Update: I should add that this is a response to this – which is why the title seems a bit odd perhaps.
Until a few years ago I was neutral towards, and comparatively uninterested in, I/P. My growing interest can be directly traced to the efforts of Palestinian advocacy, as I first began to take notice of the way Israel was represented in the media when I became aware of one of Palestinian advocacy’s pet preoccupations – the academic boycott movement.
This struck me as an unfair and misguided movement, and it certainly wasn’t how I expected my union to spend its time and money. I became more interested, and found my way to blogs such as Engage and Harry’s Place. Perhaps ironically, the pieces which struck me most on Engage were their occasional posts about Palestinians – stories about students finding it difficult to get travel permits, or peace activists such as Bassam Aramin.
Inevitably I have also found my way onto sites more single-mindedly focused on the plight of the Palestinians. Except what really leaps out from some of these is hatred for Israel, to put it no more strongly – Latuff cartoons in the Palestine Telegraph or nasty innuendo on MEMO. I’m sure these sites document real cases of suffering and injustice too – but they do so in such a tendentious way and in such a tainted atmosphere that I find myself reading in a suspicious or sceptical frame of mind.
Israel advocacy has its problems too. But I feel there is a greater willingness to face up to extreme and unwelcome views and repudiate them. Harry’s Place, for example, runs articles critical of those whose advocacy is tainted by bigotry, and promotes moderate views such as those of Alex .
Palestinian advocates seem to me much slower to distance themselves from extreme views and individuals. Even people who don’t really seem remotely extreme, generally, seem unwilling to acknowledge pretty unambiguous racism. It’s a relief to turn from some of the shriller sites, some of the hateful comments on this facebook page for last night’s MEMO event for example, and read instead this statement from Mahmoud Jabari, a Palestinian from Hebron, talking about his work as a peace activist.
To meet Israeli youths for the first time is not easy, but is something interesting, because you will test your ability to come over all the stereotypical images about the other side and believe in who you are as a normal person and who he/she is as an Israeli and as a normal person … What is special about such opportunities is that despite all the hardness in the dialogue and conversations that go on between both sides, you realize that it is not only about your story or your suffering, but it is also about the other side, whom you should consider and think about as much as you think about your side.
I don’t really (surprise, surprise) have anything against Palestinian advocacy as such, and I still see myself as neutral– I just wish more Palestinian advocates, like Mahmoud, were able to empathise with both sides.
