In her column on Nov. 5, Mia Eisner-Grynberg denounced, for its deceptive omissions, the pro-Israel Student Life advertisement sponsored by Washington University Solidarity with Israel, the College Republicans, and the College Democrats.
She articulated all the “proper” reasons for refusing to sign: The advertisement showed neither concern for the rights or the safety of Palestinians, nor did it acknowledge and oppose the overwhelming and oppressive force the Sharon government continues to use.
Eisner-Grynberg wrote of the vastly disproportionate number of Palestinian civilians killed during the intifada, offering statistics that show far more Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers than Israel has lost.
She also spoke of the weapons of mass destruction-many of which Israel receives for free, thanks to American taxpayers-used every day against the 3,600,000 occupied Palestinians.
When the sponsors and signatories of the advertisement ignore or dismiss these facts, Eisner-Grynberg argued, ending the violence becomes more, not less, insurmountable.
While there is nothing in her argument to which I explicitly object, her “objective” approach fails to truly capture the on-the-ground reality for the brutalized Palestinian people living under a ruthless and illegal occupation. Her refusal to distinguish between occupied and occupier is fundamentally flawed.
To say that 2,537 Palestinians and 903 Israelis have been killed does more to blind us to the truth of the occupation than elucidate it. The statistic is obviously accurate, but it is also an abstraction that paints the picture of a two-sided war that has little to do with reality in Israel or the occupied territories.
We see things differently when we read that “the latest casualty [in the Arab/Israeli conflict] wasÿa Palestinian childÿkilled by shrapnel from an Israeli tank shell in the northern Gaza Strip, Palestinian medical sources said.ÿ Mahmud al-Qayid, 11, was hit in his chest as he was playing with a friend near the Karni crossing point between the northeastern Gaza Strip and Israel, the medical sources and witnesses said.”
Mahmud is not a militant. He’s not 1 of 2,537. He’s an innocent human being and a victim of Israel’s illegal occupation.
Our understanding of reality shifts when we read that, according to Ha’aretz, the Israeli cabinet may begin to force Israeli Arabs to wave flags, receive identity cards and take loyalty oaths to prove their allegiance to the state of Israel to justify maintaining their citizenship.
We should reconsider the image of Israeli settlers as unwitting and helpless victims of suicide bombers when we read in Al-Jazeera: “Jewish settlers have gone on a rampage in occupied West Bank towns and villages, hacking down hundreds of olive orchards just as they were about to be harvested. Settlersÿuprooted, chopped andÿburnedÿtrees overnight in the villages of Sawia, Beta, Yitma, Bait Furik, Hawwara and Tal, said Palestinian witnesses.”
The received narrative that says the occupation is about security and not about the seizure of water conflicts when The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories reports: “218 Palestinian villages in the West Bank [have] no running water as Israel refuses to connect them to the water network,” attributing the shortage to “inequitable division of the water sources shared by Israel and the Palestinians and Israel’s failure to invest in water infrastructure through the years of the occupation.”
Concealed beneath abstractions are the real truths of the Israeli occupation: The truth of behemoth Israeli tanks firing on Palestinian children and murdering peace activists.
The truth of bulldozed homes, uprooted crops, stolen water, dehumanizing checkpoints and demeaning curfews.
The truth of helicopter attacks in civilian neighborhoods, of expanding settlements and the wretched Apartheid wall.
We lose these truths in statistical abstraction and infrequent suicide bombings when only a laser-like focus on them can end the conflict.
The most important point Eisner-Grynberg made in her column was that “one of the greatest powers of language lies not in what is said, but in what is deliberately left unsaid.” Unfortunately, she failed to see the advertisement’s most significant omission-the Palestinians themselves.
It is no accident that Palestine is ignored. The advertisement is part of the same family of racist arguments that say, “I don’t see Palestine on the map,” and “Palestinians don’t exist.”
Israel’s supporters know that once Palestinians are viewed as human beings with equal rights, rather than “militants” or “terrorists,” justification for the racist occupation vanishes. And, since Israel will not end it, they use abstraction and propaganda to erase from reality three and a half million innocent Palestinians instead.