Monday, January 19th, 2009
By Mona Eltahawy
Jerusalem Report
Hi, I’m Mona and I’m a self-hating Arab.
Surprised? Did you think it was an exclusively Jewish thing? I guess it must be a Semitic thing.
Why do we do it? Why do we insist on complicating things when it would be so much easier, as the bombs are falling and the rockets are flying, to just follow our birthright: Join the Free Palestine demonstrations if you’re Arab; and if you’re Jewish, go join the Save Israel marches.
Don’t forget, you can always throw God into the mix. Lay claim to your holy sites and you’ll have religiously sanctioned wrath to fuel your rage.
But what’s the point of choosing sides when both sides are losing? The real challenge when it comes to the Middle East is to sit on the fence.
Oh yeah – sitting on fences – forgot to mention that other character fault. I’m a woman of strong opinions who rarely sits on fences, literal or figurative. But when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict these days, the harder place to be is on that fence and – see above with self-hating – I never turn down the opportunity to take the harder option.
And so there we are, us fence-sitting, self-hating Arabs and Jews yelling at the demonstrators so sure of themselves and their side, determined to confuse them just a bit, make them think a bit more, and to remind them that there’s someone just a few miles away who holds views diametrically opposed to theirs and who has an equal right to life, an equal right to a safe and dignified life and an equal right to see their children grow up.
Self-hating, they scream at us! Self-critical, we yell back!
Sometimes the other-haters are quite humorous. A reader incensed at an op-ed I wrote taking a self-critical look at the Arab world’s obsession with Israel wrote to tell me I should run for the Illinois Senate seat left empty by Barack Obama’s victory in the U.S. presidential elections. “Even politicians don’t kiss ass that much,” wrote my critic.
I had to laugh at that one.
But it gets harder with every round in this interminable conflict. Talking of the new U.S. president – it would have been so much easier to pull an Obama and keep mum. He had it easy. There’s only one president at a time, he apparently shrugged, and pointed to the outgoing one for statements on Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Talk about proving how wrong right-wing Republicans were when they “accused” him of being Arab during the presidential campaign. Do you think if he had one drop of Arab blood Obama would’ve kept quiet about this latest bloody chapter of the conflict? Ha!
There might be just one president at a time but there are millions of Arabs and Jews, and each and every one of us is an expert on this conflict, of course. But, oh how I wish a few more of us sat on that fence, introspectively and self-critically pondering what “our side” could do differently.
Last month, I wrote how blogs and social networking sites like Facebook were giving a voice to the voiceless in the Middle East. Well, if you build it, they will come as some film a few years ago claimed. I posted that self-critical op-ed on my Facebook page just two days after Israel’s bombardment of Gaza began and, yes, there were a few critics, but there were dozens and dozens of supporters. So many that they drove the Facebook comments section slightly kaput.
They weren’t just friends being polite. I have more than 3,000 “friends” on Facebook, the majority of whom I don’t know and will most likely never befriend in “real life.”
I monitored the number of friends I had, expecting them to fall. Instead, not only did dozens of strangers post messages of support, saying I had voiced sentiments they’d long held, but new strangers wrote with invitations of friendship.
And my piece wasn’t just self-critical but took all sides in the conflict to task. But that’s what those accusations of “self hate” do, tempting you to second guess and to question your intentions and your success at fence-sitting.
It’s actually more of a seesaw than a fence that us self-haters of the Middle East are sitting on. It’s more symbiotic than just sitting next to each other. If it wasn’t for the “self-hating” Jewish contingent, those of us on the Arab side couldn’t say what we say and vice versa. We need each other.
But with each new round in this conflict, our respective sides demand not only absolute lockstep with their ideas but that those on the other side march in step too.
When Israel started bombarding Gaza, the words of Israeli peace activists were held up for me to memorize and repeat. You see! That’s what you should be saying, I was told. And I bet my words were waved equally fervently in the face of those same Israeli peace activists, with the demand they stop criticizing “our side.”
I refuse to get off this fence, this seesaw, especially when the “air is full of stupidity” as a man from Algeria wrote to tell me in a message of support that he ended with “Keep fighting!”
What sweet words to hear especially at the end of a day that began with a message from a French-Israeli who signed off his message vowing, “We have to ‘fight’ for a more intelligent and peaceful Middle East.”
Now that’s a fight I’d get off the fence for. Self-haters of the Middle East Unite! •
Egyptian-born Mona Eltahawy is a columnist and lecturer on Arab and Muslim issues. She is based in New York.
Article in Issue 21, February 2, 2009 of The Jerusalem Report.
Comments (11)
Eivind said:
I think the fence is up to a wall by now, broad enough to offer a comfortable place to sit, and not a narrow fence that digs into your unmentionables.
It’s different for those of us who aren’t born on either side of the fence. Like me. Norway is a nation with many christians, so that would tend to push us towards the israeli-side of things. But then we’re also one of the very few western democracies to officially recognize Hamas as the legitimate government of the area, and to have normal open diplomatic relations with them.
Israel, offcourse, claims that this makes all of Norway anti-semitic, more or less, but it fails to be very convincing, seeing as we where on the “right” side in WW-II and even the jews in Norway generally agree that really, we’re not that bad.
Besides, we don’t send soldiers, we send doctors. And it’s hard to convincingly argue with that. It’s hard to argue your moral superiority over my friend that spent more than two weeks in Gaza trying to save those that could be saved.
We’re a small nation. But I do think that, really, most of us are by your side, up here on the side. But unlike you, we where born up here, we like it this way.
I like people who are searching for answers, but I am deeply skeptical of anyone who claim to have found them, if that makes any sense to you.
January 19th, 2009, 8:38 am
Ahmed said:
I think the whole question of personal fence sitting, self hating Arab/pro-Arab or self-hating Israeli/pro-Israeli crap needs to stop. People are dying, dead, and injured. Instead of self evaluating our ‘political stance’, I think everyone (Semite and non-Semites) are better off vying for peace and figuring out a way on how that can be achieved (as unrealistic as it sounds) and figuring out a way to rebuild destroyed lives.
January 19th, 2009, 12:58 pm
Israeli Guy said:
Dear Mona,
There’s a difference between someone who sits on the fence and someone who is branded by ‘his’ (angry) group as a self-hating [fill in the blanks].
The first type doesn’t have a clear opinion about an issue, while the second actually has one, but it doesn’t match his “team’s”.
You are a very intelligent, articulate and opinionated person.
I find it hard to believe that you just ’sit on the fence’ regarding the issue.
As for “self hating” – who knows…
I have a feeling that this article needs a part 2 that will go further into the matter.
January 19th, 2009, 8:18 pm
GardensofSand said:
It’s hard to sit on the fence when all the dead bodies and destruction pile up to tower over the fence.
Over 1200 murdered in a little over 2 weeks. Out of those killed, 33% are children, over 20 % are women.
Before the War on Gaza, 75 % of Gazans needed someone to bring food to their table (because of the blockade, movement restructions, etc). The number is up to 100%. 70 % have no access to clean water. With 1.5 million people living in an area only slightly larger than Washington DC, 22000 buildings are destroyed. 56% have no access to medicine. 95 % of children tramautized.
Infrastructure destroyed, sewage systems destroyed so raw sewage is flowing among what remains of people’s homes. Hospitals and schools destroyed. White phosphorus used on civillians. UN buildings where civillians were sheltered bombed using imprecise weapons.
Everything shipping in Gaza must be granted permission by Israel. Banking system shut down for several and only resumed with Israel’s permission. No NGO access into Gaza. No foreign journalists allowed.
International humanitarian laws were violated. The war violated both the distinction principle and proportionality
principle.
Noting all the above, all the destruction and loss, the catastrophe of Gaza and suffering of Gazans, is sitting on the fence the conscientious, just stance? Have we reached such a low as self-proclaimed, self-hating Arabs that we cannot even condemn the merciless killing of civillians, the systematic destruction of a people?
January 25th, 2009, 2:02 am
Craig said:
Some pretty high-handed rhetoric there, GardensOfSand. Who do you think you are helping, with all that?
January 31st, 2009, 12:27 pm
GardensofSand said:
Words don’t help Craig. Without actions backing them up, words are empty and meaningless. As for who I thought I was helping with my comment, the answer is no one in particular, I was merely pointing out some facts, the outcome of the attack so to speak. I guess the truth is sometimes ugly and uncomfortable to read.
February 1st, 2009, 2:20 am
Craig said:
Over 1200 murdered in a little over 2 weeks. Out of those killed, 33% are children, over 20 % are women.
Is that truth? Is that fact?
February 1st, 2009, 8:42 am
Craig said:
And also…
Words don’t help Craig.
Words have power. Words sometimes do help. Words also sometimes do a great deal of harm. Which kind were yours?
Without actions backing them up, words are empty and meaningless.
And how would a logical person, reading your words, decide to back them up? Your words incited hate… what is the likely outcome, when people let themselves be incited by hateful speech? So, I ask again… who were you trying to help?
February 1st, 2009, 8:45 am
GardensofSand said:
Craig, I got the stats above from Bill Corcoran,President of ANERA (American Near East Refugee Aid), and Mitchell Plitnick
Director of US Office of B’Tselem (Israeli Human Rights Organization). Google the organizations or even war on Gaza to get verification of the facts.
Facts incite hate? I think it is your words that incite hate and negativity. Whether your are for or against the war on Gaza is one issue, but to not even acknowledge the outcome is what I find hateful.
If you with notice in my comments and your answers to them, you are the one who is negative and you are the one attacking. Frankly, I am somewhat surprised and a little bemused. Would you have prefered that the casualties and destruction remain unnoticed and unacknowledged? The facts are there, make of them what you will. As I said, the truth is ugly. It seems some would like it to remain buried.
Attacking someone’s speech and labeling it as hateful, and accusing the person of inciting hateful speech are ways of marginalizing the individual and discrediting what they say. It will not work on me. Why do you want to discredit what I have to say Craig? What in it makes you uncomfortable? Are the numbers too horrific? They can easily be verified.
As to backing the words with actions, there are many ways, the hardest of which is to reexamine your stance in light of the outcome. You can donate your time and effort for the relief efforts, or you can devote it to spread awareness about whatever position you hold. Or you can decide that it is not something that concerns you and move on. Whatever floats your boat.
As to to who I wanted to help, I repeat no one in particular. Maybe at best, posting the facts and outcomes of the war on Gaza would give someone food for thought and cause them to reexamine their own positions whatever they may be.
Peace to you, Craig.
February 1st, 2009, 2:10 pm
Craig said:
GoS,
Craig, I got the stats above from Bill Corcoran,President of ANERA (American Near East Refugee Aid), and Mitchell Plitnick
Director of US Office of B’Tselem (Israeli Human Rights Organization). Google the organizations or even war on Gaza to get verification of the facts.
Well, for one thing, you assume stats from those organizations are valid. I do not. For another thing, you clearly said “MURDERED” – not killed. Big difference. And lastly, you gave stats for “children” without noting that many Hamas fighters are technically Children… the average age range for Hamas fighters is 15 to 23, from what I’ve read.
You aren’t arguing facts, when you take stats and and make claims such as that, even if your stats are initially valid.
Facts incite hate? I think it is your words that incite hate and negativity.
Really? And if I were Jewish, and you told me that my country had deliberately murdered 1300 Palestinians, would that make me feel all loving and peaceful? :O
And how would it make Arabs feel, if they believed you that Israel deliberately MURDERED so many Palestinians? They wouldn’t want revenge, right? They’d immediately want to live in peace and harmony, correct?
Whether your are for or against the war on Gaza is one issue, but to not even acknowledge the outcome is what I find hateful.
I’m neither for nor against the war in Gaza. If I had my way there would be peace, and there would have been peace a long time ago. However, I am very much opposed to terrorism, and Hamas is a terrorist group with a long history of MURDERING innocent Israelis. Why do you not use the word “Murder” when it can be used correctly, in reference to hamas suicide bombing against Israeli women, children, elderly, etc who were doing nothing except going about their lives?
If you with notice in my comments and your answers to them, you are the one who is negative and you are the one attacking.
lol. A liar, complaining that somebody is being aggressive when they have the temerity to challenge their lies? How novel.
I won’t reply any further to you on this. And please don’t wish me “peace”. You are a peace advocate in the same way that I’m the Prime Minister of India.
February 1st, 2009, 5:53 pm
GardensofSand said:
Craig, whether you choose to reply or not is your own perogative just as it is my own in wishing you peace, you cleary need it.
The Director of B’tselem is Jewish and has Israeli relatives. I have no reason to doubt his statistics. Many Jews do not support the war on Gaza. If you google the war on Gaza you will see similar statistics reported by other agencies, such as UN, Amnesty International,BBC and other news portals.
Just because the facts aren’t to one’s liking doesn’t mean they’re invalid. It seems you would prefer the reality of the death toll and destruction buried.
Here is another fact for you, the death toll reported concerns civillians, the children murdered were not part of Hamas, they were innocent bystanders, children trying to survive this war and live as normal a life as they can.
Murder is the unlawful killing of another human being with intent. When civillians are killed as a result of use of imprecise weapons, or raids, or airstrikes, or indirectly because of an intentional blockade, I view it as murder. You may disagree.
When the civillian death toll is as high as it is, when many organizations state that Israel failed to distinguish between civillians and noncivillians, I would hope that any Israeli would feel indignant and would question his or her government. I would hope that he or she would stress among his Israeli and Palestinian counterparts respect for each other, liberty, and economic viability as the only course for a lasting peace and a decent life in the region.
Seriously Craig, name calling is so immature and only makes you look bad. It really doesn’t phase me, but here’s a piece of advice, it makes you look bad, like someone who lost the argument and can’t keep his cool, a sore loser.
Peace to you Craig and to the Prime Minister of India.
February 1st, 2009, 8:20 pm
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