Shmuel Rosner: "I do not eat pumpkin. That is true."

I just caught a lecture by Shmuel Rosner, former chief of news at Ha'aretz, as well as their Washington correspondent, and now a highly influential blogger at the J-Post. The lecture, which was co-sponsored by the Judaica collection of the Doe Library and the Berkeley journalism school, concerned media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian, Israeli-Arab conflict. Rosner spoke from a lectern that has also belonged recently to Benny Morris, and the journalist at times struck the historian's muscular pose, affected the same contempt for naiveté and for leftist partisanship. I eagerly anticipated his views on Ha'aretz. He said the left-of-center daily is at times too critical of Israel, and may even have caused the IDF excessive pain. Rosner's goal was to describe the community of reporters and organizations covering Israel, and to brief us on how to discern bullshit.

As for the Israeli media, those of us who rely on the Anglophone Israeli media are woefully out of touch with the internal political discourse in Israel. That discourse is created, he argued, on TV, and in the pages of Yediot, Maariv, and, now, Yisrael Hayom.

But the foreign media was the real focus.

The lecture was full of lists. The four cardinal sins of foreign journalists in the Middle East:

1. Obsession

2. Prejudice

3. Ignorance

4. Condescension

5. Unprofessionalism -- chiefly a matter of dereliction of fact-(re)-checking. (Not officially on the list, but something he lingered over later with regard to the unreliability of the Palestinian media, as well as the merely innocuous nature of the Swedish reporter who accused the IDF of harvesting Palestinian organs).

Rosner's rules for readers of foreign reporting:

1. What leaders say behind closed doors doesn't matter. What matters is what they say in public, to their own people, in their own language.

2. Israelis and Palestinians can't keep secrets. You will know what you want to know...eventually.

3. Commissions and reports of all types have little value.

4. Envoys of the US and other world powers are always too optimistic -- and almost bound to fail.

5. Do not overestimate the impact of the White House or other foreign intervention.

6. Just because someone doesn't speak English, it doesn't mean they're dumb.

7. Arabs generally have a lot of patience.

8. Never underestimate the power of domestic politics to dictate events.

9. Beware of predictions.

10. Beware of polls.

11. Beware of reporters with political biases.

12. There are many groups in the Middle East that hate each other, but they all agree on at least this: Americans are naive.

I found the scolding of foreign journalists quite satisfying. Rosner painted a vivid picture of what I imagined as a horde of professional gawkers gathering their luggage and translators at the carousel at Ben Gurion Airport, and then greedily speeding to as close to the scene of the carnage as they could get during the last two wars. And with print media downsizing everywhere, the correspondents are becoming ever less versed in the local cultures they cover. The result is a foreign media that covers Israel as a conflict, not as a country. Sounds problematic to me. We get the Israeli leadership's sound-bite, then the Palestinian's. Gazans are suffering these deprivations; now, look -- look how much it sucks to live in Sderot! The foreign media makes our heads swivel like the cat at the window watching the movements of birds outside. But what would the alternative be? What would covering Israel as a country really look like? I am not sure, and I wish I would have asked Rosner. To him, Israel as a country does have to be explained to (certain) Americans. Take his audiences at the American War College in Pennsylvania. Part of what is culturally idiosyncratic about Israel, Rosner explained to them, is the lack of distance between civil society and the military. "Everyone is a civilian, everyone is a soldier," said Rosner, unapologetically. But in fact, the image of Israel as a face-to-face society, where everyone knows someone who is affected by war, the rigors of the occupation, terrorism should be very familiar to readers of, say, the New York Times. This may be the way Israel really is, but it's also something that Israelis desperately want us outsiders to know. I find that very interesting.

A face-to-face society with 5 million cell phones, boasted Rosner, offers the determined journalist an almost unique opportunity to recover the truth about complex events. His paradigmatic example was the so-called massacre of Jenin in 2002. How did his team at Ha’aretz debunk the rumors of a massacre? By calling the soldiers, particularly reservists, they knew. “They couldn’t all be lying,” claimed Rosner. These informants were the “cousins’ best friends" of Rosner’s news division. Social proximity for him is a comparative advantage over foreign media in terms of access, not a journalistic liability. The fog of war was lifted, a little too effortlessly. On the other hand, Rosner insisted on the incompatability of perceptions born of different cultural contexts. Shimon Peres, so his opening joke went, isn’t the same Shimon Peres at home as abroad. Here, I thought Rosner combined not-so-satisfactorily a post-modern uncertainty about what we can really know with great faith in the capacity of the critical reader or journalist to get to the bottom of things. American journalistic pretension to objectivity almost sounded like the American naiveté he seizes upon. But his epistemology is certainly practical. There are things we can know (the Jenin massacre didn’t happen), and things we can’t (what happened to Muhammed al-Durrah).

Granted the last question, I asked about my personal cause celèbre: archaeology in East Jerusalem driven by vulgar ideology. I offered myself up as the guinea pig here. It's an Israeli media story that, for me, is opaque. I read about it in English in Ha'aretz and on the website of the Israeli Antiquities Authority. But I can't seem to figure it out. Are all the projects undertaken in the Ir David legal or illegal (under Israeli, not international law)? Was there a "cultural context" that Rosner could provide that would explain the seemingly contradictory reports? Rosner's answer, and he must have been fatigued at this point, was to draw again a distinction, however provisory, between the forces of objectivity and those of subjectivity. There are the "objective" archaeologists, and there are the ideologically driven right-wing zealots who fund and support the dubious excavations. At this point, Rosner could have taken a line from the Berkeley-version of Benny Morris, who, when an audience member complained that a faulty microphone rendered his lecture inaudible, explained bluntly, "This is the situation." In the final analysis, Rosner admitted, we have to trust someone. "I trust reporters, not newspapers," he said, naming a few of his favorite colleagues' names. Indeed, this is the situation. I agree.

Sad Comment on Israeli Archaeology

Construction in Maaleh Hazeitim (Photo: cnn.com)

BY NOAH K.

This may seem like utter trivia, pure kishkushim just one day after Bibi met Obama, but excuse me, this is important: a ceramic vessel with a Hebrew inscription was found in East Jerusalem. Excavations in the Ras al-Amud section of the city uncovered a "water pitcher" bearing the name "Menachem," according to Ha'aretz, "marking the first time such a handle bearing this name has been found in Jerusalem." Never mind that the Israeli Antiquities Authority people who put out this information to the press don't/can't date the vessel anymore precisely than "somewhere between the Canaanite era (2200 - 1900 B.C.E.) and the end of the first Temple period (the 7th - 8th centuries B.C.E.) [sic]," which I suppose means either that they haven't looked at it very closely in their haste, or that it's the kind of household ware that sometimes doesn't change significantly for centuries, even for a millenium. Never mind the gross hazards of trying to identify this particular Menachem, with, say, some pharaonic official in the region. The point is if course that the IAA found an Israelite in East J-lem.

So what's the big deal? As I have noted before on this blog, the legal status of excavations and of antiquities uncovered in East Jerusalem (and perhaps elsewhere in the territories), both under Israeli law and under international agreements on cultural heritage, is at best murky. What drives archaeology in East Jerusalem is settler money. And the IAA and other relevant authorities tend to look the other way when enforcement of the law conflicts with the objectives of organizations like the Ir David Foundation. Here, we have something slightly different -- a salvage excavation. Construction of a "girl's school" uncovered some ancient remains that, presumably, were then taken out scientifically. Just like nearby Siwan, another hotspot neighborhood, Ras al-Amud has attracted both controversial settlement building, at Maaleh Hazeitim, and archaeological interest. As Nadav Shragai wrote last year in Ha'aretz:

"Right-wing activists ascribe great significance to widening Jewish construction in Ras al-Amud, and to realizing ownership of lots and buildings that it has managed to acquire in recent years in that vicinity.

According to their thinking, Maaleh Hazeitim makes it harder to create a Palestinian territorial corridor, a sort of "safe passage" between the West Bank to the east, and the Temple Mount."

For me, this is very disconcerting; obviously a combustible situation . The best way to avoid another outbreak of violence like the one we saw surrounding the Dung Gate controversy is to depoliticize archaeology as much as possible in greater Jerusalem.

Secularism, Critique, Blasphemy, and the 2006 Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade

Two of the posters ("pashkavilim") shown above are part of the campaign against the gay pride parade in Jerusalem. The one on the right reproduces a headline from Ha'aretz which states that "Religious leaders have warned that the Pride Parade in Jerusalem will cause bloodshed." The second one, on the left-hand side, is from Ma'ariv and cites Shimon Peres as saying that "The homos have crossed the line." I took this photograph in Jerusalem in late June 2006. As always: click to enlarge.

Last Saturday, I had the opportunity to see the New York premiere of "Jerusalem is Proud to Present" (ירושלים גאה להציג, 2007) as part of the Jewish Film Festival at Walter Reade theater. In Israel, it has been shown on Channel 2 and Channel 8 and screened at various film festivals.

This latest documentary by the Israeli director Nitzan Gilady ("In Satmar Custody," 2003) is about the attempts to hold a Gay Pride Parade (מצעד הגאווה) in Jerusalem in the summer of 2006, as part of the international "World Pride" celebrations. The parade, which was to go through the city center, had originally been scheduled for August 6. It was postponed several times, in part because of the war still raging in early August, and in part because of the fears that police would not be able to protect marchers from the wrath of religious protesters. Ultimately, the "march" was held as a rally in a closed stadium, guarded by thousands of police officers, on November 10.

Gilady's film begins with a surreal press conference attended by Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religious leaders in Jerusalem, watching clips from previous gay pride parades in other parts of the world, and denouncing the planned event as an abomination. Throughout, it gives space to both supporters and opponents of the Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade, though it is clear that Gilady, who said after the screening that he had only recently come out to his parents, has chosen a position.

One one side, we see the activists and members of the Jerusalem Open House (English). They include the first openly gay Jerusalem city councilor, Sa'ar Netanel (Meretz), elected at the same time as its first ultra-Orthodox mayor, Uri Lupoliansky; Adam Russo, the victim of a stabbing attack at the first gay pride parade in Jerusalem on June 30, 2005 (the assailant was eventually convicted of attempted murder); Noa Sattat, the director of the Open House; and Boodi, a 19-year-old drag queen from Ramallah, who performs at Jerusalem's only gay club, Shushan (now closed), and eventually seeks asylum in the U.S. after being kidnapped by Hamas militants.

Arrayed against them, we see Mina Fenton, a national-religious municipal politician who not only organizes a group of American-born settler women using her bad English and crude sense of taste (the Americans seem slightly more attentive to public opinion) but also solicits support in Arabic from a hijab-clad by-passer. We also encounter a Brooklyn expatriate, Rabbi Yehuda Levin, a dogged opponent of the "gay political elite." Less openly involved than these somewhat ridiculous figures, are the various religious leaders of Jerusalem - the Christian clergymen, the Muslim sheikhs, and the Sephardi and Ashkenazi rabbis. Finally, we see the anonymous masses of rioting ultra-Orthodox protesters.

As the date of the parade approaches, tensions rise and the incitement on the part of the opponents of the parade becomes ever more murderous. The director and Sa'ar Netanel find themselves surrounded in a car by a mob of haredi hooligans, beating on the windows. What follows is footage from various news channels of several days of rioting in the city by young ultra-Orthodox men. Traffic blockades are set up, dumpsters set on fire, and stones thrown. The police respond mercilessly with water cannons and beatings. One foreign commentator calls it the "intifada of the ultra-Orthodox."

The rhetoric of the Open House activists is unapologetically secularist. Netanel speaks of the forces of "darkness," and the black masses of haredi men who appear in the film, anonymous and often in conditions of near-darkness, only reinforce this rhetoric without problematizing it in any way. For Netanel and others, this is a battle of democracy against theocracy, of tolerance against bigotry, of liberalism against religious fanaticism, of progress against backwardness.

The "ultra-Orthodox" intifada invites comparison with the riots that swept across the Muslim world following the Danish cartoon controversy. In both cases, the aggrieved parties - religious believers -responded with violence to what they saw as symbolic desecration (of the Prophet or of the Holy City). The "perpetrators" of these blasphemies, however, presented their actions as a matter of inherent rights and freedoms, which had to be vigorously asserted.

Last October, I attended a colloquium at UC Berkeley's Townsend Center for the Humanities, which posed the question: Is Critique Secular? The first panel discussion of the day featured a paper read by Talal Asad (Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center) called "Reflections on Blasphemy and Secular Criticism," with local superstar professors Wendy Brown (Political Science), Judith Butler (Rhetoric), and Saba Mahmood (Anthropology) responding.

In his paper, Talal Asad argued that

The conflict that many Euro-Americans saw in the Danish cartoons scandal was between the West and Islam, each championing opposing values: democracy, secularism, liberty, and reason on the one side, and on the other the many opposites – tyranny, religion, authority, and unreason (Asad 3).

Referring to secular critique itself as a kind of violence, Asad, while claiming to stake out a position beyond the normative, blasted "Western secularists" who can conceive of blasphemy only as "a constraint on the freedom of speech guaranteed by Western principles and by the pursuit of reason so central to Western culture."

Asad wants us to see blasphemy "not simply as a bid for free speech against irrational taboos but as violence done to human relations that are invested with great value" (Asad 16). I may be wrong, but my intuition is that while such an argument finds an audience in the Western academy when the violent protesters are Muslims upset about an insult to Muhammad, it seems to lose a lot of its force when those rioting against blasphemy are ultra-Orthodox Jews upset about the "desecration" of Jerusalem by homosexuals.

One Last Pass Through the Dung Gate

For the past few days, the authors of this blog have been involved in a low-intensity dispute over one of the Old City of Jerusalem's many gates. In yesterday’s post, N asserted that the “Dung Gate” (שער האשפות) should be distinguished from the the Mughrabi ("Moors'") Gate (שער המוגרבים). As N pointed out, the “Dung Gate” – a name which originally appears in the Bible – is the southern entrance to the Old City and the Western Wall plaza. For those familiar with the area, it’s the gate that is usually used by buses and vehicles to enter and leave the area. Here's a good photograph taken from a Russian-language site for anyone wishing to refresh their memory:

The "Dung Gate"

What has so far eluded me and others involved in this blog is the distinction between the “Dung Gate” and the “Mughrabi Gate”. I am accustomed to hearing both names used interchangeably for the above gate. An Arab friend of mine who works as a lawyer in Jerusalem always referred to the “Dung Gate” as the “Mughrabi Gate”. Numerous websites, including the Wikipedia entry cited above, indicate that both names are used for the gate. The origin of the name שער האשפות (“Dung Gate”) is biblical. The Arabs of the area, however, refer to it as Bab al-Magharbe (Gate of the Maghrebins). An old map that my father retrieved for me from his Jerusalem-related mini-library attests to the fact that the “Dung Gate” was in fact referred to as the Mughrabi Gate:


The above map was scanned from a book originally published 1876 by the German travel writer Karl Baedeker. The original appears to have been published in English, rather than German, in London, under the name Jerusalem and its Surroundings. In the bottom left of the above map, the "Dung Gate" is labeled "Bab al-Mogharibe". The term "Dung Gate" is also included in brackets with the prefix "vulgar".

What is missing from Baedeker map is a label indicating the location of the other Mughrabi Gate, the entrance to the Temple Mount, that N mentioned. This gate is very clearly designated in an Israeli map first drawn in 1936 by P.G. Salmon and updated and printed in 1970 by the Israeli Land Survey Department in 1970:



Those who know Hebrew will note that the "Dung Gate" is identified as such in the bottom left of the above map. Only the Hebrew term שער האשפות is used. If we trace the curved earthworks or ramp that leads from this gate upwards, we reach the entrance to the Temple Mount, which the map identifies as the שער המערביים, which essentially means "Gate of the Maghrebis" [Westerners, i.e. those coming from the West - the Maghreb]. [An interesting linguistic aside that I cannot help but insert here is that the Arabic letter غ, transcribed into English as gh and properly pronounced like a Parisian "R", is transformed into an ע (ayn) in Hebrew. Thus al-Maghrib - المغرب ("the West" in Arabic) is ha-Ma'arav - המערב in Hebrew.]

The fuss that is currently being made is, of course, about the ramp that connects the "Dung Gate" (or Mughrabi Gate or whatever) to the other Mughrabi Gate that leads up to the Temple Mount. The wooden ramp that has been in use for this purpose in the past, has now been torn up and the mound on which it rests is being leveled. Currently, excavations are underway to locate any artifacts before a new walkway is constructed. Here are several pictures taken by Amos last summer of the old wooden ramp that is now being torn down:

This shows the ramp pretty clearly; Kotel to the left, al-Aqsa to the right

Here you can see just a small part of the ramp but maybe also the gate that leads directly to the mount

Another view of the ramp

What we need now is another post summarizing the history of both gates - when they were built, when they were re-opened and when they were modified.