LETTERS
Israel's shout
Sir: Painting the squalor and despair in the Gaza shanty towns with an artist's brush, Ian Buruma (`Hopeless in Gaza', 4 May) would not dream of pointing a finger at his own government for preventing, with other UN members, the construction of decent housing there. But he does allow that the ghastly situation is not the fault of the Israeli soldiers there, who were 'decent, polite and well-educated men'. He even takes a bolder leap and suggests that `neither is the Israeli government wholly to blame for what happened in Gaza.' And, he continues, 'there are too many Palesti- nian murders of Palestinians' to put all the moral blame on Israel. Nor has the effect of the reign of terror in the Arab commun- ity escaped him.
One would expect that, having estab- lished that the PLO has imposed a reign of terror in which no truly free elections can be conducted, he would support Israel's position: all candidates not personally in- volved in terrorism can run, but the PLO as an organisation should be excluded. But such logic would constitute journalistic heresy. Buruma parrots the old refrain: `The problem here is again Israel, which won't allow the PLO to take part in elections. As long as Washington remains unwilling to put more pressure on Israel, such elections won't take place.'
The anti-Israel tone is accompanied by a couple of gaps in the reporter's erudition. He states that some small parties in the government, like Tehiya, 'wish to expel the Arabs.' One assumes he confuses Tehiya with Moledet, but even Moledet does not wish to 'expel' the Arabs. Shamir is blamed for turning down 'open-ended peace talks, favoured by his foreign minis- ter but anathema to the marginal extrem- ists.' Neither Shamir nor any other mem- ber of the government opposes open- ended talks. On the contrary, they object to a continuing international conference on the ground that it would undermine open- ended direct talks.
The trouble, according to Buruma, is that both sides are ruled by fanatic extrem- ists. 'Israeli liberals who expressed sym- pathy for the Palestinians are branded in the right-wing press as traitors,' he says. Since he cannot provide one example of such branding in the mainstream Israeli press — for the simple reason that there isn't any — he cites a pamphlet of the Tora Outreach Programme which he had picked up in his hotel. How does the press get into the act? 'Its language echoed that of editorials I had read in The Jerusalem Post.'
The pamphlet — I am taking his word for it — describes Peace Now activists as `de facto fascists, proclaiming Hitler's doc- trine of Judenrein, that Jews may not live among other people.' How does this echo the editorials in the Jerusalem Post? Buru- ma does not say, but one assumes he means that the Post, too, refers to areas in which Jews are not allowed to live as Judenrein. Happily, the English language has no equivalent word.
Buruma is not shaken to the marrow by the existence of states like Saudi Arabia and Jordan in which no Jews can live. Nor is he incensed by the idea that while 750,000 Arabs can live as fully fledged citizens in Israel, Israelis are told they should not live among Arabs in Jerusalem or Hebron. What bothers him is the rhetoric through which 'moderates on both sides are abused and silenced.' At last, we have the perfect equivalence: Arab moder- ates are abused and silenced by being tortured, raped, burned to death, hacked with axes, garrotted and beheaded. Israeli moderates are abused by being called nasty names in the Knesset, which they recipro- cate tenfold with gusto. But silenced? Show me one Israeli, moderate or other- wise, who has been silenced — and I'll show you a case of terminal laryngitis.
David Bar-Illan
The Jerusalem Post, Jerusalem
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