James Kantor’s A Healthy Grave – An Apartheid Prison Memoir Retro-Review

Nelson Mandela wrote of both his prison and Rivonia Trial experiences, as did Goven Mbeki.  Ruth First, Raymond Suttner, and Albie Sachs published prison diaries –117 Days, Inside Apartheid’s Prison, and The Jail Diary of Albie Sachs.  But A Healthy Grave was different.  Unlike Mandela, Mbeki, First, Suttner, or Sachs, James Kantor was not involved in the struggle.  The bottom line was that he was arrested for being the brother-in-law of Harold Wolpe.  Actually, he wasn’t alone in this type of detainment during the apartheid reign of the Nationalist Party.  Ronald First was arrested solely because he was the son of Julius and brother of Ruth.  But the story, of course, is much more complex.

James Kantor’s book was published in 1969.  A high-priced lawyer, Kantor was married to an actress/model when he was detained in 1963 by the apartheid regime.  He was not fond of communism and did not approve of the Marxist disposition of his brother-in-law, Harold Wolpe.  But he was Wolpe’s law partner and was jailed after Wolpe, Arthur Goldreich, Abdulhay Jasset, and Mosie Moolla escaped from Marshall Square prison in Johannesburg.  So why is this book still important.  First, of course, it is worthwhile solely because James Kantor’s prison/trial memoir needs to be read and reread as part of the history of apartheid – it is a book that appears to be lost for many South Africans.  But it is also important because it reemphasizes issues of liberty and democracy that are transgressed at the present time by the South African government and other nations throughout the world.

Kantor wrote of his experience from exile in London six years after the judge in the infamous Rivonia Trial, Quartus de Wet, dismissed his charges before sentencing eight of his co-defendants to life in prison.  But, dismissal did not come until Kantor was put through his own Kafkaesque version of hell in 1963.  Arrested at his office, shuffled between prisons in Johannesburg and Pretoria, given bail only to have it rescinded, James Kantor was still well aware that he was treated much better than any black detainees.  In spite of that awareness, the injustice of his experience provides multiple as well as wide-ranging lessons.  In addition, the apartheid regime ruined his life and arguably facilitated his early death.

There are a variety of insights and lessons from Kantor’s reflections.  He had a breakdown at one point of his sentence but understood fully that his detainment was relatively relaxed.  He lost his law practice and livelihood and yet, he was able to contemplate on his place in South African society.

I was no active do-gooder with a burning desire to right the wrongs of the world.  I felt I had contributed in a small way to racial tolerance by allowing the defense of political cases through the office at no cost to the accused; but, in the cold darkness, with my sandals slop-slopping on the concrete floor as I shambled my way up and down, I realized this was nothing more than a superficial sop to the conscience which was now struggling to break through the smugness engendered by years of good living.  At the same time I could not stop feeling sorry for myself.

Nelson Mandela, Hilda Bernstein, and his sister, AnnMarie Wolpe, all wrote about James Kantor in their respective autobiographies.  Mandela asserted that “he had no involvement whatsoever with the ANC or MK.”   “I assumed the only reason the state kept up the charade of prosecuting him in prison was to intimidate progressive lawyers,” added Madiba.  It is in AnnMarie’s book, however, that we get testimony of her brother’s lack of involvement in struggle politics or actions.  When she decided to tell him that Harold was planning an escape, his response was: “My God, he’s crazy.  He must stand his trial like a gentleman.”

Throughout the book Kantor gives thanks for the many people who assisted him throughout his detention and trial.  There were the lawyers that tried to help save his practice including Joel Joffe and liberal colleagues Jack Cooper, Ben Joseph, and Harry Schwartz.  The last was de Klerk’s appointment as Ambassador to the United States in 1990.  Kantor recalled thoughtful conversations with co-defendants Robert Hepple and Denis Goldberg as well as the strength of his wife Barbara.  But, the deepest memories in terms of ‘allies’ are of Nelson Mandela and Kantor’s own mother.  The culminating experience with Madiba came on the day de Wet ruled for Kantor’s release.

That morning, while waiting in the cell before the start of proceedings, Nelson and I had been walking up and down discussing my application.  He was very confident that it would succeed, and suddenly stopped in his tracks and said impulsively, ‘Here, let’s exchange ties for luck.’

Mandela also recalled the moment:

But when he saw the wide, old-fashioned tie I gave him compared to the lovely, silk tie he gave me, he probably thought I was merely trying to improve my wardrobe.  Jimmy was something of a clothehorse, but he wore the tie to court and when Justice de Wet dismissed the charges against him, he lifted the tie up to me as a kind of salute and farewell.

Kantor also wrote of his mother:

I was constantly amazed at the way my mother behaved.  She contrived to be always cheerful and full of hope, a remarkable feat for someone over sixty.  In the past year there had been the death of my father, the almost fatal illness of a grandchild, Harold Wolpe's arrest, the arrest and release of my sister, and then my arrest.  And yet she remained bright, full of confidence, and seemed younger than ever."

Two additional aspects of A Healthy Grave expose both the evil of apartheid and issues that are still evident today in terms of government, power, and citizenry.  Throughout the book we are presented portraits of the purveyors of apartheid.  In addition, Kantor’s internal deliberations on talking to the Special Branch, of ratting out other people, speak to the ethical/moral dilemma that existed at the time and remains today, not only in places like Palestine and Pakistan, but in South Africa and throughout the world.  Descriptions of Special Branch detectives Swanpoel and Viktor, as well as Rivonia Trial prosecutor, Percy Yutar, appear in James Kantor’s memoir.  While both Swanpoel and Viktor are portrayed in other prison diaries, and a mini-biography of Yutar is included in Glenn Frankel’s Rivonia’s Children, Kantor provides insights into how the dispositions and actions of all three men are directly related to the immorality of apartheid.  Almost everyone who has written of his or her arrest, interrogation, and imprisonment by the apartheid regime has mentioned Swanpoel.  Descriptions by Kantor connect to the overt examples of Special Branch obscenity that other people have described.

He is about thirty-five years old, of medium height but so broad as to create an illusion of stockiness.  He is already starting to turn fat.  His fair crew-cut hair bristles up on the crown of his head above a thick neck and squashed-up red, pugilistic face.  His most distinguishing features are tiny eyes… Over the years I had defended several cases in which he was the investigating officer, and almost without exception prisoners complained his violence.  He boasted openly of having shot and killed several Africans resisting arrest.

Kantor’s encounters with Viktor, a man who sparred with Ruth First during the latter stages of her imprisonment, exemplify the breadth of the apartheid ethos. There were two events and they both warrant full quotations.  The first ensued when Viktor transported Kantor to the prison in Pretoria.

Once outside of Johannesburg, Viktor started talking.  He spoke in English and, although he addressed his remarks to his companion, they were clearly meant for me.  The topic he chose for discussion was ‘The Jews’, on which he now professed to have a vast and specialized knowledge.  For instance, he knew for a fact and ‘even the Bible made it clear’ that there had never been any Jewish pioneers or explorers.  Their cunning was always to wait until a country had been fully colonized and then to move in and take over its wealth by dishonest means.  They were Communists and money-lenders, they were vermin, they should be exterminated and Hitler certainly knew what he was doing.  His companion seemed embarrassed and looked straight ahead without making any comments.  Finally, I broke into the monologue.  ‘You know, Vic, I’ve always known that you had no manners, but for the first time I realize that you are also stupid.  You are making a bloody idiot of yourself which I find quite amusing.’

The second occurrence was similar although circumstances had changed in that it was very clear that it was only a matter of time before charges would be dismissed.  On this occasion Viktor had driven James Kantor to his home at the time, Marshall Square Prison in Johannesburg.

Once more making derogatory remarks about the Jews.  He dealt with Jewish blood-sucking, Jewish business dishonesty, Jewish involvement in sabotage, adding that I should remember that the gallows were being oiled in preparation for me and my companions.  I kept quiet until we arrived at Marshall Square.  Once in the charge office, with all the staff within hearing distance, I said loudly, ‘You can now listen to me, Viktor.  You’re an ignorant bastard and I’ve had just about enough of your stupid anti-Jewish statements and impertinent behavior.  I intend making a full statement about this in Court tomorrow and I would now appreciate it if you would repeat what you said in the car, so that I have some more witnesses.’

Ironically, the third purveyor of apartheid whom Kantor described, the prosecutor, Percy Yutar, was Jewish.  While Yutar has been thoroughly described by other writers, Kantor’s portrait is interesting because he contrasts it with that of Heinrich de Villiers, who was a strident Nationalist Party member and judge.  In his book Rivonia, de Villiers wrote: “Yutar has been the undoing of many a reluctant or truculent witness.  One of the most respected and colourful in South Africa’s administration of justice.”  To which Kantor said:

Yutar is a little tyrant filled with his own importance and a burning desire to become the first Jewish Attorney General ever appointed in South Africa.  Of his Jewishness he makes no secret and professes to be devoutly religious.  In fact he asked to be assigned to the Rivonia Trial in order to vindicate the Jewish community in South Africa and to prove ‘that all Jews are not Communists’.

Finally, James Kantor was faced with an ethical dilemma as soon as he was arrested and throughout the time he was detained.  Shortly after Harold Wolpe escaped from Marshall Square, Hilda Bernstein visited Kantor at his office and asked for help hiding the escapees.  Kantor recalled the first interrogation and knew that if he implicated Bernstein or someone he does not name, Market Theatre impresario Barney Simon, he could have gone free.

The thought of going back into a cell was terrifying, and the alternative so simple.  In fact I need mention only one name.  But which one?  Either way, it meant someone being arrested that very night and so I would simply be trading my freedom for that of another.

Kantor did ponder whether or not he was being irresponsible toward his family obligations.  But at various times during interrogations he thought, “It was simply that if I exchanged my position with someone else, no matter who, I knew that I should regret it for the rest of my life.”  The Special Branch also attempted to get Kantor to snitch on his fellow prisoners, Rusty Bernstein, Robert Hepple, and Denis Goldberg.  Hilda Bernstein wrote about the issue in The World That Was Ours.

Jimmy knew Bob and Rusty very slightly, Denis not at all; none of them meant anything to him.  He was opposed to their political views and activities.  Yet again he refused to take the path of escape offered to him.  The temptation must have been enormous… to save what was left he was asked to do quite a simple thing; to turn his back on these men who, after all, meant nothing at all to him.  Yet he did not.

James Kantor did turn his back on the legal profession – an institution that he had total belief in but proved to him, in a very personal way, that it was a shameful sham in apartheid South Africa.  Not long after released from prison, he decided that he could no longer live in South Africa.  He moved to London with his family but he was a changed man.  And in 1974, at the age of forty-seven, his life was cut short by a heart attack.  In 1963, the apartheid regime was becoming increasingly vicious and their treatment of Kantor was a foreshadowing of the obscene treatment of other South Africans, activists and others, who were harassed, detained, and murdered by agents of the South African government.  Innocent people were killed in Sharpeville and Soweto while young liberals, draft resisters and United Democratic Front activists met the same fate for over two decades after James Kantor was arrested and tried for being Harold Wolpe’s brother-in-law.  Besides being an important historical story – let us also view Kantor’s story as a cautionary tale in South Africa and throughout the world.

Well Read Read – On Jay Naidoo on Chris Hani

On 10 April 1993, as he returned to his suburban Johannesburg home, South African freedom fighter Chris Hani was assassinated by an ultra-right extremist.  At the time, the negotiations to finalize the end of apartheid were nearing the finish line that would become the first South African democratic election in 1994.  Hani was a key leader in the African National Congress-South African Communist Party- Congress of South African Trade Unions trialliance.  In fact, during the exile struggle years with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, and Govan Mbeki imprisoned, Hani, along with Oliver Tambo and Joe Slovo, was arguably one of the three key leaders in the struggle against apartheid. Last week, Jay Naidoo, a struggle labor leader himself, connected Chris Hani to the present.  His essay is titled:

A culture of service and tolerance: Lessons from Chris Hani – Jay Naidoo

Twenty years on and it is sometimes convenient, or simply too easy, to forget the abyss of civil war from which our leaders drew us back and to speculate on what might have been had the ANC taken a harder line in the negotiation process that led to South Africa’s first democratic elections of 1994. We sometimes need reminding that the liberation movement achieved a “political miracle”. And we need to remind ourselves of the values held dear by Chris Hani, who represented the best of our patriots in wanting a meaningful democratic outcome for our people.

Twenty years have passed. What have we learnt from the ultimate sacrifice that Chris Hani made on that fateful day 20 years ago? I am reminded of a profound quote from an NGO I support, which says, “In every community, there is work to be done. In every nation, there are wounds to heal. In every heart, there is the power to do it."

The turbulent eighties, the era of our people’s defiance, saw the rise of the mass democratic movement led by the African National Congress. The Apartheid regime was in a structural crisis faced with a deepening economic catastrophe and a global illegitimacy, which forced a political stalemate in our country. Something had to give. The alternative was a racial civil war.

These were momentous times. It needed leaders of courage on both sides to rise above the conflict and see a path to a political settlement. But the release of Mandela and all political prisoners, the unbanning of the African National Congress, South African Communist Party and other banned organisations and the return of political exiles also saw a ferocious and brutal response by those right-wing forces opposed to democracy. Thousands of innocent black civilians paid the ultimate price as violence swept townships and people were murdered in their homes and slaughtered in the streets.

These were brutal times and fear stalked the land. It is convenient for some today to believe that these were not dangerous times and that we gave up too much in the negotiations process. In hindsight we did achieve a “political miracle”.

I reflect on some of the things that Chris Hani talked about and shared with me. He had decided that he would not go into Parliament although there was tremendous pressure on him. He was a communist and a democrat. He felt that power should also be built outside of government because of the political lessons he had learnt from other transitions.

Eight days before Comrade Chris was assassinated in April 1993, he was interviewed by social historian Luli Callinicos. In this interview, on the eve of the 1994 democratic election, he said that South Africa faced a “new enemy” and a “new struggle”.  That enemy, he said, was socio-economic; it was about the struggle for jobs, houses, schools, so that we can build a society that cares.
 

What Comrade Chris was calling for was a culture of service. A culture where nurses are guided by an ethic of care, teachers by an ethic of learning, police by an ethic of community safety, and local government by an ethic of service delivery. The new enemy, he said, was corruption and “we in the party have been discussing how we should cut down on salaries of ministers, of parliamentarians, so that if you are in Parliament in Cape Town, you actually rent a flat like everybody”. 

Importantly, he said in the interview that we must allow “the formation of many democratic formations  in this country, organs of civil  society, like the civics, independent trade unions, students’ organisations, teachers’ organisations, organisations of housewives , women, gays… so that we are kept reminded of the needs  of the people on the ground”.

He anticipated the major challenges we would experiences as a democracy when he said, “I think, finally, the ANC will have to fight a new enemy. That enemy would be another struggle to make freedom and democracy worthwhile to ordinary South Africans. Our biggest enemy would be what we do in the field of socio-economic restructuring; creation of jobs; building of houses, schools, medical facilities, overhauling our education, eliminating illiteracy, building a society which cares, and fighting corruption when power and government position enriches individuals.  We must build a different culture in this country, different from Africa, different from the Nationalist Party.  And that culture should be one of service to people.”

This is advice that we must all take to heart. The priority in education is the interests of the child, not the teachers, parents or government. In health it is the interests of the patient and, most importantly for our political and economic elites, it is the interests of the citizen.  When all of us take that into our hearts and our actions then we will have truly understood the wisdom of Chris Hani.

That was Jay Naidoo’s commemoration of Chris Hani.  It is important to emphasize Hani’s role in the struggle because his actions speak to the present.  Chris Hani not only spoke back to and fought the power of apartheid, but he spoke back to struggle leadership supporting his comrades – Chris Hani believed in democracy from the ground.

Speaking at Hani's funeral Joe Slovo said: “Chris Hani had a dream of democracy. They killed the man, but they can never kill the dream. And the dream Chris Hani had is about to become a reality.”  Jay Naidoo wants to see that dream come to further fruition – in South Africa and throughout the world.

For more on Chris Hani see Janet Smith and Beauregard Tromp’s book, Hani: A Life too Short.

David Grossman's The Yellow Wind - A Retro-Review

David Grossman’s The Yellow Wind – A Retro-Review[1]

David Grossman did the interviews for his book, The Yellow Wind, in May 1987, six months before the first Intifada.  Not only did the book show that particular decade’s oppressive reality of Israel toward Palestine, it illustrated the causes of that Intifada, and sadly, the one that followed and those that will come because of Israel’s continuing oppression that is now wed with expanding settlements on Palestinian land in what is at the very least the closest, present parallel to the Bantustan states in apartheid South Africa.  Although somewhat confounding, Grossman did not himself define Israel as the oppressor and Palestine as the oppressed.  “Defining Israel’s position as wrong in principle and the Palestinian position as entirely righteous, is simplistic and false,” he said.  Grossman’s book is compelling, however, because he relies on the voices of “ordinary” Palestinians and Israelis, not politicians or officials, living in the West Bank at the time.  And the people that he spoke with clearly do signify – the oppressor and the oppressed.

The fact is that when I wrote the book I had no intention of suggesting a solution.  I am a writer not a politician, and the writer’s job, I believe, is to put a finger on the wound, to write anew, in a language that the reader has not yet learned to insulate himself against, about the intricacies of the existing situation, to shatter stereotypes that make it easy not to deal with the problems.  The writer’s job is to remind those who have forgotten that humanity and morality are still important questions and to warn of the future implied by the present. (Intro/NP)

Traveling for seven weeks in the West Bank, Grossman spoke to Palestinians and Israelis.  He met shopkeepers, soldiers, farmers, widows, children, oppressors, victims, and more.  For the purpose of this review, we will re-visit the words of some of the Palestinians whom Grossman portrays in the book.  The underlying question, of course, is why hasn’t Israel, the United States, the World, paid more attention to these voices.

The Yellow Wind first presents stories from Palestinian refugee camps – one of a thirty-year old man in Balata who had spent ten years in the Ashkelon and Nafha prisons.  He had been found guilty of belonging to the PLO but told Grossman:

I didn’t actually take part in operations.  They only taught me to shoot.  Before I went to jail, I didn’t even know I was a Palestinian.  There they taught me who I am.  Now I have opinions.  Don’t believe the ones who tell you that the Palestinians don’t really hate you.  Understand: The average Palestinian is not the fascist and hating type, but you and the life under your occupation push him into hatred.  Look at me, for example. You took ten years of my life from me.  You exiled my father in ’68.  He hadn’t done anything.  He wasn’t even a PLO supporter.  Maybe even the opposite.  Maybe at the beginning I didn’t hate and only feared.  Afterwards, I began to hate. (11)

The second chapter of the book is entitled, “I Want to Shoot Jews.”  Included are discussions with two teachers and children.  The first teacher thinks as little of Arafat as she does of the Israelis, “Arafat is bourgeois.  He drives a Mercedes.  He doesn’t feel the suffering of refugees.  All the Fatah commanders have houses in Syria and the Gulf states.  Arafat has no supporters here.  Only we can represent ourselves.” (22) She continues saying, “We are against Arafat, because Arafat wants peace.  We want a solution by force.  What was taken by force will be returned by force.” (23)

The second teacher speaks about the children:

The children know everything.  Some of the children here are the fourth generation in the camp.  On any night the army may enter their house, right into the house, conduct a search, shout, turn over the blankets and slash at them with their bayonets, strip their fathers… A little while ago the military governor visited the kindergarten and asked if I teach the children bad things, against Israel and the Jews.  I said that I don’t.  But that his soldiers do. (23, 24)

Grossman asked a four-year old girl about the soldiers.  She said only the words “search and beatings” and then told him that Jews equated to the army.  A young boy, one of her classmates, when asked about the Jews said, “They took my sister.”  His sisters, plural, were in jail.  “’They did not throw stones’, he says angrily.”  Dialogue followed;

Suddenly a little boy gets up, holding a short yellow plastic stick in his hand, and shoots me.

‘Why are you shooting me?’

He runs to the teacher, peeks at me from behind her arm and laughs.  He is two years old.

‘Who do you want to shoot?’ The teachers ask, smiling, like two mothers taking pride in a smart child.

‘Jews’

Their lips make out the answer with him.

‘Now tell him why,’ they encourage the little one.

‘Because the Jews took my uncle,’ he says.  ‘At night they came in and stole him from the bed, so now I sleep with my mother all the time.’ (24, 25)

There are four further examples from David Grossman’s conversations with Palestinian people in 1987 that are important to revisit before turning to some of his talks with Jewish settlers.  He spent time in the Deheisha refugee camp, with a man he calls Taher in a village near Hebron, with a “terrorist’s” father, and finally with the lawyer Raj’a Shehade, the author of The Third Way.  In Deheisha, a fifty-year old woman said:

You are always with your head down, waiting for the next blow.  After a few years there you have nothing left but fear and poverty.  You become like a dead person: you do not want anything and you do not hope.  You wait for death.  Even the children there are old.  They are born with fear.  Here, children are like children they almost do not know what the army is.  Only the Mustawtanin, the settlers, are frightening. (67)

Also in Deheisha Grossman speaks with a woman named Wadha Ishmail and her daughter Hanan.  The mother’s story is terrifying but connects to many other memories of Palestinian people, historically and presently.

After they expelled us from the village, we would come back to work our land.  The Israeli Army pretended not to see us.  They would have maneuvers up on the mountain, and we would work the land in the valley.  We would come every day by donkey from Hebron in order to work our land.  One day I came here with my father.  I was young then, almost a girl.  We worked a few hours, and we started on our way back home.  Suddenly the Israeli soldiers surrounded us and separated me from my father.  I saw that they blindfolded him with a rag and pushed him into some bushes.  I remember that he still had a chance to turn to me once and call to me through the rag.  Immediately afterwards I heard shots.  Many shots.  I began to cry.  The soldiers who had stayed with me asked me: Who is that man to you?  I said: he is my father.  They said: Go to the garden down there, and you’ll see that he is harvesting lettuce and eggplant.  When I was some distance from them, I glanced back and I saw one of the soldiers aiming his rifle at me.  I was frightened and bent over.  His bullet hit my neck and came out on the other side.

I don’t know what to say to her, and she interprets my silence, apparently, as disbelief.  Look, she says, and her work-hardened fingers undo her kerchief, and she smiles a sort of apology about having to bother me with her wound.  I see an ugly scar in back, and another ugly scar in front.  Young Hanan cries.  It seems that Wadha is her mother.  Every time I hear that story, it is as if it were the first time, Hanan says.

Wadha lay among the bushes and played dead.  The soldiers distanced themselves from her and then left the area.  She rose, oozing blood and bound her wounds with a handkerchief.  Afterwards, she found her father on the ground, his hands tied behind his back, a large rock on his neck.  There were thirty bullets in his body, the village elder, Abu harb, told us later.  Wadha, who is for a moment a girl once more, describes with movements of her body how she walked and tripped through the valley, at night, s cared that the Israelis would shoot her from behind, or the Jordanians from in front.  She concluded her story as she began it, quietly, with no tone of accusation, and her daughter Hanan stood and cried for all of us. (69, 70)

Taher is described in the book as middle-aged and he was resigned to the fact, after the Six-Day War, that Israel would occupy the West Bank for many years – he was right!  He took it upon himself to study Hebrew in Jerusalem and his assertions were philosophical, political, and psychological.  First, he spoke of the need for what he called respect from the Israelis.  Translation might simply mean some sense of humanity.

Start thinking about us not as your Arabs, asses that anyone can ride, people without honor.  Start thinking about us as your future neighbors.  In the end we will be the people with whom you will have to live here and come to an agreement with and create ties with, and do business with, and everything, right?  … Even if there are five more wars here, the children of my grandchildren and the children of your grandchildren will finally get wise and make some sort of agreement with each other, right?  So I say: Change your attitude a little, make some effort in our direction.  Even try – and I know that it is probably hard for you, right? – try, God forbid, to respect us. (93)

He continued with exemplary directness on what Israeli actions say, psychologically, about Israelis.

You also have much to learn: not to get into our souls, for example.  Why do your soldiers need to stop me five times when I go to buy a sack of flour in the main street of Hebron?  Why do they need to humiliate me at a roadblock in front of my children, who can see how the soldiers laugh at their father and force him to get out of the car?  Of course, you have to behave like conquerors.  I don’t deny that.  That’s the way history is: you won the war and we lost.  I say, all right.  Be conquerors.  Push us, but with delicacy.  Because sometimes you push so hard that we see how scared you are… You should know that you’re in a bad position.  When I return from Amman, from visiting my brother, and one of your soldiers tells me to undress, and pokes his fingers down there, and checks my underwear, my hair, I look him in the eyes and think, My God, look how the entire Israeli government and the entire Israeli Army are scared of you, Taher. (95)

And an example of Israeli disrespect, and also terror, is portrayed in a chapter titled “The Terrorist’s Father.”  The IDF detained the father of what they referred to as a terrorist and questioned him for a week saying, “We’ll bring your wife here and we’ll fuck her in front of you.” (189) They then ordered him to bring his wife and daughter in law to the police station every day and eventually they bulldozed his house to the ground.  They eventually killed his son and put him in jail for four months after beating him.  He recalled the treatment.

Officers pass us the whole time and spit on us and say, Tfu! You are dogs and the sons of dogs, and every day they would leave us there until nine at night, and every day we had to take a taxi, and when we came home at night, the mukhabarat would come again, at four in the morning, and enter the house, and pull everything out of the closets, wake up the children, and they would bring big dogs with them and say, We want your children to see the dogs and go crazy from fear of them. (189)

The voices of both the adults and children quoted are all very much a part of the life experiences of Raj’a Shehade.  As already noted, Shehade wrote a book called The Third Way – or samud (endure).  He explained that the choice for Palestinians was to surrender, fight, or endure.  He chose the last option but his choice did not imply idleness.

I do not despair.  I only fear for the future.  The occupation is steadily destroying us.  It destroys the entire fabric of civil and traditional life.  We are caught in a totally false reality, and are beginning to think that it is the truth.  That is a great danger.  But I do not despair: there are so many things to fight for.  There are so many things to improve!  From looking after mental-health institutions to the effort to set up a law school.  There is not a single law school in the entire West Bank.  There are a million things that a person can devote himself to.  You can’t give up.  Independence, for me, is not only a piece of paper or a declaration.  You have to work hard to achieve it, and it is possible to do so much even now. (157)

On the settlements:

In my eyes they are criminals.  Criminals and lunatics.  Sometimes I have to meet htem.  They are racists.  Look, racism is hard to diagnose precisely.  There are many things that seem to be racism but are not.  Real racism is when you don’t see another person as human.  They ask – with deep inner conviction – why the Arabs don’t accept what they want to do here?  They don’t understand that, as human beings, the Arabs desire everything that any human desires.  They simply are not willing to understand that! (150)

On Israel as a colonial nation-state:

You should understand: the Israelis are not satisfied with having conquered us.  They want to turn us into a colony of theirs, in every sense of the word, culturally as well.  That means that they don’t want only to confiscate land, but also to impose themselves on the soul and thoughts of the conquered.  It is very important for Israelis – in a sometimes touching way – to impress us.  To convince us how much Israel is superior to us.  And by the way, there is a huge difference between the propaganda that Israel directs toward the West Bank, where it wants to appear omnipotent, and the propaganda it directs toward the West, in whose eyes it wants to appear as a victim, surrounded by powerful enemies. (154)

On the falsity of Israeli superiority:

It seems to me that the long term is more dangerous for Israel than for us.  The Arab world is now in a miserable state, there is no denying that.  It is a world that is bad to live in.  a world of oppression.  But Israel is founded on so many contradictions, and on so many opposing forces, that its existence is always in great danger.  For example, there is a huge gap between the self-image of Israelis and reality.  You think you are omnipotent, because of your success in controlling such a large Arab population.  But the truth is that foreign support is the decisive factor.  You remind me of the spoiled son of a rich man, who thinks he can do anything, until he has to face life on his own and discovers a few hard truths. (155)

The stories that Grossman tells of Palestinians are a pedagogy of the oppressed while those of the settlers he spoke with are the tales of proponents/apologists of oppression – politically, socially, culturally, and psychologically.  And they still exist today.  There is much less time spent with Jewish settlers than with Palestinians.  David Grossman’s meetings with other Jews, however, left him very troubled.  He quoted very little, but he did ponder his visit to the settlement of Ofra.  The chapter was titled “Don’t Pity Them too Much.”  Grossman commented on Gush Emunim. 

Hooliganism echoes in everything the leaders of Gush Emunim say.  A smooth, sharp hooliganism, but hooliganism nonetheless.  With television cameras in the gymnasium, every speaker makes sure to give lip service to the need to work within the law, but they pronounce the words like someone spitting a rotten pice of apple from his mouth. (206)

His reflections on the people in Ofra are much more analytical and correspond to the arrogance he found during his time in the village.  He wrote his thoughts after a meeting with residents:

At the end of twenty years it seems to me that all the arguments, both rational and emotional, have already been made.  Only on extremely rare occasions do we hear a crushing new argument, one which requires you to reevaluate your opinions, and in Israel the reality is that it is easier for a man to change his religion, and maybe even his sex, than to change in any decisive way his political opinions.  Renounce your opinions – and it is as if you have announced the total replacement of the structure of your soul, and have taken it upon yourself to proclaim that, up to now, you lived a perfect lie.  So each bunker peers with its periscope at the bunker across the way, and sees there the reflection of the shining iron of its own immovability.  So much for debate. (36)

During his short stay in Ofra, Grossman understands that the settlers don’t even see the Palestinians.  “Were he to allow himself to pity, to identify, he would weaken and endanger himself,” (40) he realizes.  But it goes further:

Who are these people, I ask myself, who maintain an almost utopian bubble of a society of values, making great demands on individuals, atop a mountain of injustice, impenetrability, and ignorance of their fellow men?... They, after all, see the Bible as an operational order.  An operation that, even if its time is yet to come, will come and, if it does not come soon enough, will need to be brought.  I fear life among people who have an obligation to an absolute order.  Absolute orders require, in the end, absolute deeds, and I, nebbish, am a partial, relative, imperfect man who prefers to make correctible mistakes rather than attain supernatural achievements. (46,48)

Then real life magnification comes two weeks later when the leader of Jewish settlers in Hebron, Rav Levinger, says: “Fifty years ago our opponents argued about Jaffa; today they argue with us about Alfei Menashe; in another fifty years they will argue with us about Amman.  That’s the way it is.”

It appears that in 1987 – from the time David Grossman began researching his book, through the people he spoke with, his perspectives on Israel and Palestine changed.  He still presented caveats to blame in the introduction of The Yellow Wind, but he concluded with grave warnings that he addressed to Israeli Jews – not Palestinians.  Grossman warned that “the reader may decide to stand by his previous opinions, but he will have to take note of the price he pays, and what he has until now been prepared to ignore.” (213) And then he concluded even more strongly – unfortunately it was a foreshadowing of the present.

I have a very bad feeling: I am afraid that the current situation will continue exactly as it is for another ten or twenty years.  There is one excellent guarantee of that – human idiocy and the desire not to see the approaching danger.  But I am also sure that the moment will come when we will be forced to do something, and it may well be that our position then will be much les favorable than it is now… I quickly understood that we all pay the price, but not all of us know it. (215)

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[1] It is important to emphasize that David Grossman’s view of Israel’s occupation of Palestine has changed greatly over the years.  While that is the topic of a different essay, consider this one comment from 2010 when he joined weekly protests of expanding settlements.  “Sometimes, it's not possible to sit and be silent. Settlers and the political right aided by the government, the legal system, and economic powers abuse the Palestinians in 1,001 different ways.  They complicate the situation to such an extent that a peace agreement becomes impossible and in a general way, destroy our future."

Why I Support the BDS Movement or The Difficulties of Jews Criticizing Israel

There has been a good amount of media attention surrounding Brooklyn College’s Political Science Department and a student-run group called Students for Justice in Palestine hosting a forum on the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction Movement (BDS) featuring Omar Barghouti and Judith Butler.  Immediately, there were critical cries coming from the Anti-Defamation League, New York politicians, and of course the ubiquitous Alan Dershowitz.  As I have read about the controversy and subsequently the event, I am reminded of how hard it is to be critical of Israel in the United States.  And that is exacerbated when you are Jewish.  Recently, I published an article titled, “Soccer and Societal Bigotry: Israeli Style,” in Left Hook: A Critical Review of Sports and Society.  I thought that the article was rather mild as it criticized the overt racism of supporters of the team Beitar Jerusalem and made connections to Israel’s oppression of Palestine.

Racism in Israeli soccer corresponds directly to the bigotry that is prevalent in Israeli society. In Israel, however, the racism is magnified because of the discrimination and oppression of Palestinians, a practice that some people around the World, including the prestigious Bertrand Russell Tribunal, refer to as apartheid.

Okay, so using the “A” word invites condemnation.  I know that.  And while I was well aware of the hatred that is spewed toward those who criticize Israel, I wasn’t ready for the venom that followed the article from some of the people with whom I grew up in a small, Jewish enclave of a larger suburb on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio.  Comments by a close childhood friend represent the milder attitude.

Not sure why you pick Israel to pick on when there are so many countries doing so many things worse and at the same time not providing most of their citizens with the freedoms Israel provides its minorities.  Israel has more than its share of critics for such a small nation just trying to survive under the constant threat of extinction.

As a Jew you just don’t criticize Israel.

It was another person who immigrated to Israel shortly after high school that provided me with a personal reminder of why BDS is so important.  Israeli oppression is getting more rather than less harsh – in both dispositions and actions.  My old classmate offered numerous responses to my article and what he viewed as my impotent and harmful leftist views.

On writing about Israeli racism:

By singling out Israel (out of every nation on earth), I believe you have a broader agenda i.e., to demonize the Jewish State. It is a sickness no less than the "bigotry" about which you purport to write.

While he made a point of telling me that he wasn’t calling me a self-hating Jew, he did say:

Your fake attachment to Israeli Jews is evident by your zealous allegiance to a larger group of fake people and others (Jew-haters and Israel bashers), who are enemies of Israel and the Jewish people, enemies who want us dead.  Who loudly and daily call for our destruction. You are proud of this connection to these people and stand by them. You should be ashamed of yourself.

My classmate took on violence and Palestinians:

If people come to apply the harshest of violence on you - to take your life - you have the perfect right and obligation to stop them. This we do - no apologies. Sorry we have to because we value life.  But thank God we can defend ourselves. Defend ourselves against real criminals, killers.  This is the real world here not some ivory tower parlor chat.  Ever see bus bomb victims - big-time burns- women, children - civilians? I have.  Maybe you don't know it but we live surrounded by killers - beasts.  What, do you think these people stage peaceful sit-ins like the sixties? It is violence plain and simple.

My classmate on The Wall and again his view of Palestinian people:

Wall? What wall? Do you mean the barrier that stopped Palestinian Arab suicide bombers for coming into my town and blowing people to bits? Yes my town. Don't worry that wall will come down when Palestinian Arab terrorism ceases.  You can't occupy land that already belongs to you. It is disputed land. Resolution 194 is a code for the overwhelming of Israel with millions of Arabs thereby ending the Jewish majority that exists today. Right, like that'll happen.

At one point I commented that he sounds a lot like the apologists of apartheid in South Africa:

Heavens! "people" "accuse" me or Israelis of apartheid. Big deal. Does it make it so just because "people" think so. "People" have been "accusing" Israel (the Jews) of many things.: of killing non-Jewish children for their blood to use in the making of matza, of being behind 9/11 Twin Towers terrorist outrage (don't tell me you believe that there is even the slightest grain of truth to that load of crap), killing Jesus, owning all the banks, controlling the media, starting all the wars and on and on and on. Is it all true because people, even many people believe it? No and hell no. People will believe whatever they want to, I don't care, we aren't here to win any popularity contest.

So how does one even begin to respond on any level?  If we turn back to the BDS controversy at Brooklyn College, however, we see that the academics and politicians who view BDS as hateful and anti-Semitic, sound much like my former classmate.

First, it might be appropriate to review some of the brief history of the controversy surrounding the BDS forum at Brooklyn College.  As noted above, when the event was announced there was an immediate, intense, negative reaction.  Jewish organizations in the United States are very clear in their criticism of BDS and the Anti-Defamation League has spoken out against events at various universities including Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania where the ADF has equated BDS with strident anti-Semitism.  The organization has objected directly to university officials where students have voted for divestment and their critiques of former President Carter and Bishop Tutu have been very loud.  When Brooklyn College announced the forum, ADF took out a full-page advertisement in the New York Times where they equated the right of Palestinians to return to their land with anti-Semitism.

To be fair to the critics of the BDS forum, their public issue was that the institution, Brooklyn College, should not be sponsoring a political point of view.  It is interesting, though, because Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz, one of the most vocal critics, did not complain about the very same Political Science department sponsoring a lecture that he presented at Brooklyn College.  As one professor recalled: “The department has sponsored hundreds of events, including Alan Dershowitz’s 2008 Konefsky Lecture where he defended torture, where there has been no one presenting the other side."

The call for fairness, though, appears spurious when one considers the language of the critics.  Before the forum took place, Dershowitz referred to the event as a “propaganda hate orgy.”  He has labeled BDS academic boycotts as “immoral, illegal and despicable” while at the same time distorting truth saying that the organization blacklists and boycotts Jewish Israeli professors.  While it is beyond the scope of this essay – academic institutions, not individual professors, are boycotted.  The three tenets of BDS are:

·      Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall.

·      Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality.

·      Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

These are the topics that both Omar Barghouti and Judith Butler outlined in their presentations as the former said:  "It is time for Palestinians' freedom, justice and equality."

But between the time that the forum was first advertised and the actual staging of the event, it was local politicians who spewed the most venom.  Their words joined those of my school classmate.  In an article by Chemi Shaley in Haaretz, he wrote about the New York officials who had argued that the forum was a call for the end of Israel.

After 19 “progressive” politicians – including four members of the US Congress – wrote a letter to the College against the sponsorship, things took a turn for the worse when ten New York City Council members threatened to cut funding to the College – a widely respected academic institution sometimes referred to as “the poor man’s Harvard” - if it did not reverse its sponsorship.  “We believe in the principle of academic freedom. However we also believe in the principle of not supporting schools whose programs we, and our constituents, find to be odious and wrong” the council members’ letter said.

Some of these public voices became harsh as they misinterpreted history.  Council member Alan Maisel said: “We’re talking about the potential for a second Holocaust here.”  The most vocal critic was democratic New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind.  At a public meeting preceding the forum he was ultra-clear on his views of BDS and Palestinians.  He argued that the goal of BDS was to end Israel’s existence through a “philosophical war demonizing Jews and denying the rights of Jews to self-determination and equality.”  Hikund labeled BDS as “the modern incarnation of anti-Semitism – same stink, different excuse.”  Finally, his final assertions play to America’s definition of terrorism.

The BDS movement’s goal is to de-legitimize Israel’s existence. Like its philosophical brothers in Hamas, BDS aims to eliminate the State of Israel from the map. Only its tactics differ from its terrorist cousins: While Hamas blows up buses of innocent men, women and children, BDS works to isolate Israelis, to cut them off from business. Yes, BDS is the benevolent face of anti-Semitism. They don’t suggest killing Israeli citizens with bombs; they prefer starvation via isolation.  They think Hamas and Hezbollah are nice organizations, and they probably feel the same way about Al Qaeda!

Slogans, code words, whatever you want to call them: Interesting, though, is that Hikund accuses BDS of doing what the rest of the world sees as Israel’s actions in oppressing the Palestinian people – eliminate, isolate, cut off from business, killing innocent men, women, and children.  This is the same New York State Assemblyman who recently celebrated at a Purim party wearing black face makeup, an Afro wig, and a basketball jersey.  When asked about it on CBS radio news, Hikund said that he did not mean to offend anyone and that it “never crossed his mind that it might be offensive.”

But the words and the actions of Hikund, Dershowitz, and the others who tried to prohibit the BDS forum and punish Brooklyn College are more than offensive as they falsify history and ignore the present in terms of Israeli oppression of Palestine.  Chemi Shaley, previously cited above, analyzes their actions.

They make mountains out molehills, carve Nazis out of Palestinians, evoke pogroms and massacres from each and every violent incident. They don’t acknowledge the occupation, see nothing wrong with settlements or “Price Tag” violence, turn a blind eye to 46 years of Palestinian disenfranchisement, regardless of whose fault it is. They recognize only one truth, their own, and view all the rest as heresy and abomination. By their narrow definitions, no less than 50% of Israelis who voted in the last elections for parties that support a two-state solution should be condemned – possibly by the U.S. Senate itself – as Israel-hating, Arab-loving defeatists. 

The show did go on, however, with mild protests and thoughtful, political lectures from both Omar Barghouti and Judith Butler.  Barghouti was one of the 2005 founders of the BDS Movement and he also was a cofounder of the Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.  Corresponding to the subtitle of this article, he explained to the audience that the voracious attempts to ban the BDS Forum were in fact a systematic program to “undermine an open dialogue about Israel's conduct and Palestinian resistance undertaken in order to demoralize those who support and take part in it.”

Barghouti spoke about post-1948 Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people and cited Brazilian educator, Paulo Freire, to argue that the oppression had dehumanized both Israelis and Palestinians.  He concluded by outlining BDS successes since 2005 and compared the Movement to the worldwide Anti-Apartheid Movement that was one of the elements that led to the first democratic South African election in 2004.  Appropriately, Barghouti’s latest book, Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights, was reviewed by one of the Worlds champions of peace, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

I have been to Palestine where I’ve witnessed the racially segregated housing and the humiliation of Palestinians at military roadblocks. I can’t help but remember the conditions we experienced in South Africa under apartheid. We could not have achieved our freedom without the help of people around the world using the nonviolent means of boycotts and divestment to compel governments and institutions to withdraw their support for the apartheid regime. Omar Barghouti’s lucid and morally compelling book is perfectly timed to make a major contribution to this urgently needed global campaign for justice, freedom and peace.

Omar Barghouti concluded his talk by explaining how important Israeli partners are to the cooperation and resistance of the BDS movement – he referred to it as “co-resistance.”

Judith Butler’s talk was two speeches in one – freedom of speech and the importance of the BDS Movement.  First, the essence of the Movement according to Butler:

The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement is, in fact, a non-violent movement; it seeks to use established legal means to achieve its goals; and it is, interestingly enough, the largest Palestinian civic movement at this time. That means that the largest Palestinian civic movement is a non-violent one that justifies its actions through recourse to international law. Further, I want to underscore that this is also a movement whose stated core principles include the opposition to every form of racism, including both state-sponsored racism and anti-Semitism. 

Through a further discussion on BDS and anti-Semitism, Butler connects to the “The Difficulties of Jews Criticizing Israel” portion of this essay.

If the Jew who struggles for justice for Palestine is considered to be anti-Semitic, if any number of internationals who have joined thus struggle from various parts of the world are also considered anti-Semitic and if Palestinians seeking rights of political self-determination are so accused as well, then it would appear that no oppositional move that can take place without risking the accusation of anti-Semitism. That accusation becomes a way of discrediting a bid for self-determination, at which point we have to ask what political purpose the radical misuse of that accusation has assumed in the stifling of a movement for political self-determination.

While some of my classmates from years ago as well as too high a percentage of American Jews still define Palestinians as terrorists, the points argued by Omar Barghouti and Judith Butler make the mission clear.  Not only must we all speak out for Palestine, but we also must support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction Movement.  North Americans like Angela Davis and Naomi Klein have brilliantly argued supportively for BDS, but it is the voices of Palestinian and Israeli allies that emphasize the importance of supporters throughout the world campaigning for BDS.  For those who have doubts about ideology or daily events on the ground in Palestine, please view the two films Five Broken Cameras and The Gatekeepers that were nominated this year for Best Documentary Picture at the Academy Awards.  Palestinians and Israelis working on the ground against Israeli oppression include activists like Mustafa Barghouthi, Neve Gordon, Ilan Pappe, and Michael Warschawski.  Although their views are not unilateral, they all do believe that Israel is the oppressor and that there needs to be support and action through BDS.

Oppression:

Mustafa Barghouthi

Let us be clear: Israel has been working around the clock to destroy the option of an independent Palestinian state and, by extension, the two-state solution.  But that does not leave the Palestinian people without an alternative, as some Zionist leaders undoubtedly hope.  The single democratic state (not the single binational state), in which all citizens are equal in rights and duties regardless of their religious affiliations and origins, is an alternative to the attempt to force the Palestinians to accept slavery under occupation. 

Ilan Pappe

Today, Israel is a formidable settler-colonialist state, unwilling to transform or compromise, and eager to crush by whatever means necessary any resistance to its control and rule in historical Palestine.  Beginning with the ethnic cleansing of 80 percent of Palestine in 1948, and Israel’s occupation of the remaining 20 percent of the land in 1967, Palestinians in Israel are now enclaved in mega-prisons, bantustans, and besieged cantons, and singled out through discriminatory policies… The Israeli settler state continues to further colonize and uproot the indigenous people of Palestine.

Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions

Neve Gordon

The only way to counter the apartheid trend in Israel is through massive international pressure.  The words and condemnations from the Obama administration and the European Union have yielded few results… I have decided to support the BDS movement… The objective is to ensure that Israel respects its obligations under international law, and that Palestinians are granted the right to self-determination… Nothing else has worked.  Putting massive international pressure on Israel is the only way to guarantee that the next generation of Israelis and Palestinians – my two boys included – does not grow up in an apartheid regime.

Michael Warschawski

BDS is addressed to the Israeli public.  At this historical juncture it is the only way to provoke a change in Israel’s attitude toward occupation and colonization.  If one compares it to the anti-apartheid BDS campaign that took twenty years to start bearing fruit, one cannot but be surprised how efficient the anti-Israeli occupation campaign has already been – even in Israel, we can already witness its first effects.

Palestinians, Israelis, and people throughout the world have witnessed Israel’s exacerbating occupation of Palestine.  While no one condones suicide bombers, Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people is not a debatable issue.  The critics of the Brooklyn Forum were not truthful but rather ideological – there are not two sides to the issue and that means that we must speak out and act as allies of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement.