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Maneuvering Between the Headlines: An American Lives through the Intifada

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An important book. A compelling read. With her eyes and heart wide open, Motro creates a tapestry of relevant details. Maneuvering Between the Headlines reveals the complexity of present-day Israel as experienced by a responsible, compassionate adult. Her fine writing and brave spirit give me hope in this impossible situation...

Sure, there is fighting in the Levant. And yes, people are getting killed on both sides. But this fight is about human rights. I've no idea if anyone will win. But I do suspect that those Arabs who insist that Jews and other non-Muslims in the Middle East must be denied human rights are going to have to change their ways. Or else get hurt badly, and probably not by some small nation like Israel.

Motro, however, is more concerned with the morality of the Israeli victims. To me, that is not a very interesting question. Moreover, I think an overemphasis on this question tends to fit right in with propaganda that the Israeli victims are in fact the villains.

Motro knew Jamal al-Dura on a first name basis, so she has plenty to say about the death of Mohammed al-Dura. But I think she misses the whole point of the incident.

The truth is that it is unlikely that Israelis killed Mohammed al-Dura, and even less likely that Israelis killed him on purpose. It is likely that Arabs killed al-Dura and quite possible that the entire incident was staged. While Motro mentions some of these possibilities, she pretty much dismisses them without cause. Worse, she fails to mention a couple of things that we can all be completely sure of:

1) No matter what actually happened in the al-Dura case, plenty of anti-Israeli propaganda is simply staged events.

2) Accounts of actual deaths of Arabs will almost always be twisted by Arab propagandists so that Israel will be blamed, with no doubt or reservations expressed by the propagandists, no matter what the facts are.

These are the lessons we all need to keep in mind. After all, we humans fare poorly when cut off from truth. If we're ever going to stop the warfare in the region, we'll need to value truth far more than we do now.

Motro makes the same mistakes with regard to Rachel Corrie, a supporter of Arab terror who died in what appears to have been an accident. The author wonders why Israelis were not outraged by Corrie's death. I think she would have done better to wonder why Corrie had not been expelled from Israel much earlier, both for her own safety and for the safety of the Jews she came to Israel to hurt.

Once again, even if Corrie's death had been murder, that would not have proved that some Arabs are right to want to eliminate Jewish rights in the Middle East (or that some Germans were right to want to do the same in Germany seventy years ago). Plenty of people get killed in wartime, and it would be a surprise but not a shock to discover that one or two out of a number of deaths that were previously thought to be accidental really might have been murders.

Motro mentions some antisemitic incidents in Europe. That includes the "Snow White" display (which praised a suicide bomber) in Sweden that so annoyed the Israeli ambassador to that country. And it includes the bad reputation the BBC has in Israel. Motro shows how far she is from reality when she asks if the problems with the BBC stem from Israeli bad deeds or poor Israeli PR! Obviously, I think the answer any reasonable person would give is "neither."

It's too bad that Motro is not an Arab. After all, she does have a tendency to discuss facts on all sides of the issue. Where she falls down is in her overall assignment of blame. And I think this is caused in part by a huge overemphasis on asking what Jewish Israelis such as herself could have done differently. Had she been an Arab, the book might have had some balance in this area.

This book is about how an Israeli who hated her own country before the Intifada came to grips with the affect of having to live under terrorism for years of her life. Part of this book is about how facts and the media distort events, like the case of Mohamad al-Dura, however even in these investigations this book is sadly lacking. We don't get a good look at the truth behind what happened in Jenin, how thousands of international reporters faked a 'massacre' that never happened, how the big elite media of the world and millions were deceived into believing thousands had died when 38 had actually been killed.

Here we have a view of how Israeli society became 'uncivil' during the intifada. After 2000 Israeli civilians were murdered between 2000-2004 the author is astounded to find that society has changed and people have dared to condemn and confront terrorism and Islamism. The author is horrified that Israelis became angry that they were being murdered every day. This book shows shock that now its hard to visit Palestinian villages because suddenly their is hate between people. This is simply an ignorant account of what happens when rich people who live in comfortable rich environments with their bourgeoisie friends are suddenly confronted with the reality. Terrorism doesn't discriminate based on class or political ideology and perhaps that was the great shock of the story, that some rich Tel Aviv anti-Israeli academics found out they could also be victims of the type of Islamic and nationalist racist extremism among the certain parts of Palestinian society that they themselves had coddled for so long.

In the end the society that became uncivil was also Palestinian society. It also became hateful and angry. This unbalanced account tries to pretend that only Israel reacted to the conflict and that only Israelis became 'uncivil'.

Seth J. Frantzman