Judenrein Palestine Colony Hotel

On Wednesday I spent most of the day in East Jerusalem checking out hotels and restaurants in and around Salah e-din (Saladin) street and searching for a shop that sells Al-Wazah (Swan Brand), my favorite tea.  It has been over 20 years since I was last there and it was nice to see all the changes and to remember the places that I visited so long ago.

For the most part, the area has not really changed or developed a great deal.  Sure, the shops have received a facelift, the restaurants offered pizza and hamburgers as much as they did shawarma and falafel, and there was even a hip-looking youth center just off the main drag.  Though I visited at least ten shops and found some people who favorably remembered drinking Al Wazah, unfortunately I had no luck finding anyone who stocked the tea.  In the end I had to settle on A Rabea, a bland but inoffensive Saudi blend that goes well with nana (spearmint).  Considering that Al Wazah was originally marketed primarily in the West Bank, it was a bit of a disappointment to end up empty handed.

Most of the day I walked around and checked out the hotels in the area to see if any of them might be worth a stay.  I saw every type of accommodation from the Metropole, a hotel that would not feel out of place in India, to the swank St. George Hotel with its beautiful rooftop view of the Old City. Each hotel had something distinctive about it, but I admit that what stuck in my mind was the complete lack of security at the entrance to these hotels.  Whereas Israeli hotels are always high security zones with guards and metal detectors, all of the hotels I visited were freely accessible to anyone off the street. Clear proof, I would say, that only one side in this conflict lives in perpetual fear of losing life and limb.

The last hotel I visited was the American Colony Hotel, of the exclusive "Landmark Hotels of the World" chain.  A remnant of the 19th century evangelical American mission to the Holy Land, the hotel exuded old-world comfort and oriental charm.  Long the leading destination for diplomats, journalists, and UN officials arriving because of the perennial Arab-Israeli conflict, it is strategically located in posh part of Wadi Joz.  Until 2001, it was situated just around the corner from Orient House, which served as the de facto Palestinian seat of government in the 1980s and 1990s.

Perhaps precisely because Orient House was shuttered in 2001 (at the height of the Second Intifada), the American Colony Hotel today serves as an unofficial meeting place to court members of the Palestinian National Authority. Considered one of, if not the most beautiful hotel in Israel, it is beautifully apportioned, with nods to local artisanship.  The lobby is comfortable with inlaid coffee tables decorated with seashells and olive wood over worn marble and limestone tiled floors covered with large Persian carpets in the locally popular hues of red and black. The inner courtyard is lush and contains a diverse collection of succulents that keep the place green all year round. Indeed, everything from the exterior to the deluxe "Pasha" rooms exudes a tasteful, yet faux Orientalism that transports you to the halcyon age of benevolent Empire.

Yet, a closer inspection quickly reveals that the hotel is squarely situated in the present day and age and even doubles as the unofficial Palestinian Propaganda Center for the jet-set and well connected on Facebook crowd.  Already in the lobby, one is greeted with free maps of "Palestine" that focus on Jerusalem and just happen to cover what would otherwise be known as Israel (including the slightly nefarious sounding "Israeli built-up areas").  Next to these maps is a glossy weekly called, "This Week in Palestine" that includes articles such as, "Jerusalem 1948-1967: La Dolce Vita" (i.e. before the Jews ruined the neighborhood and the "fall of Palestine") and "Omar: An Authentic Palestinian Movie" (funded by Europeans and filmed entirely in the Israeli "built-up area" of Nazareth").  Of all the articles, perhaps my favorite were, "Palestinian Hip-Hop" and, "This is Palestine: Building a Positive National Brand through Art and Design."

Unfortunately, a quick visit to the hotel's bookstore reveals that a positive approach does not always characterize the branding efforts of Palestine's supporters.  Displayed prominently on the shelves are the pseudo-histories and diatribes of anti-Zionists such as Shlomo Sand (The Invention of the Jewish People) and Ilan Pappe (The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine) and Ari Shavit's recent first-person, best-selling critique of Israeli statehood (My Promised Land).  Next to these lies Bradt's Guidebook to Palestine, the only existing guidebook to a non-existent place, which (not surprisingly) smudges the margins and extends Palestinian sovereignty to the, "culturally Palestinian (Israeli Arab) enclaves found within Israel."

So, what's the big deal?  Well, I think that, by wholeheartedly embracing the Palestinian perspective and publicly identifying itself as representative of "Palestine," the American Colony Hotel is presenting its guests with a false image of what Palestinian independence might look like "if only given a chance." However, at the end of the day, there is a reason that the hotel runs with such Swiss efficiency and that is because it is actually owned a run by a Swiss company.  While guests of the hotel are presented glossy and photoshopped images of Palestine, back in the real world, there is no doubt that hip hop, "positive" art, and the "Dolce Vita" will all go the way of Syria, Libya, Egypt, and Bahrain as the radicals groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad usher in Taliban rule and destroy their domestic opponents with their well-honed terror tactics.

In fact, the only thing about the American Colony Hotel that is true to what a future independent Palestine might look like is that it is functionally Judenrein, with almost no Jewish guests and only one Jewish staff member.

Self Inficted Catastrophe

Prof Ephraim Karsh's definitive and eye-opening article on the Palestinian refugee issue is a must read for anyone interested in understanding the events of 1948. Based solely on documents from that era, many of which have only recently been made available to historians, Karsh shows, what reputable historians have been saying all along - that the Palestinian refugee problem is one that was caused primarily by the venal Palestinian leadership and self-interested Arab parties.


To read the article in HTML.
To read it as a PDF.
To read the fully annotated version.

Which ever way, definitely read it!

Canary in the Coal Mine

Israel has often been called the canary in the coal mine - what happens in Israel tends to repeat itself elsewhere, usually sooner rather than later. Ironically, this is no where more true than in the Muslim world. The terrorism that was first tested out on Israeli children is now de rigeur in Baghdad. Suicide bombings - which were unheard of twenty years ago, are now common from Mauritania to Pakistan. The fighting skills that Hamas perfected against Israel was used to throw their brothers off of rooftops and to undemocratically maintain power in Gaza.

Moreover, while countless articles have been written about how the conflict has been bad for Israel, it seems to me the Arabs have fared much worse. Israel remains a vibrant democracy with an enviable economy and a strong legal system. Palestinian society is in shambles. When they remember the Nakba, they do not have to hearken back 60 years, but rather can just look around them. Sure, they blame Israel, but it is they - and not Israel - that has to endure daily suffering at the hands of their own brothers.

The Palestinians - who were once led by the secular PLO and famously included many Christians, has now been replaced by Hamas - which is rapidly weeding out Fatah along with the minuscule Christian community in Gaza. While Israel is roundly attacked for "human rights abuses" Hamas in Gaza has perfected its societal oppression and waiting for the chance to spread it to the West Bank and all of Israel. If it works in Israel, you can be sure this will impact Jordan Egypt and Lebanon.

Though I am opposed to the way Kossovars declared independence, I commend them for instinctively realizing this. Michael Totten, who usually reports from Lebanon is presently doing a series on the Balkans. Recently (April 30), he wrote:

Kosovo is the world’s newest country, and its unilateral declaration of independence is more controversial than the existence of Israel. It should be only slightly surprising, then, that many Kosovars, though most are Muslims, identify to an large extent with the Israelis. “Kosovars used to identify with the Palestinians because we Albanians are Muslims and Christians and we saw Serbia and Israel both as usurpers of land,” a prominent Kosovar recent told journalist Stephen Schwartz. “Then we looked at a map and woke up. Israelis have a population of six million, their backs to the sea, and 300 million Arab enemies. Albanians have a total population of eight million, our backs to the sea, and 200 million Slav enemies. So why should we identify with the Arabs?”

So, while columnists the world over are busy eulogizing Israel on the 60th anniversary of its founding, they may want to consider also asking about the odds of the Palestinians surviving as one people for another 60 years. Or will the fault lines of Fatah and Hamas, Christian and Muslim, Secular and Religious, and Refugee and those living in the territories, West Bank and Gaza, and Israeli Arab and non-citizen Arabs prove too much? The same could be said for most of the repressive Middle East states, where tribe, religion, ethnicity and politics are all regularly suppressed by the totalitarian regimes that rule the region.

Sure, Israel has its societal divides as well, but they are out in the open and are regularly discussed. As New York Times columnist Freedman noted in his book The World is Flat, the difference between India and Pakistan is that in India, when a poor boy looks up the hill and sees a mansion, he says "One day I will grow up and be that man." When a Pakistani boy looks up, he says, "One day I am going to kill that man." The only discussions that occur at present in Palestinian society and Muslim society as a whole, occur at the end of a rifle.

I doubt I will be around in 60 years and don't really know if Israel will be around in 60 years, but am pretty sure that Muslim dictators and the Palestinians should be the most worried right about now.

The Problematics of Anthropology

Here is another egregious example of how Anthropology is used to change the discourse on the Middle East and to undermine Israel's legitimacy that I received by e-mail.

"Esmail Nashif of Birzeit University is organizing a session on Palestine and anthropology at the international Union for Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, 16th world congress, which will take place in Kunming, China. He welcomes paper proposals.

"Palestine: An anthropologically imagined site". The aim of the panel is to discuss the anthropological practices that focus on Palestine. By anthropological practices I mean the textual and ethnographic patterns that dominate the construction of 'Palestine' as an imagined generative anthropological site. While engaging critically with the
current problematics of writing 'Palestine' anthropologically, the discussion
will also aim at exploring new directions in anthropologically engaged research
on the colonial condition in 'Palestine', and based on that, extended comparatively to other neocolonial sites."

Allow me to translate:

"By anthropological practices I mean the textual and ethnographic patterns that
dominate the construction of 'Palestine' as an imagined generative anthropological site."

This is a sophisticated way of saying, "How do Anthropologists get around the fact that Palestine does not exist as a political entity?" He could have asked, "How do anthropologists study the Palestinian people?" but that would not accomplish the political goals of his proposed session. This is clear from the sentence that directly follows:

"While engaging critically with the current problematics of writing 'Palestine' anthropologically, the discussion will also aim at exploring new directions in anthropologically engaged research on the colonial condition in 'Palestine', and based on that, extended comparatively to other neocolonial sites."

The "current problematics" is basically a euphemism for "The existence of the State of Israel" and the "colonial condition" does not refer to the Ottoman or British periods, but rather to the present-day "neocolonialism".

This is confusing to me because my 2007 Textbook for Intro to Anthropology Window on Humanity: A Concise Introduction to Anthropology (2nd ed.) clearly defines "colonialism" as, "the political, social, economic, and cultural domination of a territory and its people by a foreign power." (p. 405) Since every State dominates its territory politically, economically and culturally the keyword in this definition is clearly "foreign".

By implying that Israel is a colonialist state, the session organizer is ipso facto arguing that the Jewish people are foreigners and hence no different than the British or Ottomans who preceded them. Unfortunately, this historical fiction is becoming a more and more common view - spread by precisely such people as Nashif and Abu El-Haj in their supposedly "neutral" and "academic" guises.

Since the conference is being held in China, the IUAES should consider doing a similar or joint session on Tibet. I think that such a forum would be a good place to discuss the "problematics" surrounding the desire and efforts of the Tibetan diaspora to "colonize" Tibet.

Biladi, Biladi!

Clearly the exodus of reporters following Alan Johnston's kidnapping in Gaza has benefitted those who prefer to sow mischief away from the limelight. Here is an article from Haaretz that demonstrates that if it is not being reported for all intents and purposes it is not happening. In general, the fact that the media does not feel it necessary to relate this story conveys the casual racism that I have referred to previously - that Palestinians (or people of color) killing Palestinians is no more interesting than "dog bites man".

What is even more disturbing however, is that for some reason not even the human rights organizations seem particularly bothered by it. Could this be because it is bad for business?

Reporting this widely makes the Palestinians look violent and this means that they lose the mantle of victimhood and the cherished position of underdog. What bleeding heart will shell out money for a group that they see as aggressors?

Besides, shining a light on the tribal warfare that is going on at present risks being banned from the area. Since organizations such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and UNRWA are already heavily invested and plan campaigns around the terrible suffering of the Palestinian people at the hands of the Israelis, this is a non-starter. It effectively becomes an internal matter.

Of course, if one were to borrow the relativist logic that is so often yet selectively used by the Left, then one might ask what difference it makes if a Palestinian child is killed by a bullet fired from an M-16 or one fired from an Ak-47? Apparently it matters to some.

Here are some examples:

Several weeks now the Gaza Strip has been burning. This is not a matter of fighting between Hamas and Fatah activists or actions by the Israel Defense Forces, but battles between armed groups that for the most part are identified with large clans. Nearly every day for the past two weeks ,men, women and children have been killed in Gaza. Every day civilians are being wounded by deliberate or stray gunfire, the result of the unrestrained use of weapons. The number of armed men in the Gaza Strip, according to various estimates, is greater than 100,000. These men belong to security mechanisms, political organizations and above all to clans, and are trying to ensure the economic interests of their kinfolk. There is a tremendous amount of weaponry in the inhabitants' homes, the entire purpose of which is a potential quarrel with a neighbor, an acquaintance or a driver on the road.

In recent weeks attacks on Western and Christian targets in the West Bank have also become common. Members of terror cells identified with Al-Qaida-type organizations - compared to whom Hamas people look like boy scouts - are blowing up and destroying institutions linked to Western culture such as the American School, a church library and dozens of Internet cafes.

But the world is ignoring this. The media in Israel and the West, which reported on every person killed or wounded in the conflicts between Fatah and Hamas or because of "the Israeli occupation," are not taking any interest in Gaza. Even before the release of the Winograd report, the television news broadcasts and the major newspapers focused on trivial matters and chose not to deal with the danger to the lives of every Palestinian living in Gaza.

(For those who are unfamiliar with Haaretz or think that this is just self-serving Israeli propoganda, I would point out that this is the most left-wing of the mainstream Israeli newspapers and has a long track record of favorable reporting of the Palestinian cause.)

Occupation and Control in the Jewish Quarter

Here is a classic example of what happens when you send someone to report on a part of the world they know little or nothing about. Perhaps not surprisingly it comes from the BBC -Deep Tension Over Jerusalem Holy Site by Matthew Price.

The report is a first person account of the recently inaugurated excavations near the Dung Gate in Jerusalem. After describing the exasperation of an Israeli colleague who declares that, "Its just a ramp", Price proceeds to disagree and writes an article to explain to the obviously dimwitted Israeli that it's really, "all about control."

That control lies at the root of the problem is glaringly self-evident because, as Price is quick to note, the whole of East Jerusalem (and hence the Old City) is territory (illegally?) occupied by Israel.

As far as Palestinians are concerned, and to be fair most of the world, the Old City - which lies in East Jerusalem - is occupied territory.

While the inherent irony of a Brit explaining the "real" intricacies of the Arab-Israeli conflict to an Israeli is totally lost on Price, he would do well to read some history or even just a map of the Old City. The Dung Gate is not only the way leading to the Wailing Wall, it happens to be the only gate leading directly into the Jewish Quarter - a part of the city "with a nearly continual Jewish presence since Roman times".

Why "nearly continual"? Because during the 1948 War, when Jordan illegally occupied the Old City, it proceeded to expel all the Jews. Perhaps this was because throughout the past 2,000 years the Jewish community was the largest community in Jerusalem. Perhaps it was simply ethnic cleansing to ensure that the city be judenrein. In any case, for 19 years, Jews were not allowed to pray at the religious sites and could do nothing as those sites were systematically desecrated. For 19 years there was no Jewish "control" of the Jewish Quarter. For Mr. Price to hearken back to those days demonstrates once again that there is nothing more dangerous than a little knowledge.

Finally, as the article approaches its denouement, Price waxes poetically:

The church bells began to ring out. Then the muezzins started up, calling Muslims to prayer. When I first came here I heard these sounds and felt hopeful.

Surely these were the sounds of co-existence? Now I just hear the sound of centuries of competing claims to this city.

Notice that the sound of church bells does not initially bring forth any negative associations in the writer's mind. Of course the Jewish component of this imagined Nirvana of coexistence is left up to the reader's imagination.

An Agreement not to Commit but to Respect

As predicted here, Hamas and Fatah have managed to find a way to share power thanks to Saudi arm twisting and the promise of a billion dollars. Of course Hamas has conceded nothing with regard to the right of the State of Israel to exist and will not eschew the use of violence. All they are are promising is to "respect" previously signed agreements rather than "committing to" them.

I find this a bit ridiculous because Hamas is in power as part of an electoral process that were agreed upon and set up as part of those previous agreements that they are only now offering to "respect". These guys had no qualms about participating in a process that was set up by an agreement that they reject, though now the are willing to openly "respect" it. This is like the PLO Charter that was ammended back in 1998 in Clinton's presence. The only problem is that no copy of the ammended Charter has ever been made available to the general public!

Who's Orientalizing Now - "Soft Racism" in the Media

Today the Palestinian arch-terrorist Khaled Meshaal and his henchman Prime Minister Haniya are meeting in Mecca under Saudi auspices with Palestinian President Abbas to discuss a unity government and an end to the spiraling violence in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. While I am not much of a betting man, I can say with certainty that a failure to reach some sort of compromise or accord will go down in Palestinian history as the second Nakba (Catastrophe). No doubt the Saudis are twisting arms and the Europeans are holding out an end to their economic embargo if a unity government is formed and Abbas agrees to run cover for Hamas.

Since the Hamas victory at the polls and Fatahs fall from grace last year, there has been increasing tension between the opposing factions which has developed into open warfare following Abbas’ threat to dissolve the government and call for new elections. The recent fighting has included mortar attacks on Abbas’ Presidential Palace, shots on Prime Minister Haniyah’s motor cavalcade (injuring one of his sons), attacks on rival institutions of higher learning, rival mosques and the turning of residential areas into battle zones as snipers and gunmen commandeer rooftops and apartments. Even ambulances have not been off-limits to the carnage and some of those injured in the fighting have even been kidnapped from their hospital beds. Both sides, it seems, have once again proven themselves as masters at brinksmanship - employing violence to achieve their political goals.

Of course, all of this begs the question of what the international reaction would be were Israel to have carried out any of the above actions. Undoubtedly the media would sanctimoniously editorialize about Israel’s “torpedoing” of peace efforts, “flagrant violations” of international law and “extra-judicial” kidnappings or killings. UN resolutions would be passed and EU fact-finding missions would be organized to “investigate” the matter at carefully pre-selected photo-ops. Perhaps even members of the International Solidarity Movement would volunteer to place themselves as “human shields” between the warring sides to prevent further bloodshed.

That none of this has occurred should really come as no surprise. After all, it is precisely when things take a turn for the worse that the reporters run for cover and start filing their reports from hotel rooms and the wire services provide stories by local stringers whose dedication to the truth is suspect at best. Even worse, when things become complicated and a clear good guy and bad guy are no longer easily discernible, world public opinion not surprisingly loses interest.

It is precisely for this reason that I have been following the ongoing media coverage of the Palestinian in-fighting and the language employed by the various news outlets. It is interesting that through the many “rounds of fighting” over the past two months no “cycle of violence” has yet reared its head. It appears that this merry-go-round theory of conflict which subtly posits the irrationality of “an eye for an eye” while broadly hinting at the futility of the ongoing conflict only has analytical value with respect to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In fact, one might be excused for thinking that this implies that if the Palestinians are killing each other in reprisal shootings, they no doubt have a good reason to be doing so. At the same time, it implies that there is no sense in trying to comprehend this behavior since it is clearly irrational and should not be judged by the laws of reason. Indeed, there is no need to even posit an ultimate “root” cause or theory to explain this fratricide – rather it is widely understood and accepted that resorting to violence and bloodshed is just the local way of dealing with problems.

Unfortunately, I find this approach typical of a specific type of racism representative of an unquestioned worldview that underlies this reportage. Sure, this is not the kind of racism that leaves you lying beaten and bloody in an alley by a bunch of guys in white sheets, but it is racism no less. It posits that that, as rational-minded Westerners, we can never appreciate the irrational passions and emotions that have been unleashed and thus we also have no right to judge its morality.

This perhaps explains why there has been no mention in any of the reportage about the “innocent” civilians who have been wounded or killed while caught in the crossfire between the two factions. This absence is quite striking since errant Israeli bullets usually solicit banner sized headlines such as: “Innocent child killed by Israeli bullets!” When somewhere between 14 and 22 Palestinians civilians died in a battle that killed 23 Israeli soldiers in Nablus in 2002, the world press was quick to dub it the “Massacre of Jenin”.

Yet, as hundreds of innocent Palestinians have been killed or wounded over the past few weeks, the absence of similar headlines ascribing responsibility to either Hamas or Fatah becomes even more pronounced. This seems to imply that when Palestinians kill other Palestinians, it is too complicated to figure out who is innocent. Could it be that no one wants to ascribe “guilt” by proclaiming someone innocent? Once again, the logical conclusion is that this fighting is simply one of those irrational, Oriental things that defy simple Western notions of rationality and “right action”.

This may also explain why there is also a general avoidance of legalese and no attempt to judge the sides by the principles of international law. When Israel overturns a rock in Jerusalem or send its soldiers across the Green Line, the papers are almost unanimous in their contention that this violates long-held (yet undisclosed) principles of international law. While Palestinians have violated almost every single article of the 4th Geneva Convention over the past two months, not once has anyone questioned the legality of these actions.

Salman Rushdie has termed this attitude “soft racism”, since it essentially paints a smiley face where a Swastika really belongs. This is the kind of racism that does not believe that all those Ayatollahs and mullahs could “really” mean what they say. It is a vestigial colonial attitude that patronizes the “natives” and infantilizes them by treating them with kid gloves. It says, in effect, “We know you don’t really mean any harm by your actions, you are simply not mature enough to control your emotions or act rationally.” In essence, “You know not what you are doing and can not be held accountable for your actions.”

It is clear that the recent coverage of the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict not only suffers of the Orientalism that Edward Said identified, but also from an essentializing and infantilizing of Arabs/Muslims that is clearly racist. It is time we recognized the long-standing and elaborate traditions and values that underpin Middle Eastern societies and start holding them accountable for their actions. At least no more or no less than Israel is held to account.

Welcome to Palestine

Take a look at Caroline Glick's latest article Welcome to Palestine. Pretty Scathing stuff.

And so it is that as statesmen and activists worldwide loudly proclaim their commitment to establishing the sovereign State of Palestine, they miss the fact that Palestine exists. And it is a nightmare.

In the State of Palestine 88 percent of the public feels insecure. Perhaps the other 12 percent are members of the multitude of regular and irregular militias. For in the State of Palestine the ratio of police/militiamen/men-under-arms to civilians is higher than in any other country on earth.

In the State of Palestine, two-year-olds are killed and no one cares. Children are woken up in the middle of the night and murdered in front of their parents. Worshipers in mosques are gunned down by terrorists who attend competing mosques. And no one cares. No international human rights groups publish reports calling for an end to the slaughter. No UN body condemns anyone or sends a fact-finding mission to investigate the murders.

In the State of Palestine, women are stripped naked and forced to march in the streets to humiliate their husbands. Ambulances are stopped on the way to hospitals and wounded are shot in cold blood. Terrorists enter operating rooms in hospitals and unplug patients from life-support machines.

In the State of Palestine, people are kidnapped from their homes in broad daylight and in front of the television cameras. This is the case because the kidnappers themselves are cameramen. Indeed, their commanders often run television stations. And because terror commanders run television stations in the State of Palestine, it should not be surprising that they bomb the competition's television stations.