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 Warning From a ‘Burning Land’Posted on Mar 3, 2011
By Rayyan Al-Shawaf The Israeli-Palestinian conflict hardly lacks news coverage. Additionally, a range of opinions—from the moderate to the extreme—on all aspects of the dispute is widely published. This makes it nearly impossible for a book on the subject to be groundbreaking. The best that one can realistically hope for is a few original observations amid a mass of familiar reportage. And that is precisely what Greg Myre and Jennifer Griffin manage in “This Burning Land: Lessons From the Front Lines of the Transformed Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” The book does not mark a milestone in Middle East journalism, but it is good of its kind, and avoids the two major temptations that often waylay Middle East correspondents and analysts: doomsday predictions of a major conflagration and facile solutions to complex problems. Instead, husband and wife Myre and Griffin, both seasoned journalists, soberly posit that the conflict is intractable. Having arrived in Jerusalem in 1999, when Israelis and Palestinians seemed headed for peace, they witnessed then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon’s provocative visit to the Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary in 2000, which ignited the second Palestinian intifada. The couple remained in Israel for eight years, during which time Myre was a correspondent for The Associated Press and later The New York Times and Griffin was a correspondent for Fox News. Though the authors’ pessimism understates the crucial role of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and its suffocation of Gaza in perpetuating the conflict, it is partly justified. For one thing, decades of Israeli government-sponsored Jewish settlement in the West Bank and Gaza—illegal under international law—have ensured that ending the occupation, in the unlikely event a future Israeli government should wish to do so, would be no easy task. As the authors bluntly put it: “Israel cannot stop building settlements. Around 500,000 Israelis live beyond Israel’s 1967 borders, in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and their numbers are growing by up to 15,000 a year. There is no way to create a viable Palestinian state if all of these Israelis remain in place.” And that is only part of the problem. Myre and Griffin enumerate other factors militating against a cessation of the conflict, including: “Too many Palestinian militants remain wedded to armed struggle. … [Hamas] looks set to control Gaza indefinitely, giving the Islamist group veto power over any peace plan. … The Israeli and Palestinian economies have been largely detached from each other. … For many years, under multiple administrations, the United States has too often been uncritically supportive of Israel and has acquiesced even when Israel pursued policies that damaged peace prospects.”
This Burning Land: Lessons From the Front Lines of the Transformed Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
By Greg Myre and Jennifer Griffin
Wiley, 336 pages
These and other possibly insuperable obstacles to peace appear in a straightforward list compiled by both Myre and Griffin. Yet for the most part, their respective contributions to “This Burning Land” are indicated as such and remain stylistically distinct. The bulk of the book was written by Myre, who interweaves firsthand reportage with his big-picture analysis. Griffin’s segments consist entirely of firsthand accounts of specific incidents, sometimes with the aim of illustrating a general phenomenon described by Myre. This unequal division of labor works surprisingly well, and the narrative by and large emerges as cohesive. There are, however, a few errors in this book. Myre attributes the expansion of Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories over the decades to Israeli governments dominated by the Likud Party, but historically it was the Labor Party that aided this project the most. Myre also refers to Israeli troops firing “rubber bullets” at Palestinian protesters. In fact, they are rubber-coated metal bullets. Elsewhere, Myre writes that “Hamas has largely abided by a pledge to use persuasion, rather than force, in shaping social customs.” But whether it be banning male hair stylists from working in women’s hair salons or ordering female lawyers to wear headscarves and layered cloaks when appearing in court, Hamas has used its newfound political power to impose its will on people. Finally, in his chapter on the Hezbollah-provoked war with Israel in 2006, Myre insinuates that Hezbollah used civilians as human shields. In fact, following the 2006 war, Human Rights Watch found no evidence that Hezbollah used human shields, confirming what journalists such as Mitch Prothero—writing for Salon—reported from Lebanon during the war itself. Because they lived in Israel, the authors’ psychological perception of the conflict is more Israeli than Palestinian. Despite their repeated forays—some of them for extended periods—into the Occupied Territories during the height of the intifada, where they witnessed the dangers and humiliations the Palestinians are subjected to by the Israelis, Myre and Griffin remained physically a part of Israeli society. As such, their personal fears—quite understandably—revolved more around Palestinian suicide bombings than Israeli airstrikes, targeted assassinations and collective punishment. Yet their personal lives do not overshadow their professional responsibilities, and in a discussion on civilian casualties the authors register an important point: “The Israeli civilians tended to be killed in suicide bombings that attracted widespread coverage because of the spectacular nature of the attacks. Palestinian civilians often died in ones and twos. They were killed in places that were harder to get to, and the circumstances were often murky and disputed.” In general, the authors should be commended for their consistency. To be sure, they highlight heartening episodes of tolerance and compassion by individuals on both sides of the divide—and well they should—but they do not allow these glimmers of hope to blind them to the norm. Indeed, their belief that the conflict will continue for a long time to come rests in part on the realization that “[t]he Israelis and the Palestinians hate one another. This often trumps all else. … Solid majorities of Israelis and Palestinians have to genuinely want peace, or it will not happen.” Interestingly, Griffin, most of whose anecdotal stories enrich the book but do not prove essential to its success, makes the most potent observation on the conflict’s durability, one which she relates to her personal life. A couple of years after relocating to the U.S. with Myre and their two young daughters in 2007, she discovered a cancerous tumor in her breast, one she described to her friends in the military as growing “faster than an Al-Qaeda cell in Somalia.” After months of chemotherapy followed by a double mastectomy and radiation treatment, the cancer cells appeared to have been destroyed. Today, Griffin knows that she must accept the ever-hovering possibility of a relapse, but her experiences covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have prepared her well. “It can at times feel like a perpetual war, but life goes on. It is never an easy lesson to digest but one that I had already learned: some battles must simply be managed.”
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By de freitas, July 21, 2011 at 2:19 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
As someone who hs long felt that the Palestinian side of the conflict has been woefully underreported and pro-Israeli biased (Fox News in particular), I found this book incredibly even-handed—would recommend it to anyone trying to get a handle on the situation. One caveat:read it carefully. It’s not a difficult read, but the reader has to be careful not to skim over parts that might not be to his liking…. Always thought Jennifer Griffen is a top reporter; it’s the opinion shows on Fox that are heavily pro-Israel.
Report thisBy drbhelthi, March 5, 2011 at 4:04 am Link to this comment
The un-natural, inhuman, un-earthly behavior of the Hitler “society” might be precisely that. When comparing the appearance of Adolf Hitler with that of the alleged “race”, he is alleged to have termed “Aryan”, remarkable differences are noted. Hitler was not tall, thin, blonde-haired, with crystal-blue eyes.
Austrians have stated that what we call flying-saucers were contained in his repertoire of vehicles. These vehicles were not brought over by Mongolian folk who settled Alaska 30,000 years ago, whose following, legally, own all the land from the Alieutians to the southern-most tip of S. America. Although, Mongolian folk may have seen such vehicles.
Scientist, mister Nicola Tesla, who was not an Aryan, yet who understand the principles of this “race,” could have been what prompted Hitler- and his illuminati entourage- to have Mr. Tesla murdered. Nor, was it an accident that F.B.I. “agents” “collected” the secretive papers of Mr. Tesla from his hotel room; PROMPTLY. Nor was it an accident that the C.I.A. delivered Mr. Tesla´s stolen papers to the door of the German scientist in the Black Forest about 2000. This scientist mis-used Mr. Tesla´s stolen research to develop a machine, on contract with the C.I.A., to see through concrete walls. The most brilliant scientist in the recent history of the world, bankrupted and murdered by the “society” of Adolf Hitler.
This is the machine that MOSSAD officer, Michael Chertoff (buddy of the GHWBushSr entourage) now sells back to the USGov for misuse on people. Michael Chertoff, whose WIKI description has been altered, so as now to make him a U.S. hero, instead of a MOSSAD spy. The C.I.A.´s “see through concrete machine”, currently misused at airports, truckstops, train stations, which now, increasingly roams the streets in un-marked vehicles. Unmarked vehicles illegally used by occupant-puppets to “see thru” truck bodies, car bodies and human bodies, damaging human DNA each time a human body is within its projection range. The same principle of lawlessness introduced in Texas by the GHWBushSr entourage, thirty years ago. Accelerated via attempted assassination of Pres. Reagan, and presidential elections 2000, 2004, 2008.
The Hitler society, responsible for Operation Paper Clip, 1945, continued into the 1950s. Which introduced Werner von Braun & Hubertus Strughold to the US space ndustry. Strughold, who conducted inhuman experiments on Jewish folk at Dachau, and should have been hanged. Instead, he was named chief scientist of the American Aerospace Medical Division, 1961, received the Americanism Medal from the Daughters Of The American Revolution??? The Texas Senate declared June the 15th, 1985, to be Dr. Hubertus Strughold Day? Although Strughold made no significant contribution to space medicine.
Texas, stronghold of the GHWBushSr entourage. June, 1985, about the time when a family of seventeen hippie-types were murdered and skinned (yes, skinned) during a 3-day disappearance of George W. Bush (George H.W. Bush Jr.). Junior remembered nothing about the 3-days. Of course, not! (MK-Ultra techniques?) GHWBushSr. smothered the Texas investigation of his junior. The Governorship of Texas, by junior Bush, is remarkable.
Remarkable.
The US Space program overtaken by NAZIs, pharma industry & FDA using medicine to reduce US population, Monsanto polluting the productive acreage of the world, poisoning all living beings, the C.I.A. colonizing the western world for the Hitler society. Just who are these “Aryan-types”?
Hello Americans ! Hello EURO !
Report thisAnd, now, Germany is being overtaken by USGov infiltrators, members of the “Hitler society”. Re-cycles every fifty years ? “To the victor go the spoils”. Do “Aryans” control the Hitler society?
By Cliff Carson, March 4, 2011 at 11:02 pm Link to this comment
Not surprisingly Patrick
I believe that Greg has a good standing with “HonestReporting” an Israeli site to make sure that the world gets the news as Israel see’s it and Ms. Griffen his wife who is a Reporter for Fox News.
Do you think their reporting could be supportive of—“The Good Guys”??
Report thisBy PatrickHenry, March 4, 2011 at 7:50 pm Link to this comment
Cliff Carson,
I see they found a publisher in America soon enough.
Report thisBy Cliff Carson, March 4, 2011 at 6:50 pm Link to this comment
Yes PatrickHenry
How would the book have been written and what would have been the authors message to the “outsiders” if that scenario had played out.
“Too many Palestinian militants remain wedded to armed struggle. … [Hamas] looks set to control Gaza indefinitely, giving the Islamist group veto power over any peace plan. …”
Palestinian Militants wedded to armed struggle…Remember the Zionist plan is to rid the land of Palestinians, spoken as such by Ben-Gurion himself, and if anyone is interested there are maps drawn up in 1919 showing the final borders of “Israel” as dreamed of by the Zionist movement in their plan.
Hamas is a group helped in formation by Israel as a counter to the PLO. But Hamas moved away from their quest and became the foundation for the oppressed Palestinians. Hamas was elected in January 2006 as the Government of Palestine in an election that was supervised by both the United States and Israel. But the outcome was not what was expected so the U S and Israel closed the borders, arrested the elected Government,and began a starvation campaign in an attempt to force the Palestinian people to accept a Government they didn’t want. This was the first and last open and free election in Palestine.
Hamas took a stand against Fatah, the choice of the U S and Israel, in Gaza, and have prevailed to this day, although they have been starved, forced to do without any life sustaining needs except those that could be smuggled in. Those attempts to force the Gazans to accept the US Israeli Fatah have been eased only after the world began to bring pressure on the “Good Guys”. The Gazans have paid a brutal price for their quest for freedom - in their own land.
Seems silly when the authors said that the “Islamists” have veto power over any peace plan. The silliness is echoed by the arrest of the Government in 2006 and the starvation of the Palestinians when they had the audacity to elect a slate not desired by America and Israel.
In the Mid-East the hypocrisy of the “Good Guys” is legend. The Palestinians are strangers in their own land.
Report thisBy PatrickHenry, March 4, 2011 at 5:44 pm Link to this comment
I wonder how the book would have turned out if they had lived in the occupied territories for the last 10 years (if they survived).
Report thisBy Arabian Sinbad, March 4, 2011 at 5:31 pm Link to this comment
This review is so superficial which must be stemming from the superficiality of the book itself. Thus, this is a book I will never read, even if I was given a good sum of money.
Therefore, I have only one short comment to make on the statement that“[t]he Israelis and the Palestinians hate one another.” Obviously, this is just stating the very obvious and does not contribute to any new ideas.
However, a critical mind would add that this mutual hatred is not equally justified. The Palestinian hatred is justified because they were picked upon, from among all the world people, to be the victims of a terrorist, racist, apartheid ideology called Zionism; Zionists who represented fleeing, cowardly savages who did not have the courage nor the guts to stand and fight against the persecution committed against them in in their lands of birth in racist Europe.
On the other hand, the Zionists’ hatred for the Palestinians is misplaced and unjustified; for it represents a double victimization of the victims; first, by stealing their land, terrorizing them and killing large numbers of them; and second by continuing to hate their victims and dehumanizing them, instead of focusing their hatred on the Europeans who victimized them.
I believe that a public official announcement by terrorist Israel to renounce state-sponsored terrorism and recognize the victimization of the Palestinians and make a sincere efforts to make amends can go a long way in healing the wounds of both the Palestinians and Jews towards preparing the ground for a possible peace and convivial existence.
Report thisBy Cliff Carson, March 4, 2011 at 4:57 pm Link to this comment
Yes WriterOnTheStorm
The issue is framed by those who have power to do the right thing and, by cause and effect, have the power to force the wrong thing. In other words - those who have the power to force their agenda - do so by obfuscation, improperly claiming moral right, and also claiming the “Chosen of God” argument to enforce their “Rightness”.
I have often wondered how those who claim to live the commandments of God, would encourage the murder and eviction of a people from their own land. A people who’s only SIN seems to be to resist the destruction of their people by those who claim to be “The Good Guys”.
Report thisBy WriterOnTheStorm, March 4, 2011 at 4:46 pm Link to this comment
Another variation of the it’s-just-too-complicated-to-solve argument. Curious
that these arguments always seem to come from those who are fundamentally
sympathetic to Israel. Because as long as it remains too-complicated-to-solve,
the Israelis can continue their slow-motion colonial project by steadily taking up
Palestinian land for illegal settlements. It’s an old trick, but unfortunately, one that
dupes many.
This too-complicated-problem-to-solve will get solved very shortly after America
stops supporting the illegal settlements and blockades, stops vetoing every U.N.
measure attempting to stop them, and conditions its financial and political support
on compliance with the ‘67 borders.
What’s so intractable about that?
Report thisBy Cliff Carson, March 4, 2011 at 4:16 pm Link to this comment
A most interesting article, or rather a review of a book. Many, many things I didn’t see mentioned, but maybe it is because of the difference between the book and the review, I am not sure. Since I haven’t read the book I can’t give much of an opinion other than to say any book about the struggle should start from the beginning, and I didn’t see anything about that in the review article.
Report thisIt started back around 1880. It started because the Ultra Orthodox Zionist Sect after being persecuted by the Russian Pogroms, decided that God literally gave them ownership of a land bordered on the North by the Litani River in Lebanon, to the East by the Euphrates river in Iraq, to the West by the Mediterranean, and to the South by the Red Sea. They also took literally the instruction by God to the Moses led Exodus, to destroy every living thing not Hebrew in that land of Canaan. Unfortunately for the people living in that land ( Jewish people comprised only 1% of the land now Israel), not being Jewish, they didn’t agree with that religious claim.
In 1907 Ben-Gurion, later to become known as the father of Israel, became the leader of this murderous plot. A Terrorist war was commenced against the people of that land, with most of the funding provided by the House of Rothschild. So to say the war against the Palestinian people began around 1907 would be fairly correct. The Zionist plan was to get political control of the land then “cleanse” it of Non-Jews. In a speech in 1937 Ben-Gurion stated that there would have to be a forceful eviction of the Arabs of the land so that the political purity of the “New” Israel could be maintained.
When given the New Country of Israel by the U N, Israel refused to recognize the 1947 Borders drawn by the U N because the plan wasn’t finished. The Eretz Ysarial remember was to stretch from the Mediterranean to Baghdad to the Letani River to the Red Sea, so the plan was hardly finished.
And to the modern day Zionist, the plan will not be finished until those borders are finalized and all Arabs are forced out of those new borders.
Or as Governor Huckabee stated just recently while campaigning for the 2012 election, “The Palestinians need to get out of the occupied territories because the land doesn’t belong to them it belongs to the Jews as promised by God”.
By omop, March 4, 2011 at 3:55 pm Link to this comment
With a subservient USA and a belief that Israeli leaders have and long
adhered to the judgment of early Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann: “The Arabs
will be our problem for a long time…They’re ten to one, but don’t we Jews have
ten times their intelligence?”
Until and unless the Arabs acquire military parity with Israel it will continue to be Israel uber alles on the yellow brick road to peace.
Report thisBy BurntSynapse, March 4, 2011 at 2:30 pm Link to this comment
One may be excused for marveling at the naked hypocrisy of the book’s claims, as well as the incompetence of a summary misleadingly labeled a “review”.
Rayyan Al-Shawaf passes along without comment the dubious narrative that Ariel Sharon’s show of Jewish dominance at gunpoint (actually, about 1,000 gunpoints) gave rise to the Second Intifada.
As reports by Amnesty International and others (most notably: leaders of the intifada) claim that the tipping point was the huge military and police presence Ehud Barak sent to surround Muslim holy sites on Friday, their day of prayer. Rayyan Al-Shawaf makes no mention of the discrepancy.
Similarly outrageous quotes are passed along without comment, such as: “[t]he Israelis and the Palestinians hate one another. This often trumps all else. … Solid majorities of Israelis and Palestinians have to genuinely want peace, or it will not happen.” A) Most do not hate each other, and B) Solid majorities genuinely DO want peace. There are plenty of polls the reviewer could have cited.
As for the hypocrisy of the book’s viewpoint: imagine what it would contain regarding an identical analysis, but from an opposing position. For example: claiming the conflicts and violence caused by Germans sequestering Jews in tiny, overcrowded ghettos & murdering Jews, and violent Jewish uprisings in response were merely battles that “must simply be managed”.
Just imagine!
Report thisBy gerard, March 4, 2011 at 1:02 pm Link to this comment
From my point of view, likening the war of Israel against Palestine to breast cancer—that is, you must kill diseased cells—is very misleading.
Report thisFirst, war is not a “disease” where, if you succeed in killing enough cells, the disease disappears. The killing in war IS the disease itself, no matter which “side” does the killing. Murder and property theft cannot be stopped by further murder and deprivation. You can’t zap hatred with a magic ray and have it disappear.
“Some battles must simply be managed” is also misleading. The message is defeatist—just tolerate it; that is, there is no cure, so just live with it. Palestinians are forced to “live with it” paying a considerably higher “price” than Israelis, and this is unjust. Unjust human social/political situations ought better to be treated with therapies more complicated than “zapping.” Etc. etc.