SHAME ON US ALL

(Thanks to Rabbi Klein of Temple Emanu-El in Oak Park, Michigan for bringing these articles to my attention)
The New York Times - June 19, 2007
Brothers to the Bitter End
by FOUAD AJAMISO

The masked men of Fatah have the run of the West Bank while themasked men of Hamas have their dominion in Gaza. Some see this as atolerable situation, maybe even an improvement, envisioning a secularistFatah-run state living peacefully alongside Israel and a small, radicalGaza hemmed in by Israeli troops. It's always tempting to look forsalvation in disaster, but in this case it's sheer fantasy. The Palestinian ruin was a long time in coming. No other nationalmovement has had the indulgence granted the Palestinians over the lasthalf-century, and the results can be seen in the bravado and thesenseless violence, in the inability of a people to come to terms withtheir condition and their needs. The life of a Palestinian is one of squalor and misery, yet his leadersplay the international game as though they were powers. An accommodationwith Israel is imperative - if only out of economic self-interest andpolitical necessity - but the Palestinians, in a democratic experimentsome 18 months ago, tipped power to a Hamas movement whose very charteris pledged to the destruction of the Jewish state and the imposition ofIslamist rule. The political maxim that people get the leaders they deserve must bereckoned too cruel to apply to the Palestinians. Before Hamas, for fourdecades, the vainglorious Yasir Arafat refused to tell his people thebasic truths of their political life. Amid the debacles, he remainedeerily joyous; he circled the globe, offering his people the false sensethat they could be spared the consequences of terrible decisions. In a rare alignment of the universe, there came Mr. Arafat's way in thelate 1990s an American president, Bill Clinton, eager to redeemPalestinian claims and an Israeli soldier-statesman, Ehud Barak, whowould offer the Palestinians all that Israeli political traffic couldbear and then some. But it was too much to ask of Mr. Arafat to return to his people with adecent and generous compromise, to bid farewell to the legend that thePalestinians could have it all "from the river to the sea." It was saferfor him to stay with the political myths of his people than to settledown for the more difficult work of statehood and political rescue.For their part, the Arab states have only compounded the Palestinian misery. The Arab cavalry was always on the way, the Arab treasure wasalways a day away, and there was thus no need for the Palestinians topay tribute to necessity. In recent years, the choice was starkly posed:it was either statehood or a starring role on Al Jazeera, and the young"boys of the stones" and their leaders opted for the latter. After Mr. Arafat's death, the mantle passed to a fairly decent man,Mahmoud Abbas, a leader for a post-heroic era. He is free of Mr.Arafat's megalomania, and he seemed keen to cap the volcano; hepromised, as he put it, "one law, one authority, one gun" in thePalestinian street. But he has never been a master of his world; by thetime he had been given his political stewardship the culture of thePalestinian world had succumbed to a terrifying cult of violence. It has long been a cherished legend of the Palestinians, and a proud claim, that they would not kill their own, that there would be nofratricide in their world. The cruelty we now see - in both Gaza and theWest Bank - bears witness that the Palestinians have run through theconsolations that had been there for them in a history of adversity.It isn't a pretty choice, that between Hamas and Fatah. Indeed, it wasthe reign of plunder and arrogance that Fatah imposed during its yearsof primacy that gave Hamas its power and room for maneuver. We must notoverdo the distinction between the "secularism" of Fatah and theIslamism of Hamas. In the cruel streets and refugee camps of thePalestinians, this is really a distinction without a difference. It is idle to think that Gaza could be written off as a Hamas dominionwhile Fatah held its own in the towns of the West Bank. The abdicationand the anarchy have damaged both Palestinian realms. Nablus in the WestBank is no more amenable to reason than is Gaza; the writ of thepitiless preachers and gunmen is the norm in both places. There is no way that a normal world could be had in the West Bank whileGaza goes under. There is no magic wand with which this Palestinianworld could be healed and taught the virtues of realism and sobriety. Nointernational peacekeeping force can bring order to the deadly streetsand alleyways of Gaza. A population armed to the teeth and long in thethroes of disorder can't be pacified by outsiders.For decades, Arab society granted the Palestinians everything andnothing at the same time. The Arab states built worlds of their own, hadtheir own priorities, dreaded and loathed the Palestinians as outsidersand agitators, but left them to the illusion that Palestine was anall-consuming Arab concern. Now the Palestinians should know better. The center of Arab politics hasshifted from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, a great politicalwindfall has come to the lands of the Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula,vast new wealth due to the recent rises in oil prices, while miseryoverwhelms the Palestinians. No Arabs wait for Palestine anymore; theyhave left the Palestinians to the ruin of their own history. The rise of Hamas in Gaza should concentrate the minds of the custodiansof power in the Arab world. Palestine, their old alibi, the cause withwhich they diverted the attention of their populations from troubles athome, has become a nightmare in its own right. An Arab debt is owed the Palestinians - the gift of truth and candor as well as material help.Arab poets used to write reverential verse in praise of the boys of thestones and the suicide bombers. Now the poetry has subsided, replaced bya silent recognition of the malady that afflicts the Palestinians.Except among the most bigoted and willful of Arabs, there is growingacknowledgment of the depth of the Palestinian crisis. And aside from ahandful of the most romantic of Israelis, there is a recognition in thatsociety, as well, of the malignancy of the national movement a stone'sthrow away. The mainstream in Israel had made its way to a broad acceptance ofPalestinian statehood. In the 1990s, Yitzhak Rabin, the soldier who hadled its army into acquisition of the West Bank and Gaza in the Six-DayWar of 1967, told his people that it was time to partition the land andto accept Palestinian sovereignty. It was an unsentimental peace, to"get Gaza out of Tel Aviv," as Mr. Rabin put it, but it was peacenonetheless.In varying degrees, all of Mr. Rabin's successors accepted this legacy.There was even a current in Israel possessed of a deep curiosity aboutthe Palestinians, a romance of sorts about their ways and folk cultureand their connection to the sacred land. All this is stilled.Palestinian society has now gone where no "peace processors" or romanticpoets dare tread.Fouad Ajami, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of AdvancedInternational Studies, is the author of "The Foreigner's Gift: TheAmericans, the Arabs and the Iraqis in Iraq.

"The New York Times - June 20, 2007
Behind the Masks
by THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Every war has THE picture that captures its essence, and the Palestiniancivil war in Gaza is no exception. My nominee would be the photograph ofa Hamas fighter in Gaza, lounging in a senior Fatah official's officeover which he has just taken control. The masked Hamas fighter in jeansis relaxing in an ornate chair, holding a rifle in one hand and speaking- through the opening in his mask - on a telephone in the other. It hasthe weird feel of a Gap ad for Halloween.In his essay on this page yesterday, Fouad Ajami described the two sidesof the Palestinian civil war as "the masked men of Fatah" and "maskedmen of Hamas." Indeed, the fact that masks were worn by the fighters onboth sides is one of the unique things about this civil war - and itraises, for me, two questions. First, why were both the Hamas and Fatahfighters wearing ski masks? And two, where do you buy a ski mask inGaza?Oscar Wilde said: "Give a man a mask and he'll tell you the truth." Sowhat truth does it tell us when fighters on both sides in this civil war(and in Iraq's) are wearing masks?The first answer is habit. Hamas fighters always wore masks whenconfronting Israel, so that Israel could not identify them forretribution. On June 16, though, Reuters quoted a Hamas spokesman assaying masks should not be worn in the intra-Palestinian war. "Wearingmasks should only be near the borders and in fighting the Zionist enemy,not in the streets and near people's homes," said Khaled Abu Hilal.But certain habits, especially bad ones, die hard - and they can end upwarping your own society as much as your enemy's. You can see what'shappened here: If it's O.K. to wear masks when confronting the Jews, iteventually becomes O.K. to wear masks when confronting otherPalestinians. If it becomes O.K. to use suicide bombers against theJews, it eventually becomes O.K. to use suicide bombers against otherMuslims. What goes around comes around.Beyond old habits, though, there is also some new shame. These masks areworn by fighters who not only wish to shield themselves from Israel'sgaze, but also from the gaze of their parents, friends and neighbors.After generations of Arabs highlighting the justice and nobility of thePalestinian struggle for statehood, there was surely an element of shamethat Palestinian brothers were killing brothers, throwing each other offrooftops, dragging each other from hospital beds and generally rippingapart Palestinian society in a naked power struggle. There was nothingnoble about this fight, which is why, I would guess, many wanted to wearmasks. The mask both protects you against shame and liberates you tokill your brothers - and their children.Putting on a mask is also a way to gain power and enhance masculinity.People in black masks are always more frightening - not only physically,but because their sheer anonymity suggests that they answer to no oneand no laws. In our society, it's usually only burglars, rapists or KuKlux Klansmen who wear masks - either to terrorize others or make iteasier to break the law. The mask literally says: "I don't play by therules. Be afraid, be very afraid."Think of how relieved you'd be to be captured in war by someone in auniform and how frightened you'd be to be captured by someone in a mask.But given the breakdown in society we see in Iraq, Lebanon and thePalestinian areas, that may be a luxury. Wars against masked men andgangs - whose true identities, agendas, rules and aspirations are neverclear - will be the norm."These masks are the uniforms of the new armies of the 21st century andthe new kind of violence," which in Iraq, Lebanon and Gaza "no longerdistinguishes between war against the stranger and war against membersof your own society," argued political theorist Yaron Ezrahi. "Just asthis new violence doesn't have a front, it doesn't have a face. Itdoesn't have boundaries."That is why these masks announce one more thing: These young men do notreport to anyone above them. They have no ranks. No leader can ever besure of their allegiance. Every masked man is a general, and everymilitia is a cross between a self-funded criminal gang and a modernarmy.Get used to it. In today's environment, where the big divide is betweenthe world of order and the world of disorder, you can expect to see alot more confrontations between armies in uniforms and helmets andarmies in blue jeans and masks.