'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Feeling Jewish hate in Jerusalem's Silwan

Richard Silverstein had a chillingly informative post on his blog this week that contained an English translation of a short piece Israeli journo Meron Rapoport wrote about a recent visit to the large Jewish settlement being established in the heart of the ancient Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan, in East Jerusalem.

(Thanks for posting that, Richard.)

Rapoport wrote,

There were three of us – Ilan the director, Michael the cameraman, and me, the interviewee. We were making a film that explores the overt institutional discrimination against this East Jerusalem neighbourhood’s Palestinian residents...

Even before we manage to position our camera, a group of religious girls comes up the path (we could tell they were religious by their skirts). They were around eight to ten years old, smug and beautiful chatterboxes. One of them slowed down beside us. “Film me”, she said amiably. “What would you like to tell us”, we asked. “I want to say that Jerusalem is a city that belongs to us, the Jews”, she said while walking – “it’s just a shame there are Arabs here. The Messiah will only come when there’s not even a single Arab left here”. She walked on. The girls giggled and sauntered along with her.

...[T]wo young women came up the path. They are seventeen or eighteen years old. Secular, evidently not local residents. One of them stood in front of the camera. “Take my picture”, she fawned. “Do you want to be interviewed”, we asked her. “Yes”, she said. She’s from Gan Yavneh, came to visit Jerusalem, the City of David, she said. “Why the City of David in particular”, we asked. “Because this is where David was a king, this is a very important location for the Jewish people. It’s just a shame there are Arabs here. But soon all the Arabs will die, God willing, and Jerusalem will be ours alone”. She walked on.

Two minutes went by. An Orthodox family came up the path. The husband, dressed in black, asked Ilan the director: “say, do both Arabs and Jews live in this neighbourhood?” “Both Palestinians and Jews”, Ilan replied, “but the majority is Palestinian”. “That’s temporary”, the Orthodox man allayed his concerns; soon there will be no Arabs left here.

I look at Ilan and Michael. Barely a quarter of an hour had passed since we arrived; we had not interrogated anyone about their attitude to Arabs, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or about the future of Jerusalem. We just stood in the middle of the street. Like pylons. The hatred poured on in our direction, like a river to the ocean. Freely, naturally.

I think it was important that Rapoport noted that he and his colleagues hadn't even started asking their questions before "The hatred poured on in our direction, like a river to the ocean... "

As Richard wrote in his blog post, Rapoport's piece looks like a short prose equivalent of the two "Feel the Hate" videos that Max Blumenthal shot in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv earlier this summer.

This kind of blind inter-group hatred is tragic, wherever it occurs: a symptom of a very deep spiritual wounding.

But it is also particularly dangerous when it is promulgated amongst-- and comes to be embraced by-- a group of people who have guns and all the other appurtenances of state power to back them up and are capable of acting on their hate-fueled fantasies.

Much has been said about the role of "incitement" in stoking the antipathy that many Palestinians have for the Israelis. (The fact that Israel has been maintaining a belligerent, intrusive, and land-grabbing military occupation over East Jerusalem, the rest of the West Bank, and Gaza for 42 years now is also, of course, relevant to Palestinians' feelings.)

But how about the role of "incitement" in helping form the views of these Jewish Israelis? Where did they get them from?

In particular, where did the youngsters get their views from?

Definitely worth investigating.

I can believe that some of this hatred arose from the horror and tragedy of past Palestinian actions against Israeli civilians. (But we can only allow that to be a factor inasmuch as we allow the much greater horrors and tragedies that Israel has visited upon Palestinians also to be factor, for them.)

But is there no incitement by politicians, educators, and other community leaders involved in this generation of Israeli hatred? Of course there has been incitement.