JODY WRITES:
Everybody might find this story encouraging. It's from an article in the Nov. Utne Reader (not online yet) by a woman who went to Palestine as part of the International Solidarity Movement to protest against and bear witness to the Israeli occupation. She and 2 other ISM volunteers, looking for shelter before curfew in Balata refugee camp, were welcomed and befriended by some Palestinian women. Excerpt follows: ----

"Around us young men are prowling with guns, houses are exploding, lives are being shattered. But we are in an intimate world of women. Hanin brushes my wild hair and ties it back. We try to talk about our lives....The women of this camp are educated, sophisticated -- many we have met are professionals, teachers, nurses, or students when it is possible to go to school. "Are you Christian?" Hanin finally asks. Melissa, Jessica and I look at each other. All of us are Jewish, and we're not sure what the reaction will be if we admit it. Jessica speaks for us. "Jewish," she says. The women don't understand the word. We try several variations, but finally we're forced to use the blunt and dreaded "Yahoud." "Yahoud! Hanin says. She gives a little surprised laugh, looks at the other women. "Beautiful!" And that is all. Her welcome to us is undiminished. She shows me to the shower, dresses me in her own flowered nightgown and robe, and gives me the empty side of the bed she usually shares with her husband, who has been arrested by the Yahoud. Two of the children sleep with us. ....How have I arrived here, I wonder, at an age when I should be at home making plum jam and doll clothes for grandchildren, to be comforting a Palestinian boy in a night disrupted by gunfire? I lie there in awe at the trust that has been given me, one of the people of the enemy, put to bed with the children. At that moment, there do indeed seem to be powers greater than the guns I hear all around me: the great surging compassionate power that overcomes prejudice and hate."

Hanin should be an example to us all. She isn't living in some PC wonderland but in a refugee camp under Israeli siege; yet she discerns rightly - morally - reasonably - compassionately - between Jewish enemy and Jewish friend. This is the kind of discrimination that the world needs more of. Good luck to you too.

Dear Jody.

Whose "prejudice and hate" do you think this little story encapsulates? Palestinian "prejudice and hate" against Israeili/Jewish occupation for sure, since the Jews in this article appear to automatically anticipate it. More latently, perhaps the Jewish author is reflecting upon Jewry's "prejudice and hate." But this is more deeply buried, and one must make a greater leap to presume that the author's comments are self-congratulatory, in that the four Jewish women represent a transcendence of JEWISH "prejudice and hate." But let's accept that it's there.

Then, does the Jewish author of this piece EQUATE Jewish and Palestinian "prejudice and hate?" Obviously yes, and this seems to me very unfair. Is it just to examine the "prejudice" of the oppressed and the oppressor in the exact same light? (We're speaking here in generic terms -- Jew and Palestinian -- which is what this little story is really about.) To use the most dramatic example, one that should provide you clarity, do you think Jews had any "prejudices and hates" about Germans during World War II? At the heighth of war, might any of their "prejudices" have been based in reason?

These Palestinian women are indeed extraordinary. But I am not surprised. Arab culture prides itself on its hospitality to strangers. There is enormous dignity in that society. Alas, tragically, this culture is being destroyed by the Israeli "sabra" ethic which, on all fronts, is smothering them.

If these women -- at least one of them who has had a son arrested by the Israeli army -- starting screaming, "Jews! Jews! Out, out!", could you have blamed them? Or would they, in your eyes, be bigots? Would such rage be "prejudice and bigotry" to you? And given the fact that Palestinian society is carefully monitored by Jewish spies of all sorts, would you fault the Palestinian host for considering the possibility that the four Jews in her own home might be up to no good? Is it insane in your view to wonder if the International Solidarity Movement has itself been infiltrated by Israeli eyes?

Would you fault the Palestinians for their "stereotypes" of oppression? Would you fault them for presuming that, no matter what the intention of these Jewish visitors, these guests were in extremely important ways NOT Palestinians and will, sooner or later, retrace their steps into a life quite more comfortable?

I understand that this Palestinian saintliness is not really the focus of your interest in forwarding this excerpt to me. It is not solely to highlight these women's amazing hospitality, but to highlight forgiveness of Judeocentrism and the Jewish community's overwhelming support of apartheid Israel -- as, in your view, the implicit duty of any "unprejudiced" moral person.

And, in the wings, it appears you somewhat solicit forgiveness for Israel itself, the state self-proclaimed in the name of all Jews everywhere, which is still a long, long way from concluding its mutilation of the Palestinian people.

You are also providing an example of a Jewish anomaly to the Judeocentric monolith, which -- in your apparent view -- assuages the "generalizations" against the self-proclaimed JEWISH state that oppresses these women.

Who are the REAL heroines in this little story you sent me?

Do you think there were many (any?) Jews who, upon discovering four Germans in their house during World War II, would proclaim "Beautiful! and that is all." (?) Would a German, any German, be welcomed in the Jewish Warsaw ghetto, divorced from the fervent hope that such a German's sympathy could in some way ameliorate Jewish suffering?

Yes, yes. There are heroes (heroines) in the current Middle East trauma. But there are heroines, and then there are HEROINES. In relative power and so much else, the Jews and the Palestinians are very, very different.

I note for you too that this little excerpt is innately Judeocentric. I fatigue of so many Jews telling the Palestinian story, in the way that so many Jews dictate the African-American one. Let the Palestinian women tell their OWN story. Let these women tell their OWN thoughts when they suddenly discovered four Jews sitting on their couch, in the name of aiding them. I mistrust an almost complete Jewish mediation of the Palestinian struggle -- much the way in which President Clinton's (coincidentally) four "peace negotiators" to the Palestinans were also ALL Jewish.

Bless the four Jewish women who came to help the Palestinians. But they in no way counterbalance the weight of the enormous problem, nor "Jewish" guilt in it.