Ariel & Me

I met Ariel Sharon in January of 1995. I had no idea who he wasóor rather, I knew what his position had been in the Israeli government at one point, but I didnít know anything about what heíd done; I was ten or so when he was invading Lebanon, etc., and although I wasnít politically unaware as a child, my scope stretched only so far. He was at the bookstore on a book tour, and my job there generally was to cater to the needs of visiting authors. He had a bodyguard, but a really in-the-background type, who followed us to the signing table at a distance. Supposedly, I was leading Sharon to the table, but heíd taken my elbow and somehow managed to escort me, instead, even though he didnít know where he was going. I figured he was just some old, paternalistic dude, nothing more. I didnít read his book.

The weird thing that happened was this guy with a camera came up and pulled out all of these 8 x 10 black & whites of Sharon in various places around the world. The photo-stalker showed Sharon the prints, but he didnít really say anything that would explicate his hobby. He and Sharon had a sort of tense exchange that had no content whatsoever. And then he left. (And no, this guy wasnít a Muslim or Palestinian or anything other than some white guy from the U.S.)

Fast-forward to fall of 2000, and Sharon is in the news in a big way, having willfully instigated the second Palestinian uprising. Now Iím well aware of who he is, and I feel sort of icky about meeting this guy and thinking heís just some relatively harmless old geezer with a misplaced courtly streak.

Actually, the whole thing reminds me of this Kate Bush song, ìHeads, Weíre Dancingî, which tells the apocryphal tale of a German girl who dances with a charming man at a ball one evening, then opens the paper the next day to see him on the front page: ìthere was a picture of you/but it couldnít be you/itís a picture of Hitler.î Now, I am not claiming or implying that Sharon is Hitler, I am in no way equating them. However, I do think Sharon is, as I said, pretty icky. And what heís doing isnít so clearly black-and-white as what Hitler didóalthough plenty of people seem to think the Israel-Palestine situation is not morally ambiguous at all, and that other peopleís opinions are, if different from their own, purely racist.

The thing is, the rhetoric surrounding the uprising is always a debate over who is wrong and who is right, as opposed to recognizing that itís mostly just wrong and more wrong. Weíre dealing in semantics: the Palestinians are terrorists, and the Israelis are just defending themselves. What Israel does is often portrayed as justifiable, as acts of war, whereas the Palestinians are just lawless evildoers who, for some reason, arenít considered combatants in the war, because they donít wage their battles with modern military equipment. How are they supposed to wage their battles? Bayonets? Huge slingshots?

Do I approve of people going into a cafÈ, or a wedding, and blowing people sky-high? Of course not. But I also donít think highly of razing peopleís homes on a large scale and claiming that terrorists live there, so itís kosher. Why does being in a war allow one side carte blanche to do all sorts of nasty stuff, but the people striking back at them, outside of the organized-military establishment, are considered completely out of line?

Rwanda had a war (although not one the U.S. saw fit to involve itself in), but it devolved from an army thing to people chopping up their neighbors with machetes. Would it be more acceptable if Palestine and Israel engaged in some good, old-fashioned hand-to-hand combat?

Actually, that would be an improvement, because if they confine the fighting to one area, and stop with the bombs and tanks and grenades, civilians would be better off. Houses would still be standing.

Conservatives like William Safire and Charles Krauthammer are constantly dealing the race card on this issue. One of Krauthammerís recent editorials claims that this governmental side-taking is bringing Europeís latent racism out of the closet: Jews will only be tolerated when theyíre meek and mild. This sounds like the American South in the sixties, as Iím sure he intended it to, but thereís just one problem: the fight for Civil Rights was mainly a non-violent one (at least on the pro-Civil Rights side), and blacks were fighting for basic human dignity. I donít think anyone wants Israel to just sit back and wait for the next bus to blow, but Israeliís arenít just standing up for themselvesótheyíre actively trying to subdue a group of people and take their land. So maybe itís not entirely a pro-Arab, anti-Israeli thing thatís driving opinion so much as the nagging suspicion that Israel is going too far. (And how can Krauthammer accuse France of being pro-Arabóhas he never heard of Algeria?)

Hey, if youíre not for us, youíre against us, right? Subtlety: itís overrated.