When you routinely report about Israel and Gaza through the eyes of Israelis, the results can be awkward, like today’s New York Times front-pager that frames what was a human catastrophe for many Palestinians–the killing by Israel of some 40 Gazans at a U.N. school–into a mere military and PR “pitfall” for Israelis. As the headline read, “For Israel, Lessons from 2006, but Old Pitfalls.”
In the third paragraph of the story, reporter Steven Erlanger mentions the killings along with other earlier “pitfalls”:
And then there are the sudden events that can throw off so many careful calculations and come to symbolize the horrors of war–like the deaths of civilians from Israeli munitions in Qana, Lebanon, both in 1996 and 2006, and the reports on Tuesday evening of as many as 40 people, including children, killed as they sought shelter in a United Nations school in northern Gaza.
In fact, neither of Israel’s Qana attacks–the attack on a building near Qana in 2006 that killed 28 civilians, nor the 1996 attacks on the Qana U.N. refugee camp that took 106 lives–resulted from from “careful calculations” being “thrown off.” As the Israeli daily Ha’aretz reported (8/1/06), the 2006 attack purposely targeted a three-story building near Qana because it was near the site of a previous Hezbollah rocket launch, even though the IDF, in Ha’aretz‘s words, “had no information on rockets launched from the site of the building, or the presence of Hezbollah men at the time.”
In the case of the 1996 massacre, a U.N. investigation found that Israel Defense Forces had misrepresented key facts of the assault and had likely intentionally targeted the Qana refugee camp: “While the possibility cannot be ruled out completely, it is unlikely that the shelling of the United Nations compound was the result of gross technical and/or procedural errors.”
Beyond the geopolitical considerations of empire, to the racists, and, illogically, to many of the anti-Semites who rule this nation, Israelis are “honorary white persons”.
You don’t mess with white people.
Mess with white people, no matter what white people have done to you, you die.
True in Oakland, true in New York, true in the southern US, true in southern Israel.
I say this as a white boy from the great and sovereign state of Miss’ssippi. I say this as someone who is, and always will be, a “recovering racist”.
I also say this as someone who is well aware that if blacks or any other race controlled this country, the same dynamics would exist.
There is no cause for pride, or prejudice, regarding race. We’re all capable of the most vile acts by dint of our species, which is the only one wilfully incapable of reason.
I think understanding that, and that we’re also capable of great humanity, is the key to breaking down the walls that divide us.
Or maybe I’m full of shit.
What do you think?