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PARTISAN REVIEW
concerted attack on the renascent Israel by Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jor–
dan, and Iraq which made this possible.
The author seems equally at sea when she discusses more recent
events. She bungles the date, place, and particulars of a well-known ter–
rorist attack carried out by a young Gazan against an Israeli bus. Khan
Yunis, the second largest city in the Strip, is described as "a small town
and a refugee camp near the border with Egypt," which is not even an
accurate description of the southernmost city of Rafah. Hamas leader
Sheikh Yasin, a grandfather, is said to be "a young quadriplegic." The
Lebanon war of '82, Emerson writes, was the result of "the nationalist
movement in Lebanon, the strengths of the P.L.O. and their ebullient,
often arrogant, behavior." The latter constitues surely a new etiology of
the Israeli invasion.
Interested in studying "life under occupation," Emerson lived at
Marna House in Gaza City, a hotel "where Westerners and Palestinians
may meet on safe ground." The author's isolation there may explain her
basic misunderstanding of the dynamics of the Intifada. The majority of
Gazans live in conditions of moderate to severe poverty, yet Emerson
writes of a local grocery in which customers can purchase bottled water
and frozen okra, Kraft French Dressing and Heinz Hamburger Relish.
The
shebab,
the "young guys" at the vanguard of the Intifada, burn tires,
says Emerson, in order to "make army vehicles detour." As anybody who
has witnessed the process knows, it is clear that such acts are calls for
confrontation accompanied by catwhistles, curses, and a lot of bravado. If
soldiers don't answer the challenge, the result is acute disappointment.
The explosion of tear gas grenades and rifles, Emerson writes, produces a
"soft plop." Neither can be accurately described as such unless one is
miles away from the action. In a book that purports to be a form of
documentary realism, such errors cast doubt on the work as a whole.
The responsibility of a journalist is, at the very least, to get the facts
straight. More important is the sustenance of something like cognitive
dissonance. Emerson instead lapses into the laziness of black and white.
She presents the complex array of social and political forces at work in
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as a drama pitting the Sons of Light against
the Sons of Darkness. On the Israeli side, she sees the "small plump gen–
eral" with the "sharp French face" who treats Palestinians like "animals
in the zoo." There is also the Israeli reporter who "possessed a slight
hauteur, a barely concealed sense of her own superiority that was not
easy to admire." There is the racist "Agent Y" quoted as saying: "There
is a problem with the Arabs, a mental problem. It's terrible what I'm
saying, but they're basically different from Westerners - it's in the genetic
structure." There is the Shin Bet agent who, when a prisoner is brought
before him, simply says, "CrucifY him."
