Tony at Tallrite blog forwarded me this incredibly tedious piece of personal nostalgia by Barbara Smith, written last month in honor of her departure from The Economist (good riddance). My overall reaction was "who cares?" I mean, there's very little here that could possibly be of interest to anyone.
But, of course, there was something in the article that caught my attention. It was this:
If shame for Britain's part in the Suez affair set off my exasperated affection for the Arab world, a far deeper, European, shame fed my passionate advocacy of Israel's existence, a passion that survived, just, my first visit to the Middle East. My way to Israel led through the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, and the gross injustice of evicted Palestinians paying for Europe's guilt. That tempered my delight in Israel in the late 1950s and early 1960s. But delight there was: the eagerness and courage, the idealism of the early kibbutzim, the fun and the rough ways, the heartbreaking beauty of the place before concrete and breeze-blocks took over.
"Shame for Britain's part in the Suez affair," which Ms. Smith describes as a conspiracy between Britain, France and Israel "to do down Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt's dictator?" There was, in fact, a wee bit more to it than that. But though Britain didn't acquit itself particularly well in that incident, Ms. Smith's declared Arabophilic conversion hardly seems an appropriate response.
Ah, but then we have her "passionate advocacy of Israel's existence" -- quickly smothered by her revulsion at "evicted Palestinians paying for Europe's guilt" in Lebanese refugee camps in the late 50s and early 60s? So the substance of her "advocacy" escapes me. Ms. Smith obviously believes that Israel's existence on even the sliver of land it held in 1960 was a "gross injustice," and she seems to suggest that whatever legitimacy Israel did have resulted solely from the horrors of the Holocaust. Or perhaps it was due in part to Israel's ability to delight her with its quaint socialist collective farms and its sense of "fun." Whatever. With advocates like this . . .
The scene changed after the 1967 war, a war in which Israel captured all the rest of the land that the Palestinians could call home. Some Israelis argued, in the years immediately after that great military victory, that it would be wise to return the land, but there were not enough of them, and the Palestinians were not ready for any sort of bargain. It was the first of the many opportunities tragically missed.
"All the rest of the land that the Palestinians could call home?" Once again, the other (arguably) 75% of "Palestine," currently ruled by an Arabian Hashemite named Abdullah, is being omitted from the picture. But why get distracted by facts? Yes, it was surely the lack of enough Israelis willing to "return the land" (to whom?) that prevented a harmonious agreement among the parties to the Six Day War. The infamous "three no's," agreed to by eight Arab heads of state at Khartoum, played no part whatsoever.
(Someone should have reminded Ms. Smith that the palestinians had no say in the matter. Had any land been "returned," it would have been to Jordan, Egypt and Syria. And you can bet there would never have been any discussion of a palestinian state in the Gaza Strip or the "West Bank.")
So let's move on. To this:
Yet the solution is blindingly obvious. The land has to be peacefully shared, with an independent Palestine set up in the territories that Israel seized in 1967, and small land-swaps where geography or settlements call for them. Since most Israelis and most Palestinians now accept a decent two-state solution, they must, eventually, implement one—but not until the Israelis choose a prime minister who also believes in it, which Ariel Sharon does not.
An incredible proposal! How amazing that no one has thought of it, tried it, lost hundreds of innocent lives trying to implement it before now! And, of course, contrary to every shred of evidence, including their own words, we have the old canard that "most Palestinians" accept a two-state solution, while Sharon does not.
It gets worse, culminating in a rambling, self-congratulatory paragraph, the point of which appears to be an inference that Ms. Smith deserves credit for singlehandedly dragging her editors at The Economist to "accept[ance of] the idea of an independent Palestinian state."
How special.
So the article turns out not to be so tedious, after all. In fact, it offers great insight into the extreme myopia and personal bias that too often inform what we take for "news" from the Middle East. But unless you need a sedative, don't even try to read the whole thing.
