13-Oct-15: Thoughts about rocks through the windshield

File photo

Robert Fisk, a writer for The Independent UK, was driving his car in a remote part of Pakistan in December 2001 when something mechanical happened and he had to stop. While pushing the broken down vehicle off the road, he became aware that

a group of 40 to 50 people gathered. "At first they were reasonably friendly but then a little kid threw a stone at me. More stones followed and then I find myself being punched and beaten in the face... ["UK journalist beaten by Afghan mob", BBC, December 9, 2001]

He wrote that he thought he heard the mob shouting the word "kaffir", an Islamic/Arabic word meaning infidel, a non-adherent to the beliefs of their religious values. Much later, he recorded his feelings about what was happening in a confessional that is a classic of its kind:

They started by shaking hands. We said "Salaam aleikum" – peace be upon you – then the first pebbles flew past my face. A small boy tried to grab my bag. Then another. Then someone punched me in the back. Then young men broke my glasses, began smashing stones into my face and head. I couldn't see for the blood pouring down my forehead and swamping my eyes. And even then, I understood. I couldn't blame them for what they were doing. In fact, if I were [them], I would have done just the same to Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find. ["My beating by refugees is a symbol of the hatred and fury of this filthy war", Robert Fisk, The Independent (UK)]

In a merciless critique ["The pathology of Robert Fisk"] at the time, the British/American writer and conservative columnist Andrew Sullivan tore Fisk's mea culpa to shreds, calling it

a classic piece of leftist pathology. You have to read it to believe it. Even when people are trying to murder Fisk, he adamantly refuses to see them as morally culpable or even responsible. I’ve heard of self-hatred but this is ridiculous... What it means is that someone – anyone – is either innocent or guilty purely by racial or cultural association. An average Westerner is to be taken as an emblem of an entire culture and treated as such. Any random Westerner will do. Individual notions of responsibility or morality are banished, as one group is labeled blameless and another irredeemably malign. There’s a word for this: it’s racism. And like many other members of the far left, Fisk is himself a proud racist, someone who believes that the color of a person’s skin condemns him automatically and justifies violence against him... [Andrew Sullivan, December 9, 2001]

Sullivan's take-down of the Independent's war correspondent gave rise to the emergence of the now-widely used and useful term "to Fisk". That's defined by The Guardian to mean the practice of

"savaging an argument and scattering the tattered remnants to the four corners of the internet ["Archbishop on end of a good Fisking", The Guardian, June 19, 2005] 

All of that is offered as intro to a small, barely-noticed piece of news reported late last night in Times of Israel over the anonymous byline TIMES OF ISRAEL STAFF. At this point, as far as we can tell, it is published nowhere else:

UN official hurt in stoning: ‘Allah will forgive them’
Mounir Kleibo, who heads the UN bureau of the International Labor Organization in the Palestinian Territories, sustained serious injuries to his jaw after coming under attack by Palestinian rock throwers in East Jerusalem on Friday.
The UN coordinator for development and humanitarian activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, Robert Piper, condemned the attack “on a clearly marked United Nations (UN) vehicle traveling on Route 50 in East Jerusalem, which seriously injured a senior UN official..." Piper’s statement did not identify Kleibo either by name or position. A report in the Hebrew-language NRG website noted that Kleibo’s Facebook profile was overtly pro-Palestinian, despite his being a UN official. Kleibo’s cover picture shows the dome of the al-Aqsa Mosque on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and his profile picture is the word “Shuhada” (“Martyrdom”) on a black background. In one of his posts, Kleibo wrote, “We mourn not only our shahids but also ourselves, our eyes, our hearts, our consciousness and our humanity.” After the attack - in an update apparently posted from his hospital bed at the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem neighborhood - Kleibo said that both he and his wife, Tamara, were fine, and then added, “May Allah forgive those who throw the rocks at night”... [Times of Israel, October 12, 2015]

Kleibo's Facebook page

There's some sympathetic background about Kleibo here ("Mounir, you see, has a passion for Palestine and carries an ambitious vision").. His Twitter account appears not to be active (and probably hijacked as well to judge from what's posted there).

We're not psychologists, but it would make our hearts sing to see a professional in the field explain to the rest of us what it takes to bring a successful professional to the state of mind that produces a Fisk-full of self-demeaning and eventually dangerous nonsense.

In the end, if murderous hatred is dumbed down by smart, relatively powerful people into forgivable and perhaps understandable temper tantrums, then what becomes of ordinary notions of right and wrong, good and evil, life and death, and the well-being of our families and our children and our societies? At what point can it be said that a person's moral compass has ceased to function? Or his common sense?

As for the notion of forgiveness as a response to terror, that's something on which we have spoken publicly several times in the past, generally in response to journalists quoting statements made on that theme (statements we reject completely) by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. We will try to pull together a blog post about them in the wake of this Kleibo affair. Sullivan's caustic observation in that 2001 piece gets close to it:

You know the expression: you wouldn’t understand a culture if it actually hit you in the head? [Some people] won’t recognize reality, or abandon their racism, or moderate their spectacular condescension to the inhabitants of the developing world – even when reality, literally, crushingly, punches them in the face.  [Sullivan, December 9, 2001]

If anyone knows anyone in the human resources department at the United Nations or the ILO, this might be a good time to reach out and express some sympathy.

Or fury.

13-Sep-13: Atoning, not forgiving

Isidor Kaufmann, "Day of Atonement" (painted ~1900)

Yom Kippur, the once-in-a-year Day of Atoning for sins, is just a few hours way.

It's a typical late summer Jerusalem day: intensely hot and sunny, but much quieter outside than Fridays usually are, here. The sun is soon going to descend and 25 hours of introspection and fasting will begin.

A close and dear friend who serves as a wonderful educator and a community rabbi shared some thoughts and questions with us about forgiveness earlier in the month. Most people know it's one of the themes that characterizes this day, and it's one on which he and many Jewish leaders will be delivering sermons tonight and tomorrow.

He asked for some comments from us about the idea of dealing with people who have hurt you, as he put it, "to the point of no return". The response that follows is from Arnold.

In February 2005, I was an invited speaker at an international gathering of victims of terrorism in Bogota, Colombia. Right after checking into my hotel, several messages were handed to me from TV news reporters asking to do on-camera interviews. I did several.

Colombians have had a long, bitter and ongoing experience with terror. It is based on a lethal combination of politics and drug trafficking. I knew next to nothing at that point about how it had impacted on the lives of ordinary Colombians. I came face to face with aspects of that impact time after time in the course of the following two days and learned much.

For the interviewers, I felt safe about giving answers that reflected on my own family's life and our experiences. Our daughter Malki's murder in a Hamas terrorist attack in 2001 has caused me to do a lot of reflecting about how terrorism changes your society and you.

At the end of one of these sessions, after the cameras had stopped rolling (if that's what digital devices do), the young, attractive journalist asked me to comment on something a prominent visitor to Bogota had said to her and the cameras just a few days earlier. He was Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize.

As the reporter conveyed it to me (and as I remember it now), his message to the Colombians had been: I am willing to help bring the Colombian authorities and the rebels to the negotiating table, but it must be clear that forgiveness by the victims must be part of the process.

What, the reporter asked me, did I think of that as a formula for peace in the Israel/Palestine conflict? Could it work?

I said I have a deep resistance to the idea that you ever sit down at the negotiating table with terrorists. (I can expand, but will skip that part.) I said the conflict had less to do with the fact that there is no state of Palestine than with the fact that there is an Israel: existing, vibrant, thriving.

Then I added, with some heat, that the Middle East conflict would have an entirely different character if the terrorists were ever to seek the forgiveness of their victims. In fact, I said, if we ever get to that stage, then most of the conflict will be behind us.

The reporter smiled warmly and said she felt the same was true of the Colombian situation and that Tutu's advice was not very welcome.

Later that same year, I was asked by Israel's Foreign Ministry to meet with a visiting Christian delegation here in Jerusalem. This turned out to be a deeper, much more meaningful encounter for me than the exchanges I had with reporters in South America. In fact, it has flowered and continued up until the present.

The group is connected to an unusual US-based Christian group with its origins in Germany. Since I have a genuine regard for the individuals, I will skip some details. Their group's philosophy mainly focused on violence in United States schools and urban settings and on the redeeming power of forgiveness. In bringing a dozen or so members to Israel, it seems they wanted to address a much larger issue. (My impression is this visit eventually persuaded them to focus their energies in other places, though I might be wrong.)

Their message to the parties at conflict here involved encouraging what I would call radical Christian forgiveness. I addressed them over a dinner at their hotel. We inevitably got to the little matter of Israel and the Arabs, and one of them delivered a not-unexpected suggestion. Their suggestion but my words, since I don't have a record:

The Jews and the Israelis ought to develop a deeper willingness to forgive and this is bound to produce good results. As victims of a deep injury, recovery will come to us only when we allowed ourselves to forgive the other.

I believed then, and am more convinced today, of the sincerity of these people. At the same time, I sincerely wonder at how they arrive at their practical solutions.

I think I answered with care. As I recall now what I said eight years ago, I described what had been done to Malki and the other victims in the Sbarro massacre. I referred to the replica of the death scene that had been mounted at An Najah University soon afterwards, as an especially odious form of celebration. I spoke of the ongoing glorification of the killers, the bombers, the shooters, the stabbers by all  parts of Palestinian Arab society.

I said the matter of forgiveness posed a practical difficulty for me, to which I had no answer, and it was this. Malki was the middle child of our seven. Assuming I find a way to forgive what was done to her, where does that leave me when it comes to protecting my other children, my wife, my home? Is forgiveness an ongoing repetitive process, I asked rhetorically, something you have to do over and again, weekly or daily, knowing that the terrorists who have never expressed anything remotely resembling regret are busy at this very moment preparing their next attempted murder?

Where does forgiveness fit into the ongoing war that, I believed then and am certain about today, is being waged against us and our children and our children's children's children? And has been for generations?

I said we haven't reached an intermission when the various sides take stock, review their plans and prepare an alternative approach. We are in an existential crisis, with the emphasis on personal existential danger.

I said it would be unthinkably irresponsible for Israelis to lower their guard, knowing what we know about the theological drivers behind the appalling death industry they have cultivated.

Bottom line: their proposed approach just cannot work.

Our discussion did not converge on a shared hashkafat olam (outlook on life), but I am pleased to say we parted as friends, and have an active and rewarding ongoing dialogue.

For all who observe the Day of Atonement, Gmar Hatima Tova and our wishes for a meaningful and effective fast day.