Halakha and the concept of ?relation-
ship.? He fears that when we obey
Halakha without questioning it, we
become complacent or ?secure.? Rab-
binic authority in interpretation of text
should not encourage us to avoid our
own responsibility before the sovereign
and absolute God: ?The security de-
rived from this maneuver is a sham
security. There is no person or per-
sons who are beyond the judgement
of God. . .. Each individual must ask
himself what God?s will is for his par-
ticular situation. . .. No human advice,
however learned, can take the place
of individual decision based on the
individual?s understanding of the will
of God.?

Wyshogrod identi?es the will of God
as relating directly and only to the

BOOK REVIEW

Intifada

people of Israel, although they do in
turn have responsibilities to the rest
of the world. Hartman sees I-Ialakha
as part of the continuum of universal
ethical categories, though it is mediated
in terms of Israel?s experience and char-
acter. Greenberg understands the Jew-
ish ethics expressed by Halaltha as the
vanguard of a universal process of liber-
ation. Another way of differentiating
between the three scholars is through
their reacrion to "chosenness." Hartman
seems to downplay the notion; he puts
emphasis on the Jewish need to rebuild
and restructure the state and life of
the people, free of the dis-
traction that the concept of chosenness
brings. For Wyshogrod, Israel is the
chosen people?non-Jews come to
God only through the Jews, a fact not

to be denied or forgotten. Greenberg
puts Israel at the center of humanity
by the virtue of its message and ex-
perience. In exercising its chosenness,
Israel can help other nations to discover
their vocations.

\Vhile Hartman, \Wyshogrod, and
Greenberg differ in their visions of
messianism and change, they are alike
in one signi?cant respect: All believe
in real~if imperfect??solutions that
are achievable in this world. They en-
courage us to consider the concept of
Jewish unity as both a metaphysical
reality and an urgent sociopolitical goal.
Such an understanding?is essential as
we enter this next decade. Caught be-
tween the memory of past longings
and a sense of history in the making,
we shall need political sensibility, moral
resolve, and truSt. El

 

Benny orrz's

Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising?ls-
raelfs Third Front by Ze?ev Schiff and
Ehud Ya?ari. Simon 6: Schuster, 1990,
352 pp.

Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising by
Don Peretz.Westview Press,1990, 246 pp.

For some fifty years following the
crushing of the Arab Rebellion in
Palestine by the British Mandate au-
thorities in 1936-39, the Palestinians
looked to the surrounding Arab world
for their salvation and succor. In 1948,
their half-hearted military performance
(Haifa?s 70,000-strong Arab population
caved in after a twenty-four~hour battle)
was in large meaSure dictated by their
reliance on the surrounding Arab states
and their belief that the regular Arab
armies would eventually invade Pales-
tine and pull their chestnuts out of the
?re. During the 19505 the battered

 

Benny Mom's, the author of The Birth
Of the Palestinian Refugee Problem,
1947-1949, is MacArthur
Scholar at the Broohz'zzgs Institution,
Wirshr'ngtorz, DC.

Palestinians, most of them in exile and
savoring UNRWA handouts, did little
to in?uence their own destiny. Cowed
and meek, they subsisted under less
than benign Egyptian and Jordanian
rule. In 1967, barely a Palestinian sniper
was out to ?greet? the IDF columns
when they broke into Gaza and occu?
pied Jenin, Tulkatm, Nablus, Ramal-
lah, Bethlehem, and Hebron. Where
else in modern history have enemy
towns and cities been conquered so
swiftly and inexpensively?

Nor did things change much there-
after. The rise of the PLO in the late
19605 and its advocacy of guerrilla
warfare as an alternative to the tried
and failed model of state-to-state con-
frontation proved as abortive as paSt
Arab efforts to dismantle Israel. The
attempts to set up resistance
networks in the occupied territories in
late 1967 and 1968 foundered on the
twin rocks of Palestinian indifference
and cowardice, and Israeli (meaning
General Security Service, or Shin Bet)
ef?ciency. The Israeli operatives were
at first dumbfounded by the Palestin-
ians? readiness to inform on their

neighbors and by the captured would-
be rebels? routing betrayal of their
co?conspirators. Palestinian docility
and collaboration became a byword?
and a source of Israeli contempt. And,
partly in consequence, the Israeli oc~
cupation of the West Bank and Gaza
Strip between 1967 and 1987 was one
of the cheapest and least savage in
modern history.

The efforts over the years to
raid Israel from the surrounding Arab
states fated no better. To a certain
extent, these raids?and PLO attacks
on Israeli and Jewish targets abroad?
delegitimized Palestinian aspirations by
equating them, in Israeli and Western
eyes, with terrorism. To be sure, the
raids had some nuisance value, but
they did little to promote the advent
of Palestinian Self-determination?ex~
cept insofar as they managed to keep
the cause alive and on the interna-
tional agenda.

For more than twenty years, from
June 1967 until December 1987, and
with only several hundred troops and
security men, Israel was able to occupy
and keep quiescent a population that

85

 

during the period grew from one to
almost two million souls. Most of the
population and much of the itraditional
leadership simply resigned themselves
to the new facts of life and kowtowed
to the new rulers. Brief bouts-of demon-
stration and civil disobedience were rap-
idly overtaken by protracted stretches
of calm. Thousands of Palestinian work-
ers daily labored in the 
of Israel?s new settlement network in
the occupied territories; tens of thOu-
sands daily commuted to srael and
manned its services, construction sites,
and factories. Neither in war of
1973 nor in 1982 ?when i! was their
own representative organization, the
PLO, that was under attack in Lebanon
?did the Palestinians make Israel?s
life more dif?cult by any lsort of re-
sistance or disruption of roads and
traf?c to and from the front lines
through the Gaza Strip anll the West
Bank. 

 

Israeli 
centers remain the most
important ?schools? for

the intifada cadres
and the hreedz?ng ground
for future leaders
of the State 

 

And then, on Decembler 8, 1987,
. I . .

everything changed. The Iterritories,
?rst the Gaza Strip and then the West
Bank and East Jerusalem, erhpted more
or less spontaneously in demonstration,
riot, and civil disobediencle. The inti-
fada (Arabic for awakening; or shaking
off?as a dog does a ?ea) had broken
out. A population humilia ed beyond
endurance and despairing of succor
from withom was moved to shake off
the oppressor?s boot and tlo assert its
will and destiny. Passive, lservile na-
tives almost overnight tur ed into en-
raged, courageous street ?thters. Por-
merly cowed Palestinian youths bared
their breasts in de?ance of Israeli bullets;
previously apathetic or coll' borationist
villages declared their 
and raised the Palestinia flag; hun-
dreds of Arab youths were shot and
killed, thousands were clubbed,
and tens of thousands were hauled off
to detention camps for lmonths on

end. But the Palestinians? refused to

86 TIKKUN VOL. 5, No.9

recant or break.

To be sure, thousands of Palestinian
commuters continued to supply Israel
with cheap labor and, ironically, Pal-
estinians continued to build the new
settlements. By blanketing the territor-
ies with tr00ps, carefully reconstruct-
ing Shin Bet informer-networks, and
liberally employing curfews, mass at-
rests, economic privations, and a wide
range of other personal and collective
punishments, the Israeli authorities
were able to reduce the levels and
frequency of Palestinian violence and
disobedience.

But the intifada, now in its third
year, continues. Something basic has
changed. The intifada has transformed
\?Uest Bank and Gazan society beyond
repair; no matter how many rebel ac-
tivists, agitators, and leaders are killed
or incarcerated, Israel will never again
be able to hold and govern the terri-
tories on the cheapm?economically,
politically, and militarily. This bOut of
rebellion may ultimately be suppressed;
but until a political solution is found
to the problem of the territories, the
rebellion will break out anew, again
and again, after each respite, and with
particular virulence in the Gaza Strip
(which will have a population of over
one million by the year 
a strip of land 28 miles long by some
5 miles wide).

he past few months have seen the
publication of a spate of books

0n the intifada, with the Ze?ev Schiff?
Ehud Ya?ari and Don Peretz efforts
being the most prominent. Both suffer
from the limitations of ?instant history,"
of writing about the very proximate
past without the benefit of hindsight
and substantial dOCumentation. And,
in the present case, this is compounded
by the fact that what is being described
and analyzed is an ongoing process or
event which has not yet run its course.
At best, as Schiff and Ya?ari suggest,
we are getting an ?interim assessment.?
Given these considerations, both cf-
forts are creditable, with Schiff and
Ya?ari, to my taste, enjoying a major
edge. Indeed, the Schiff?Ya?ari Inti-
fada is an excellent piece of reportage
mixed with political analysis of a high
order. It is likely to remain the best
history of this part of the intifada for
years to come. Schiff and Ya?ari made
excellent use of their various contacts
in the Israeli military establishment

and in the territories. And, it appears,
they had aCCess to some classi?ed Is-
raeli documentation, in addition to
open sources and the press. (They do
not, however, provide footnotes, which
forces the reader to take a great deal
on trust.) Peretz?s book is more jour-
nalistic and relies almost exclusively,
to judge from its footnotes, on press
cuttings (eSpecially from the Jerusalem
Post International Edition?which was
by no means as good in its coverage
of the intifada as the daily jerzisalem
Post). It is, though, a solid piece of
work.

One of the most interesting things,
historically, about the intifada is that
it caught everyone?Israelis, Western
governments, King Hussein, the PLO,
and even most Palestinians in the ter-
ritories?by surprise. While violence
and disobedience simmered. and sput-
tered in the territories during the years
before 1987, no one quite expected
what happened one December day after
a traf?c accident ignited the powder
keg. (In that accident, four Arab la-
borers were killed when an Israeli truck
rammed into a Gaza pickup truck.) If
the inhabitants had taken in their stride
the slings and arrows of Israeli abuse
and oppression for twenty years, why
not for another twenty?

Such was the outlook of the Israeli
defense establishment. For weeks it
was to be business as usual. Indeed,
the establishment?s chief, Defense Min-
ister Yitzhak Rabin, boarded a plane
to New York on the third day of the
uprising and only returned to the coun-
try twelve days later, on December 21.
Two weeks passed before the Israeli
cabinet met to discuss the?disturbances."

From an intelligence point of view,
says Schiff and Ya?ari, the surprise was
worse than that of the Egyptian-Syrian
onslaught of October 6, 1973, for ?the
intelligence community had failed to
discern a process already well advanced
among a population under its own
tight control.? The fact is that the terri-
tories fell between stools: strategic in-
telligence assessment regarding theWest
Bank and Gaza was the responsibility
of neither the IDF Intelligence Branch
nor the Shin Bet (nor, needless to say,
the Mossad or the Foreign Ministry
Research Division). The Shin Bet, in
charge of internal security, for years
had focused on tactics rather than strat-
egy, the trees rather than the forest;
the IDF Intelligence Branch kept its

 

.v

 

I

on Arab armies and states. The
gOvernment?s Coerdinattir of Activities
in the occupied territories, Shlomo
Goren, spent his days prbducing glossy
booklets on the Israeli-sponsored im-
provements in the local inhabitants?
quality of life. So no brie saw that
?even the asses are rejecting the occu-
pation by now,? as Nabjlus politician
Hikmet al-Masri phrased it.

?The solution will dome through
the barrel of a gun,? believed Arafat.
Thus, when the stones started flying
and the tires burning, PLO leader-
ship took weeks to fatho' that a major
historical event was uni-Siding. Schiff
and Ya?ari?s treatment the 
confusion during those ?rst weeks of
the insurrection is excellent.

The actual triggers the intifada,
which preceded the fatal traf?c acci-
dent, are now Clear: the Palestinian
hang-glider attack on November 25,
1987, on the Lebanese border, in which
a brave PLO guerrilla liilled six IDF
soldiers and wounded seven others
before himself being shot dead; the
May 18 breakout of Isla ic Jihad activ-
ists from prison and their subsequent
campaign of ambush and terror in the
alleys of Gaza; the Novjember 10 kill~
ing of a Dir al Balah schoolgirl by an
Israeli settler and the eportation of
Gaza preacher Sheikh Abd al Aziz
Odeh; and the Arab summit in Am-
man of November, in wh ch Palestinian
grievances {and Arafat) It fere shunted
aside completely and the Iraq-Iran
war got top billing. 1

Yet the rebellion wa not initially
and primarily a nationalist revolt, ar-
gue Schiff and Ya?ari:

Though it developed into a state-
ment of major politic'al import,
the intifada began no as a national
uprising to throw off the yoke of
foreign domination as a rebel-
lion of the poor, an attesome
outburst by the forsa en and
forgotten at the bottom of the
social heap. 

Initially, the intifada as ?powered
by the hardship of getting through
each day? and was directed against
a hypocritical, callousj society that
?pointedly ignored the disgraceful c0n-
ditions in which so manly of [the Pal-
estinians] lived.? Israeli exploitation
of the Palestinians, and especially of
the refugee-camp dwellers, along with
the routine, daily humiiation by Is-

 

 

raeli employers and soldiers over the
years of these commuting laborers cre-
ated an ?enraged proletariat, a class
that saw no way out of its abominable
state except by a political revolt. In
short, Israel?s economic system was
the real driving force behind the radi-
calization of the Palestinian public.
It was the piston of the 

Unfortunately, Schiff and Ya?ari ar-
rive at their assessment of the social
origins of the intifada by way of tran-
scripts of Israeli interrogations of ap-
prehended Palestinian rioters. These
detainees, most ?simple laborers,? ac-
cording to the interrogation forms,
were ignorant of basic PLO nationalist
slogans and policies. They cared little
about politics, argue Schiff and Ya?ari.
But I am not sure that reSponses to
inrerrogators? questions are the best
avenue to an understanding of a de-
tainee?s motives.

It is early yet to venture a de?nitive
assessment on the motives under-
lying the refugee camps? insurrection
of December 1987, which within days
and weeks sucked in the whole of the
Palestinian population in the territories
and, in some measure, the Israeli Arab
minority as well. But the judgment of
history is likely to be that the uprising
was powered essentially by nationalist
motives, reinforced by dire socioeco-
nomic grievances. Hence the refugee
camps, rather than the middle-class
urban neighborhoods, were the ?ash-
points of the rebellion. Hence, the
traditional radicals of the territories,
the politicized, nationalist middle class
(the Nusseibehs, Senioras, and Hus-
seinis), were relegated to a secondary,
symbolic conduit role by the intifada?s
real leaders.

Perhaps the strongest sections of
the Schiff and Ya?ari book?and here
lies their pioneering contribution to
the historiography of the intifada?are
those dealing with the 
of the rebellious leadership [the Uni?ed
National Command?or, as Pcretz calls
it, the United National Leadership of
the Uprising?and the local ?popular
committees?) and with the re-
lationship with the Tunis-based PLO
leadership.

The intifada was initially an unor-
ganized, spontaneous outburst of rioting
crowds?men, women, and children.
Pure rage. But within days, a shadowy,
home-based leadership emerged, a

  

 

 

  

season?s be the .

Middle .EaSt

 

 

Palestine and

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The Uprising and Beyond
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REVIEWS 87

leadership that both inaugurated and
represented a completely new politics
in the territories. The lge-old Arab
norms of generational and sociopoliti-
cal hierarchy had been Swept away in
the pall of smoking tires. The new
leaders, almost to a man, came not
from the traditional, uppeI middle-class
West Bank and Gaza elitf families but
from the serried tanks 0 I political and
security prisoners, from the thousands
who had spent long mo Iths and years
in Israeli detention duflng the 19703
and 19805. Many of thej new leaders
had been released in one or other of
the mass prisoner of the
early 19805 (in the last jof which, in
1985, more than one thousand Pales-
tinians were freed in .xchangeifor
a handful of captured IDF soldiers).
These were the men who! led the riots,
put together and chaired the popular
committees, and sat on the UNC. The
cohorts of ?ex-cons? wer'e leavened by
a handful of academics,l mainly from
Bir Zeit University. 

Schiff and Ya?ari have l'escued these
men from their self-impbsed clandes-
tinity, if not from obliviorl. This leader-
ship, which one day will no doubt be
co-opted into the Palestinians? politi-
cal pantheon, was based on closely
knit networks of relatives and friends,
mostly ex-cons who ha done time
together. (The Israeli detention centers,
incidentally, remain the lmost impor-
tant ?schools? for the intifada cadres
and, indeed, the breedino ground for
future leaders of the State of Palestine,
if it ever arises.) 

In the beginning there were Mo-
hammed and Majid Lab di and their
Gazan brother-in-law, amal Zakut.
Almost single-handedly, lfhese Demo-
cratic Fronts for the Liberation of
Palestine operatives put gether, pub-
lished, and distributed ommunique
No. 1? of the UNC. Then, making
contact with representatives of other
resistance facrions, they lput together
the UNC. On it sat one representative
from each major organization: Fatah,
the Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine, the DFLP, find the West
Bank (formerlyJordaniaan Communist
Party. Eventually a representative of
the Islamic front was drliwn into the
meetings. The taking hold
of existing passions and conditions,

thereafter steered the r?bellion with

 

the help of a stream of mmuniques,
which instructed each 10 iality when to


i

88 TIKKUN VOL. 3, No. 3

 

strike, what sort of demonstrations to
mount, what sort of slogans to unfurl,
and so on. It took the Shin Bet months
to pinpoint the UNC membership, by
which time the rebellion was ?rmly on
track. As each leadership foursome
was lopped off by Israeli security (some
were deported, others merely incar-
cerated), another foursome stepped
into its place. The UNC continued to
function and the communiques con-
tinued to surface and be distributed.
Eventually, using fax and telephone,
the wording of the communiques was
negotiated between the UNC and PLO-
Tunis, and broadcast to the territories
on PLO radio stations.

The informality and ad hoc nature
of the leadership structure contributed
to the longevity. But gradually
the mix of Israeli repression, round-
ups, and PLO pressure?exercised in
great measure thrOugh the distribution
and withholding of funds?severely
curbed the functioning and
control over the intifada. But the net-
work of local popular committees-?
which oversaw strikes, demonstrations,
fund allocation, education, health serv-
ices, transport, and so on?continued
to run the rebellion on the local level,
despite the ?erce Israeli measures.
At the moment, the two sides appear
locked in a stalemate, with the Pal-
estinians somewhat the worse for wear.
The level and frequency of intifada
violence has dropped off considerably
as compared with Year One, but there
is suf?cient disruption of normal life
throughout the territories to necessi-
tate an IDF presence a number of
times greater than anything seen be-
fore 1987.

he UNC emerged independently

of, and functioned only in loose
cooperation with, PLO-Tunis?as its
occasional shunning of PLO instruc?
tions and of traditional PLO leaders in
the territories (Faisal Husseini, Hanna
Siniora) demonstrated. The UNC man-
3 ed to shrug off the initial PLO efforts
to take over and direct the intifada.
Indeed, the intifada and, more Specif-
ically, its leaders managed to turn the
tables to the extent of gradually forcing
a major change?or speedup?of the
policies. The major outcome of
the intifada?UNC?PLO symbiosis was
the Palestine National Council?s Algiers
resolution of November 1988 and Ara-
fat?s subsequent declarations?accept-

 

ing the? two-state? solution, recognizing
Israel, and renouncing terrorism. In
turn, these ushered in the opening of
the dialogue and, indirectly,
the Shamir ?peace plan? of May 1989,
which, in turn, eventually led to the
breakdown of Israel?s Likud-Labor
National Unity Government.

The tangled relationship between
the intifada leadership and PLO-Tunis
is tellingly described by Schiff and
Ya?ari. Peretz devotes little attention
to the rift, and is appar-
ently oblivious to the deep tensions
that have governed their relationship
throughout the intifada.

Peretz is stronger?in parts, stronger
than Schiff and Ya?ari?in his descrip-
tion of the impact of the Palestinian
rebellion on Israeli society. Schiff and
Ya?ari devote no space at all, for
example, to the IDF ?refuseniks? of
service in the territory. Both books fail
to examine the whole problem of con-
scientious objecrion and its almost
complete absence in Israel during the
intifada, despite the fact that half or
more of the Israeli population opposes
to some degree Israel?s often brutal
measures of repression, and despite
the fact that close to half support Is-
raeli withdrawal from at least the Arab?
populated centers in the territories.
(Fewer than one hundred IDF soldiers
refused service in the territories and
were jailed since December 1987.) Why,
with so many Israelis uncomfortable
with or opposed to their government?s
policy in the territories, has opposition
to that policy failed to seriously dent
Israeli praxis and thinking?

One underlying reason, without
doubt, is the average Israeli?s ?histori-
cal? approach to politics and current
affairs. This historical awareness may
often be unstated or blurred, but it is
always present somewhere behind the
scenes. It is an awareness imposed
upon the Israeli by circum-
stances and by the awesome travail of
Jewish history. And it compels the
Israeli?both the one who supports
the government?s policy and the one
who opposes it?to view the intifada
not only as a revolt of the politically
and socially oppressed against a for-
eign occupier and economic exploiter,
but also as the latesr bout, albeit an
unusual one, in the cycle of Arab?
Israeli conflict. In this second, hisrori-
cal perspective, the seeming victim and
underdog, the Palestinian refugee,

 



 



neli an

slum-dweller, and peas[ nt, is in reality
Only the latest, subtle? instrument of
I . . .
Arab assault on the Jewish politythis sobering ambivalence that gives
the intifada, for Israelis at least, its
unique moral complexity.
. . . .
This complextty, in part, 15 embodthe phrase yorzm ve hoe/92m,
meaning, in Hebrew, ?they are shoot-
. . . .
ing and crying, whichI describes the
young IDF soldiers? performance in
the alleyways of the intifada. The term


was popularized by Israeli singer Si
Heyman in a song of that name that
bitterly criticizes Israel?s suppression
of the Palestinians. In the song, the
phrase is used bitterly, cynically, to
assail Israeli hypocrisy, as if to say:
??rbu?re busy crying as you shoot stone-
throwing children, but you don?t really
feel bad. You are merely using the
tears as cover, to declare that you?re
human and to expiate your guilt at
carrying out such brutal measures.The

measures themselves are in this way
legitimized by your sorrow.? But my
feeling is that the phrase has a hard
core of truth, beyond cynicism. In the
case of many Israelis, who are busy
shooting, the tears are genuine: they
feel real sorrow, but they regard their
actions as necessitated by the situa-
tion and by the historical setting of
the events. 

 


LETTERS 1
(Continued fro?: p. 

nick might helpfully have pointed out.
Thus Said condemns figures that we
all agree are indeed agelnts and symp-
toms of destruction, such as ?Ayatollah
Khomeini, Ayatollah Btlgin, Ayatollah
Gemayel  the Falwells, the Swag-
garts, the Farrakhans (Blaming
the Victims). However; he does not
(to the extent I can eep up with
his proli?c writings) discuss how such
fanaticisms are fertilized by prior op-
pressions racial, ethnic,Land imperial.
Nor is Said especially in olved in criti-
cal discussions of the use of ancient
and traditional texts for liberatory
ends. (Thus I ?nd altog ther implaus-
ible Krupnick?s claim that one of the
lacks Said has worked tb amend is ?a
sacred text of [the Pale tinians?] own,
to memorialize an ori inal covenant
between a people and its God?)

3) Krupnick writes, ?When one ex-
poses the distortion in Said?s
portrayal of Zionism, however, one
realizes that his attack is simply an-
other ploy' to discredit Israel.? But
Krupnick hasn?t exposed anything; he
has merely summarizedthe debate be-
tween Said and Walzer.lThe ?realiza-
tion? he refers to, based on a nonex-
istent ?exposure,? seem rather to be
a leap of faith on Krup ick?s part.

While Said obviously is out to dis-
credit Zionism?s claim to belonging
in the family of natioI-al liberation
movements (an issue I hardly see as
a question of either/or nor as one
whose ?nal arbiter, as Said repeatedly
suggests, is necessarily Third World
opinion), I do not believe his goal is
?to discredit Israel.?  has publicly
acknowledged the Israeli )ews? right
to self-determination and he has writ-
ten of their ?traditional tie to the land,
their unimaginable of suffer-
ing, and [the fact that] they were by

no means an overseas offshoot of a
metropolitan Western power? (Blaming
the Victims). His claims to an authori-
tative discourse on Zionism norwith-
standing, his primary concern is to
obtain a modicum of justice and recog-
nition for the Palestinians, not to dis-
credit Israel.

4) As far as narratives go, the leaders
of the intifada are carefully following
the morals of the stories they created
in their failed efforts of the late 19305
and again in the late 19405. The ?rst
time they were badly disunited and
factionalized, the second time these
handicaps were compounded by the
failure to realize that the Yishuv was
already soundly established and pre-
pared for military victory. There, pri-
marily, are the historical ?problems?
that can be traced to the Palestinians.

The intifada, by contrast, is remark-
ably though not perfectly uni?ed; the
people who participate in it have no
illusions about a military defeat of the
Israelis, and their leaders have recog-
nized Israel. The intifada is reaching
for a ?kind of solution??independence
without rejecrion of the Palestinians?
Otherhbeyond the exilic melancholy
Krupnick finds in Said?s Beyond the
Last Slay. It strikes me as gratuitous
when Krupnick writes: ?The ebullience
of the past year, in the wake of the
uprising and the declaration of national
independence in Algiers  is hardly
likely to last in the face of the in-
tractable difficulties peacemaking will
entail.? Any loss of ?ebullience? has
more to do with Israeli attacks on
Palestinian lives than with difficulties
in a peacemaking process that the Is-
raeli government has so far ?intract-
ably? and successfully avoided.

5) In his ?nal paragraph, Krupnick
writes that ?it would be unfair to say
that, faced by Palestinian rage, our

sympathy wholly blots out our fear
and distrust. The project of under-
standing encouraged identi?cation with
the Other, but it also entails owning
up to our feelings about being the
object of Palestinian rage.? By using
the inclusive pronoun ?our,? he assimi-
lates his reaction to that of all Jews,
just as he assimilates Said?s polemical
critique to a generalized quantum
called ?Palestinian rage.?

Said, too, sometimes assimilates Pro-
fessor Said to ?the Palestinians,? as
when (in Critical Inquiry) he wrote
back to me and my brother Daniel,
?Can you imagine the brothers Boyarin
standing next to the residents of Beita
as their houses were being blown
up by the Israeli army, and saying
to them, ?It would help you to know
and remember that the Jews who are
now killing you were once cruelly and
unfairly killed too?? Of course we
wouldn't, and Said should know this.
When my brother (who lives in Jeru-
salem) goes to towns like Beita, he
goes to express his solidarity with
the intifada and to ask how he can
help. While I can understand why Said
identi?es with people in Beita, he
should not confuse himself with them,
nor should his Jewish interlocutors.
People in towns like Beita and Belt
Sahur are much more likely to address
peace-oriented Israelis directly with a
message of exhortation and solidarity
than to publish scholarly critiques of
Zionism.

In conclusion, I agree with Said and
Krupnick that discourse is crucial to
politics. But Palestinians suffer more
directly from dispersal and occupation
than from any putative narrative de-
ficiencies. The issue is hardly what
Israelis may or may not be ?excused?;
morally and strategically, the Israelis
have already lost control of the terri?

TIKKUN VOL. 5, No. 3 89