Sabbar Kashur on the cover of The City Tel Aviv Magazine, 3 September 2010
A few weeks ago, a story about a Palestinian man convicted by an Israeli court of raping a Jewish woman made headlines around the world. Sabbar Kashur, a 30 year-old resident of East Jerusalem, was convicted not of rape by physical force, but rather of rape by deception: according to the verdict, he presented himself as a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious relationship, when he was in fact a married Muslim Arab looking for a quickie.
Kashur and the plaintiff met two years ago on a street in downtown Jerusalem. According to the story that was initially published quite widely, he introduced himself as Dudu (a Hebrew nickname derived from David). They flirted; he suggested that they go to a nearby building; she agreed; and a few minutes later they were having consensual sex. Only later, after the woman discovered that Dudu was an Arab, did she accuse him of rape. Israeli law stipulates that sex obtained by deception is rape.
The judges’ wording of the verdict seemed to be inspired by E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India, or an Oriental version of To Kill a Mockingbird, with Kashur as Tom Robinson, the black man unjustly accused of raping a white woman in 1930s Alabama. “If she hadn’t thought the accused was a Jewish bachelor interested in a serious romantic relationship, she would not have cooperated,” wrote the judges. Judge Tsvi Segal added, “The court is obliged to protect the public interest from sophisticated, smooth-tongued criminals who can deceive innocent victims at an unbearable price – the sanctity of their bodies and souls.”
By the time the verdict was published, Kashur had been under house arrest for nearly two years, wearing an electronic monitoring device, presumably living in the same house as his children and his wife while he was on trial for raping another woman. An interview Kashur gave to Haaretz was quoted extensively by the international media: “If I were Jewish, they wouldn’t have even questioned me,” he said. “That’s not called rape, I didn’t rape her in the forest and and throw her away naked. She agreed to everything that happened.”
There were two precedents of Israeli Jewish men convicted of rape by deception; but in both those cases, the men were convicted of lying about their socio-economic status. Never had a man been convicted of rape by deception for claiming he was a Jew when he was in fact an Arab. Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy asked rhetorically if a Jewish man would have been convicted for posing as a Muslim in order to bed a Muslim woman.
For Israel’s male-dominated, socially liberal media, the outrage could be parsed as follows: all men lie to obtain sex – this is normal and not worthy of comment; but only in Israel is such a banal incident considered rape if the liar turns out to be an Arab posing as a Jew.
This past Friday (3 September) Ha’Ir (The City), a weekly magazine distributed only in Tel Aviv, published a cover story by Lital Grossman that brought a new perspective to the story. “Don’t look at him like that,” is the title of the piece, in large white font superimposed over Kashur’s image against a red background. The lede summary continues:
‘The story of “Dudu,” or Saber Kashur, sounded bizarre from the beginning. A man from an Arab family pretended to be a Jewish bachelor and convinced a young Jewish woman to have sex with him. Based on that, he was sentenced to 18 months in jail. In response to a request from Ha’Ir, the courts released the testimony of “B,” revealing a sad life story and her version of the events that occurred on that afternoon two years ago. According to her testimony, the story is much more complicated and the identity of the victim is rather different – that of a woman who was found after the encounter with Kashur naked on the roof of a building on 13 Hillel Street in Jerusalem.”
A very brief summary of the piece is as follows: the plaintiff, identified in the article as “B*,” was an emotionally traumatized woman in her 20s who had been raped by her father from the age of six. On the day she met Kashur, she was living in a women’s shelter. Before that, she had worked briefly as a prostitute and spent some time living on the streets. Kashur lured her into the building on Hillel Street with the claim that he worked there and wanted to show her his office; he then assaulted her and raped her, leaving her naked and bleeding – which is how the police discovered her.
B. was later hospitalized in a psychiatric institution, where the police questioned her about the rape, which led them to Kashur. During the trial, after it became apparent that B’s past, combined with her emotional state, made her a vulnerable witness, the prosecution came up with a plea bargain of rape by deception.
Excerpt from B’s testimony**:
“At first he told me his name was Daniel (and not Dudu, the nickname his friends use, as Kashur claimed in interviews; LG)… he didn’t want to tell me his last name… after a few minutes he like said ‘Cohen.’” B. also said that “he asked me if I have a boyfriend and I said no, and then he asked me if I want to be his girlfriend. I asked him if he’s married, and he said no, and then I asked him if he has children and he told me he doesn’t have children.” Later in that conversation, according to the testimony, Kashur asked B. for a kiss. “He wanted me to give him a kiss on the cheek and then he gave one back.” According to B., they also exchanged phone numbers.
At this point, according to the testimony, Kashur invited B. to see where he works, supposedly in the building at 13 Hillel Street, outside of which they were standing. “He said he wanted to invite me for coffee and show me his workplace there,”said B. The reason she gave for agreeing to leave with an almost complete stranger was “I looked for someone to put my trust in… I know that strangers, you even don’t contact them… but because I was, like, as you know, when I told you that I came from a place where there’s no, I lived on the streets for a while too… I thought that if I am with him, I’ll feel safe, and I’ll have, I’ll be financially secure. I really, like, trusted him.”
Right after they entered the building, B. claims, Kashur began forcing himself on her. “We were in the staircase, like in the first stairs of the building, where we entered and then he asked for a hug… so I hugged him because he said that he wants a hug for warmth and love because he didn’t have a relationship in a while, like, a girlfriend… and when I felt that he was too clingy, I tried pushing him away, so he used force a little, like, got a little aggressive.”
According to B., Kashur wouldn’t let go. “He lifted my shirt and the bra and kissed my chest,” she said. But then, a blond woman entered the stairwell, and Kashur stopped. He decided to move from the stairs to the elevator. “When I was with him in the elevator he also touched me and started acting like some psychopath. I was so scared of him… I started sensing that something strange was happening, because I noticed that I wasn’t going to any workplace and I don’t see any coffee cups, and I don’t, then I began to panic and started like, I also screamed when it started happening.”
When they left the elevator on the top floor of the building, according to B., Kashur took her to the stairwell that led to the attic. There, according to her, he raped her. “He took off my pants and underwear,” described B., “and all of this was done with force, I didn’t agree to anything… I was left in just my shirt. Then he took off his clothes… then he put saliva on his penis and then, it was like full penetration, like, it wasn’t with consent as he claims. He laid me on the floor… and asked to kiss my chest too and then like when I asked him to stop and tried to push him away, he started pressuring me with his arms forcefully on me… when I tried to push him with my hand in his stomach, this happened in a more advanced stage, when he was already inside of me, then he said that if I stay silent and I don’t resist, then it would like end faster and it wouldn’t be, like, he wouldn’t use force. I still resisted him and it was forced.”
B’s story sounds believable. Based on her testimony it appears that she was not a racist but rather a terribly vulnerable, emotionally damaged woman who was desperate for affection. The act she describes Kashur having committed is indeed a brutal rape. So the point made in Lital Grossman’s article is that Kashur was not unjustly punished because he was an Arab, but the opposite: that he managed to avoid the punishment he deserved because his ethnicity made it possible to plead guilty to the lesser charge of rape by deception, thus avoiding jail time. Everyone knew there was no way of convicting Kashur of violent rape based on B’s testimony, but the judges and the prosecution were sympathetic to the plaintiff and wanted Kashur to pay at least a little, so they cooked up a deal.
Over the weekend I spent a lot of time thinking about that article. Were those of us who rushed to support Kashur guilty of reverse racism and sexism? If a Jewish man had committed that brutal rape, wouldn’t he have gone to jail for a long time? Or perhaps not. Perhaps a Jewish man accused by a woman with B’s credibility problems would have been released without any conviction at all. But if B was such a vulnerable witness, then why did Kashur’s lawyer agree to a plea? Perhaps because he believed the judges were more influenced by their sympathy for B than their commitment to the law.
There are few unassailable facts or bottom lines here. A woman who may or may not have been raped is in a psychiatric hospital, traumatized and unable to communicate coherently. Perhaps a rapist who should have have been jailed is now a free man, wandering around Jerusalem shopping malls with his kids while the woman he raped is institutionalized, physically and emotionally traumatized. Or perhaps an innocent man was forced to plead guilty to a crime he did not commit, in order to avoid being sentenced to jail by judges who were biased against Arabs.
None of these issues were raised in the original reporting of the affair. None of the reporters covering the story when it first broke, in July, mentioned having applied to the courts to obtain the unsealed testimony. The polarized, angry atmosphere in contemporary Israel seems to make rational, detached analysis nearly impossible. This is a very troubling state of affairs. It is also quite dangerous.
*Israeli courts banned publication of the plaintiff’s name in order to protect her privacy, but the Guardian went ahead and published her first name.
**Since the 3,000 word feature was published Saturday on Haaretz’s Hebrew website (Ha’Ir and Haaretz are both owned by Schocken) I was hoping it would be translated for the English edition, but it hasn’t been and Elizabeth Tsurkov saved me hours of work: she translated the whole thing and posted it on Mideast Youth.
September 5, 2010
9:45 pm
[...] Cross-posted to +972 Magazine. [...]
September 6, 2010
4:58 am
Part of the problem “For Israel’s male-dominated, socially liberal media” is that although rapes are reported almost daily in the media along with extensive detail, Israel’s male dominated society seemingly reacts to this vicious of crimes short of murder, with Kantian phlegmatic calm, “another rape reported, yawn.”
This is of a piece with the general reaction of a good part of Israeli public to deaths and harm caused by the IDF to the Palestinian civilian population. We are becoming course and conveniently forgetful of our own past of not all that long ago.
September 6, 2010
5:05 am
Reading about the tourists to Israel learning to be cowboy sharpshooters, I am reminded of the two type of summer camps offered to kids in Gaza. The first and by far the best attended are the UNRWA summer camps wherein children come to have fun. The second kind of camp is hosted by Hamas, here children come to learn how to shoot guns and make explosives.
September 7, 2010
4:26 am
[...] Lisa Goldman diskuterer i en interessant artikkel om denne saken hvilken rolle det kan ha spilt at mannen var araber. Hva ville skjedd om mannen var jødisk? Ville man anstrengt seg hardere for å få ham dømt for voldtekt, eller ville han gått fri? De fleste ser ut til å mene at en jødisk mann neppe ville blitt dømt etter den samme paragrafen i en motsatt situasjon – min mistanke om institusjonell forskjellsbehandling er altså ikke grepet ut av luften – men dommerenes situasjon var en annen og mer kompleks enn jeg beskrev. [...]
September 9, 2010
3:21 am
[...] Read the full story on 972mag.com. [...]
December 24, 2010
11:47 am
A statement like,
“Kashur was not unjustly punished because he was an Arab, but the opposite: that he managed to avoid the punishment he deserved because his ethnicity made it possible to plead guilty to the lesser charge of rape by deception, thus avoiding jail time”
…requires such gymnastic reasoning that it cannot go unchallenged.
In other words, B’s lawyers could not make their case against Kashur for rape so they employed a separate legal category for his behavior in order to charge him. In what universe is that “democratic” justice?
The angle of your post (and Grossman’s story), that being Palestinian is in any way advantageous in Israel is utterly fantastic… But for what it’s worth the notion that minority populations derive benefit from their abject status is pretty standard. Further, you mock the comparisons to Forster and Lee’s stories even as you recount the Israeli court’s description of Kashur as a “sophisticated, smooth-tongued criminal” who preys on “innocent (Jewish, female) victims”, which is pretty much the basic narrative of all permutations of the “darkie wants our women” stories ever written. So no, it is not misogynistic to point out the long history of ethnic men getting tortured, killed and/or imprisoned based on the say-so of white women in racist societies.
There is no way for anyone to know for certain what went on between B and Kashur, which is why in democracies we depend on the law to guide us to resolution. If proved guilty of B’s rape there is no question that Kashur should be punished, but he wasn’t. Your post (and Grossman’s story), which suggest that Kashur’s Palestinian identity was employed by him to grant a legal advantage obscures two key points: 1) The court made his ethnicity an issue and the justification for his charge and 2) Palestinian Israelis are not equal citizens with their Jewish neighbors. No matter how “macho” Israeli society is or isn’t the notion that Jewish Israeli men feel solidarity or even empathy (!) with a Palestinian man accused of raping a Jewish Israeli woman is too ridiculous to contemplate. Israeli Apartheid precludes the possibility of such empathy. And that system of oppression is the inevitable frame for any discussion of Kashur’s case.
You are correct that the particulars of Israeli Apartheid make “rational, detached analysis nearly impossible” but it seems you have exempted yourself from this dynamic. However in raising your concerns about Kashur’s case without acknowledging the role of institutionalized racism in Israel you are perpetuating its most pernicious memes about Arab criminality (which occurs only in a vacuum and never as a result of living within a racist system). The “bottom line” is that Kashur’s charge was imposed because of his ethnic identity and in the absence of other proof–and that points not to institutionalized misogyny but rather institutionalized orientalism and Islamophobia.
December 24, 2010
1:03 pm
[...] I would read this all the way through. It’s really not what you expect and rather disturbing: A rapist who dodged jail, or a Palestinian man unjustly accused? [...]
December 24, 2010
2:10 pm
Joseph H, you have offered some strong opinions with no supporting evidence. You have also extrapolated from my post that I think Palestinian citizens of Israel – or East Jerusalem residents, as Kashur is – have an advantage over Jews in the justice system. I did not write that, because I don’t believe that.
As for the plea bargain, it was not suggested by the plaintiff’s lawyers. It was suggested by the defendant’s lawyer – a Palestinian-Israeli.
Apartheid, Islamophobia and Orientalism are all hackneyed terms that have no relevance to this post at all.
December 25, 2010
12:10 am
Lisa,
So when you wrote “Kashur was not unjustly punished because he was an Arab, but the opposite: that he managed to avoid the punishment he deserved because his ethnicity made it possible to plead guilty to the lesser charge of rape by deception, thus avoiding jail time” you *didn’t* mean that being Palestinian earned him a legal advantage in an Israeli court. Okay then. All I can say is that it certainly seems like that is what you mean.
That the plea bargain was suggested by the defendant’s lawyer (a Palestinian Israeli!) is meaningless–because the system itself is racist and any analysis of this case that does not engage with that fact is too compromised by nationalist weirdness to be of any use. That is my point. There was no case against Kashur for rape. Period. Of course he was punished anyway. A description of these events that concludes that Kashur somehow beat the system by accepting a lesser charge when the more serious one simply could not be proved shows only the bizarre contortions upon which Zionism depends to sustain itself. It simply makes no sense to conclude that Kashur was guilty *because* there was no evidence against him.
Look, I haven’t offered “opinions”, strong or otherwise–but rather an analysis of your post about Kashur’s case. I just responded to the logic problems in what you wrote. So your defensive complaint that I somehow need “evidence” (?) beyond your words is strange.
But thanks for your response anyway.”Apartheid, Islamophbia and Orientalism are all hackneyed terms” says more about who you really are and where you are truly coming from (Tel Aviv, ha!) than any analysis of mine. Well done.
December 25, 2010
12:36 am
Joseph. I am not offering my own opinion about Kashur’s plea bargain. I am quoting Lital Grossman’s. Then I proceed to examine my reaction to Grossman’s thesis.
The Israeli judicial system is hopelessly biased against Palestinians. If you had bothered to do any research into my background, you would know why and how I came to know that fact due to first-hand experience.
The point I try to examine in this post is not that Israeli men lined up in macho solidarity behind Kashur, but rather that liberals – or progressives – axiomatically believed that Kashur was innocent *because they know the judicial system is biased against Palestinians*. I was one of the people who believed that Kashur was innocent, even though I had not attended the trial, met the plaintiff or read the testimonies.
I am not sure what point you are trying to make. Are you saying that Kashur could not be a rapist because the judicial system is biased against Palestinians?
I do not live in Tel Aviv, by the way. I live in Jaffa.
You, I gather from the link to your blog, live in the United States.
December 26, 2010
2:54 pm
Lisa,
I don’t want to bicker with you and clog up your comment thread. But: of course I am not suggesting that it is impossible for Kashur to be guilty because he is Palestinian– I am arguing only that the case for rape against him could not be proved. However, once B’s testimony was made widely available Grossman and you (and others around the net) decided that it was credible, despite her universally understood mental instability, which is a bit unnerving. You wrote , “B’s story sounds believable”… Why? And what makes you conclude that Kashur may be guilty of rape after all because he served time on a lesser charge? As I have said, that makes no sense to me. In fact, the only way I can think of to justify your conclusions in the above post is anti-Arab racism.
I don’t need to “research” your background in order to react to something you have written about this case. And the fact that I am in New York and you are in Jaffa (sorry, I understood Tel Aviv-Jaffa from your bio) is also not important in terms of this discussion… But rather than continue this ad infinitum and dominating your comment thread (not my intention) I went ahead and wrote about this over on my blog. You are welcome to respond to me there.
If you feel I have misrepresented your argument please let me know and I’ll happily note that. In your last response you made a distinction between Grossman’s take on the case and your own that is not clear to me from the original post. I do not want to attribute opinions to you that are better described as Grossman’s, even if I ultimately disagree with the rest of what you have written. I appreciate that you have responded to me and I’ll publish any comment you make over at VS the POMEGRANATE. Does that seem fair?
December 26, 2010
3:49 pm
You see, Lisa? You lost both ways. First, being sensitive to perceived ill-treatment of Palestinians by Israel, you believed the lie that it was racism which brought about the charges and lesser conviction. Then, when you learned that it was rape and the use of the rapist’s ethnicity was cynically manipulated by his counsel, you were accused of being prejudiced yourself by a person who clearly can’t judge anything about Israeli society rationally. And look at how polite and defensive you’re being with your accuser, who is apparently defending a rapist or at the very least a man who lied in order to have his way with a woman.
A person is permitted to believe that his body is his/hers and can only be shared with those who have earned the right to share it. The terms of earning that right are defined by that individual. If one of the parameters set by that individual is that they only wish to share it with people who surf, or people who juggle, or people who share their faith, that is their inherent right. Others have no right to impose their views upon that person’s preferences. As the judge wrote, it is their body and soul.
Even if B’s story is false and Kashur’s story is true, then it was rape if he chose to take advantage and violate this woman’s known limits, which appear to have included seeking a partner of the same faith. Period.
All of Shahadi’s claims about the system are just that. Claims. The facts are that a woman was violated one way or another. The rapist appears to have gotten off lightly after his counsel used reverse racism as an excuse. When Shahadi wrote, “That the plea bargain was suggested by the defendant’s lawyer (a Palestinian Israeli!) is meaningless–because the system itself is racist and any analysis of this case that does not engage with that fact is too compromised by nationalist weirdness to be of any use” he took himself out of the discussion. He is so biased and full of irrational hate that he can’t analyze this situation or discuss any part of Israeli society rationally.
December 26, 2010
3:55 pm
Maayan, you and Joseph are exactly the same types. If you had been born a Palestinian-American, you would have chosen his argument.
Neither one of you is capable of seeing beyond your biases to examine a case based on facts. You are both blinded by your agendas and your prejudices.
December 26, 2010
4:09 pm
Joseph, if Sabur Kashur had been a Jewish Israeli man, the charges against him would have been dismissed.
However, the charges would have been dismissed not because he was innocent, but because he could not have been charged with rape by deception.
The defense attorney wanted to question the plaintiff about 14 previous incidents of rape and incest. Neither her attorney nor the judge thought she capable of maintaining her composure while she was questioned about previous rapes. At that point, seeing that he was about to lose his conviction, the prosecutor charged Kashur with rape by deception. And even here the ‘deception’ was not only the odious charge that Kashur presented himself as a Jew, but that he presented himself as a *bachelor* Jew, when he was in fact a *married* Palestinian.
My comparison between the judge’s wording of the plea bargain and EM Forster is not sarcastic, by the way; it is literal. The transcripts show that the judge would have convicted on the evidence, but could not legally override the defense’s request to question the plaintiff about her past. But his dissatisfaction with the plea bargain does not make his racist, colonialist wording acceptable.
The physical evidence against Kashur was solid. Police found the victim battered, bleeding and naked in a stairwell. She was taken to a hospital, examined and given a rape kit. Based on that evidence and her statement to the police, charges were brought against Kashur. Based on the transcripts of the trial, her testimony sounds very credible. If the defense attorney had not insisted on his right to question the plaintiff about her past, Kashur would most probably have been convicted on the original charges.
December 27, 2010
12:33 am
“Maayan, you and Joseph are exactly the same types. If you had been born a Palestinian-American, you would have chosen his argument.
Neither one of you is capable of seeing beyond your biases to examine a case based on facts. You are both blinded by your agendas and your prejudices.”
Really?
I’ve now had to correct your facts in two different discussions, including one on this site. You’ve already acknowledged in the other discussion that I was right and in a few moments when you see the evidence I produced for the discussion on this site, you’ll apologize for being wrong again.
That’s not important. What’s important is your comparison between Shahadi and me. There is no comparison between us. That you fail to understand this is very sad but does explain the naivete of your political views in general.
Here are three differences between Shahadi and yours truly. I am able to differentiate between a democratic system and an undemocratic one, as well as the justice systems under both. I believe that peace and reconciliation are possible and they are my goals. I am able to view this conflict rationally and particularly view people as people.
Where I agree with Shahadi, however, is when he quotes you “.”Apartheid, Islamophbia and Orientalism are all hackneyed terms” and then slams you for it by saying that your comment “says more about who you really are and where you are truly coming from (Tel Aviv, ha!) than any analysis of mine. Well done.”
You see, these terms are not hackneyed. They are powerful weapons and being put to excellent use by people very different than you and I, people like Shahadi, for example.
December 27, 2010
12:52 am
Maayan, you make some interesting claims in your comment. Could you elaborate on the following?
>>I am able to differentiate between a democratic system and an undemocratic one, as well as the justice systems under both.
What is the democratic system to which you are referring, and what makes it democratic? What undemocratic system are you referring to, and what do you believe makes it undemocratic?
>>I believe that peace and reconciliation are possible and they are my goals.
With whom do you wish to achieve peace and reconciliation and how do you intend to achieve that goal?
>> I am able to view this conflict rationally and particularly view people as people.
What people do you believe are viewed as non-people, and by whom? What makes your view of the conflict rational, and how do you define an irrational view of the conflict?
I am looking forward to your responses.
December 27, 2010
6:58 am
Gladly Lisa.
1. What is the democratic system to which you are referring, and what makes it democratic? What undemocratic system are you referring to, and what do you believe makes it undemocratic?
Democratic: Israel. People vote. Knesset has representatives of numerous minority groups. People protest openly. People speak openly. Courts protect people. Press is open and vibrant. Press and population are openly critical of the government.
Undemocratic: the Israel of Shahadi’s imagination.
Aw shucks, if you really want me to get into it, although that wasn’t what I was discussing, let’s throw the three Palestinian governments in there as well, that of Gaza, Judea and Samaria and Jordan. Undemocratic.
2.
With whom do you wish to achieve peace and reconciliation and how do you intend to achieve that goal?
With the Palestinians, of course. I intend to achieve that goal by standing by either Barak’s Taba offer or Olmert’s offer of 2008. Unfortunately, I have to battle fools who support the Palestinian rejections of these offers in order to eventually weaken the Palestinians sufficiently to make them reconsider their rejections of these offers, but what can one do when certain do-gooders relate to the Palestinians as endless victims without choice? A view of things the Palestinians take to the bank every day. Imagine, for example, learning about a rape or possible rape of a woman where upon learning of it, one feels automatic pity for the potential rapist because he brings up the claim that he’s an Arab.
3.
What people do you believe are viewed as non-people, and by whom?
Israelis, of course. By Shahadi.
To be fair, you viewed the victim of this crime as a non-person because of the guilt-feelings that led you to sympathize with the rapist. But I am not sure this is a consistent problem with you whereas Shahadi’s views of Zionists and Israelis are as much a part of him as the air he breathes.
4.What makes your view of the conflict rational, and how do you define an irrational view of the conflict?
I see flaws on both sides; mistakes on both sides. I understand the reasons that drive both sides and make allowances for each side’s weaknesses and strengths. My understanding of how reconciliation will come about is based on a rational analysis of the situation.
An irrational view of the conflict holds Israel responsible for the ills which plague Palestinian society as well as Israeli society without taking into account the Arab and Palestinian contribution to the state of things or addressing the state of Arab societies nearby Israel (and while we’re at it, an irrational view of the conflict is one where an Israeli supports demonstrations on behalf of a Palestinian community on which the Israeli police is clamping down following two serious, unprovoked attacks against Israelis by groups of individuals from that community).
December 27, 2010
8:20 am
Maayan:
1. Jordan is not a Palestinian government
2. In Israel, citizens are arrested without charge and held under secret arrest. That is not democratic.
3. In Israel, 800 citizens were held under preventive house arrest during the Gaza war, because the Shin Bet thought they might organize protests of the war. They were not charged with any crime. The Hebrew media did not report on the arrests. That is not democratic.
4. Neither Barak’s nor Olmert’s offer was generous or implementable. For details, read Roi Maor’s post. http://972mag.com/did-israel-offer-the-palestinians-a-great-deal/
5. No-one has blamed Israel for the ills of Palestinian society – although you do not specify what ills you are referring to. We are talking about the ills of Israeli society.
6. Given that Israel of 2010 is a country where municipalities sponsor ‘modesty patrols’ to prevent mixed Arab-Jewish couples; where there people call for women who date Arab men to be killed; and where rabbis issue letters forbidding Jews from renting to Arab tenants, it is not difficult to understand why, given the judge’s wording of the plea bargain and the fact that the testimony was then sealed, Kashur’s protestations of innocence seemed believable.
December 27, 2010
4:15 pm
“1. Jordan is not a Palestinian government.” Whatever do you mean? I thought Jordan was founded on 77% of the province of Palestine. Not to mention the large percentage, estimated by some to be over 50% of the population, of Palestinian inhabitants.
“2. In Israel, citizens are arrested without charge and held under secret arrest. That is not democratic.”
This may be true, I can’t tell because of all the propaganda surrounding this topic. However, a flawed democracy is still a democracy.
“3. In Israel, 800 citizens were held under preventive house arrest during the Gaza war, because the Shin Bet thought they might organize protests of the war. They were not charged with any crime. The Hebrew media did not report on the arrests. That is not democratic.”
This may be true. Yet, Israel is still a democracy.
“4. Neither Barak’s nor Olmert’s offer was generous or implementable. For details, read Roi Maor’s post. http://972mag.com/did-israel-offer-the-palestinians-a-great-deal/”
Both offers were generous, fair and implementable. It’s a joke to claim otherwise. I mean that. It’s a joke. A bad one.
“5. No-one has blamed Israel for the ills of Palestinian society – although you do not specify what ills you are referring to. We are talking about the ills of Israeli society.”
You asked questions. I answered.
“6. Given that Israel of 2010 is a country where municipalities sponsor ‘modesty patrols’ to prevent mixed Arab-Jewish couples; where there people call for women who date Arab men to be killed; and where rabbis issue letters forbidding Jews from renting to Arab tenants, it is not difficult to understand why, given the judge’s wording of the plea bargain and the fact that the testimony was then sealed, Kashur’s protestations of innocence seemed believable.”
Excuse me but you forgot to mention that a tiny number of municipalities sponsor ‘modesty patrols’; that a tiny number of people call for women who date Arab men to be killed; and that the government, the PM, and a large number of rabbis spoke out harshly against the rabbis who issued the letter forbidding Jews from renting to Arab tenants.
You haven’t responded either to my smaller points or my larger points. I’m not disappointed and I’m also not surprised.
December 27, 2010
10:22 pm
Maayan, I think you should start your own blog.
December 27, 2010
11:55 pm
Sure. Got any tips for me?
December 28, 2010
12:02 am
Yes. Start with some courses in basic logic and recent Middle Eastern history and current events. Try to visit the places you write about. If you write from a base of knowledge, you will build a loyal readership.
December 28, 2010
4:06 pm
Lisa, I know more about ME history than you. Guaranteed. As for current events, considering that I read both right and left wing sources, Israeli and foreign, and considering the number of people to whom I speak about the issues confronting Israel (and unlike you, my research is done with an open mind and sympathy to both sides) I doubt you know more than I do, but we’ll call it a tie. If these are the criteria for writing a blog, I bet mine would be excellent. However, it seems you wrote what you did not to encourage my future career as a blogger but in an attempt to minimize what I have written above. I’m sorry Lisa, but you really need to do a much better job in your debates. It’s not only in your discussion with me that you’ve failed to seriously and convincingly contend with the issues raised, you previously failed with Shahadi whose views are ridiculously extreme (unless you move around in certain circles…). You can do better, Lisa, just apply yourself.
December 28, 2010
6:28 pm
Robert Malley, a US legal adviser to Clinton (later to Obama) on Mid East affairs was present at the Camp David negotiations and asked by the Palestinians to decipher what was on offer from Israel. He responded unequivocally by stating that what was on offer was a bantustan for the Palestinians. He said it was obvious that the Israelis had studied the South African model and what they were offering was a bantustan.
Later, Israel’s own foreign minister Schlomo ben Ami readily admitted that there was absolutely no way any Palestinian leader could accept the absurd offer from Israel. It was plainly out of the question.
Maayan is of course, a pathological liar, but one can’t blame her. To defend Israel, one HAS to be a pathological liar because ALL of the facts are against them.
December 29, 2010
1:31 am
Actually, anti-Israeli, that isn’t what Malley contended when, together with Palestinian scholar Agha, they formulated their version of what happened at Camp David to compete with the narrative expressed by Clinton himself. Their version is contested, however, by Dennis Ross who was there.
Regardless of that, my feeling on Camp David is that the Palestinians could have negotiated in good faith instead of rejecting everything and then launching their war.
Still, I was pointing to Barak and Israel’s generous offer at Taba, based on the Clinton Parameters and enhanced by Israel. I am also pointing to the crazy-generous offer by Olmert where he actually reverted to a psudo-181 that divides the holy sites in Jerusalem.
So that even if you wish to reject Camp David as being insufficient, the fact remains that two different PMs offered the Palestinians about 98% of the land they claim would satisfy them, connection of Gaza and Judea and Samaria that essentially bisects Israel (a similar line in the Camp David offer is what gives scumbags like you the excuse of bringing up “bantustans,”), control over eastern Jerusalem as their capital, control over their holy sites, reparations, acceptance of a limited number of real Palestinian refugees and a state.
The facts are simple. Today there could and should be a Palestinian state sitting side by side next to an Israeli state encompassing almost all of the Jordanian occupied West Bank and Egypt’s occupied Gaza. Both countries would have a capital in Jerusalem and access to their holy places. The Palestinians would launch their new state with $30-50 billion and a small number of refugees estimated at anywhere from 10,000-40,000 would be permitted to move into Israel.
December 29, 2010
12:16 pm
Lisa,
Thank for your last response to me (Sunday , December 26, 4:09)– In it, you were much more clear than in your original post, which conflated Grossman’s conclusions with your own. As promised I will integrate it into my own post.
However, based on your response it seems you missed a opportunity with your original post. The fact that the Defense has the right to question an accuser about her past in a rape trail is the point here, *not* the ethnicity of the alleged perpetrator. Under these terms an Israeli Jewish man would have gotten off completely so Kashur’s ethnicity actually worked against him here, which is the exact opposite of what Grossman (and you) suggest. But if you had focused on the fundamental sexism of Israeli rape law and its subsequent role in earning Kashur a reduced sentence you might have really had something here. I cannot help but wonder why you centered your post around Kashur then? Do you blame me for wondering about your motives when, given the opportunity to critique a sexist Israeli law you instead blamed the Palestinian guy? Especially given that Kashur’s conviction was predicated on his ethnicity, since a Jewish Israeli man committing the same crime would have gone free in the same circumstances?
I appreciate your devotion to “facts”, even if you framed your concern for the truth as a dig at me. If your original post about Kashur had been that straightforward and factual I wouldn’t have commented in the first place. But it wasn’t. And that you became so extraordinarily defensive when I pointed out the blind spots and inconsistencies in your post (some of which you still have not addressed) is telling. You have entreated me to “research” your past positions as a way to contextualize this post but if you had written it in such a way that was consistent with the kind of analysis you are clearly capable of, I wouldn’t have to.
Look, you live in a racist society. As an American, so do I. Any analysis of a case involving members of a privileged majority and an oppressed minority that does not engage with that simple fact is flawed at the root, even if it pretends toward “objectivity.” That has been my only point here.
Couple things tough:
1) I am not a “type” I am a man–singular. Don’t you think it is bad form to erase my humanity so summarily? Please note that at no point did I do this to you.
2) I am not Palestinian or Palestinian-American. Or Muslim, if you are wondering.
3) I do not have an “agenda” here beyond holding you accountable for being clear about what you are trying to say.
4) I don’t hate anybody. I’m just not an idiot–when liberals from racist societies (however unintentionally) reproduce racist ideologies in their work I notice. Sometimes if it is important enough I am compelled to comment. That’s all.
December 29, 2010
12:33 pm
Everyone’s a ‘type,’ Joseph. And I did not write that you were a Muslim or a Palestinian.
My lasting impression of you is that you are neither interested in understanding what I have written, nor in engaging me in an interesting exchange. You are the only person who has consistently expressed such a marked misreading of my post – and it has been very widely read.
Your statement that you are holding me accountable is extremely presumptuous.
I was surprised to discover that you are a university lecturer (unlike you, I do believe in research and context). Based on your interpretation of my post, I was convinced you were an undergraduate.
December 29, 2010
3:11 pm
Lisa,
The fact that a lot of people read your post and agreed with your analysis no doubt makes you feel better about my critique of it. Nevertheless that–like most of your responses to me (not to mention the post itself)–is based on false premises.
It does not surprise me that you think everyone is a “type” since your entire society is based on the illusion that such cultural and social constructions are “natural” and significant. Mine, which so often fails miserably to live up to its own standards, is not. So, despite the authority you seem to believe you wield to classify people like me, I remain only myself– for better or worse.
It also does not surprise me that an Arab man with a point of view different from yours would be so vexing to you. But your attempts to attack my ego (an undergraduate? I wish.) are transparent. What next? Will you tell me that you do not care for my shirt? Or the way I wear my hair? Are we on the Real Housewives of Jaffa? Your pride is obviously wounded. But I have just disagreed with you and found fault with your analysis– not attacked you personally. This is blog about politics, not a diary. You have complete control over whether or not to publish my comments, so your “wounded” pose is just silly. I am only interested in your argument, not you personally.
So: apologies for not living down to your stereotype but my issue here is only that you have offered such a shallow analysis of a complex case. One of the truisms of the I/P conflict in America is that (excluding the mouth-frothing nutballs, which we also have in abundance) Israeli reporting about it is often much, much more nuanced than our home grown analysis. But that is not the case here.
Your “impressions” of me aside, the fact remains that given the opportunity to make a really important point about the obviously misogynistic rape law under which Kashur was prosecuted you instead wrote about the Arab boogeyman (who is wandering around Jerusalem! Better not rent him an apartment!) And it is still completely unclear why.
My response to you is simply this: Do better.
December 29, 2010
3:19 pm
So, Joseph. You are telling me to do better. And you think I should have written a post about a different subject – misogyny in the courts, discrimination against Palestinians? – to please you. You have implied that you think I’m afraid of an Arab bogeyman. And you have also implied that I judge your opinion based on your ethnicity, rather than its merits.
I mean, given that combination of presumption and ignorance, why would you expect me to waste my time arguing with you?
I wrote a post about how a news story was reported without nuance due to lack of information. You read something else. We can argue whether you misunderstood because you lack the tools to understand my point, or because I failed to make it clearly. Obviously, I think the former. Either way, though, you have misunderstood.