Jewish novelist Michael Chabon rails against fictional ‘occupation’

As a novelist, Michael Chabon has a vivid imagination. One of his novels centers around a world in which there is no state of Israel, only a large Jewish refuge in Alaska. Chabon’s imagination was on full display last week, when he toured Israel and denounced an “occupation” that exists only in his mind.

Together with other American Jewish critics of Israel, Chabon visited Hebron. Afterwards, he told The Forward that “the occupation [is] the most grievous injustice I have ever seen in my life.” Now keep in mind that 80 percent of Hebron is occupied by the Palestinian Authority. But for some reason, Chabon is concerned only about the 20 percent controlled by Israel.

The Israeli military presence in that small part of the city is necessary for one simple reason: Hebron’s Arabs have a long history of massacring their Jewish neighbors. Evidently, that reality does not trouble the visiting novelist. No, somehow the fact that Israeli soldiers protect the city’s handful of Jewish residents is—to quote Chabon—“the most grievous injustice I have ever seen in my life.” That tells me only that Chabon, like many pampered prize-winning novelists, has not seen many injustices.

Chabon’s knowledge of Middle East history is likewise brimming with fiction. He explained to The Forward that he first began criticizing Israel during the 1982 Lebanon War, when he was “reading about the massacres in the refugee camps. I was like, wait, Israel? Is that what they are doing?”

Well, no, Michael, that was not what “they” were doing. It was what the Lebanese Christians were doing. No sane person ever accused Israel of perpetrating massacres in Lebanon; the most Israel was accused of was failing to foresee that the Christians might wreak vengeance on their enemies. Of course, it’s all too easy for a novelist sitting in the comfort and safety of the United States to demand that Israel adhere to absurdly unrealistic standards of behavior.

Chabon also told his interviewer that he visited the Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, which is inhabited mostly by Arabs. Jews are “illegally taking over houses and these people are fighting for their neighborhood…[American Jewish donations are] going to support the takeover of Silwan.”

You would think a writer would be a little more careful about his choice of words. Chabon’s language reminds me of white racists in the 1970s who were “fighting for their neighborhoods” against African-Americans who were supposedly trying to “take over.” Sorry, Mr. Chabon, but there is nothing “illegal” about Jews purchasing houses in a mostly Arab area, any more than there is anything wrong with African-Americans purchasing houses in a mostly white area. It’s called integration. Welcome to the 21st century, Michael Chabon. South African apartheid is gone and Arab apartheid deserves the same fate.

Chabon mentioned in the interview that he is co-editing a book of essays “marking 50 years of Israeli occupation.” Bookstores should place it on the fiction shelves. Israel stopped occupying the Palestinians back in 1995, when prime minister Yitzhak Rabin pulled Israel’s forces out of the cities where 98 percent of the Palestinians reside. It is only in the minds of purveyors of fiction such as Michael Chabon that Israel is still “occupying” them.

Chabon’s own essay in the book concerns one Sam Bahour, “a Palestinian-American businessman who moved to Ramallah to build the Palestinian economy in the wake of the Oslo peace accords, only to watch the Israeli occupation deepen around him.” Fascinating! Ramallah is the capital of the Palestinian Authority regime. There are no Israeli soldiers in Ramallah. Yet somehow Sam Bahour, in Ramallah, is “watching the Israeli occupation deepen around him.” Now that requires a powerful imagination indeed.

Michael Chabon is a talented novelist. Unfortunately, it seems that when the subject is Israel, he has trouble separating fiction from reality.

This article first appeared on JNS.org.

Peace treaties that don’t bring peace

My comments on a recent New York Times ad placed by the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace urging Israel to sign a peace treaty with the Palestinians.

Israelis of a certain age have a saying which translates from Hebrew as, “We’ve already seen that movie.” 

Read the full column at Peace treaties that don’t bring peace



 Well, that's what I have to say.Stephen M. Flatow

American historians show their true colors when Palestinians do the arresting

Where's the historian's outrage?

American college professors have now shown their true colors when it comes to Israel. Remember how 126 historians recently tried to get the American Historical Association (AHA) to condemn Israel for “interfering with the travel of students” by maintaining security checkpoints? Well, now it’s the Palestinian Authority (PA) that is setting up checkpoints to block teachers—and wouldn’t you know it, those angry historians have suddenly fallen silent.

The 126 radical historians presented their resolution at the AHA’s convention in Atlanta in January. The Gang of 126 claimed the students are sometimes delayed “15 minutes or more” at Israeli security checkpoints, and these delays supposedly are “impeding instruction at Palestinian institutions of higher learning.”

The real impediment to Palestinian education, however, is the behavior of the PA. More than 20,000 Palestinian public school teachers are striking because the PA has failed to implement a 2013 agreement between the PA and the Palestinian Teachers Union. The pay raises and promotions required by the agreement have never been put into effect.

The PA claims that it doesn’t have enough money to pay the teachers. Yet the PA has one of the largest per capita security forces in the world; in fact, more than half of all PA employees are in the security forces.

One of the tasks for which the PA needs such a large security force is—arresting teachers! Last week, the PA police arrested 20 teachers and two school principals for the “crime” of participating in a rally supporting the striking teachers.

I suppose that news won’t come as a surprise to anyone who reads, for example, the U.S. State Department’s annual report on human rights around the world. The most recent report states that under the PA, there are “restrictions on freedom of speech, press, and assembly.” There are “limits on freedom of association and movement.”

Now Haaretz reports that “the PA security services set up rings of checkpoints to prevent the teachers from attending a demonstration” in support of the strikers.

What? Checkpoints? Palestinians delayed? Education disrupted? Those 126 angry historians should be up in arms. And they would be, except for the inconvenient fact that it is the PA, not Israel, which is to blame for the checkpoints. And Israel’s critics are constitutionally incapable of ever criticizing the Palestinian leadership for anything it does. These educators did not protest on behalf of Palestinian university students because they care about them, they simply are against Israel’s existence. Shameful.

Read the column on line here at JNS.ORG.

Lessons from the life and death of a Palestinian Arab terrorist

American Jews could have done something about Naif Zaid

A Palestinian terrorist who murdered a yeshiva student was found dead in the Palestinian Authority's embassy in Bulgaria last week. Before we all turn the page and forget the names of both the killer and his victim, it's worthwhile pausing to consider some lessons from this episode.

Naif Zaid ambushed and murdered a young yeshiva student, Eliahu Amedi, in Jerusalem in 1986. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. But it did not take him long to figure out how to manipulate the system. In the spring of 1990, Zaid announced that he was going on a hunger strike. After forty days, the Israeli authorities transferred him to a hospital in Bethlehem.

Being situated in an all-Arab city created an opportunity for Zaid to escape, which he soon did--from the hospital and from Israel. By 1994, Zaid was living in Bulgaria. There he married, fathered three children, and generally enjoyed life as Eliahu Amedi never will.

While Zaid was enjoying his new life in Europe, Amedi's name was forgotten by everyone except his immediate family and friends. And that, sadly, is what happens to almost all victims of Palestinian terror.

But an unusual development brought the story back into the headlines in December 2015. Apparently fearing that Israeli agents were about to capture him, Zaid took shelter in the Palestinian Authority's embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria's capital.

Israel asked the PA to hand him over, in accordance with Annex IV, Article 2, Par.7(f)(1) of the Oslo II agreement that Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the PA signed in 1995. That clause specifically obliges the PA to comply with every Israeli request for extradition. But the PA refused, just as it has refused Israel's dozens of other requests for the extradition of terrorists.

For more than two months, the yeshiva student's murderer remained in the PA embassy, eluding justice--and nobody did anything.

Of course, in most instances of Palestinian terrorism, there's not much that American Jews can do. We rely on the Israeli security authorities to pursue the attackers and bring them to justice. We are merely spectators, hoping that the Israelis will catch the bad guys and finding ourselves powerless to do much beyond collect tzedaka for the victim's family.

But the case of Naif Zaid was different. The pursuit of justice left the security realm and entered the political arena. Once the PA refused to hand him over, the question became how to put pressure on the PA to change its mind. And that's where American Jewish protests could have played a role.

There are those in the Jewish world who speak out forcefully when yeshiva students are threatened with being drafted into the Israeli army, or when yeshivas are in danger of receiving less government funding. Why weren't those voices heard in protest against the PA sheltering the murderer of a yeshiva student?

There was so much that could have been done to put pressure on the Bulgarian authorities to intervene.

-There could have been a rally outside the Bulgarian Consulate in New York City.

-A delegation of Jewish leaders could have visited the Bulgarian Embassy in Washington.

-Jewish groups that sponsor tours to Europe could have dropped Bulgaria from their itinerary. (Recall how the Jewish boycott of Mexico in 1975 forced the Mexicans to withdraw their endorsement of Zionism-is-racism.)

And there was so much that could have been done to put pressure on the Palestinian Authority. There could have been a petition to President Obama, urging him to pressure the PA to surrender Naif. Members of Congress could have been mobilized to reassess U.S. aid the PA. Jewish peace activists could have announced that they would cut off contacts with Palestinian leaders until Zaid was surrendered.

The story of Naif Zaid has an unusual ending. One day last week, he was found dead in the PA's embassy. News reports claimed he was involved an unspecified "altercation" in the embassy. The Palestinians are--naturally--accusing Israel of killing him. The truth may never be known, and the names of Zaid and Amedi will soon vanish from the news.

Still, it's only a matter of time before some similar situation arises again, and American Jews will again face the choice between silence and activism. Let's hope they make the right choice.

This post originally appeared on IsraelNationalNews.com.

Iran gets its money, terror victims are disgusted by the Obama administration's disrespect

Mike Kelly of northern New Jersey's Bergen Record writes today about the release of money earmarked to pay American victims of Iranian sponsored terror.

Promised that the American government would reimburse itself for payments made on behalf of the Iranian government, the money has now been released.

As said by Arline Duker, the mother of Teaneck resident Sara Duker murdered 20 years ago this week-

"No one sat with us or sent us anything to indicate that our children’s lives and that our feelings mattered in all of this,” she said. “It’s as if this is only about the money and the agreement with the Iranians, and the lives of the Americans didn’t matter. It feels disrespectful.”

And so it goes.

The full column may be read here.