The Bible tells us that, following the drowning of the Egyptian soldiers in the Red Sea, the children of Israel held a celebration. According to rabbinic legend, the angels joined in with them. God chastises them for this, revoking them for daring to celebrate the destruction of his creation. The moral behind this parable is clear – don’t celebrate your enemy’s misfortune, even if they have done you great harm.
During the past 10 days, Israel has successfully begun the operation to ‘disengage’ from Gaza. This is the first time in 38 years that the settlement project has gone backwards. 8000 Jewish settlers have been made to leave their homes. These settlers had previously lived among over one million Palestinians, controlling one fifth of Gaza’s land mass and in the process turning the Palestinian areas into Bantustans. They have also extracted a huge cost in terms of the lives of soldiers pointlessly sent there to protect them.
One would have thought that last week’s events would have provided a perfect opportunity to take stock, to note the awful price the settlement enterprise has cost, and to quietly commend the brave soldiers and police who have implemented the disengagement. In some quarters, however, it has been used as an excuse to continue the long-term project of dehumanising every aspect of Palestinian existence.
Elie Wiesel is the most important Diaspora representative of the ‘beautiful Israel’. That is to say, he performs the function of showing to the world how Israeli society tears itself apart over the tough decisions it is faced with. When it does the right thing, he can glowingly report that. When in the wrong, at least he can show the government’s tortured conscience. For the most part, the Palestinians have been curious by their absence in disengagement reporting. The world’s media has indulged in the images of Jews evacuating Jews, haplessly documenting Sharon’s melodrama so that he can turn around and say ‘never again’. Some, however, have reported Palestinian celebrations over the withdrawal.
It is these celebrations that Wiesel focused on in a commentary piece for the New York Times earlier this week. He starts by equating the Palestinian celebrations the past few days with previous celebrations of suicide bombs. It is worth quoting this opening paragraph in its entirety:
“In 1991, when Saddam Hussein’s Scud missiles fell in a deafening din on Tel Aviv, some Palestinians danced in the streets and on the roofs of their houses. I saw them. I was in Jerusalem, and I could see what was happening in the Arab quarter of the Old City. It happened again later, each time a suicide terrorist set off a bomb on a bus or in a restaurant. I evoke these scenes with sadness, and for a reason: we have just seen them repeated in Gaza.”
Wiesel’s assertion is that the Palestinian celebrations over the disengagement are no different from their celebrations over suicide bombings. Words cannot stress how absurd a comparison this is. To celebrate suicide-bombings is to celebrate mass murder. To celebrate disengagement is to celebrate the withdrawal of an occupying force from your land. In fact, I am sure that many Israeli households held a l’chaim or two to mark the moment. And note his crudeness. ‘Palestinians’ celebrated a suicide bomb. Then they did the same in Gaza. No nuance, no complexity. Just Palestinians dancing to mark Israeli despair.
Then, after reminding us how ‘unbearable’ the images of the evacuation are, he reminds us (“let’s not forget,” no less) “In the eyes of their families, they were pioneers, whose idealism was to be celebrated.” That’s a bit of a mute point, Elie. Of course families might respect one another. But what do you think? Do you think they were pioneers? Or dupes of one expansionist government after another? The transformation from settler to refugee is then completed, with Wiesel failing to remind his audience of the generous compensation that the ‘evacuees’ received.
Now onto the celebrations. Wiesel alludes to the same Jewish concept I opened this piece with, noting that King Solomon ordered us “not to rejoice when the enemy falls.” Amusingly, at the end of the paragraph he tags on “I don’t know if the Koran suggests the same.” Again, what are you saying Elie? As a columnist for the New York Times, I would expect you to do some basic research. It surely can’t be too hard to find out if there is a similar concept in Islam. But, once again, he prefers to leave things hanging in the air, letting his omission do the dirty work.
There is an ‘I-told-you-so’ brigade amongst certain sections of the media. As soon as disengagement finishes, they will sit and wait for the first sign of a Qassam rocket firing out of Gaza so that they can tell us that they warned us about this already. Disappointingly, Elie Wiesel seems perfectly happily nailing his colours to this posse’s mast. In an article that contains only one criticism of the behaviour of the settler movement (“They insulted and wounded soldiers; they spat on officers”), he reproaches the ‘Palestinians’ (to deconstruct exactly what Wiesel means when he casually bandies that term around would take another article) for their decision “to organize military parades with masked fighters, machine guns in hands, shooting in the air as though celebrating a great battlefield victory.” I guess he expected to be writing about Palestinian fire on the IDF as they attempted to carry out the withdrawal – this, of course, never happened. Instead, because meaningful self-criticism is clearly beyond him, he hurls his opprobrium at Palestinian celebrations of the withdrawal.
Now, to a certain extent, I’m with him. There is certainly something distasteful about the militaristic nature of some of these celebrations, and it is appropriate to highlight the ideal outlined in the opening paragraph. But Wiesel does not bother to remind his readers that the people of Gaza are finally seeing the withdrawal of occupying forces. This is naturally a great cause for joy. Who wouldn’t be celebrating at a time like this? More crucially, at a time when there are far more pressing issues to be dealing with (How do we make sure this isn’t ‘Gaza-last’? How can we use the relative smoothness with which disengagement has been implemented as a fulcrum to heal some of the divisions in Israeli society), what kind of perversity causes such an esteemed figure as Elie Wiesel to use his ‘op-ed’ piece in the New York Times for this kind of piffle? The article’s conclusion reads - “Gaza, after all, is but one chapter in a book that must ultimately be about piece.” One is reminded of what Jay-Z said to Nas – “Yeh I sampled your voice, you was using it wrong. You made it a hot line, I made it a hot song.” Walk it like you talk it, Elie.
