Where Hatred Trumps Bread

And what rough beast,
its hour come at last,.
slouches toward Bethlehem
to be born?

Temple on the Temple Mount, the
emperor Hadrian also had the distinc-
tion of reassigning the history of
Jerusalem; he dubbed it Aelia
— WB. Yeats Capitolina, in honor of Jupiter.
Yet, at the same time, Golda Meir was
CYNTHIA OZICK
mistaken: She declined to recognize a
Special Commentary
growing sectarianism rooted not merely
in the bitterness of contemporary poli-
White Plains, NY
tics — the Arab war against the Jews —
hen, some years ago, Golda
but far more comprehensively in a par-
Meir contentiously
ticularized and developing cultism.
remarked, "There are no
Whether the Palestinians nowadays
Palestinians," she was histor- constitute a cult or a sect or a nation
ically correct and evolutionally mistaken.
within the greater Arab world is
She was right because the-people who scarcely to the point. They have
had only recently begun to take on the
become a nation in their own eyes —
name "Palestinian" were ethnically and
and, with the blessings of the road
civilizationally Arab, part of what the
map, internationally as well.
Arabs themselves were pleased to call,
Nevertheless, it is not the determina-
with the poetic resonance of indivisibil-
tion of political borders that makes a
ity, "the Arab Nation."
nation; a nation is defined by its traits
Palestine, moreover, had its origin as
and usages, by its heroes and aspirations
a term of malice, the Roman invaders'
— in short, by its culture.
way of erasing Judea by naming it
History, in Benedetto Croce's formu-
after the Philistines who warred
lation, "is about the positive and not the
against the Jews.
negative." No one can refute the truth
And like the Palestinians today, who
that the Palestinians have fashioned a
deny the ancient reality of the Jewish
culture peculiarly their own — but one
so steeped in the negative as to have
Cynthia Ozick, a novelist, is the author been turned into a kind of anti-history.
of "Quarrel & Quandary: Essays"
In order to deprive Jews of their pat-
(Knopf 2000).
rimony, Palestinians have fabricated a

INT

Holding Activists Accountable

GARY FITLEBERG
Special Commentary

Los Angeles
ccording to an International
Solidarity Movement (ISM)
media allegation, "Rachel
Corrie was murdered by
Israel while she was peacefully protest-
ing against the illegal demolition of a
Palestinian home."
American Rachel Corrie, 23, was
killed in the Gaza Strip on March 16,
2003, when she entered an area where
Israeli forces were carrying out a mili-
tary operation. The incident tragically
and unfortunately occurred while Israel
Defense Forces (IDF) were removing
shrubbery along the security road near
the border between Israel and Egypt at
Rafah to uncover explosive devices,

A

Gary Fitleberg is a political analyst spe-
cializing in international relations with
emphasis on Middle East affairs. His
commentaries have appeared in Jewish
and secular newspapers nationally and
internationally. His e-mail address is
jewsinthenews4@yahoo.corn

and destroying tunnels used by
Palestinian terrorists to illegally smug-
gle weapons from Egypt to Gaza.
Corrie was not demonstrating for
peace or trying to shield innocent
civilians; she was interfering with a
military operation to legally demolish
an empty house used to conceal one of
these tunnels.
A misleading photo published by the
Associated Press gave the impression
that Corrie was standing in front of the
bulldozer and shouting at the driver
with a megaphone, trying to prevent
the driver from tearing down a building
in the refugee camp. This photo, which
was taken by a member of Corrie's
organization, was not shot at the time
of her death, however, but hours earlier.
The photographer said that Corrie was
actually sitting and waving her arms
when she was struck ( Christian Science
Monitor, April 02, 2003).
The Israel Judge Advocate's Office
investigated the incident and conclud-
ed that the driver of the bulldozer
never saw or heard Corrie because she
was standing behind debris that
obstructed the view of the driver

sectarian narrative alien to common-
place knowledge.
Although the Arab invasion of
Palestine did not occur until the 17th
century, Palestinian Arabs are declared to
be, according to activist Salah Jabr, "the
descendants of civilizations that have
lived in this land since the Stone Age."
With equal absurdity, other such
deniers of Jewish patri-
mony claim a
Canaanite bloodline.
By replacing history
with fantasy, the
Palestinians have
invented a society
unlike any other, where
hatred trumps bread.
They have reared chil-
dren unlike any other
children, removed from
ordinary norms and
behaviors.
And they have been
assisted in these devia-
tions by Arab rulers
who for half a century
have purposefully and pitilessly caged
and stigmatized them as refugees, down
to the fourth generation.
Refugeeism, abetted also by the
United Nations, has itself been joined
to the Palestinian cult of anti-history.

A people respectful of history, includ-
ing its own above all, will work to
fructify and invigorate life; it will not
debase and vitiate it.
The salient attribute of any culture is
originality and its legacies. Genius, no
matter how rare, is a human universal. It
sends into the world new perception and
new experience, inspiring duplication:
Out of Israel came
monotheism, out of
Greece philosophy, out
of Arab civilization sci-
ence and poetry, out of
England the Magna
Carta, out of France
the Enlightenment.
What has been the
genius of Palestinian
originality? What has
been the contribution of
the evolving culture of
Palestinian sectarianism?
On the international
scene: airplane hijack-
ings and the murder
of American diplomats
in the 1970s. Olympic slaughterings
and shipboard murders in the 1980s.
And toward the Jews of the Holy
Land, beginning in the 1920s and
continuing until this morning, terror,
OZICK on page 30

whose field of view was limited by the Saffold, a founder and organizer of ISM
small armored windows of his cab. An
(Washington Post, March 17, 2003).
autopsy found that the cause of
The death of an innocent civilian is
Corrie's death was falling debris
always tragic, and the best way to
(Jerusalem Post, June 26, 2003).
avoid such tragedies in the future is,
The State Department warned
first and foremost, by the Palestinian
Americans not to travel
Authority putting an
to Gaza, and Israel
end to violence and
made it clear that civil-
stopping the smug-
ians who enter areas
gling operations that
where troops are
have brought huge
engaged in counter-ter-
quantities of illegal
ror operations put
weapons into the
themselves unnecessari-
Gaza Strip.
ly at risk. This was not
Activists interested
the first time protestors
in peace should be
have tried to obstruct
protesting the
Israeli operations, and
Palestinian actions.
the IDF has made
Activists also have
every effort to avoid
every right to express
harming them.
their views about
This case received
Israel's policies, but
worldwide publicity in
Rachel Corrie was part of the they should take care
large measure because it
pro-Palestinian International to avoid the appear-
was the first such inci-
ance of siding with the
Solidarity Movement.
dent where a protestor
terrorists or placing
was killed. In fact, the
themselves in positions
army had told Corrie and other demon-
where they could be inadvertently
strators from the anti-Israel ISM to
caught in the crossfire of a counter-ter-
move out of the way. "It's possible they
ror operation or otherwise endangered
[the protesters] were not as disciplined as by entering an area where military
we would have liked," admitted Thom
operations are being conducted. Di

7/25

2003

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