Thirty Years of Frustration

The appearance of Mark Feldstein's article "A Kibbutz Diary From the Invasion of Southern Lebanon" in last Wednesday's Crimson reflects either a deliberate case of media perversion, or, hopefully, a lack of discernment or responsibility on The Crimson's part to avoid carrying articles that present biased distortions rather than substantive perspectives on heated political issues. It is rather pathetic that this newspaper chose to publish this diary-type article on such a weighted issue as the dilemma of Palestinian-Israeli confrontation along the southern Lebanese-northern Israeli border, because the article's limited and distorting scope essentially reduces this complex subject to simply a matter of "fanatic Palestinian terrorists vs. innocent kibbutzniks."

This lengthy, full-page narrative account of life in kibbutz Hanita seems only to serve as the author's attempt to fuel sympathies against what he depicts as war-hungry, ruthless Palestinian terrorists "firing 82-mm, and 120-mm. mortars, in addition to the Soviet Katyusha rockets" against helpless and terrified kibbutzniks. Feldstein presents a one-sided portrayal of each party in this dilemma: the "bad guy Palestinian" is depicted simply as a massacring Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) terrorist while the "good guy Israeli" is seen only as a defenseless kibbutznik victim. There is only one enemy to be degraded in this complex Palestinian situation: the Palestinian killer.

Feldstein is relentless in his over-simplification of the conflict in as much as he reveals only the kibbutznik as the sufferer. As Feldstein describes how the Palestinian onslaught is taking a psychological toll on innocent kibbutznik children and grownups, he unfortunately magnifies the one-sided image of the Palestinian as a violent PLO terrorist.

Feldstein consumes an entire page in what his title indicates is a desperate attempt to rationalize the March Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon. But in so doing, he considers it unnecessary to provide any political-historical context behind the aggressive Israeli move, and instead finds it a sufficient justification to engross the reader in emotional details of the physical and psychological traumas experienced by northern Israeli kibbutzniks who are under perpetual fear of Palestinian rockets launched from southern Lebanon.

He exalts the image of the courageous Israelis whose psychological defenses enable them to momentarily endure dangers induced by bombarding "PLO terrorists." These Israelis are portrayed as fearful, chain-smoking adults who act in defiance of Palestinian mortar attacks by "telling jokes and bawdy stories" and keeping their children preoccupied by their frenzied-like laughter, singing and dancing to Hebrew tunes. But the nearby explosions eventually cause their defenses to crumble, and Feldstein describes scenes of "dazed kibbutzniks" huddled stiffly in a bomb shelter.

I am not contending that the psychological tolls suffered by Israeli kibbutzniks are not a significant factor with which any substantive perspective on the issue of Palestinian-Israeli border confrontation should deal. My point is, rather, that Feldstein need not present such a marring image of the Palestinian--whom he cites as the cause of inflicting such psychological and physical suffering--to strengthen emotional sympathies toward the Israeli victims.

Instead, his tactic of totally debasing the enemy by casting him only as a "PLO lunatic" discredits his very personal appraisal of the situation, for it causes one to wonder why he needed to adopt such an emotionally defensive perspective. By outlandishly equating the Palestinians with the Nazis and the North Vietnamese, Feldstein shows the extreme degree to which he attempts to debase the Palestinian enemy:

A middle-aged German Jew, especially frightened because he has lived through such nightmares before, fears that PLO terrorists could sneak into the kibbutz during the night and massacre us as we huddle in the shelters. He decides to stand guard outside the shelter for most of the night.... At the height of the explosions, which are now shaking the kibbutz and drowning out even the loudest singing, the group bursts into a Hebrew chorus of a tune that sounds familiar to me. It is "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" --a vestige of some long-ago childhood memories of the Vietnam protests.

Another young American is in the room, who understands what that song means to our generation, looks at me with a haunted expression on his face. It is a sort of Vietnam deja-vu, combined with the horrors of our own decade of ten years later.... In order to gain the reader's sympathies, Feldstein has desperately associated his emotional reflections toward this war situation with the markedly different nature of suffering inflicted by the Nazi Germans and North Vietnamese within very contrasting circumstances.

I do not deny that kibbutzniks are caught as powerless victims of occasional Palestinian bombardments. I feel, however, that The Crimson's choice of publishing this particular narrative as a "first-hand experience of a war situation" reflects an irresponsible policy in accepting opinionated articles, because the article distorts an understanding of the Israeli trauma.

The article presents the terrifying atmosphere pervading northern Israeli kibbutz life, but fails to incorporate any political-historical context (by perhaps a lead-in article summarizing the general situation) for interpreting the author's personalized, emotional reflections and his implicitly biased conceptions of the "enemy" with the proper perspective. Feldstein's narrow and distorted portrayal of the Palestinian is perhaps indicative of his general misunderstanding of the entire political situation, a situation that appears only to him as an "unfathomable chess game:"

The whole scene is so bizarre as to be seen as almost unreal. Palestinian terrorists are actually trying to kill me, and yet I am unable to get angry or even upset about it. The rockets are exploding around me, and yet it is somehow still so impersonal that it is almost impossible to deal with. It's a cliche, but it's true: My life has become a pawn in some large and unfathomable chess game.

When Feldstein portrays the entire situation as a simply "bizarre" and almost "unreal" scene, in which children, mothers and fathers are forever in fear of their kibbutzes being the target of Palestinian bombing, one must adopt a more analytical and less emotionalist perspective, and ask why the Palestinians are firing. Indeed, when viewed within an historical-political scenario, the scene is certainly not of some bizarre nature where Israeli kibbutzniks just happened to be chosen as Palestinian targets.

A review of the "30-year diaspora" of the Palestinian refugees shows that substantially mounting pressures and injustices inflicted by neglectful parties in the Arab and international arenas, as well as the Begin government's expansionist actions in violation of settlement policies in occupied territories (prescribed by U.N. international law), have brought the Palestinians to resort to occasional bombardment of the northern Israeli region in order to draw long-overdue attention to their cause.

It is vital to consider several questions that might broaden one's understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian issue and allow one to realize that Feldstein blindly portrays it as simply "innocent kibbutznik vs. fanatic PLO terrorist:"

1) Why are these Palestinian commandos even living in Lebanon--did they once live somewhere else? In examining the pre-1948 territorial situation, one makes the vital realization that these commandos are rocketing the very areas in which Palestinians once lived and were uprooted after the May 15, 1948, U.N. creation of the state of Israel and the ensuing 1948 war.

2) Would such a terrorist problem even exist if the creation of the state of Israel had not forcefully displaced 700,000 Palestinians from their homes--and if the Israelis had not conquered approximately 25,000 square miles of territory (an area over three times the size of Israel itself) in the 1967 war and hence caused over 150,000 West Bank refugees to become twice-displaced as they, along with an additional 100,000 West Bank residents, fled across the Jordan? Would this commando problem exist if the Palestinians had been granted an independent state or entity to compensate for their uprooting that was a result of this foreign occupation of their lands?

3) Are there not similar, emotion-laden narratives depicting accounts of terrorist action where Israel played the role of the massacrist and the Palestinians were the innocent victims?

To make the significant point that terrorist warfare has been initiated by Israeli as well as Arab parties, one might recall the major atrocity committed by Israeli terrorists of the Irgun when these Zionists massacred nearly all of the defenseless inhabitants (254 men, women and children) of the Palestinian Arab village of Deir Yassin on April, 19, 1948, or one of the many other atrocities committed by Jews against the scores of other Palestinian villages in the first Palestine War in 1948.

Or one might recall the fright of innocent southern Lebanese villagers during the Israeli incursion into Lebanese Arqub area, a four-day attack in February and March 1972. That Israeli retaliation to fedayeen raids brought the largest military operations to date against Lebanese villages--which caused even the U.N. Security Council to pass a resolution condemning Israel. Again, heavy civilian Lebanese casualties were sustained the following June when the Israelis staged air attacks on Lebanese villages following a renewal of fedayeen activity.

Or what of the helplessness of southern Lebanese villagers during Israel's recent massive invasion into Lebanon when Israel used U.S.-supplied CBU-72 "cluster bombs" during their military operations which wantonly killed, mutilated and maimed thousands of civilian men, women and children? (These were devastating antipersonnel bombs used against Palestinian guerilla forces and Palestinian refugee camps--the use of which was a distinct Israeli violation of the secret 1976 agreement with the U.S. to use such weapons only in wars comparable in scale to the 1967 or 1973 wars and only against Arab armies.)

From this perspective, then, one realizes that there have been helpless victims on both sides who have paid the price for the aggressive action and policies adopted by the responsible governmental or organizational parties. As Feldstein sympathizes with helpless kibbutzniks who have been the occasional targets of Palestinians who are incensed by a hard-line and expansionist Israeli government policy, so too have defenseless Palestinian refugee camp dwellers and southern Lebanese villagers been the victims of Israeli terrorist action and military incursions initiated in retaliation to PLO commando action.

The message is simple: The Palestinians are not just "PLO lunatics," but are embittered refugees who have resorted to terrorist warfare out of mounting frustration. Although it might seem not only brutal but futile for the Palestinians to resort to terrorist action directed toward helpless Israeli kibbutzniks, one must realize that many Palestinian commandos have sadly concluded that 30 years of international neglect have made such terrorist action necessary to cry out their cause.

Attempts at settling the Palestinian problem through conventional Arab armies in four fruitless wars and through international forums such as the U.N. and talks in Geneva have not solved the Palestinian refugee diaspora. The 1967 Arab defeat was the final blow that showed these embittered Palestinians that conventional Arab warfare was not an effective means by which to promote their cause, and that they must resort to independent commando action to make that cause audible.

One cannot doubt that Palestinian terrorism has taken many Israeli lives, but one must also realize the desperateness of the Palestinians. After 30 years, it has become evident to the Palestinians that the Arab states as well as the international community will settle for peace at the cost of the Palestinian cause. This reality has been shown by Israeli violations of international U.N. law concerning settlement policy in occupied territories and recognition of the Palestinians' right to return to their homeland (U.N. Resolutions 3236, 3237, 3376, 3375, 3379 of 1974-76); actions by the Arab League subordinating the Palestinian cause to Arab state interest; a dismissed Geneva Conference; and U.N.-, Rogers-, Sadat-initiated moves contrary to PLO objectives.

No one can applaud the 1970 hijackings by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the 1972 Munich incident, or the recent Fatah terrorist action, but one must try to understand what harsh realities have motivated some PLO groups to take such a course. Thirty years of refugee life and four fruitless wars have made the Palestinians feel they must cry out louder with more audible means to make their cause heard, and to exert pressure that will guarantee that any future-settlement will consider the Palestinian population as a primary factor to reckon with.

Historian Arnold Toynbee recognizes the international neglect that has nurtured a sense of desperateness among the Palestinians and has caused them to resort to such extreme means:

The Palestinian Arabs have an understandable vendetta against the Israelis, but they also have a grievance against all the rest of us. Half a century of massive indifference to their wrongs has had the same exasperating effect on them as a century of similar treatment has had on the black citizens of the United States....

Today the Palestinian faces the human stone wall, and it is no wonder if, after beating his head against it in vain, he seizes a stick of gelignite and blows up himself, the wall, and his unresponsive fellow human beings on the far side. What else is he, or anyone of us, to do?

In summarizing, then, we see that terrorism exists on both sides--one could go into the entire history of such Israeli terrorist organizations as the Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern Group that have collaborated with the official armed forces of the Jewish Agency (Haganah and Palmuch) and committed atrocities in which many innocent Palestinian civilian lives have been taken. The same military and psychological tolls that Feldstein describes as being suffered by kibbutzniks have also been endured on the Arab side where Palestinian refugees and southern Lebanese villages have instead been the victims. Similarly, the same sort of defensive psychological mechanisms have enabled the courageous, homeless Palestinians and war-stricken Lebanese to withstand such perpetual agony. Just as Iraelis try to forget the danger by placing their fate in God's will, so do victimized Arabs sing and pray to Allah.

But an emotional narrative describing the traumas and suffering inflicted upon the Palestinians during the past 30 years without incorporating such reflections within a substantiated historical-political perspective that presents the victim and the enemy objectively would be as ineffective as Feldstein's article. His isolated emotional narrative only serves to perpetuate the mischanneled power of the press; for The Crimson to carry an article that comments on the entire issue of the dilemma of Israeli-Palestinian confrontation along the southern Lebanese-northern Israeli border in terms of a diary-type dialogue that portrays "fanatical heartless Palestinian terrorists" attacking "innocent Israeli kibbutznik victims" accomplishes little but to perpetuate the general ignorance of the reading public on the complex issue in the Middle East.

The Crimson would achieve the same negligible impact (in terms of informing the public on such a heated political issue) if it chose to devote an entire opinion page to a diary-type narrative of the 1948 Deir Yassin Massacre or to a daily account of life in a Palestinian refugee camp without first putting such an article in the proper historical-political context. A lead-in article giving general background information on the issue would enable the reader to discern the emotional biases and distortions implicit in the article.

All in all, I feel that it would have been much more substantive (in addition to reflecting a more responsible news coverage policy by The Crimson) if instead of devoting an entire page to Feldstein, it would have sufficed to have included a shorter passage revealing such an emotionally-colored perspective on the psychological traumas suffered by kibbutzniks. Arab Information Center Director Hatem Husseini elaborates on the point that the media is a culprit to perpetuating slanted perspectives on the subject:

The Palestinian people have been portrayed by western media as either helpless "refugees" or violent "terrorists." These stereotype images have been perpetuated by Zionists and advocates of the Israeli cause who sought to polarize the conflict and intensify passions. Rarely have the Palestinians been presented as human beings who have suffered a devastating tragedy, a people who yearn for peace and tranquility.

It is time for the American people to examine the conflict in an objective manner and to begin to learn about the Palestinians.... They are not fighting against Jews, but against Zionist ideology and institutions that have separated Palestinians from Jews and allowed the Israeli ruling elite to dominate and persecute the Palestinians. They are struggling, therefore, for the creation of a new society where Jews, Christians, and Moslems can coexist with equal rights within a secular democratic state.

Nina J. Lahoud '78 is a Middle Eastern Studies concentrator of Lebanese-American descent. She spent the summer of 1975 in Lebanon during the civil war, and last summer was an intern for the Near Eastern desk of the State Department in Washington.