A slice of life in Sheikh Jarrah

[polly7]

A slice of life in Sheikh Jarrah ( 0) Print This ShareThisBy Andrew Kadi
Mondoweiss
Sunday, Jan 3, 2010


Around 12:30… I went walking down, with an old friend and a new acquaintance, to the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem so that we could take a closer look at the Palestinian homes Israeli settlers had taken over (denoted by the giant Israeli flags hung from each of the buildings).
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_57985.shtml

[grassfed]

1. Magen David Ambulance Dispatch: “Is it an Arab or a Jew?”

That was when I heard what I couldn’t believe… honestly, you read about this kind of thing, but you never realize how serious it is until you hear it for yourself. The policeman called for an ambulance. The ambulance, over the radio, responded by asking in Hebrew “Is it an Arab or a Jew?” Immediately an angry woman (presumably the injured boy’s mother) shouted “OF COURSE! OF COURSE That’s what they ask… Because if he’s an Arab, WHY SHOULD THEY COME?” I couldn’t believe my ears. I didn’t understand… Why would an ambulance dispatcher ever pause to ask the ethnicity of an injured child before rushing to pick him up? At that moment, I was overwhelmed and had to step away from the situation. I imagined my own son lying in pain and bleeding, no matter how severe, with an ambulance dispatcher asking in the background for clarity on his religion or ethnicity. I believe that the original dispatcher who asked the police officer about ethnicity was from the Magen David (the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross).

from the same article
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_57985.shtml

[polly7]

3. Thanks grassfed, that part sickened me too. nt.

[Violet_Crumble]

6. Absolutely disgusting...

And that settlers can break into people's homes with impunity and attack Palestinians and the police stand by and do nothing is appalling...

[Igel]

10. Need info.

I mean, really.

Can you think of no reason for an ambulance driver knowing if the kid's Arab or Jewish?

Think of things like language. Or the ability for his parents to easily visit him in the hospital if they don't have permission to get to the right part of the city. It may be that ambulance drivers from Magen David would have had rocks thrown at them by Arabs if they picked up Arabs. I simply have no way of knowing, but I can easily come up with some perfectly fine reasons given what little I actually know of the context.

Of course, as a native speaker of English in a country where services are by default in English, where freedom of movement is a given, and where ethnic tensions are dialed way back these things probably wouldn't occur to me if I pictured my kid being hurt and needing an ambulance. To imagine these things in Houston is insane. Well, not quite: If my kid's best friend were unconscious and his mother and sister not home, he'd be in trouble if the ambulance driver didn't ask if he knew English. The kid's dad is pretty much monolingual in Spanish. So I guess even in Houston asking about ethnicity--a shorthand for language--is a good idea. I mean, a Latino will speak English or Spanish, all ambulance drivers speak English but some speak Spanish.

The charges of racism come from the kid's mother, in an ethnically charged situation where ethnic tensions were already high. Anything that can be interpreted as ethnically charged will be interpreted as ethnically charged. And that's the problem. "Can be interpreted as" doesn't entail "intended to be."

Magen David may have been racist. They may have been pragmatic. I can't fault the woman for her assumptions because from her immediate experience all Jews hate Arabs and so it's proper for all Arabs to hate Jews. I'm not her. I need actual evidence of racism because I'm not sufficiently enraged at specific Israeli Jews to justify an assumption of racism on the part of all Israeli Jews, but all I'm given is ambiguous evidence and an assumption that may be entirely or just partly emotion driven.

[shira]

2. Censorship at Mondoweiss

http://yaacovlozowick.blogspot.com/2010/01/censorship-at-mondoweiss.html

Censorship at Mondoweiss
CIfWatch routinely documents how the Guardian staff censors opinions it disagrees with. This morning I tried to post a comment at Mondoweiss. First I had to register (why?). Then I had to re-register twice until the system let me in. I then posted a comment, which has yet to appear, even though in the ensuing hours Phil Weiss has put up a post of his own, so apparently he has been online. Will he eventually authorize my comment? I don't know. May he be waiting until the post it's appended to, sinks so far from the top that no-one will read it? I also don't know. So for the sake of documentation, I'm putting it up here. Perhaps Fake-Ibrahim, who seems to have no problem posting comments at Mondoweiss, will link to this post in a comment. Though I wouldn't count on it.
------------------------------
To the Mondoweiss community,

This will be my one and only comment on this website.

As a regular reader of Mondoweiss, I have long since resigned myself to the spite and the malice which are its main fare. Indeed, one reason I regularly visit is to keep updated on the themes and argumentation of the enemies of my nation. Perhaps someday we will manage to make peace with our Palestinian neighbors: I certainly hope so, having lost far too many of my friends in wars with them, and wishing them better than what they've got.

We will never be able to make peace with the sort of people who write at Mondoweiss and frequent its comment sections, however, since the source of your enmity is irrational, it's resistant to facts, and there's no common ground from which to begin a discussion. Ask yourselves a simple question: is there a theoretical interpretation of the facts as they seem, which might lead you to a different understanding of the reality; is there any explanation of Israel's actions which might weaken the template always used here at Mondoweiss? Not: Do we agree with that interpretation, simply: could it exist?

One of the oddest things a regular reading of Mondoweiss demonstrates is that the Mondoweiss community has not the slightest interest in the Israelis as human beings. There is never any honest attempt to understand who they are, how they see their world, and how this understanding informs their actions. Yet odder, however, the exact same thing holds also for the Palestinians. The Mondoweiss community loves the Palestinians, automatically sees them as beautiful people and wonderful, but never sees them as human beings. There is no slightest interest in who they are, how they see their world, and how this understanding informs their actions.

The Israelis are cardboard figures of evil, devoid of any real life. The Palestinians are cardboard figures of virtue, devoid of any real life. It's weird.

Dr. Yaacov Lozowick, Jerusalem

[polly7]

4. Why are you derailing the thread? nt.

[grassfed]

11. Are you new to this forum?

FWIW My posts in this forum are intended for the 15 minutes or so they're visible on the 'Latest' forum... The effort becomes rather pointless once the posts are exiled to the I/P ghetto, but those few moments in 'Latest Discussion Threads' are not totally inconsequential.

[grassfed]

5. Mondoweiss is devoted to "a progressive Jewish perspective"

About Mondoweiss
Mondoweiss is a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective.

It has four principal aims:

1. To publish important developments touching on Israel/Palestine, the American Jewish community and the shifting debate over US foreign policy in a timely fashion;

2. To publish a diversity of voices to promote dialogue on these important issues;

3. To foster the movement for greater fairness and justice for Palestinians in American foreign policy;

4. To offer alternatives to pro-Zionist ideology as a basis for American Jewish identity.

Biography

This blog is maintained by Philip Weiss and Adam Horowitz. Weiss is 54 and lives in New York state. Horowitz is 36 and lives in New York City.

We maintain this blog because of 9/11, Iraq, Gaza, the Nakba, the struggling people of Israel and Palestine, and our Jewish background.

http://mondoweiss.net/

[polly7]

7. Sorry, I see I need to upgrade my reading list.

My apologies.

[shira]

8. MondoLies is a hate fest masquerading as a progressive site

Anyone with 2 functioning brain cells can see the hate literally dripping off each web page from that site (the articles and the comments section) and here's one example after another...
http://sadredearth.com/tag/mondoweiss/

[Violet_Crumble]

9. It's long overdue but I've bookmarked Mondoweiss and I'll start reading it...

I was going to start reading it after a bit of spitting at it in a thread from a poster a few months ago, but I was busy and never got round to it. I figure if it's worthy of being spat at, then it's worthy of me reading it for a while...