go up or do they go down, or are we all in the middle of an Escher drawing? (or stuck on one of those weird gym machines). Plus, I wonder if there’s a link between the violence we do to the planet and the violence we do to each other…

  7. jveeds says:
    December 29, 2015 at 3:17 pm

    As an anonymous would-be philosophe once said: “A bigger window always reveals more scenery…but not always the scene you want.”

    (Ok, that was me who said that).

  8. Dr Mansour Malik says:
    December 29, 2015 at 9:45 pm

    Our world is in a mess. I agree with you we must keep our hope and positive way for a better peaceful world

  9. Life's backpacker says:
    December 30, 2015 at 3:18 am

    Hi Leslie, very insightful and yes something that has come to my mind too. Thanks for putting the right words together (wish they could come as easily to me). Which brings me to my next question; is war/violence/death an auto-immune response by God/nature/whatever-you-choose-to-call-that-power, to the burgeoning population of this planet?

  10. Fran Love says:
    December 30, 2015 at 5:44 pm

    Leslie thank you for this reminder that all the current atrocities are actual improvements to previous times. I certainly was not looking at it that way so your point of view, and Pinker’s. is an important reminder for us all.

  11. lynnrosengiordano says:
    December 30, 2015 at 11:42 pm

    As Fran says, you’ve opened some eyes on world perspective and the actual progression of human kindness Thanks for the reminder.

  12. De Lise Hartzell says:
    December 31, 2015 at 8:54 am

    Your blog brings up a very good point. Going to read the book you mentioned.
    I have wondered and debated the same question.

    Awareness precedes action.

Aron Kader’s War Against War

Posted July 30th, 2014 by Lesley Hazleton

aron kaderI am going to wage peace upon everyone who disagrees with me. It will be an aggressive, offensive and hostile strike that will continue until I inflict the final death blow to misunderstandings and conflict. I will gather all my available resources & weapons for this assault. I will never surrender until the foes of harmony surrender. I declare war on war. I will inflict peace on everyone and occupy your fear with understanding. You will suffer under my brutal campaign of tranquility. The enemy will endure the horrors of justice, tolerance, compassion and freedom. I will indoctrinate the aggressors with acceptance until the resistance is futile. I will show no mercy for hate. If you are not with me you are against warmth, love and little furry baby animals.

This brief manifesto was posted on Facebook earlier today by Palestinian-American stand-up comedian Aron Kader, followed by this update:

My war against war begins tomorrow. I will be on CNN tomorrow on the Brooke Baldwin program to talk about the murder of my cousin Mohammed Abu Khdeir and the police beating of Tariq Abu Khdeir. Also my plea for ceasefire in Gaza and how you will never convince me we cannot have peace.

To say I’m an instant fan doesn’t begin to cover it.  Finally, a war I can support!

 

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File under: Middle East, sanity, war | Tagged: Tags: Aron Kader, Gaza, Israel, Mohammad abu Khdeir, waging peace, war on war | 9 Comments
  1. Nuzhat says:
    July 30, 2014 at 10:35 pm

    I would join this war whole-heartedly….let’s do it instantly, it’s unbearable out there. Pleas and prayers in support….
    Nuzhat

  2. Khaled Hakim says:
    July 30, 2014 at 10:41 pm

    I think, Leslie, that true (and I know how much you hate the word Truth with a capital T, but this true could be capitalized and I’m sure you’d still be on board) martyrs are the ones that die fighting this kind of war.

    I support this war too.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      July 31, 2014 at 9:39 am

      Enough martyrs, Khaled. Let’s declare the age of martyrs well and truly over, no matter what the cause.

      • Khaled Hakim says:
        August 1, 2014 at 1:49 am

        I can accept that, blindly.

  3. Anita Sloan says:
    July 30, 2014 at 11:16 pm

    This is the only war worth supporting… we must save the children from their suffering; I weep when I see the fear in their eyes. Sending my prayers and support . God bless. Anita

  4. joezias says:
    July 31, 2014 at 3:34 am

    On the other hand, Israeli frnd who lives near the Jerusalem Forest where the body was found, erected with others in the village, a monument in memory of the 16 year old who was beaten and burned to death. That evening it was destroyed by right wing activists, they rebuilt it , the next day and again in the morning it had been destroyed. When the Arab families whose sons killed in cold blood, the three young teenagers who were hitchhiking in the West Bank I may have a change of heart vis a vis the present conflict. Meanwhile it’s time to sent Hamas, ISIS, Islamic Jihad and their supporters, back to the Stone Age.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      July 31, 2014 at 9:26 am

      The point is this: In the spirit of your friend who helped erect and then rebuild that monument — and who I hope will continue to rebuild it every time it gets pulled down — let’s get beyond sending anyone at all “back to the Stone Age.”

  5. pah says:
    July 31, 2014 at 9:34 am

    let’s fight a peace war, and stop the weeping of all the mothers….let;s fight a peace war in the name of all children, regardless of origin.

  6. joezias says:
    July 31, 2014 at 11:03 am

    Several yrs ago when i was much younger I had been asked by a local Rabbi, to come to a synagogue, something which I never do here in Israel, to maintain along with others a strong physical presence when things would ‘get out of hand’, which they did. The speaker was a Palestinian living in the US who was in favor of a non-violent confrontation with the on going situation, a Palestinian Martin Luther King like figure.

    Kahanist like males were scattered through out the the audience and interrupted his presentation, time and time again and each time they interrupted young guys, wearing kippas physically tossed them out of the synagogue. At times it was a bit violent.

    His presentation was impressive and spoke to us Israelis, Peace Now, Meretz types, however when I spoke with my Arab friends, no one had ever heard of him.

Gaza Morgue

Posted July 20th, 2014 by Lesley Hazleton

I still have no words that I trust.  Only this photo of a doctor weeping in the overflowing morgue of Shifa hospital in Gaza:

Gaza doctor

(photographer: Oliver Weiken, for the New York Times).

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File under: Middle East, war | Tagged: Tags: deaths, doctor, Gaza, Israel, morgue | 5 Comments
  1. Niloufer Gupta says:
    July 21, 2014 at 2:57 am

    Yes the throat chokes at the sights i have experienced thru al jazeera! I thought there would be a breakthru today- it has nt .

    Niloufer gupta

  2. Aijaz A. Mahesar says:
    July 21, 2014 at 3:26 am

    A picture speaks a thousand words, unspoken words, that do not even require to be remembered. They go deeper in hearts, deeper than we mortals know – they write themselves in our DNAs – for eternity.

  3. Rabab Maher (^_^) رباب ماهر says:
    July 21, 2014 at 1:24 pm

    The incessant ethnic cleansing of Palestine renders one speechless and anger and shame take the place of (unspoken) words (-_-).

  4. Lisa Kane says:
    July 21, 2014 at 6:35 pm

    Heartbreaking. When will this madness end?

  5. Zmurrad says:
    July 21, 2014 at 7:56 pm

    We are all ‘ DEAD’ people walking on earth. We have no humanity left. We are not moved by anything as if we are stones. Where is the power of collective conscience of human beings?

Gaza Beach

Posted July 16th, 2014 by Lesley Hazleton

My disgust with the Israeli government is so deep that I don’t trust myself with words.

But really, two articles in today’s New York Times say it all.

In the first, foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman is quoted advocating the Israeli invasion of Gaza in order to ensure “a normal summer vacation for our kids”  (the quote is way down in the 14th paragraph of the story).

In the second, we see what appears to be Lieberman’s idea of a kids’ summer vacation in Gaza:  four boys, ages 9, 10, and 11, killed by Israeli bombs while playing soccer on the beach.  It’s accompanied by this photo by the award-winning Tyler Hicks:

gaza beach

Reports from eyewitness foreign journalists here.

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  1. Guy de la Rupelle says:
    July 16, 2014 at 5:07 pm

    This is really too, too sad. There’s a silly movie called “Groundhog Day” whereby the main actor (Bill Murray) wakes up to the same day, again and again and again, and it becomes a nightmare. Every few years I wake up to see almost the same news, the same hatred, the same anger, the same rockets, the same out-of-proportion Israeli response with high-tech militaria, hundreds of homes demolished in the Gaza strip, and the photos…of limp bodies of children, tear-streaked faces of Palestinian women grieving, smug-looking Israeli tanks commanders and also the frightened faces of Israeli conscripts who would rather be in their homes in Tel Aviv or elsewhere…
    And I think to myself, Will there ever be peace in that part of the world? (sigh..)

  2. Cory says:
    July 17, 2014 at 11:49 am

    This reminds me of Tom Friedman’s recent column on arsonists vs firefighters. The thrust was that the leadership in Mid-East countries are the arsonists, fanning the flames for short term political gain. If left alone, however, the general populace is quite capable of living peacefully with various factions intermingled. But I begin to wonder whether there are any “firefighters” among Israelies and Palestinians.

    Do you find any reason for hope in this dysfunctional place? Any chance of a grass roots uprising? A growing chorus of “Enough”?

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      July 17, 2014 at 1:42 pm

      Reason for hope? I hate to say it, but no, not right now. After the massacre of kindergarteners in Sandy Hook, Long Island, for instance, I thought “maybe now” there’d finally be a move toward serious gun control in the US. I mean, a whole room of five-year-olds gunned down? How much worse could it get? But no. After seeing these boys blown up in Gaza, it’s tempting to again think “maybe now,” but everything tells me not. After 47 years, the ugly mentality of occupation is deeply institutionalized, and the thuggish dehumanization and demonization of the “other” seems only to be worsening, from the top on down.
      Do I hope nonetheless? Clearly, despite everything, and reason be damned. The fact that I cannot see something happening does not mean that it can’t happen. Human beings may be infinitely manipulable, but we can also be defiantly unpredictable.
      Re “firefighters,” they’re there, of course, but we hear little about most of them because as always with the news, the adage is “flames lead.” They need support more now than ever. Inflammatory leadership and biased reporting on both sides means that those who advocate dialogue instead of violence are branded “traitors” and then attacked by thuggish extremists on “their own side” as “worse than the enemy.” I have huge admiration for all those, Palestinian and Israeli, who continue this advocacy nonetheless. It takes no courage to speak out against violence from afar; it takes real courage to do so when you know that a death threat awaits you and your family.

      • Lesley Hazleton says:
        July 17, 2014 at 1:53 pm

        And I should add this from Nick Kristof in today’s NYT, starting with the families of both Naftali Fraenkel and Muhammad abu Khdeir calling for an end to violence, but to no avail — as I wrote the reply above, the ground invasion of Gaza began.
        http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/opinion/nicholas-kristof-leadership-israel-gaza.html?smid=tw-share

  3. fatmakalkan says:
    July 18, 2014 at 4:55 pm

    Since Israel started bombardment of Gazza I became unhappiest person on the earth, their arrogance, justifying their aggressions, not caring about safety of Plastenian women, children, elderly, sick, not respecting their life’s and property is despicable. Their heart became like a stone, no mercy, no compassion left in their hearts. If Moses was alive he would be a shamed by Israeli government and he would help Palestinians because they are oppressed by Israel. He would lead them to freedom. Instead of searching the murderer of 3 Jewish boys at West Bank they are bombing 2 million people at Gazza. They needed an excuse to attact Gazza and used this crime. It is Ramadan and they ruined 1,8 Billion Muslims Ramadan with their attack. We can no longer watch news, read news. We are fed up with them. Since US behind them all muslim world is afraid and helpless:(

Who Has Kidnapped Who?

Posted June 18th, 2014 by Lesley Hazleton

From a column in today’s Ha’aretz by former Speaker of the Knesset Avraham Burg, speaking directly to Israelis focused entirely on three yeshiva students kidnapped in occupied territory:

All of Palestinian society is a kidnapped society. Like many of the Israelis who performed “significant service” in the army, many of the readers of this column, or their children, entered the home of a Palestinian family in the middle of the night by surprise, with violence, and simply took away the father, brother or uncle, with determination and insensitivity. That is kidnapping, and it happens every day. And what about their administrative detainees?

What is all this if not one big official, evil and unjust kidnapping that we all participate in and never pay the price for? That is the fate of tens of thousands of detainees and others under arrest, who stayed, or are staying, in Israel’s prisons – quite a few of them for no good reason, falsely imprisoned on false pretexts. The vast majority of them have been exposed to the appendages of military justice, and none of us cares a whit.

All these things have turned the topic of the prisoners into the main subject in the lives of the occupied society. There is not a single household without a detainee or prisoner. So why is it so difficult to understand their joy and our pain, fears and worry notwithstanding? It was, and can still be, otherwise.

However, as long as the Israeli government shuts all the gates of freedom, flees from all real negotiations that could solve the conflict, refuses to make good-will gestures, lies and blatantly violates its own commitments – violence is all that remains for them.

 

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File under: Middle East | Tagged: Tags: arrests, Avraham Burg, detainees, Ha'aretz, Israel, kidnapping, occupation, Palestine | 4 Comments
  1. Joe Zias says:
    June 18, 2014 at 11:19 am

    Painfully true….

  2. lynnrosengiordano says:
    June 18, 2014 at 11:34 pm

    Spot on. What else remains?

  3. RICK says:
    June 20, 2014 at 9:37 am

    I applaud Burg’s courage to tell the truth. Follow this river of criminal government behavior and it will lead you to the fact Israel is a colonial settler state with its incumbent agenda.

  4. Tea-mahm says:
    June 23, 2014 at 9:16 am

    YES, Lesley!! Love that you tell-it-like-it-is!!

The Book American Jews Most Want to Read

Posted February 19th, 2014 by Lesley Hazleton

“It’s almost laughable,” says M. J. Rosenberg of Media Matters. “The organized Jewish community, which claims to be worried about young Jews defecting in droves, just cannot help itself from doing things that drive Jews (not just young ones) away. Between supporting Netanyahu, advocating for war with Iran and maintaining the occupation, and keeping silent as Israel evolves into a theocracy, it is also in the business of preventing debate on all these things and more.”

judisThe case in point?  New York City’s Museum of Jewish Heritage, which describes itself somewhat oxymoronically as “a living memorial to the Holocaust,” first scheduled and then turned around and canceled a talk by New Republic senior editor John Judis, author of the newly published Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict.

As this review in the Boston Globe points out, Judis’ book is no polemic, but a serious historical study.  So why the cancellation?  The book challenges the conventional Zionist wisdom about President Truman’s recognition of Israel in 1948, showing him as a hard-nosed politician trailing in the polls in May of an election year, and being heavily lobbied by American Zionists who then helped ensure his reelection.

Judis quotes this from Truman: “I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism; I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.”

Such were the folkways of American politics: squeaky wheels getting the oil. And with American Arabs and Muslims still generally reluctant to take an active organized part in national politics, such they remain.

As for the irony of a museum banning historical discussion, this is quite the trend among elderly American Jewish poohbahs when it comes to Israel.  When Peter Beinart’s book The Crisis of Zionism came out last year, Jewish community centers, under pressure from wealthy donors, seem to have all but blackballed him. “Pretty soon,” says Rosenberg, “any institution under any kind of Jewish auspices will have to abide by speech limits set by the Jewish 1%. The 92nd Street Y already does (it will not allow any Palestinian to speak unless ‘balanced’ by a Jew). Brandeis University wouldn’t permit President Carter to speak [on his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid] without a simultaneous rebuttal by Alan Dershowitz. Pretty soon, Mount Sinai hospital will check what books patients are sneaking into their sick rooms.”

Or maybe not. Controversy over the museum’s about-face on Judis’ book is sparking exactly the public debate its donors sought to avoid — and far beyond the presumably hallowed halls of the museum itself. As with the conservative Indian attack on Wendy Doniger’s book The Hindus, which I posted on here, the desire to squelch consideration of Judis’ book is fated to achieve the precise opposite of what it intended. Beinart’s The Crisis of Zionism became a bestseller, and now Judis’ Genesis looks set to do the same.

As I post this, it’s #2 on Amazon’s list of books about Israel and the Middle East. By the time you read this post, it may well be #1.

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Yes Woman, Yes Drive

Posted October 29th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

Can comedy do what common sense can’t?

In case you somehow missed it, this video mildly satirizing the Saudi regime’s absurd ban on women driving has gone totally viral since it was posted on Saturday:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/aZMbTFNp4wI]

That thing about ovaries?  The Sauds seem to imagine that driving can make a woman infertile.  I kid you not.  Being a back-seat passenger has no such effect, it seems.

Could this possibly have anything to do with the idea of control?

(In case you’re amazed at how uniquely backward the Sauds are with respect to women, by the way, you might consider this ironic detail:  exactly the same argument was used in Israel for decades to stop women from flying planes.  Again, being a passenger was held to have no such effect — just being at the controls.  As a result, the first group of female Israeli air-force pilots graduated not in the ’70s or the ’80s or the ’90s, but all of two years ago, in 2011.)

So who is the guy in the No-Woman-No-Drive video?  He’s Hisham Fageeh, he’s a Riyadh-based stand-up comic who’s studied religion, and thanks to Mother Jones magazine, there’s more on him here.  And if you need a sense of what the dozens of women who defied the ban this past weekend were risking, here’s a TED talk by the wonderful Manal al-Sharif, who went to jail for doing it.

Meanwhile, I’m taking to the road (and the air) through mid-November, with Bob Marley on my playlist. But will I ever be able to listen to ‘No Woman, No Cry’ the same way again?

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File under: absurd, Middle East, women | Tagged: Tags: ban on women driving, Bob Marley, comedy, Hisham Fageeh, Israel, Manal al-Sharif, No Woman No Drive, pilots, Saudi Arabia, viral video | 4 Comments
  1. Reaching Out says:
    October 29, 2013 at 2:13 pm

    Reblogged this on Reaching Out and commented:
    Brilliant! Love this! 😀

  2. Jerry M says:
    October 29, 2013 at 5:39 pm

    We see a lot of ads for ‘low t’, which is a non disease that a lot of drugs are being marketed for. One wonders if steering wheels or brake pedals now contain that medication?

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      October 31, 2013 at 5:43 am

      Love it!

  3. Nasir. says:
    October 30, 2013 at 5:57 am

    Agreed Lesley. Old traditiond however unrealistic die hard. Pakistan is a moderate Islamic state and we too have many women air force jet pilots, paratroopers, mountain (Everest) climbers, sports women and ofcourse car drivers by the thosands as also wonmen Prime Minister, Speaker National Assembley, legislators, court judges…the list is long
    -and last but not the least, Malala Yousufzai! The Prophet’s wifes lady Khadijah was an accomplished business woman and Ayesha too had a public life including leading an army once. The Saudis are a cloistered people like many Orthodox Jews and share a semitic brotherhood.

American Influence?

Posted October 26th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

rohdeThe road to hell may be paved with good intentions, as the saying goes, but there’s a lot of understandable suspicion out there about exactly how good American intentions even are when it comes to the Middle East.  That’s the theme of David Rohde’s book ‘Beyond War:  Reimagining American Influence in the Middle East.’

The first step I’d suggest:  do some major reimagining of images, and forget Orientalist stereotypes like the camel-rider on  the cover.  The second step:  question the whole concept of influence.

The Catholic weekly America asked me to review the book, and here’s what I wrote:

When the Egyptian military seized power in June, American pundits instantly rushed to preach about democracy.  This took some hubris considering that two recent American elections – 2000 and 2004 – are still considered by many to be of questionable legality, and that redistricting is rapidly ensuring the minority status of Democratic strongholds throughout the south.

Is the US even in a position to preach democracy?  Especially since as with national elections, so too with foreign policy:  democracy is subject to money, and how it’s spent.

This is the hard-headed reality behind two-time Pulitzer prize-winner and former Taliban captive David Rohde’s new book, which focuses on how the US government spends money abroad, specifically in the Middle East.  It’s an argument for small-scale economic rather than large-scale military aid, and as such is immensely welcome in principle. The question is how to do it in practice.

As Rohde writes, “Washington’s archaic foreign policy apparatus” and its weakened civilian agencies mean that “in the decades since the end of the Cold War, the ability of the White House, State Department, and Congress to devise and carry out sophisticated political and development efforts overseas has withered.”

Whether Rohde is aware of it or not, the problem might be encapsulated in the subtitle of his own book, which assumes not only the existence of American influence, but also its necessity. Many of his sources are well-informed and palpably frustrated employees of the Agency for International Development (USAID) who are basically in conflict with both the State Department and Congress.  Yet the stated goals of USAID are clear:  they include providing “economic, development and humanitarian assistance around the world in support of the foreign policy goals of the US.” [my italics].

For all the talk about the need for humanitarian aid and intervention (most recently in Syria), the reality is purely political.  What’s presented as humanitarian aid is always a matter of foreign policy.  And American foreign policy is still intensely focused on George W. Bush’s GWOT – the “global war on terror.”

The principle is that US aid should act as a stabilizing force against militant Islamic extremism.  But the very idea of the US as a stabilizing force has been thoroughly undermined by the disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Even the best-considered foreign aid has now been rendered suspect in many parts of the Middle East, especially when there’s “a widespread perception of the American government as a finely tuned, nefarious machine, not an unwieldy cacophony of viewpoints,” and when authoritarian control fosters an intense rumor mill, with conspiracy theories rampant (most recently, for instance, Malala Yousufzai as a CIA plant, or American-backed ‘Zionists’ as the instigators of the new regime in Egypt).  In Egypt in particular, Rohde notes, “Washington faces an extraordinary public-policy conundrum.  Decades of support for Mubarak will not be forgotten overnight.”

Rohde details the conundrum in a series of country-by-country chapters, some intensively well-reported (particularly on civilian contractors’ takeover of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and on the use of drones in Pakistan and Afghanistan), while others (on Turkey, Libya, and Tunisia) seem more perfunctory by comparison.  But in the light of the June military coup, the chapter on American dollars-for-peace financing and the Egyptian army’s vast business empire is particularly fascinating and uncomfortably prescient.

Oddly, though, there is no chapter on Israel, the largest recipient of American aid.  This seems to me tantamount to ignoring the elephant in the room, since the intense investment in an Israel that seems willing only to prolong and intensify the conflict with Palestine undermines US efforts elsewhere in the region.  In fact you could make a pretty strong argument that American support of Israel, driven by domestic electoral politics, runs directly counter to its own foreign policy interests.  Inevitably, the US is perceived elsewhere in the Middle East as at least tolerating if not encouraging Israel’s land grab in the Palestinian territories;  if its funds do not literally finance the expansionist project, they certainly free up funds that do.

Even assuming the best American intentions, then, they’re all too often interpreted as the worst.  But what exactly are those best intentions?

At root, this book is, or could have been, about America’s perception of itself.  Are we the world’s greatest do-gooders, distributing our largesse (and our arms) where most urgently needed?  Or are we acting to secure a blinkered and out-dated conception of our own interests?

Either way, as Rohde wrote in a New York Times op-ed back in May, “We should stop thinking we can transform societies overnight…  Nations must transform themselves.  We should scale back our ambitions and concentrate on long-term economics.”  His economic recommendations are accordingly small-scale (sometimes to the level of pathos, as in his enthusiasm for an Egyptian version of ‘The Apprentice’).  Yet his emphasis on entrepreneurship may actually undercut his argument that trying to force Western models on other countries will backfire.  And this is the argument that matters.

Like Ambassador Chris Stevens in Libya, says Rohde, American officials need to listen rather than try to muscle their way in, whether economically or militarily.  A little respect, that is.   Preach less, listen more.  That may not be much of a “reimagining,” but it’s the really important message of this book.

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File under: Middle East, US politics | Tagged: Tags: 'America' magazine, 'Beyond War', Afghanistan, David Rohde, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Pakistan, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, USAID | 2 Comments
  1. fatmakalkan says:
    October 26, 2013 at 2:13 pm

    I agree with you Lesley. In reality after Eygptian over throw of Moursi next one was Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. Turkey has much older democracy than Israel in Middle East but it is not in the interest of west to have strong Turkey with strong leader. West wants Soudi type regimes that will obey. Gezi park demonstrations at Istanbul in reality was an unsuccessful cue attempt of west. Thanks God it was unsuccessful. It would destabilize Turkey politically and economically and make Turkey again slave of west. Why West and Israil gov. Wants to get rid of Erdogan? Is he radical Islamist? No. Is he planing to bring sharia law back to Turkey ? No. If Turkey was a Christian state they would allow it to became another France or Germany but it is Muslim state very mellow understanding of Islam no treat to anybody but still even that much of Islam is not OK. There fore Turkey must remain as a third world country for western Judeo- Christian politicians.

  2. Jerry M says:
    October 28, 2013 at 10:57 am

    I can understand why the author left Israel out. I may not like our policy in Israel but it is a very different problem than what is happening in the Muslim world. In the case of the Obama administration, I don’t think they have a clue as to what they want to accomplish. Their lack of real preparation has led to them to keeping the mistakes of the Bush administration in effect long after they have left town. For example the spying on Germany has been going on for 10 years.

    Obama is a good administrator when he has a clear goal, but without ideas and without good advisors he is only a little better than an amateur.

Sign Here, Syria (and Israel, and Egypt)

Posted September 9th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

In the whole debate on whether to deploy a missile strike against Syria for the use of sarin gas, my mind has been (appropriately?) like the many-handed Hindu goddess of darkness and death, Kali.

— On the one hand, what exactly would a US missile strike achieve, especially since President Obama has so carefully described it as limited in scope and intent?

— But then am I really so callous as to say we should not move when chemical weapons are deployed, especially against sleeping civilians?

— Then again, the level of the debate has sickened me (all the talk about maintaining America’s credibility, for example, as though that were more important that what’s actually happening in Syria — or the talk about how we can’t let Assad “get away with it,” as though he were merely a schoolboy who’d broken the rules).

— But does that really mean we just sit back and do nothing?

— Though that’s exactly what we’ve been doing as an average of 5,000 Syrians have been killed each month.

— But is military action really the only option?

—  And isn’t the idea of a surgical strike another of those military oxymorons created for armchair warriors thrilling to missile-mounted cameras as though war were a video game?

—  And shouldn’t the US have intervened to prevent chemical weapons being used, instead of as a gesture of disapproval after their use?

All this, and I haven’t even gotten to the question of who would actually gain from such a strike.  And without even mentioning Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and…

Kali needs more than eight hands.

But today’s diplomatic developments seem to me immensely hopeful.

All I know at this moment is what you do:  Russia has publicly proposed that Syria give up its stockpiles of chemical weapons.  And since Russia has so openly supported the Assad regime (and been a major supplier of the ingredients for those weapons), and since Assad has so publicly claimed his regime did not use chemical weapons (all evidence to the contrary), the demand that he give them up to avoid a US-led missile strike may be an excellent example of his bluff being expertly called.

So I have a modest proposal that might sweeten the deal — for all of the Middle East.  It’s as follows:

Seven countries have held out on the international treaty against the use and manufacture of chemical weapons, aka the Chemical Weapons Convention.  Those countries are Syria, Israel, Egypt, Angola, Myanmar, South Sudan, and North Korea.  (Two of these — Israel and Myanmar — have signed, but so far, have not yet ratified it.)

So if we’re really serious about banning chemical weapons, and if we’re really serious about the search for some nascent form of Middle East peace (two big ‘ifs,’ but bear with me), we should demand not only that Syria give up its chemical weapons and sign and ratify the treaty, but that at least Israel and Egypt both step up to the plate too.

We should seize the moment and say “Sign here, Mssrs Assad, Netanyahu, and Sisi.”

And we should do it right now.  Before we forget about chemical weapons until the next time they’re used.  Before we leave Assad to keep killing Syrians with conventional weapons.  And before the American public again retreats into its normal state of apathy about anything that happens in countries where the majority are not apple-pie white and Christian.

At least let something good come out of all this horror.

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File under: Middle East, US politics, war | Tagged: Tags: chemical weapons, Egypt, Israel, Russia, Syria, treaty, United States | 6 Comments
  1. Irene says:
    September 9, 2013 at 11:15 pm

    Thanks Lesley!!!!! This is the best I have read and heard on this topic so far. I am with you. Completely.

  2. Dora Hasen says:
    September 9, 2013 at 11:26 pm

    By jove, I think you have got it! The time is definitely now and I appreciate your truthful comment about American public.

  3. nuzhat fakih says:
    September 10, 2013 at 12:01 am

    how TRUE Lesley……on every word said here….oh, what a disgruntled feel it is, to be a helpless observer to this insolent crime being flaunted for the rest of humanity to see…..misguidedly in the name of religion or politics or power.
    Our hearts and prayers remain with each innocent sufferer of this holocaust.
    had been waiting for your comment on this issue from you, and was expectedly rewarded with these enlightened views.

    Nuzhat.

  4. Chad says:
    September 10, 2013 at 4:31 am

    Me Like!

  5. Lesley Hazleton says:
    September 11, 2013 at 10:37 am

    But how? Per today’s NYT, finding let alone destroying Syria’s chemical arsenal may be all but impossible:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/11/world/middleeast/Syria-Chemical-Disarmament.html?hp

  6. Adil Rasheed says:
    September 19, 2013 at 7:00 am

    Lezley, I would like to bring to your kind attention that it is not only Sisi, Netanyahu and Assad who need to sign and ratify the treaty but even the US and Russia should be told to observe the CWC which required them to destroy their stockpile of chemical weapons before a final deadline required by the CWC, which elapsed in April 2012. So much for those who like drawing red lines.

Palestine and Israel at the Oscars

Posted January 31st, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

I’m usually no fan of the Oscars.  The “Academy” seems to have an unerring bias toward the showy and the obvious.  But this year I’m excited.  Not only because the stunningly un-showy and un-obvious Amour has a decent chance for the big Best Picture award (see my take on it here), but even more because the documentary section has two nominees that I really really want to see (yes, double really):  5 Broken Cameras, and The Gatekeepers.

5brokencamerasThe five broken cameras belong to the occupied:  Palestinian farmer Emad Burnat.  He got the first one the week his sixth son was born, and began using it as a kind of record for his children.  Over the next five years, he documented life in his village of Bilin, the focus of weekly demonstrations against the construction of Israel’s “separation barrier,” aka The Wall (another excellent documentary than never got such recognition, despite an unforgettable long opening shot of the last concrete panel being put into place, cutting off the landscape).

One by one, Burnat’s cameras were smashed — by an IDF teargas canister, by rubber bullets, by angry Jewish settlers.  Each time, he found another and went on filming, then teamed up with Israeli co-director Guy Davidi, who managed to partially fund the movie with a government grant — money, in suitably Middle Eastern irony, from the same government that broke at least two of Burnat’s cameras.  (See the trailer here.)

thegatekeepersThe gatekeepers are the occupiers:  six retired heads of Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, the Shin Bet (the acronym of sherutei bitahon — security services).  It’s a talking-heads movie, yes, but these six are unprecedentedly candid about their actions and decisions, including torture and targeted assassination.   Faced with the consequences of their actions as the Israeli right-wing becomes more intractable than ever, they wrestle openly with doubt and conscience, and this wrestling adds up to biting criticism of the occupation from deep within Israel’s defense establishment.  (TimeOut New York has an interesting interview with director Dror Moreh, and you can see the trailer here.)

But the Oscars are still the Oscars, where “American” wins out over “foreign” and sub-titles are considered an undue tax on the moviegoer’s mind.  So I doubt that either of these two will win the documentary award, which will probably go to Searching for Sugarman, a movie about trying to track down a Detroit singer-songwriter who dropped out of sight years ago.

And there’s a far tougher reason why neither 5 Broken Cameras nor The Gatekeepers is likely to win:  Both lead to the same place, which is the urgent need to end the Israeli occupation, and find a way for Israelis and Palestinians to coexist.  Oscar voters are doubtless terrified of taking such a basic political stand, let alone of recognizing either movie over the other and thus be seen as “taking sides.”  Politics at the Oscars?  The horror!

So in the spirit of both movies, here’s an idea:  Give a joint award for best documentary this year, Oscar voters!  5 Broken Cameras and The Gatekeepers together.  Wouldn’t that be a terrific statement?

—————————-

[Note:  both movies are scheduled for general release in the US in the next few weeks.  I have no idea why the delay.]

 

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File under: art, Middle East | Tagged: Tags: 5 Broken Cameras, Bilin, documentary, Israel, occupation, Oscars, Palestine, Shin Bet, The Gatekeepers | Be the First to leave a comment

Morsi’s Anti-Semitism

Posted January 16th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

I wish I could say that Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s anti-Semitism surprised me half as much as it seemed to surprise The New York Times.  (“Egyptians should nurse our children and grandchildren on hatred” for Jews and Zionists, Morsi declared in a videotaped speech three years ago. “They have been fanning the flames of civil strife wherever they were throughout history. They are hostile by nature.”)

But the rampant use of anti-Semitic imagery in political rhetoric both in Egypt and in other Muslim countries (“apes,” “pigs,” “bloodsuckers,” said Morsi) is hardly news.  It comes right out of the convoluted paranoia of The Protocols of the Elders of the Zion, which far too many Egyptians still take for fact instead of the fictional fake it was long ago proved to be.  What concerns me is how it seeps into even the best-intentioned minds, in far less obvious but nonetheless insidious ways.

Consider, for instance, an exchange like this one, which I seem to have had a number of times over the past several years:

— “What do the Jews think they’re doing in Gaza?”

— “The Jews?  All Jews?  Which Jews?”

— “The Israelis, of course.”

— “Which Israelis?”

— “Well, the Israeli government.”

— “So why do you not say ‘the Israeli government’ instead of ‘the Jews’?”

This is what you might call the low-level shadow of anti-Semitism.  My interlocutors (I love/hate that word) would never dream of using Morsi’s inflammatory language of hatred.  They’re liberal and moderate American Muslims (some are believing mosque-goers, others self-described agnostics or atheists).  And yet even they are not always immune to that conflation of politics and ethnicity, of Israeli policy and Jewishness.

Each time such an exchange occurs, there’s a pause in the conversation — a moment of discomfort as my interlocutor (that word again!) realizes what I’m responding to.  And then comes a nod of acknowledgement, one that takes considerable courage, since none of us appreciate being called to account.  Call it a small moment of sanity.

I recognize this because it’s mirrored in Israel, where talk of “the Arabs” — a generalization as bad as “the Jews” — veers more and more not just into outright racism, but into a kind of gleeful pride in that racism, as shown in David Remnick’s long piece on “Israel’s new religious right” in the current New Yorker.

Israeli politicians have taken to presenting themselves as defenders of “the Jewish people,” regularly using “Jew” as a synonym for “Israeli,” even though — or because — over 20% of Israeli citizens are Muslim or Christian Arabs.  They do this deliberately, of course, just as the Morsi-type anti-Semitic rhetoric is deliberate.  The emotional resonance of “Jew” is deeper and far older than that of “Israeli,” and thus far more useful as a carrier of both covert and overt pride and prejudice.

As a Jew I find this political claim to represent me both insulting and obnoxious.  Like an increasing number of American Jews, I’m appalled by the policies of the Netanyahu government (let alone those of its predecessors), and at the development of what has clearly become an apartheid regime.  I deeply resent being lumped together with the Netanyahus of this world — and I equally deeply resent the attempt by the Netanyahus of this world to lump themselves in with me and define my Jewishness.  How dare they?  And how dare Morsi?

I’d ask “have they no shame?” but the answer is obvious.

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File under: Islam, Judaism, Middle East, sanity, ugliness | Tagged: Tags: anti-Semitism, David Remnick, Egypt, Israel, Morsi, Netanyahu, racism | 9 Comments
  1. Sani says:
    January 16, 2013 at 1:08 pm

    I am surprised that Egyptian President Morsi is described as antisemite. Morsi too is a semite. Anti-semetism according to history tracks originated from the Christians who claimed that the Jews killed Jesus one of their brethen […] Your accusation means that you are acclaiming President Morsi as a non follower of Muhammad Rasulullah […]

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      January 16, 2013 at 3:56 pm

      Antisemitism needs to be called out, not excused. The same, I might remind you, goes for Islamophobia.
      The case for antisemitism as anti-Islamic could indeed be persuasively made, and needs to be made far more, by Muslims. Instead, too many argue precisely the opposite.

      • Muhammad Siddique says:
        February 14, 2013 at 5:36 am

        Lesley, I quote your words.
        “The case for antisemitism as anti-Islamic could indeed be persuasively made, and needs to be made far more, by Muslims. Instead, too many argue precisely the opposite.”
        I am a Muslim, but I cannot agree more with you on this. Islam does not advocate hatred for Jews as a people. The Prophet’s many interactions with the Jews of Madinah prove the opposite. For Muslims the father of Jews, Israel (Jacob) and their leader Moses are beloved figures. The quarrel that arose between sections of the latter days Jews and Muslims in Madinah is not a racial one, but a political issue. Today, if the democrats and republicans don’t see eye to eye, does it mean there is hatred between them?. Today’s Muslims’ view of Jews has become conditioned by the actions of the State of Israel.

        Muhammad Siddique

  2. Sarah says:
    January 16, 2013 at 3:35 pm

    Lesley, I have been in similar discussions from an early age. I always try to redirect the speaker: “You mean zionist, don’t you?” or, “you mean Israeli, don’t you?” There is no political correctness movement or enlightenment in the Middle East to help people un-learn their bigotry.

    A generation ago, Jews, Muslims and Christian Arabs lived together throughout the middle east. Many went to mixed schools and had friends of other religions. Now, this is restricted, even where the different groups co-exist. It is a tremendous loss. It is so much easier to paint people with a broad brush when you don’t actually know them.

  3. Hakan from Turkey says:
    January 16, 2013 at 7:05 pm

    You ask “which Jews” but I think it is not correct to turn a blind eye on the sentiments of the mainstream citizen of Israel. It is well documented that the Jewish people living in Israel see the Arabs inferior. I also remember reading in the news that the Israeli drafted soldiers (which means regular people, not professional killing machines) wearing t-shirts with visuals that implies they delightfully killed Arabs, or Israeli school children writing massages on bomb shells that they know will explode in a village in Palestine.

    Years of violence poisoned everybody in that unfortunate corner of the middle east. I hope they get back to their senses soon.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      January 17, 2013 at 11:10 am

      You might want to read my post again and examine your own thinking, Hakan. “The Jewish people living in Israel see the Arabs as inferior,” you say. Really? Not some, not even many, but all of them? Thanks for denying the existence of, among others, Israeli liberal activists and reporters, without whose work we would know little of what’s happening in the West Bank and Gaza. Instead, you repeat apocryphal tales from unsubtantiated sources — basically, urban legends based in prejudice. Years of violence have poisoned many people, true. But not “everybody.”

      • Hakan fron Turkey says:
        January 17, 2013 at 1:29 pm

        Of course no society on earth is monolithic. I actually used the term “mainstream”. I don’t blame all the Israelis. I thought I made that clear enough.

        Let me give you an example to make what I argue easier to understand. Do you think is it logical to claim that only the Nazis are to blame for the shoah? Or the German people, who elected them knowing what Hitler was up to, are also guilty? Of course there were good Germans too, some even committed suicide instead of being a part of that society. But we can absolutely say there was a serious problem with the “majority” of the German society at that time.

        Just like that, are we to blame Sharon, Netenyahu or Liberman alone, or the people who elect them and let them govern Israeli too?

        To repeat, I am not anti- anything and condemn Morsi’s statement.. I just say if people blame the “Israeli people” for what’s going on there, we need to stop and think if there is a truth in that statement, instead of fending them off by saying only the government is to blame.. We need to see the problem to correct it. Of course you know all of these better than me, I just wanted to remind.

        P.S. They are not urban legends, but documented realities:
        http://mondoweiss.net/2009/03/racist-and-sexist-military-shirts-show-the-fruits-of-israeli-militarism.html

        http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-military-condemns-soldiers-shocking-tshirts-1651333.html

        http://wakeupfromyourslumber.blogspot.com/2006/07/israeli-children-sign-their-missiles_18.html

        just a couple links.

        • Lesley Hazleton says:
          January 17, 2013 at 1:53 pm

          I stand (and sit) corrected. Poisonous thinking spreads — and we all need to stand against it, wherever it is. In Israel, in Egypt, in the US, in Turkey, anywhere. Glad you’re on board.

  4. ThinkWorth says:
    January 17, 2013 at 10:08 pm

    Only an agnostic can be even-handed. I do appreciate your piece. I watched your recent video defending Prophet Mohamed before large audience under the title Muhammad, you and me. Keep up your good work. But surely, I am no agnostic.

Welcome, Palestine!

Posted November 30th, 2012 by Lesley Hazleton

So here’s where all you sophisticated cynics get to tell me I’m being naïve, and yesterday’s UN recognition of Palestine as a non-voting member state is merely symbolic, and it makes no difference to what’s actually happening etc etc.

To which my reply is:  Never underestimate the power of symbolism.  Or the sense of an alternate historical inevitability strengthened by this move.

Historical inevitability is exactly what Israel has been trying to create since 1967 with “facts on the ground,” aka “settlements” — a totally misleading term since it calls up images of small outposts, while the bulk of the Israeli settlement project in the West Bank is by now huge swathes of urban and suburban housing.  As if to underline this, today’s Israeli reaction to the UN move was to formally announce yet another urban expansion, this one intended to cut off Ramallah and Bethlehem from Jerusalem.

The New York Times seems to imagine that this is in retaliation for the UN vote, but they’re wrong.  It’s part of Israel’s long-term plan, which has been, since the late 1960s, to create an “irreversible” pattern of Israeli settlement in Palestine — I reported on this way back in the 1970s — and to make daily existence so burdensome for Palestinians in so many ways that they will up and leave “of their own accord” (a kind of ethnic cleansing lite.)

But history is nothing if not a long pattern of reversals.  And it now looks very much like both Israel and the United States (along with Palau, Panama, Micronesia, Canada, and the Czech Republic — the less-than-impressive array of countries voting against acceptance of heightened status for Palestine) are on the wrong side of history.

I have absolutely no idea how this might work out in the long run.  In fact when I try to imagine it, I find myself in despair.  The hard truth is that a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza is in all probability economically, geographically, and politically non-viable — a “two-state solution” that solves nothing at all.  And while the “one-state solution” thus seems the only logical outcome, logic has nothing to do with the politics of identity.  One state would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state, since it would then have a non-Jewish majority;  whether you support the idea of a Jewish state or not, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see that Israel will never agree to dissolve its foundational raison d’être. 

Which leaves us where?

Without a vision of a positive outcome, the all-or-nothing hardliners are in the ascendance, promising nothing but more violence.  So could the rest of us be suffering from a dismaying lack of imagination?  Is there a third way?  Or a fourth or a fifth?  I have no answers, just the stubborn faith that there has to be.  For the first time in over a decade, the UN decision gives me a sense of forward movement.  If that’s illusory, I’ll take it for now.

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File under: Middle East | Tagged: Tags: Gaza, Israel, one-state solution, Palestine, settlements, two-state solution, UN, West Bank | 4 Comments
  1. cloakedmonk says:
    November 30, 2012 at 1:40 pm

    Reblogged this on Cloaked Monk's Blog and commented:
    Some thoughts from Lesley Hazleton on the recognition of Palestine as a non-voting member state. For all those advocating for a one state solution, what does it do to Israel’s identity to have to create a world that is not inherently Israeli? Hmm. I must think on this.

  2. Trying God's Patience says:
    November 30, 2012 at 1:56 pm

    I’ll take your naivete and raise you.
    Perfectly put.
    As usual.

  3. zummard. says:
    December 2, 2012 at 6:40 am

    Don’t despair. Make a prayer.

    ” Oh God of SARAH, HAGAR, MARIAM, KHADIJA and everyone else!!!!!!
    Mothers are running out of tears for their children.
    WHEN WILL YOU RUN OUT OF PATIENCE?
    Our moral decadence has desensitized us to the misery of humanity. So YOU do something to restore peace and justice on earth.

  4. Ibrahim says:
    December 3, 2012 at 2:02 pm

    Isn’t it strange, as soon as one mentions the need for collective action to come up with a plan that has concrete contribution to resolving a situation, how few of us immediately appeal to the mothers of Ismail and Ishaq.
    Leaving the occupied territories has less existential challenge for Israel than the one-state solution. The “settlements” should present no important issue as it did not in the 1978 agreement with Sadat.
    What we need to do is to convince the politicians that the other alternative is Kissinger’s prophecy.
    This can be done if we were to force the issue of military assistance from US to become contingent upon move in that direction.
    If prayers were helpful, i am sure the issue would have been resolved as thousands of good people from both sides have been praying for a long time for a miraculous resolution.

No Gaza Ceasefire

Posted November 20th, 2012 by Lesley Hazleton

Hillary Clinton’s tight-lipped glare says it all.  The expected ceasefire in Gaza today did not materialize.  Israel still bombing, Hamas still launching rockets.

I watch as the hardliners on both sides reinforce each other — delegitimizing not Israel, nor Hamas, but the Palestinian Authority.

Worse still,  they knowingly do so at the cost of other people’s lives.

I watch in wordless misery.

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File under: Middle East, ugliness, war | Tagged: Tags: Gaza, Hamas, Hillary Clinton, Israel, Netanyahu, Palestine | 18 Comments
  1. lavrans123 says:
    November 20, 2012 at 3:40 pm

    It is stunning to watch this. Sad, infuriating.
    Part of me wonders if the people living there will ever rise up and toss these hardliners and their militants out. They aren’t going to leave on their own, and it looks to me like they have the same problem we do here- the squeaky wheels are given bullhorns, and everyone not on the fringe watches in near silence.

  2. Lynn Rosen says:
    November 20, 2012 at 11:55 pm

    Wordless misery. That says it all. Dammitt.

  3. lavrans123 says:
    November 21, 2012 at 1:54 pm

    OK- here’s my question for you.
    What drives this war? I keep running into discussions online, and the language always seems the same. The Israelis I know make the very good point that the Palestinians are indiscriminately shooting rockets at them and that they can’t exchange land for peace.

    On the Palestinian side the argument is that they want their land, they want the blockade to end, and that the Israelis use their armies superior technology and firepower to respond with indiscriminate killing… and that all the dead are “martyrs”.

    Why does it seem to me that using the same language will inevitably bring the same results? Where are the moderates? Who is using different language to define the problem, and to produce solutions?

    Right now I see the two sides apparently speaking different languages (figuratively in addition to the rather obvious literal aspect). How do they expect to create understanding without creating common language?

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      November 21, 2012 at 4:50 pm

      Ah, but what makes you assume that either the Israeli government or the Hamas leadership is interested in understanding? They do already have a common language, however: hardline irredentism.

  4. lavrans says:
    November 21, 2012 at 7:32 pm

    Ah- I guess I should be more specific. I see posts and read a lot of stuff from people on the far sides of this issue. What’s the language, what are the stories, the talking points of the people who aren’t on the militant end of this stick? I’m sure they are out there; why aren’t they heard more and louder? Too hard to listen to reason when there is easy hyperbole that needs so much less thought?

    And where do we find that reasonable language? How does one help spread it? How do I reply to my Jewish friends who state that it is not possible to trade “land for peace” and that inevitably leads to why all Israel does is defend its people, or the Palestinian sympathizers (sadly, I can’t say I have any Palestinian friends who are muddying up my social media) who post the “martyr” dogma.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      November 22, 2012 at 10:20 am

      Lavrans — You’re right, the moderates are there (and here), but as usual, out-shouted, drowned out by the violence, noise, and bombast of extremists. One thing that strikes me is how absolutist both Israeli and Palestinian partisans in the United States are, often arguing almost cartoon stances. The emotional investment is undeniable, but however deep our anger and disgust, we need to remember that it’s also ruthlessly manipulated by hardline irredentists on all sides. We all need to resist this, since as you say, it only makes it all the harder to have any kind of productive exchange — of words, let alone territory. It serves the interests of nobody but the hardliners, those whose greatest fear is the prospect of the difficult mutual compromises necessary for any kind of long-term resolution. Those who thrive, that is, on conflict — and who oppose the current (non-Hamas) Palestinian bid for full UN status, which I totally support.

  5. AJ says:
    November 22, 2012 at 4:22 am

    How can we say…one side do this and other side do blah blah.
    Any so called even handed analysis would be justification of mass killing by apparent powerful and aggressor.

    We are deceiving ourselves and feigned to be naive.

    • lavrans123 says:
      November 22, 2012 at 12:28 pm

      That’s what I’ve been arguing, to some extent. That to use the common method, which is to count bodies and try to decide who’s actions are more justified can only lead to entrenched positions, rather than conversation.

      Better, it seems to me, that the conversation turn to the common ground that is so much harder to find. It takes the work of reason and restraint- to not think about that boy when thinking of the wrongs, but to think about the real lesson of his death. His death isn’t a beacon to the evil of one side, and it’s not an example of the callousness of one side, nor is he a martyr to a cause- his death is an example of what happens when two groups are willing to ignore the consequences of their actions.

      No act of retribution will bring him back.

      • AJ says:
        November 23, 2012 at 3:22 am

        Conversation is meaningless when weaker side could be slapped around to bow to unjustified demands…work of reason and restraint is luxurious fantasy in this case.

        Stronger A would never kill the child of weaker B, if he knows B can also kill his child in retribution.

        We as outsider should have enough courage to call a spade a spade..yes why not count the bodies…after all these numbers are human beings..lets decide who is aggressor by number of bodies then quit saying “Israel has right to defend”…Mass killing in so called self defence is no defence rather terrorizing the neighboring inhibitants of different race and creed….oops !!!…I should not have used “terrorist” exclusive copyright of west.

        The best we can do from outside…to not give Israeliz any moral justification of mass killing as their right to defend.

        Lets not bomb Israeli kids in retribution, at least make them feel guilty…let them feel what they have done…do not give them justification by calling it two side problem.

        No one knew the power of benevolence, patience and defeat unless Imam Hussain gave his life in utmost humaneness.

        • lavrans123 says:
          November 23, 2012 at 8:47 am

          And yet, Netanyahu’s line also has perfectly good reasoning behind it:

          “The moment we draw symmetry between the [intentional] victims of terror and the unintended casualties that result from legitimate military action against the terrorists, the minute that false symmetry is drawn, the terrorists win.”

          Both tear at the heart strings, both are rational seeming words. The Israeli’s have their “martyrs”, too. They know the terror of rockets and what it is like to lose a child. When Palestine complains about the blockade, the Israeli’s can complain about the Hamas leaders agreeing to a two party state, so long as “Israel isn’t one of the parties”. When Gaza complains about the blockade, Israel can complain about being surrounded by hostile countries who want them eliminated merely because they are Jewish.

          You look at a child’s body and say he was killed by Israelis, I can’t help but note that it was two hands that killed him, one a Palestinian hand, the other an Israeli hand. Perhaps you can excuse the blood on that Palestinian hand, but I cannot see the difference in his blood no matter which hand it is on.

          More importantly- how can you say you want peace if you want the children of Israel to feel shame? From outside I know that all you get with shame is anger.

          • AJ says:
            November 25, 2012 at 10:36 pm

            International terrorist wins but not against Israel…they win against their own Muslims.
            A people who are defenseless, innocent, out-powered and outgunned are being attacked and killed while the world watches.
            Gaza is a prison, where the inmates are killed for very little provocation, if any. They are being attacked for existing. That is enough provocation. It is not only the misery of a brutal death, but also dying in the knowledge that the world does not care, or perhaps, is with the aggressor.
            However, the world does not watch in silence. Worse, excuses are being made for the killers. The victim is being blamed. The murdered has brought it upon him. Can it be termed a war if only one side does all the killing? Nothing has been done to provoke the aggressor, yet it remains provoked, because it wants to be provoked, because it can. Innocent women and children murdered in cold blood. Even before the killing takes place, the apologists have the script ready. Sounds familiar, all of this, does it not? A state of affairs that is easy to condemn. It seems not.

            Who made these Palestinians hostile..you sould not worry about hostile countries…they all sit when commanded to sit..they are obedient monarch of west installed as western interest Tyrant on their people.

            How those Palestinians who give their land and home to Jews in the first place, becomes hostile.
            Friendly neighbor doesn’t suit Israel…they need hostile neighbor as reason for further expansion…and to carry on as watch dog for western interest in oil rich territory.

            All these Saudi kings and midget of Jordan and Arab Sheikhs does not fear west…geogrophically they are no threat but YES they fear Israel and that we call purpose served.

  6. AJ says:
    November 22, 2012 at 4:26 am

    I wish I could cut n paste this kids smiling dead body

    They took away his life but not his smile. His smile is a sad reflection of cruel reality of global politics of hate. Shame.

  7. AJ says:
    November 26, 2012 at 11:13 pm

    I also see all the blame is put on hardliners from both sides.
    Plaestinian hardliners(Hammas) were recently added in the picture…History of Palestinian suffering is well before any hardliners exist.

    We come up with such gems when we are not ready to face the reality but always ready to hide the truth

    • lavrans says:
      November 26, 2012 at 11:35 pm

      AJ- look at your words.
      They are the words of recrimination, that ask to dredge up the crimes, the insults, the slights of the past. I have heard your line of reasoning, and the accompanying refrain from Israel.
      I am not an Israeli, I am not a Palestinian.

      My question is what you would do, what would you ask, if you were to make peace in the region. What would you ask in order to live in peace and without the sword of Damocles hanging over your neighborhood? How would you make it possible to have a neighborhood that is equally filled with Israelis and Palestinians?

      What would you do to make yourself and your neighbors proud to have Israel as a neighbor, as an ally? What would you do to make Israel want to have Palestine as a neighbor, and to be proud of calling Palestine their ally?

      We all know the past well enough- how do you get beyond the history to a place where both can live in harmony? That’s what I am curious about. I don’t need to hear about the recriminations, about the pain and shame and fear. I know those stories. I don’t know the stories about how that is overcome.

  8. AJ says:
    November 27, 2012 at 1:32 am

    lavrans
    Pointing a crime with the culprit is not dredging the crime.
    And truth should never be taken as insult…Yes past history establish the running course.

    Apologist with ready script always come up with “Israel has a right to defend”.
    Defend against whom…stone throwing kidz…and with assumption that neighboring Plaestinians are hostile…now we need history.

    People are against each other due to race,creed and religion..Palestiniana happened to be Muslim.
    Three time Jews were expelled from Jerusalem by Christians and all the three times Muslims welcome them back.
    First Khalifa Umar Bin Khattab welcome them back then Saladin Ayubi and third time today’s Palestinians….all happened to be Muslim and Arabs. Historically they are not hostile towards Jews.

    I am glad you point my refrain toward Israel, not Jews.
    You right on spot ask for a solution…Although its not easy but very much possible…a greater responsibility lies on Israel….Hammas ready for 67 border…do you think Israel would agree.

    Israel in 21st century can not aford policy of apartheid….one neighbor is rich with tall buildings and top notch schooling and best health facilities…other side is blocked even for necessary medicines and milk and food for babies.
    For the sake of argument I buy that in the name of food, arms are smuggled into Gaza. Israel should take matters in its own hands and capture all the shipment and then supply on their own all the food and medicine to Gaza..that will win the heart of people there…first step necessary towards peace but eventually lead to lost effect of “hostile neighbor” rhetoric.

    You know and all of us know Israeli blockade is nothing but to punish whole nation of Gaza…in my opinion Gazans are human being, hopefully you will agree with this opinion…no pun intended.

    I wish I were a Jew to say all these words…my being Muslim will not compromise my zeal for justice.
    We are human being, if we can not feel the pain of other human beings then we are apologist zombies, who is not ready to do the least he/she can do i.e. point the culprit and held him responsible.

  9. Lesley Hazleton says:
    November 27, 2012 at 8:52 am

    May I suggest that justice is one thing, coexistence another? That there is no perfect justice in this world? That all sides need to compromise? [see here what I’ve written in the past about the impossibility of perfection.]
    Lavrans has an excellent question: how do we get beyond history? Can we? Or are we doomed to keep digging the pit deeper and deeper? Are we so bound by the past that we can no longer imagine a future?
    (I say ‘we’ with some trepidation, since whatever ‘we’ come up with here, it’s the people living there who have to do the hard work.)
    Worth remembering too, AJ: I don’t know the percentage, but a sizable number of Palestinians are Christian, and have been for close on two millennia.

    • AJ says:
      November 27, 2012 at 11:58 am

      A solution I suggest has nothing to do with past…Lets win the hearts of people…treat them equal…a Palestinian baby died due to lack of medicine and food, should also be considered death of a human being..is it to much to ask….and all my suggestions addressed to those who think Israel has right to defend…a lesser hostile Palestinian is best defence.

      I have another suggestion but that will earn me great disrespect from apologists….Lets equip Palestinians with 1/10th of arms Israel have…that will greatly reduce loss of life and better living conditions for Gazan…Israel won’t dare stopping their food supply in the name of arm smuggling.

      I was not talking about perfection in anything…after all we are human being, we are endowed with senses and common sense and we can see the obvious…we don’t have to be rocket scientist to tell who is aggressor and who is suffering.

      Lesley does not believe in perfection so she should not be believing in absolute imperfection…a whole nation is declared terrorist because their kidz can throw stones and they have few missiles too.
      Their suffering is justified because their kidz are terrorist.

      A killer always have a motive and justification for his act…we should not hold him accountable because our judgment against him could never be perfect…thats silly, though I was not talking about perfection…yes I was talking about the result of killer’s act…loss of human life and human suffering.

      Palestinians are predominantly Muslim…many of them are African aborigine but still they are known as Arab…Lesley and I could never be on same page in any set of discussion.

  10. AJ says:
    November 28, 2012 at 3:00 am

    When Will the Killing War in Iran Begin? It Already Has

    “Economic sanctions are, at their core, a war against public health.” –The New England Journal of Medicine [1]

    By Stephen Gowans

    November 06, 2012 “Information Clearing House” – While campaigns are organized to deter the United States and Israel from acting on threats to launch an air war against Iran, both countries, in league with the European Union (winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize) carry on a low-intensity war against Iran that is likely to be causing more human suffering and death than strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities would. This is a war against public health, aimed at the most vulnerable: cancer patients, hemophiliacs, kidney dialysis patients, and those awaiting transplants.

    http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32958.htm

Breaking Through On Iran?

Posted October 21st, 2012 by Lesley Hazleton

Today the NYT reports that “the United States and Iran have agreed in principle for the first time to one-on-one negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.”

(I’m not at all sure what to make of that phrase “one-on-one negotiations.”  I’m assuming it means face-to-face meetings between American and Iranian officials as opposed to “back-channel” contacts, but in the land of diplo-speak, who knows?  Moreover, this is hardly “the first time” the US and Iran have negotiated over nuclear issues, not least since Iran’s nuclear program began with full-on American support decades ago, under the Shah. But I’ll stop with the cavils for now…)

The new agreement is still informal.  It comes after “intense, secret exchanges between American and Iranian officials that date almost to the beginning of President Obama’s term,” the NYT reports, but it’s unclear if Ayatollah Khamenei has yet signed off on it, or even when negotiations might begin.  “After the US elections” is all that’s being said.  And of course if Romney wins, forget it.

If this works out, it’s excellent news.  Long overdue.  There’s no way this whole standoff is going to be resolved without direct talks.  So it was hardly a surprise to see the Israeli reaction, via ambassador Michael Oren:  “We do not think Iran should be rewarded with direct talks.”  Instead, he said, sanctions and “all other possible pressures on Iran” should be increased.

“Rewarded?”  More sanctions?  “Other pressures?”  Does he imagine that Iran will simply collapse and disappear?  That it can be bombed into submission?  That no direct talks are ever necessary?  Where exactly does he see any form of resolution in all this?

The answer is:  he doesn’t.  Conflict resolution is not the aim so far as he’s concerned.  That’s his government’s stand toward Palestine:  no negotiation, no resolution, and yes, per Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, bomb ’em into submission.  No give and take, no flexibility, no live and let live.  Just build more walls.

If US-Iran negotiations do indeed take place, the logical outcome would be that Iran ends up with nuclear energy but not nuclear weapons.  From Iran’s point of view, that’s a huge concession:  Israel has nuclear weapons, after all, and the US has been one of the world’s largest exporters of nuclear-arms technology.  It doesn’t take much to see why Iran objects to being lectured on nuclear issues by two nuclear powers, or that the very idea of “allowing” Iran to develop nuclear energy — “allow” is a word that crops up often in the NYT article — stinks of paternalistic hypocrisy.

But Iran’s leaders — its real leaders, that is, not front-man clowns like Ahmadinejad — may turn out to be a lot more realistic than Israel’s ones.

One thing is for sure: This news is going to figure large in Monday’s foreign-policy debate between Obama and Romney.  And Obama couldn’t do better than quote R. Nicholas Burns, whom the NYT cites as the man who “led negotiations with Iran as under-secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration.”  Burns sounds as though he’s had quite enough of diplo-speak:  “While we should preserve the use of force as a last resort,” he says, “negotiating first with Iran makes sense.  What are we going to do instead?  Drive straight into a brick wall called war in 2013, and not try to talk to them?”

—————–

Update, Monday October 22: The NYT reports that  everyone’s back-tracking.  Looks like someone was pushing a little too hard.  Or to use an unfortunate metaphor, jumping the gun.

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