Orwell in Gaza

Jim Sleeper posted a great essay at tpmcafe about the need for an Orwell to be reporting from Gaza. I'm listening to him now on the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC.

First: I am so happy, so pleased, to listen to commentary that recognizes the strong emotions of the topic, and then proceeds to analyze the situation dispassionately. Passion, stridency, photos of dead children, strong partisanship - all of these may well have a place in the public conversation. But they are not, and never will be conducive to analysis. Thank you Mr. Sleeper.

Second: The main point of the essay is that an awful Israel doesn't whitewash the Palestinian side. The truth, whatever it is, can't be told by people who wish us to look only in one direction, and the facts that support on side's interests and not the other.

The Times account of how cruelly both sides are fighting underscores how badly we need reporting like George Orwell's from the bloody Spanish Civil War in 1936. Orwell joined and fought for the democratic left against the fascist Franco, but he quickly found something his leftist readers didn't want to know: Franco wasn't the only evil enemy of freedom in Spain.

...

Franco was so truly and obviously bad that no one wanted to hear that some of those fighting him were just as bad, possibly worse.

Last night my good friend K came over and we talked about the Palestinian Solidarity Movement.  All I had to do was mention that 'each side of the conflict has fault' and she became quite cross with me. Her argument: the word 'conflict' implies that there is some kind of a fight with two sides. It's an inappropriate word for the aerial bombardment of children or the mass imprisonment of 1.5 million people. Furthermore, the idea of there being two sides is distorted - would we talk about two sides in the case of a rapist and his victim?

Well, no. In the case of a rapist and his victim, the words 'conflict' and 'sides' don't quite apply. But even with Israel being the powerful force, with a thousand or ten thousand times the destructive capacity and resources as the weaker side, I refuse to reduce the Palestinians, the Gazans, or even Hamas to the status of a rape victim.

The Palestinian people is worthy of inclusion in the family of nations. They are not mere objects of history, powerless and victimized, expelled and bombed and killed at the whim of others while they whimper in pain and cry out for help. They are organized, armed for resistance, they have political parties, NGO's, strong as well as weak leaders, and a significant solidarity network around the world. The casualties of the current campaign include many children and civilians - but also fighters and civilians granting assistance to those fighters, all of whom are seen as brave and selfless by the vast majority of Palestinians. Does anyone doubt that the Hamas fighters battling Israel today will be commemorated as heroes in the civics lessons of a future Palestinian state?

Had one of those fighters, or Hamas voters been at the table with us last night, they would not have agreed with the rape victim analogy. They would agree that Israel is powerful and strong, and criminal for the actions it takes. But they might also have said some insane things about the Jews controlling America, or the need for all of Palestinian to become holy Islamic Wakf land, or the essential superiority of Muslims over non-Muslims. Even opposing Hamas, they would still say that resistance is a sacred right, not an irrelevancy to be discounted.

Count me as a respecter of Palestinian strength, not just a champion of their victimhood. The Palestinian side needs the world's support against an overwhelmingly powerful adversary that is conducting an unwise and bloody campaign. But they also need our honesty, our critical faculties, our willingness to be clear-headed when we analyze even as we are passionate with our concern.

If we fail, then we are failing the test of Orwell. We fail in the crafting of strategies that can move political mountains, and ultimately save lives and help the Palestinians acheive their rights.