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PARTISAN REVIEW
to Israel's Vietnam, Kent State, and Watts rolled into one." Is this a
valid comparison to the Israeli dilemma in confronting the Palestin–
ian uprising? After all, America was able to resolve its conflict with
Vietnam by withdrawing and alleviated the problems in Watts by
opening up the system to its disadvantaged minority. The Palestin–
ian issues, however, cannot be resolved by a unilateral response.
America, which was thousands of miles away from Vietnam,
could withdraw without a peace treaty. But Israel cannot. In the
words of a young captain whose kibbutz is four miles from Gaza: "I
hate this assignment of having to quell the Palestinian uprising.
Still, I prefer fighting in Gaza rather than among the houses of my
kibbutz." And the inhabitants of Watts wanted to make it in the
American system, while the Palestinians do not want to make it in
the Israeli one-they want to destroy the state.
At his
Nightline
meetings in Town Hall with Arabs and Israelis,
Ted Koppel, at the request of the Arab participants, had erected a
fence. The fence clearly conveyed the message: there will be no
dialogue. Throughout the program the Israelis tried to talk across
this fence, but the Palestinians turned deaf ears. Koppel literally sat
on it. For instance, instead of answering a question, one of the
Palestinian panel members stated as her demands: "A Palestinian
state, a return of the Arab refugees to the heart of IsraeL" And in
response to Jewish children's comments about their need for secur–
ity, an Arab child demanded that the Israelis "get out of Nablus , out
of Jerusalem, and out of Tel Aviv.... "
The absence of a dialogue , of course, heightens the dilemma of
those Israelis who are ready to look for accommodation and com–
promise with Palestinian demands. Yet how is a dialogue to begin
with a party that refuses
to
meet and discuss the issues, with a party
that dreams of Israel's extinction? Certainly, Koppel's intentions
were honorable. But under the pretense of neutrality and even–
handedness, television supports the Palestinian dream of portraying
Israel as an oppressor and the Palestinians as victims. By identifying
with the rebel , television portrays the Arab youths throwing stones
and Molotov cocktails as "protesters" to an American public whose
emotional response to "protest" always is that it is a positive value.
Given that television has no memory of the past, nor responsibility
or accountability to the future, commentators only rarely ask why
the Israeli army is there, or where the battlefront would be once this
army disengages itself.
I recall that Kurt Vonnegut, in
Slaughterhouse-Five,
at great
length describes the destructive impact of America's bombardment
