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Dispatch From Hebron: A Gentile Finds Jewish Redemption Amid Brutality |
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 by Paul Widen, May 21, 2008 |
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I suppose that the revolutionaries are those who are capable of coming to terms with the brutality of the world, and of responding to it with increased brutality. --- Michel Houellebecq
I just finished working on an article about the Jewish community (or settlement, if you wish) in the West Bank city of Hebron for a Swedish magazine. It was originally meant to be a simple interview with the community spokesperson David Wilder, but once it was finished, my editor wanted me to "balance" the piece with a "voice from the other side." Allowing a Jewish settler to speak unchallenged would create the impression that his views were somehow endorsed by this magazine, heaven forbid.
And what are his views? Simply put, David Wilder believes that Jews have the right
A Prayer By The Grave Of The Patriarchs to live in Hebron, just as they have the right to live in any other part of the Land of Israel. We don't really discuss it, but it is obvious that this right has had to be maintained through continued sacrifice. During the last 40 years, 103 Jewish civilians living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank have been murdered by their Arab neighbors, simply for being Jewish. At times, the Jews have responded in kind: On February 25, 1994, Baruch Goldstein stepped into the Mosque by the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and gunned down 29 Muslims before being beaten to a pulp.
In Zionist theory, Hebron can be said to be the logical end point of the argument. People who otherwise agree with the basic Zionist tenet that Jews have the right to live in Israel will be hard-pressed to concur that this right extends to Hebron. That is probably why there are fewer than 1000 Jews living there, with at least 100 Arabs to every one of them. Hostility long ago reached the point at which the IDF had to enforce a separation between the populations, effectively destroying any semblance of normal life for thousands of Arabs. H2, the area where the Jews live, is a ghost town. The Arab shops have been closed for years and a lot of people have moved out. It is an ugly sight, I can assure you --- yes, brutal. It is perfectly understandable why people feel reluctant to take their Zionist claims all the way to Hebron.
But this is where it all started, the idea that God gave a piece of land to a certain
Mitzpeh Shalhevet Settlement: Cleared by order of the government person and his descendants. It is repeated every day in the morning prayers: "...and You established the covenant with him to give the land of the Canaanite, Hittite, Emorite, Perizzite, Jebusite, and Girgashite, to give it to his offspring; and You affirmed Your word, for You are righteous..." God gave the land with an obligation to conquer and expel, as one rabbi phrased it a few years before he was murdered outside of his settlement together with his wife.
It is not an easy thing to stomach, and most people don't. Just like they rush through their morning prayers without thinking about the words they utter, they claim that they are Zionists without giving much thought to the fact that every square inch of this land is soaked in the blood of Jews who died defending it and that there is no foreseeable end to this struggle. Maintaining a Jewish civilian presence in Hebron might require brutality, yes, but that's increasingly true for the rest of Israel as well. The neighborhood has always been rough, and it is getting worse.
Coming from a completely non-Jewish background, this is the Judaism that I am
Not Everyone Was Thrilled About The Forced Evacuation exposed to in Israel. My secular Jewish flatmate in Jerusalem is increasingly concerned about the amount of time I spend in my West Bank Yeshiva. "Why don't you move to New York?" she almost pleads and assures me that there is Jewish life there, too. "Residual Judaism," I reply with a smile. "There is absolutely no life in it."
"But it is so much nicer..." she tries, before realizing that "nice" is obviously not what I'm looking for.
So what am I looking for? I think my life took a decisive turn about eight years ago when I first encountered the writing of the French author Michel Houellebecq. In between reports from the Second Intifada that had just broken out in Israel, his words were etched into my conscience: "In the midst of its natural barbarity, humankind had (not often) managed to create areas of love and warmth; small, protected zones where love and inter-subjectivity thrived."
Today I think that I have found one of those zones, perched on a hilltop in the West
"The People of Israel Lives" Bank. I think I have come to terms with the brutality of the world; I have yet to respond to it, beyond moving here, which for some is brutal enough, but I am not sure if it qualifies me as a revolutionary. I suppose this move is a way to graphically express the fact that I have given up on the world in a sense, a consequence of the fact that I can no longer, as I used to, claim that it is redeemed. Israel, as a state and as a concept, is in itself another expression of this for me, an expression of the obvious, undeniable fact that we live in an unredeemed world. Israel is the last outpost, mankind's last attempt at redeeming itself; There is nothing beyond it, and all the evidence seems to suggest that things are going straight to hell. It is, to once again quote Houellebecq, an expression of the general impossibility of things.
Photography by Paul Widen
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Paul Widen is a Swedish freelance journalist based in Jerusalem. More... |
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Anonymous
Well if they want to live in
Well if they want to live in peace they are more than welcome to, but unfortunately they dont. The settlers of hebron see the transfer of their palestinian neighbors as an order from G-d. I assume when you were their you saw the grave of Baruch Goldstein? or should i say the shrine they built for him. Thats right, they built a shrine honoring a man that went into a mosque and opened fired on the worshipers as then knelt in prayer. Did they show you the houses they have stolen from the local arabs? did they show you the garbage their children dump in yards of their arab neighbors? There are some decent settlers, but the hebron community is beyond the pale. just to make it clear, i am not saying the Palestinians are without blame. they are also violent and intolerant. but that in no way excuses the actions of the settlers in Hebron. if we ar going to ask the palestinians to reign in their radicals we must do the same.
Palestineisamyth
Hebron was founded as a Jewish city thousands of years ago.
The only settlers in Hebron are the Arab Fakestinians who came from Arabia. Jews can't be called settlers in their own homeland. That would be like calling the Navajo Indians from Arizona settlers.
The Jews in Hebron have been assaulted and murdered by the occupying Arab Islamofacists whose goal is a Judenfree Middle East and world. David Wilder is a brave and courageous man!
Anonymous
Why is it illegal to
Why is it illegal to discrimiate against Jews in Grosse Point Michigan or Greenwich, Connecticut, but it is illegal for Jews to live in Hebron? Also, why no mention of the Palestinian massacre of Jewish civilians in Hebron in 1929. Perhaps these murdering Arabs were anticipating the "occupation" of Hebron 40 years later
Michael Green
Paul - you, or whoever
Paul - you, or whoever selected the photos for this piece, forgot to include the settler graffiti that reads "Death to the Arabs", "[Meir] Kahan was right" or "Arabs to the gas chambers".
Many of the Jewish settlers in Hebron and elsewhere in the West Bank don't simply "believe that Jews have the right to live in Hebron, just as they have the right to live in any other part of the Land of Israel", like Mr Wilder claims. (Many of them) want to expel the non-Jews living there, or, at the very least, rule over them with an iron fist until they realise who the 'Lords of the Land' really are...
Palestineisamyth
The Arab settlers goal is to murder the Jews.
The anti-Israel and Jew hater Michael is back with more Arab Islamicfacist propaganda. The anti-semite is confusing the Arab settlers with indigenous Jews. Let's see all the Arab terrorist graffiti that says "Kill all the Jews, sons of monkeys and pigs", and "Death to Israel."
And let's not forget the posters of the "artryrs" who've have blown up Jewish civilians. And also the posters with scenes of suicide bombings where the blood and human body parts of the Jewish victims are drawn with unbridled glee.
You are a disgusting excuse for a human being just like the people you defend!
Monosodium glutamate
Most Arabs (and Michael
Most Arabs (and Michael Green) are disturbed over the existence of Jews not cowering or burying their dead. It violates their sense of normalcy, ie of Jews being victims. Frankly, two millenia of Jewish victimhood is enough. If Arabs can live in Umm el Fahm and Haifa (and dream of the day when Jews are expelled from all of historic Palestine), then Jews can live in Hebron. Sure, some Jews write graffiti saying Meir Kahane was right. This is a fringe of Israel. When elected Arab officials in the Knesset travel to Syria to urge war against Israel, this reflects the majority of Israeli Arab opinion. It is dishonest to compare an Israeli fringe to the Arab mainstream
James Murray-White
Breaking the Silence
I reccomend anyone who wants to see 'the other side' of this story should go on a 'Breaking the Silence' tour of Hebron. This is a group of ex-IDF soldiers who simply had enough with the occupation. Go - take the tour, listen to the ex-soldiers tell their tales, visit with them to Palestinian homes who they have had to guard against settler attacks, watch the footage they will show you. Run onto the bus with a soldier guarding you against abuse from the settlers..........
Look at both sides of the story, please.
James Murray-White
Headache
Hebron = Jewish: Behavior of its inhabitants= not so much.
You are 100% correct, Hebron is a good marker for the validity of the legality of the Jewish state overall, and anyone who denies this is kidding themselves. However, this fact still doesn't excuse the frankly out-of-control, vicious behavior of the settler population in Beit Hadassah, etc- not just towards the local Palestinians (who may or may not deserve it, that isn't really the issue here) but to *anyone* who disagrees with them- even other settlers from less "orange" climes... Much as they might not want to face up to it, they (and their co-settlers from other hilltops) aren't the front line in some biblical struggle. They are living out their dreams and changing the face of the Jewish nation, yes- but amidst a messy, complicated conflict which isn't going to end through any pseudo-biblical posturing. There aren't just two sides to this story- your editor should have asked you for 102, that might have been more representative!
naftali
So, James Murray White
I see the Gateway Arch in your picture. In which areas of St. Louis would you prefer to be banned from living? The problem is more than neighbors not getting along. The problem is that those in the majority in the West Bank are persecuting all minorities in the living there, Christians as well as Jews. And it seems that the the majority West Bank population sees nothing wrong with killing and torturing the undesirables. Is that the way you treat Cubs fans?
This is a complex problem to say the least. But in Israel, there are no streets named after Baruch Goldstein, in the Jewish world he is not a hero. If the issue is one of tolerance, there is not a steady stream of media coverage and 'entertainment' focused on murdering the Arabs.
The fact that there are IDF soldiers whose task is to guard Arab homes from attacks says everything, because I doubt there are Fatah policemen given the task of guarding Jewish homes which don't even receive the luxury of being called homes by the western media and by many people throughout the world. The most those residents can hope for is to be called 'settlers' even though the land on which they live is under the sovereignty of their own government.
If I moved next to Cunetto's, would I be a new neighbor or a settler?
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