Toward an Open Tomb

by Warschawski, Michel

• ISBN13: 9781583671092
• ISBN10: 1583671099
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-07-01
• Publisher: Monthly Review Pr

Summary

Since the breakdown of the Oslo peace process in 2000 and the beginning of the second Intifada, conflict has escalated in Israel/Palestine and come to seem irreversible. The overwhelming power of the Israeli military has been unleashed against a largely defenseless population in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza, driving Palestinians to despair and to desperate measures of retaliation. The author of this book, Michel Warschawski, has for many decades been active in building alliances of Jews and Palestinians to oppose the Israeli occupation. In this book, however, he focuses especially on the effects of the occupation on the occupiers--that is, on Israeli society--rather than its victims.Warschawski describes the atrocities of the occupation--from the sack of Ramallah to the massacre in Jenin, the razing of houses and refugee camps, shooting at ambulances and hospitals, the use of Palestinian civilians as human shields--showing how each of these pushes back the boundaries of what was previously thinkable. He documents the resulting shifts in Israeli political thought, citing Ariel Sharon, army officers and even rabbis who begin by describing Palestinians as Nazis and end by relying on the German army's tactics for subjugating the Warsaw ghetto.Toward an Open Tombseeks to explain the forces within Israeli society and culture that are leading to this self-defeating result.Warschawski has the keen eye of an Israeli insider. He develops a powerful critique of Israeli policies with a persuasive power drawn from his own Jewish origins and his deepening devotion to Jewish traditions.

Table of Contents

Preamble: Beach Stories	9	(2)
Green Light for a Massacre	11	(13)
From Muhamed El-Dura to the Destruction of Ramallah	13	(4)
. . . And to the Jenin Massacre	17	(4)
On the Misuse of ``Self-Defense''	21	(3)
A Double Dehumanization	24	(12)
Interlude: The Walls' Turn to Speak	34	(2)
The New Face of Racism	36	(10)
Brutality Without Borders	36	(4)
Delirium	40	(2)
The Perverse Return of the Shoah	42	(4)
The Wall	46	(8)
A New Ghetto	46	(3)
Unilateral Separation	49	(2)
The Wall and the Bomb	51	(3)
Counter-Reformation	54	(12)
Putting Arab Citizens Back in Their Place	55	(3)
National Revolution	58	(4)
Degeneration	62	(3)
Interlude: Christmas in Bethlehem	65	(1)
A Burdensome Legacy	66	(10)
The Big Lie	66	(2)
The Worm in the Oslo Apple	68	(3)
The Treason of the Intellectuals	71	(2)
Fewer Rights, More Humiliation	73	(3)
The End of an Interval	76	(10)
Choosing Normality	76	(3)
The Forces of Resistance	79	(2)
National Reconciliation	81	(4)
Interlude: The End of an Era	85	(1)
The New Israel	86	(12)
A Fake Democracy	87	(3)
A New Politicalclass	90	(3)
New Ideology for a New Regime	93	(2)
The Left Gives Up	95	(3)
Epilogue: Toward Masada?	98	(6)
Afterword to the English Translation	104	(4)
Notes	108	(9)
Index	117