It is horrific to contemplate what Gilad Shalit and his family have been subjected to for over three years. Not only has he been imprisoned but the ups and downs of the prisoner exchange negotiations must be torture for his family (and for Gilad himself if he knows what has been going on).
But most maddening is, in my opinion, the racial implications of the Shalit saga. It does not matter that Israelis and Palestinians are racially indistinguishable. The fact is that the Israelis are "white" in terms of their status in Israel-Palestine and the Palestinians are not.
The Shalit story is reminiscent of the way Americans become obsessed with crimes committed against whites while generally indifferent to identical crimes committed against people of color. The media will devote endless hours and days of coverage to the tragedy of a white woman gone missing while ignoring similar disappearances of black women. The same applies to stories of child kidnappings and other crimes of violence.
We tend only to care if the victim is white.
And Israel is no different (it is, in fact, worse). It cares about "Jewish suffering" but is indifferent, at best, to the suffering it inflicts on the non-Jews with whom it shares the land.
The country is obsessed with Shalit's imprisonment. It is beside itself with rage, sorrow, and fury. It is so upset that the government is on the verge of approving a massive prisoner trade with the hated Hamas to get Shalit released.
At the same time, Israel is perfectly content with holding thousands of Palestinians in their prisons. In the words of Daoud Kuttab in today's New York Times:
Israel is holding more than 10,000 Palestinians, some without charge or trial. Almost all of these prisoners are being held in contradiction to various international laws and treaties, particularly the Geneva Conventions, which regulate the actions of a prolonged occupying power. These prisoners are routinely denied basic rights, including the right of family visitations because of the inaccessibility of Israeli prisons to more than 90 percent of Palestinians living in the occupied territories. (Only families living in East Jerusalem or those who have managed to get permits through the Red Cross can visit their imprisoned loved ones.)
Shalit was kidnapped (although "captured" is the usual term applied to soldiers). But in 2006, Israeli authorities kidnapped 46 members of the Palestinian parliament in response to Shalit's abduction. Fifteen are still in prison.
And who cares? Certainly not the Israeli population which seems to believe that any jailed Palestinian must have done "something." No matter that so many are held without being charged, or that so many are adolescents who don't even know what they are accused of doing.
These prisoners will sit and rot in jail until released as part of a deal to free some Israeli who shouldn't have been kidnapped either.
One can take this argument even further. The entire Gaza Strip is an Israeli prison if one uses the most common definition of a prison. It is sealed and its people are locked in. Its million residents cannot leave. Even youngsters accepted at American or European universities are refused exit permits. Add to that the Israeli blockade that keeps Gazans on what are essentially prison rations, struggling without jobs in a ruined economy and living in a bombed out hell, and the analogy becomes even more apt.
Of course, in one key way, a prison is better. Prisoners are safe from being bombed from the air.
The hypocrisy is almost too much to take.
It speaks well of Israel that it cares so much about one imprisoned soldier.
On the other hand, its sympathy for its own stands in stark contrast with its lack of empathy for Palestinians. It tolerates the killing of kids in Gaza, only becoming exercised when a United Nations committee rightly calls it a war crime. It supports the blockade of Gaza. It continues to throw people out of their homes to make way for religious extremists who insist on living on land where their ancestors walked thousands of years ago.
In short, Israelis today -- with the exception of Israel's courageous left -- operates without pity. Except for its own.
*******
Crossposted in Palestine Note, the best source for news on Israel/Palestine
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You just said that "captured" is the correct term, and still went on to use "kidnapped"! Why exactly shouldn't he have been captured? The Palestinian resistance has the right and duty to target Israeli soldiers, and they are to be commended for having captured him alive and kept him alive. Until the occupation is dismantled and justice is imposed, and as long as Israel is attacking collectively punishing the Palestinian people, with little regard to whether they are combatants or civilians, the Palestinian resistance (be it Hamas or other factions) need to step up their efforts against the Israeli Terrorist Forces.
Add to that the massing of over 100,000 troops on the Israeli border, also an act of war. The war started because the Egyptians fired the first shots and followed that with a second act of war. Israel was put in the position of having to act in order to prevent the complete destruction of itself.
What is amazing is how we ask for such a small slice of the territory we once controlled and deserve as our own state. Israel does not cover all of eretz Israel, a large part of the Jewish state was taken to create Transjordan.
The UN did not create Israel, it assisted in our restoration. Complaints about the UN are largely confined to the past few years, the time frame in which the UN has grown increasingly irrelevant.
Perhaps the most distrubing aspect of all of this is how so many commenting on Israel seem to be comfortable with its elimination. There is only one place on earth where a Jew can feel free to be a Jew and that is in Israel.
So long ago that there is no agreement on where the borders of the actual state or indeed what the people actually worshipped or how they ruled.
In other words it wasn't you. A modern day Israeli would no more recognize one of those people as one of you as you would a stoat.
For some bizarre reason a group with only the name of a religion in common decided after 2000 plus years that they were going to move from the 4 corners of the globe and occupy a location where myriad generations of other people had been existing and thriving pushing them out of the way and off their land and you wonder why it caused problems?
The size of the slice you asked for of the place people with nothing to do with you happened to be in charge of more than two millennia previously doesn’t matter to those who along with their ancestors actually lived there because to them it was 100% of what they had and held dear.
We tend only to care if the victim is white."
One of the most refreshing aspects of the international satellite media & the world of blogging is that other voices, new faces & concerns are shown, in contrast to the normal MSM focus on allowing the majority of expression from only the "whites." A case in point is the story of Shalit, much known while at the same time, the names, faces & stories of thousands & thousands of Palestinians remain unknown. Thank you for another great article.
fairguy, as a black american Mr Rosenberg is right on target. His comparison is not shameful;truth never is.
Don't speak for me.
The focus here must ALWAYS be towards putting an end to the settlements and the violent occupation that they necessitate. If there were UN peace keepers installed in Gaza, east Jerusalem, and the West Bank, (as has been suggested MANY times by the Arab nations in the UN) there would be no need at all for the occupation, and the work of removing all settlers could be started in earnest.
Hypocrisy is really unattractive, but does appear to represent Israel's better side.
I'm not sure if you intended your post to read this way. It's like crowing over the F-plus you got on your report card. Hey, at least it's not a flat out F!!
1. It definitely sucks that Israel has thousands of Palestinians imprisoned. Not sure where Daoud Koutab got 10,000 but the exact number is irrelevant. It would be good if they could be released without harm to Israel. Which brings me to the next point.
2. Which proportion of the imprisoned are political prisoners compared to criminals? And among the "politicals", how many have committed or assisted acts of violence? The author doesn't say. One would suspect that not too many Palestinians (perhaps none) are imprisoned for just writing articles or civil resistance.
3. For many years, Gaza was not a "prison". Its passages were open and labor and trade flowed quite effectively. Only the repeated Palestinian uprisings and missile bombings caused Israel to lock it down. .
4. Why are the settlers still termed religious extremists? Many of them aren't even religious at all. They may be wrong to be occupying Palestinian lands, but - point in fact - their removal from Gaza did not help reduce the rocket attacks.
5. The comparison to the USA African American community is cynical and shameful. This is an ethnic group that, for generations, built the USA to what it is today while suffering unimaginable slavery and discrimination. In contrast, all the Palestinians have done is destroy every chance at a workable peace at every step, undermining any moderate leadership
I'm a pretty big supporter of Israel but even I had to hold my nose at this one. The settler movement hosts a disproportionately large number of Kahanists and various other crazies who spout violent ideology that should be repugnant to most Jews.
Also, there is a major difference between the legal, recognized settlements like Nokdim or Gvaot and the illegal Kahanist outposts that get demolished week after week.