Saturday, June 9, 2012 by The Guardian/UK
Segregating Gazans Has Made Them Easier to Demonize
Separating Israelis and Palestinians has broken the bonds between us, making Gazans easier to target in the Israeli press
A stout sense of humour and self-irony is the least most Israelis
expect of Gazans. It is certainly true today, when they are spoken of
almost solely through the hyperbole of military commentators who jump
frantically from discussing the Iranian threat to the danger that the
tiny, overcrowded, impoverished and besieged enclave poses to the state
of Israel, a global military power.
A Palestinian woman looks at the Israeli 'security fence' in the West bank village of Masha. (Photograph: Jamal Aruri/AFP)
But that sense of humour is also lost in the victim-oriented
Palestinian media reports or the militant statements of anonymous veiled
speakers and lower-tier Hamas politicians of which the meagre Israeli
media diet ordinarily consists.
Now we would struggle to understand stories such as the following
anecdote, relayed to me by the Fatah activist Abu Mustafa. Thirty years
ago, Mustafa was being tortured by an Israeli interrogator. "You must be
getting a double salary," Mustafa told the oversized interrogator, who
was stepping on his back and squeezing his arms. "How come?" The Israeli
was surprised. "Because of your weight," said Mustafa, as he was
struggling with the pain. According to this thin and shy man, the
interrogator burst out laughing, was unable to continue his chore and
left the room. Did Mustafa want to mellow his own memory of the torture
when he shared that story with me, or did his humour indeed reach home
with his tormentor?
Even 25 years ago, the relationship between Gazans and Israelis was
very different. Back then, Gazans were a reservoir of cheap labour and
still flocked to the streets of Israeli towns – to be found in every
restaurant, clothing factory, garage and construction site. How were
they seen then by the ordinary Israeli? Were they mere functional
shadows who disappeared in their dorm shanties? Dispensable ghosts?
Savages? An Uncle Tom?
Then in 1991, Israel imposed the closure – an under-discussed policy
of movement restrictions on Palestinians, especially in Gaza, which was
gradually streamlined into the reality of a separate, cut-off entity
that exists today.
It was in 1990 I started my professional "romance" with Gaza. I
realised how poorly and inaccurately it was being portrayed. My late
father, never a typical Israeli, concluded when he heard my reports: "Of
course! A people who rebel are a beautiful people." A pinch of
self-conscious romanticism on his part, but also a counter reaction to
the general attitude. This was still the first popular uprising. The
Gazans, until now a faceless group, started acquiring the generic title
of "terrorists" among Israelis.
Yet even before 1991, notwithstanding the widespread exploitation of
Gazan workers, the daily interaction between them and Israeli employers
was rarely represented in the media.
Tragically, it was during and after the Israeli onslaught on Gaza in the winter of 2008/9
that I got another reminder of such past ties. A blacksmith who hurried
to move his shop's equipment to a safe place was hit by an Israeli
missile. Eight people, his sons among them, who were loading a truck
with the equipment, had been targeted by military officers who
deciphered the inspection drone footage and misinterpreted the elongated
objects as "grad missiles" and not the oxygen jars that they were (a
common, deadly mistake, by the way, during that attack). I had the
impossible task of interviewing this broken man over the phone a day or
two after. He quickly switched to Hebrew, telling me about the Israeli
business partner he'd worked with for years. "Talk to him, he'll confirm
that I am not a terrorist." He also told me that this ex-business
partner wired him money following the attack. But when I called the
Israeli man he refused to talk to me, because "he does not speak with
traitors".
When I entered Gaza, a few days after the onslaught ended, I heard it
over and over again, from people old enough to have worked in Israel
and whose fields, houses and factories were just destroyed: they spoke
warmly of their ex-employers and Israeli business partners who had just
called them, worried about their plight.
The welcome astonishment with which such stories were received by my
young editors told me yet again of how the strict policy of separation
was bearing its fruits. Without any trace of ordinary human encounters
left (since 2006 even Israeli journalists are barred from entering the
Gaza Strip), Gazans have become abstract, almost extra-terrestrial,
creatures. As such it is so much easier for officials, and some media
mouthpieces, to stereotype and demonise. It is based on brusque and
tawdry TV scenes, and makes Israeli video war-games, but with real fire,
much easier.
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited
