Shailaza's Blog

Tag: jonathan freedland

  • The War Will End

    Israel vs Palestine

    Part II

    What happens when a nation is at war? For those living in the country, it becomes a never-ending battle to survive every day. For those who do not live in the country, it binds them to their besieged motherland and leaves them vulnerable to attacks in the foreign land.

    In his recent article titled “A brutal year and the tale of two Israels” which was published in the Guardian, Jonathan Freedland writes “There’s the Israel you see on the news: the mighty bully, wildly lashing out at its neighbours, that, not content with turning much of Gaza into rubble, has now rolled its tanks into Lebanon – apparently for no better reason than because it can. This Israel is the one indicted by the world’s courts, where it is accused of the most heinous crimes. This Israel has, for a year, brought out millions in mass demonstrations in the major cities of Europe, the US and beyond, a scale of protest unseen for two decades, politicising a generation that has decided that opposition to Israel is the great issue of our age. And then there’s the Israel you glimpse in the testimony of the men, women and very young children who survived a massacre  – telling how they huddled, alone and undefended, in bathrooms and kids’ bedrooms, for long, terrified hours as Hamas men surrounded their homes, firing bullets through doors and hurling grenades through windows, before eventually setting house after house ablaze, yelping in delight at what they themselves called a “slaughter”. This Israel is the one still yearning for the hostages seized that day, scores of whom remain in captivity in Gaza. This Israel is the one whose north has been pounded by Hezbollah rockets for 12 months straight, forcing about 65,000 Israeli civilians from their homes.”
    He further writes, “Take the war that has caused so much pain for all of the last year. What the world sees in Gaza is a benighted strip of land that Israel has crushed, heedless of the consequences for civilian life. What Israelis see is a cruel Hamas enemy that revealed its true face on 7 October and which has embedded itself inside and beneath the streets and homes of Gaza, using the entire population as a human shield, so that when innocents die there, it is Hamas who should bear the blame. You can keep on like this, each example exposing the gulf that separates Israel from a swath of world opinion. But all this only points to the deeper difference. To most outsiders, Israel is a regional superpower, backed by a global superpower. It is strong and secure. But that is not how it looks from the inside. Israelis see their society as small – the size of New Jersey – besieged and vulnerable.
    For several decades, the rest of the world could say such talk was absurd; that whatever Israel’s origins, with the state established just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the country that existed now was muscled and armed, with nothing to fear. But then came October.”

    Jonathan Freedland with author and journalist Sarah Walker

    You have talked about the tale of two Israels. One which is struggling, the other which is standing strong. How do you think this war is likely to end?

    “It is a very hard question. Wars usually end when both sides are exhausted and have come to the conclusion that they are not going to win this war by military means and that they will have to negotiate. That’s usually how conflicts end or they end with one side utterly defeated and in total surrender. That’s just how history has tended to work. In this case, I don’t see the latter ever really happening. So instead, what you have to look to is what diplomats have been working on for many, many months, which is the ceasefire agreement by which there’d be a pause in the fighting, there would be a release of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza and a release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails and an agreement to stop the fighting at least for a while. That seems to me the best way of ending things, although it may only be a pause. The problem has been that Hamas, it seems, is not really ready to go through with that. They’ve never fully 100% said yes. And Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also never said yes and people debate the reasons why. But there is a ceasefire agreement there and neither side has yet been ready to do it and so the war continues. So, the best way of ending the war will be a ceasefire agreement on both sides and then a negotiation that delivers that ceasefire agreement that might continue and eventually get on to the longer-term core issues of this conflict.”

    Jonathan Freedland with Simon Mayo of Drivetime Show

    Since the war, how have the lives of Jews living outside Israel changed?

    “Their lives have changed since October 7th in a couple of ways. Firstly, a whole lot of people who had not particularly identified strongly as Jewish before suddenly found that they felt very connected to the events of October 7th and they felt connected to Israel, which is after all the largest Jewish country in the world. And I found that lots of people I’ve known for a long time who didn’t feel particularly Jewish before suddenly felt very Jewish because of this attack on Jews in huge numbers and with such devastating consequences. They felt a sense of solidarity that they didn’t even know they had in them. Jews are continuing their normal lives, Jewish events go on, and people live and go to school and go to work in all the ways they used to.

    The difference is that there has been the most enormous increase in recorded incidents of anti-Semitism, meaning anti-Jewish racism. The figures are through the roof in Britain and in America. The figures have increased by an enormous quantity. And that is deeply troubling, that as soon as there was this huge attack on Jews in Israel, then Jews themselves were attacked all around the world. And that started happening even before Israel’s military response in Gaza. So, you can’t say it was just a direct protest at Israel because, for one thing, it came before Israel had reacted. But for another, the targets were not Israeli, they were Jewish targets. So, synagogues were vandalized and there were threats outside Jewish schools. So, yes, there is more security and there is more nervousness. You do hear about Jewish people who used to wear, for example, the kippa, the religious skull cap that men wear, but some Jews were no longer wearing those things because they didn’t want to be identified as Jews in public. So, there was a kind of nervousness, but very much continuing to live and work and go out in all the same ways as before.”

    Jonathan Freedland with other authors and their books

    How will this war really end?

    “In some ways, this is the same question. How will this end? Probably in a ceasefire agreement when both sides feel exhausted from fighting. There was just one other thought I was going to mention about how and how this could end.
    There is a group of Arab states who are very opposed to Iran and are opposed to Iran’s proxies, its allies, who have surrounded Israel with a so-called ring of fire. And I’m thinking, like I wrote in that article that you mentioned, of the Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. They’re all arms of Iran. There are a whole series of Arab countries that oppose those allies of Iran. And here I’m thinking of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, and others. Those countries have offered a kind of new alliance with Israel, all lined up against Iran. What Israel would have to do to make that alliance happen is accept that one day there will be a Palestinian state. I think Israel should make that move. I would like the Prime Minister of Israel to say yes, we accept that one day there will be a Palestinian state alongside Israel. I think that’s the moral thing to do and it’s strategically the right thing to do for Israel’s own sake. However, the current Israeli government is not ready to make that move and does not believe in it. I think they’re wrong. But to me, that would be a very good long-term way of ending this war and forging out of it a new alliance, which offers a new possibility for Israel’s future. I think that option is on the table. But many people in Israel, including the Prime Minister and the government, do not agree with me.”

    ..Concluded

    This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on October 24, 2024

  • War Anniversary Month

    JEWS CAN DEFEND THEMSELVES

    What is about the Jews that throughout history they have been persecuted and oppressed? Why does this Israel-Palestine war show no sign of abating? Award-winning author and journalist Jonathan Freedland believes that the answer is not that simple.

    Ever since I met him at the Jaipur Literature Festival this year, it has been an ongoing conversation about a plethora of topics including the year-long raging war between Israel and Palestine and the Jewish community with the award-winning British author, and journalist, Jonathan Freedland. He is also a columnist at the Guardian and the host of the Guardian’s Politics Weekly America Podcast. He also presents BBC Radio 4’s The Long View and is the author of the award-winning The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World, along with several thrillers under the pseudonym Sam Bourne. He is a past winner of an Orwell Prize for journalism.


    When we met at the Jaipur Literature Festival, the very first question that I asked him was about why is there so much hatred for Jews? Hitler persecuted them, they have always been talking about the promised land but their promised land has always been besieged with wars.
    Jonathan said, “I don’t think the explanation will lie with Jews but instead it will lie with the people who hate them. And so have to ask why is it that there has been this hate throughout history. There are all kinds of theories about it. The one that is probably the heart of the matter is that in the Christian world, the Jews stood out for refusing to embrace Christianity and that became very irritating for the followers of Christianity for centuries. It was an irritant to them that there was this group of people who were refusing to fall in line and the very fact they continued to exist proved that there was another way. For example, in England, the country I am from, the only minority at all in the 12th century in England were Jews. Everybody else was Christian. Today, we’re used to minorities. But for many centuries the only minority in all of Europe, before there were Muslims for example in Europe, would have been Jews. So, for the masses, there is indeed something annoying to people about a group that refuses to fall in line with everyone else. That’s one part of it. There are different things in the Muslim world. Again, the refusal to adopt the main faith is part of it. And then there is another theory which says, it goes back even further, which is Judaism, the religion, offered the form of the Ten Commandments (which were the first sort of moral rules). People don’t like rules and they don’t like to have to behave in a certain way and Jews have been in this theory. I’m not saying I necessarily agree with it. Jews have been like a guilty conscience to mankind.
    Jews are around sort of saying you should behave better, you shouldn’t kill, you shouldn’t commit adultery, etc. according to the rule. Therefore, people would rather not have a voice in their ear saying to behave better. I believe this was also because 5,000 years ago, Judaism was the first religion to insist on there being one God. Monotheism begins with Abraham and the Jews and then Christianity comes next and then Islam after that. And therefore, before then, with many gods, you could live differently and Judaism has sort of come along early and spoiled that way of living. But all said and done, the truth is that it is hard to work out why there is prejudice against black people, why there is prejudice against people who are not white or people who are brown. It’s a very hard thing to explain why prejudices live on.”

    Why do you think Hitler hated the Jews?
    “Well, he was steeped in anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish racism for centuries. I don’t think there’s any value in trying to think of there being a rational or logical reason why people hate minorities. They always have.”

    From Hitler’s time to this time, when the wars are continuing, what has changed?

    “The big change in the world for Jews anyway has been the fact that Jews are no longer unable to defend themselves. So that for 2,000 years Jews were always a minority who were vulnerable because they never had any means to defend themselves. It’s fascinating, in 1947 there were two big partitions in the world, one that created India and Pakistan and the other one that created Israel. That vote of the United Nations in 1947 said there should be a Jewish state and from 1948 onwards there has been a Jewish state. And now for the first time in 2,000 years, Jews have an army and can defend themselves and that is a very big difference. In the big sweep of Jewish history that’s the big change.”

    So, now that the Jews have a great army and are defending themselves, can it put an end to this hatred in the long run?
    “No. It has been there for many decades. But it is as strong now. Anti-Semitic attacks in London are high, they’re up. More now than in many decades. Same in the United States. So, it has not ended the hatred. But I think it has meant that people, the attitude is different because there is now a place where Jews are defended. Now as it happens, the act of defending themselves has been part of this war between Israel and Hamas, which of course has brought out a whole lot more hatred for Israel and therefore for people who stand with Israel. So, the ability of Jews to defend themselves has not ended the hatred, it has in a way just created a new set of problems.”

    Can you relate some anecdotes that have shaped your writing?

    “There is this stereotype about Jews that they are miserly with money, that they hold on to money. It goes back a thousand years actually to the time when Jews were not allowed to do other jobs and the only job, they were allowed to do was to lend money. The king would allow them to collect taxes or lend money. And so, this arose, this idea that Jews are somehow mean with money. So, years back, my wife and I, were a young couple looking to buy our first home in England. We were at a flat that we liked and we asked the agent who was showing us around about would the place cost. The agent told us the price and said that we could negotiate with the owners of the flat. He said that the owners are Jewish and added that they might squeal a bit. He used the word squeal which one would use for the noise a pig makes. It was a very racist thing to say, that the people who owned the flat would somehow want more money and would behave like animals. It was just a small moment, you know, it came and it went, but it was proof to me that there are still these attitudes. This man didn’t know that we were Jewish. We told him we were; he was very embarrassed. It was just a prejudice that just came out. But all the time, you know, even if it’s not me personally, there are these stereotypes that sort of live on, you know, this idea that Jews operate and conspire in secret networks. And so, I remember once at work, a friend of mine had phoned and left a message with a number, and the colleague who took the number said, one of your networks called. He didn’t say one of your friends, he said one of your networks. And he would never say that to somebody else, but the word came to his mind because he knew I was Jewish. And so immediately he thought Jews have networks as if they are sort of secretive.”

    In India, there are two worlds. In one there’s a caste system where people are treated differently on the basis of their caste and in the other India, the caste system doesn’t matter. It is more cosmopolitan. Is it the same for Jews as well?

    “I think that’s very interesting, what you said about India. Maybe it is something like that, where both things can exist at once, where on the one hand, you know, you can grow up and live without really encountering these prejudices. On the other, it’s there. So, for example, if you go past any Jewish building in London, or Paris, or Berlin, well I don’t know about America, but certainly in Europe, you will always see a security guard outside the door of a Jewish school, a kindergarten even, for three and four-year-old children because even these buildings are prone to attack. If you go to a synagogue or a Jewish house of worship, there has to be security anywhere in the places I’ve mentioned. We get used to it now, we’re just, that’s part of life. But that’s not there because people want to do it, that’s there because they have to do it. There is a security threat. So, these communities are living under threat. I’m not a particularly religious Jew, so I don’t wear a cap, but people who do wear a skull cap, are vulnerable in traveling around. Some choose now not to. Even if you just get on with your life, it’s there.”

    To be continued…

    This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on October 23, 2024.