Salem, 1
Dina
Salem
Prof.
Dania Adra
English
203
October
20, 2015
Doubting and Believing: The Paranoid, Supremacist Roots of the Stabbing Intifada by Jeffrey Goldberg
Norman Finkelstein, an American-Jew who
happens to be a strong advocate for the Palestinian cause once said, “If I came
in with a bible in one hand and a rifle in the other, knocked on your door and
said: according to the bible, my family lived here two thousand years ago,
would you pack up your bags and leave?” Jerusalem was a city where Muslims,
Christians and Jews lived in peaceful coexistence, yet Goldberg focuses his
attention on the Muslim population and makes it seem as if they were the only
ones who lived there, cancelling out the prominent Christians that made up almost
half the population, and the fact that Jews were part of that peaceful society is
proof that Israel is fully motivated by the Zionist ideology, not the
indigenousness of the Jewish community. the writer claims that “the
unwillingness of many Muslim Palestinians to accept the notion that Jews are a
people who are indigenous to the land Palestinians believe to be exclusively
their own” (Goldberg); here the writer essentializes Islam as the religion of
all Palestinians, furthermore, throughout that passage, he refers to the
rioters as “Arabs” (Goldberg), and yet again attributes Islam as a
characteristic of every Arab in Palestine. His biased one-sided approach is prevalent
when he describes the religious tolerance of the government of Israel, when he
said:
Moshe Dayan, ordered it taken down, and
soon after promised leaders of the Muslim Waqf,
the trust that controlled the
mosque and the shrine, that Israel would not interfere in its
activities. Since
then, successive Israeli governments have maintained the status quo established
by Dayan. (Goldberg)
But
currently in Jerusalem, Muslim citizens are subject to strict stops and searches
at several checkpoints before they enter the mosque and are often forbidden
from entering at all in times of unrest, for ‘security measures’. Churches are
also often destroyed as in the case of Tabgha, a Catholic church which was burned by Israeli settlers and is
located on the banks of the Galile sea. His failure to mention these clearly
intolerant actions is biased.
His biased perspective is also evident when he
describes the violent acts that occurred in Israel and the West Bank region, as
he fails to mention the acts that were committed by the Israeli settlers during
the same period, thereby ignoring all the innocent people who were butchered by
extremist Zionists, whether Palestinian or Israeli:
When violence against Jews occurs inside Israel, or on the West Bank, a consensus tends
to be reached quickly by outside analysts and political leaders, one that holds that such
violence represents the inevitable consequence of Israel’s occupation and settlement of
Palestinian territory. (Goldberg)
On
the other hand, with the concept of believing in perspective, the writer does
have a logical opinion about the two-state solution, with complete religious
tolerance and respect on both sides, “There will not be peace between Israelis
and Palestinians so long as parties on both sides of the conflict continue to
deny the national and religious rights of the other.” (Goldberg). Violence,
whether from Palestinians or Zionist settlers must be condemned no matter what
(in my argument I do not wish to exonerate those who have committed violent
acts against Israeli soldiers and settlers). Goldberg’s dissatisfaction with
the US policies is also reasonable, for example, when he quotes the Haaretz journalist.
Salem, 2
Works Cited:
Goldberg,
Jeffrey. "The Paranoid, Supremacist Roots of the Stabbing Intifada." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 16 Oct. 2015. Web.
20 Oct. 2015.
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