In Every Generation
April 15, 2005
By BARBARA SOFER
I was recently listening to a European professor, a pacifist with truly impressive humanitarian credentials, as she described the suffering of the Palestinians under "occupation." Suddenly I realized there was no mention of the war they launched in September 2000. We Israelis were cast as the familiar unrepentant evil empire, lacking sensitivity, and the sole source of Palestinian misery. Conspicuous by their absence were even the token recognition that Israel might have security concerns, and the usual nominal condemnation of terror.
Had the speaker slept, Rip Van Winkle-like, through the past half decade and missed the headlines about bombers ripping apart buses and cafes, murdering doctors and nurses as they came home from work and targeting teenagers out at a discotheque? Of course not. She'd simply waved away that silly violence as a justifiable reaction to occupation; it was something that we Israelis needed to accept. Camp David, Taba, Sbarro and the Park Hotel weren't landmarks on the internal map of her world view.
Hers was the clearest articulation of what I see as a trend of "intifada denial," a phenomenon in articles domestic and foreign that urges us to get on with the peace plans and behave as if we were back in the heady summer of 2000. Remember back then how we were expecting so many millennium tourists that we were urged to take home pilgrims to cope with the overflow?
Intifada-denial is a dangerous error. Even for Israelis who enthusiastically supported Oslo and Camp David, four years of violence has forced a reckoning with reality. The pointless murder and savage mutilation of civilians, coupled with the images of celebratory joy by Palestinians as buses were torn to pieces and the Twin Towers crumbled had to be an awakening. Anyone who is concerned about peace in the Middle East would be nuts not to factor in this hatred.
Would that we could turn the clock back to 2000. Let's imagine what would have happened if the Palestinian people had invested their considerably energy, not in violence but in restructuring the PA by accepting Ehud Barak's plan at Camp David.
A nascent Palestinian state could have been celebrating its fifth anniversary. Young leadership could have reformed the corrupt mechanisms of government instead of devising plans for recruiting and dispatching teenagers as human bombs. The techies who design tunnels and bomb factories could have been turning out air-conditioners and gas cooking grills, building houses, improving their highway system and designing computer programs.
The billions of euros poured in by the Europeans would have supported these projects, as well as constructing bright new schools, hospitals equipped to treat cancer and prevalent genetic diseases.
How many playgrounds and sports centers could have been built with the money spent on Kassam rockets alone? Soccer teams from Gaza City and Jenin would be competing in regional leagues. Jericho could have become the Monte Carlo of the Middle East. It has far better weather. PA educational television could have been highlighting talented vocal artists and ambassadors, paid for by commercials for new colleges offering badly needed specialties.
A population with health problems frequently caused by marriage within the family could be in waiting rooms for preventative check-ups instead of waiting at checkpoints. Luxury hotels on the Mediterranean would be offering kosher-for-Pessah vacations. We could have been tearing down walls instead of investing precious resources in building new ones.
But, of course, this is more than a question of wasted opportunities. So many are dead, so many have lifelong disabilities. As a society we have become terror survivors. The term "terror survivor" was actually coined in this "intifada" by a Jerusalem woman named Shoshana Gottleib. She was shot in the spine on the way home from work. Because she'd been bending over to put orange peels in a plastic bag on the floor, she wasn't killed. The terrorist who shot her for pay later complained that he didn't get his money because she'd survived.
Gottlieb, a mother of five, was speaking in Washington, and visited the Holocaust Museum there. She was surprised and impressed that so many average Americans were waiting in long lines for the exhibits. She suddenly realized that she wasn't just a victim; that, like her parents who had been in Auschwitz, she was a survivor too. She wanted to stand up and shout it, but of course she couldn't. Shoshana is confined to a wheelchair.
We're in the midst of preparing for Pessah, the national holiday in which it's our obligation to pass on to our children the message of the joyous, divine moment of liberation from slavery. I know it kind of throws a damper on the party, but we're also obliged to remember that in every generation someone tries to destroy us.
Imagine reading those lines of the Haggada at the Pessah Seder at Shoshana Gottleib's home. The intifada was, indeed, another of these malevolent but futile attempts to destroy us. Were that it wasn't so.
If we don't remember, we can't expect others to. Nor will they be able to understand the poignancy of our eternal longing for "Next Year in Jerusalem."
