With Praise Like This
In Israel, the Noble vs. The Ugly
Israel goes out of its way to display its ugliest side to the world by tearing down Palestinian homes or allowing rapacious settlers to steal Palestinian land.
Yet there’s also another Israel as well, one that I mightily admire. This is the democracy that tolerates a far greater range of opinions than America. It’s a citadel of civil society. And, crazily, it’s the place where some of the most courageous and effective voices on behalf of oppressed Palestinians belong to Israeli rabbis — like Arik Ascherman, the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights.
Rabbi Ascherman — 50, tall, lean and bearded with mournful eyes (if central casting ever needed a Prophet Jeremiah type, he’d be it) — grew up in Erie, Pa. He fell in love with Israel on a brief visit between high school and college and moved here in 1994. At Rabbi's for Human Rights, he presides over 20 staff members and hundreds of volunteers who sometimes serve as human shields to protect Palestinians — even if that means getting arrested or beaten.
I watched the ugly side of Israel collide with its more noble version, as Rabbi Ascherman and I visited a rural area in the northern West Bank where Jewish settlers have taken over land that Palestinian farmers say is theirs.
“If we try to enter our land, settlers will be waiting, and we will be beaten,” said Muhammad Moqbel, a 71-year-old Palestinian from the village of Qaryout who pointed to fields that he said had been stolen by settlers. Last year, he said, he was hospitalized with a broken rib after settlers attacked while he was picking his own olives.
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DECONTRUCTION:
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff issues disturbing praise on Israel in his most
recent column “In Israel, the Noble vs. The Ugly”. For Kristoff, Israel’s nobility is not a function of its democratic character, but that its democratic character produces detractors of Zionism. The subjects of his praise are not ordinary Israeli citizens, but actors in Israeli civil society that are willing to “unravel Israel’s founding mythology” and challenge its historical claims to land. For Kristoff, Israel’s virtue is found in those who challenge the founding character of the state. In other words, Israel is noble to the extent that it fosters debate, which challenges its nobility.
Kristoff identifies Rabbis for Human Rights as the “noble force” which “collides…with the ugly side of Israel.” Eric Asherman and his organization are lauded by Kristoff for their bravery in advocating for Palestinian land rights and protesting against questionable Israeli land seizures. Kristoff’s article categorically lumps all Palestinian land claims as “noble” and all “settlers” as ugly. There is no attempt at nuance. Whats worse, Kristoff article further muddles the discourse over “settlements” in which religious Israelis are depicted as planting Israeli flags mad-max style in the middle of Palestinian villages. That the facile oppressor-victim paradigm drives the tone of the article goes without saying.
Kristoff has served Americans well by reporting from unchartered territories like Sudan and Chad and encouraging various administrations to confront the threats posed by failed states. That Kristoff is choosing to adopt a new conflict, muddle the debate, and cast his characters as starkly either “ugly” and “noble” it itself the ugly truth.
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