Rebuilding Homes, Building Peace

situationdemanded much more of him than just doing his job: He could not simply observe this unjust situation; he had to resist this injustice with all his might. He threw himself in front of thebulldozer,anaction he has taken many times since then. In that momentHalpermoved from notional or theoretical opposition to the Occupation to active resistance. This shift forms the basis of the hope that undergirdshisnarrativeandanalysis . The point of sharing his own experience is to encourage us as readers to make turns (sometimes U-turns) in our lives in wayssimilartohisshiftfromacademicanthropologisttocritical “IsraeliinPalestine.” Perhapsthemostfundamentalshiftonthe partofmostAmericanswouldbetosimply become better informed about important thingshappeninginourname,butrarely— if ever—mentioned in our mainstream media. Attention to data abounds in this book. Halper provides us with a great deal of information. He documents his sources at critical junctures in his argument. And he offers a more than ample bibliography forfurtherreading. But data do not “speak,” any more than “facts on the ground” do. We must probe just what these data or facts really mean. Halper offers not just information, but alternative explanations—called “reframings ”—that stretch our minds to make sense of the apparently nonsensical. In short,wemustbeintelligent,rigorouslyso, asweseektherealrationaleforthepolicyof home demolition, which on its face and in its effects does not promote the one thing thatIsraeliscravemorethananythingelse: security.Halpergroundsthehomedemolition policy historically in the British policy of home demolition (by dynamite rather than by bulldozers) in the period of its Mandate over Palestine. In so doing he neglects to mention that the British also destroyedthehomesofIrishdissidents(by torching thatch-roofed cottages rather than by dynamite) prior to Britain’s rule over Palestine. And he omits centuries of dispossession of Jews by Assyrians, Babylonians , Greeks, Romans, and—most devastatingly—by emperors, kings, and petty princes of city-states throughout the Christiancenturies. Whatever the precedents for the current Israeli policy of home demolition, Halper argues that this policy is only comprehensible as an act of neocolonial oppressionoftheindigenouspeople ,andthat this particular policy and related oppressive policies—checkpoints, settlements, bypassroads,andtheWall—areallaspects of a twofold plan to maximize Jewish control over the entire land and to minimize the presence of Palestinians by their overt or indirect transfer elsewhere (where preciselyisamatterofindifference ;itcouldbe JordanorLebanon,ChicagoorDetroit). Ifthisinterpretationseemsimplausible tosomeofHalper’sreaders,heisthefirstto encourage them to find some better hypothesis to explain a policy so profoundly insensitiveandinhumane,soinattentiveto centuriesofJewishexperienceatthehands of Europeans who expressed contempt for Jews by subjecting them to homelessness, and who made them wanderers by expellingthemfromtheirhomelands . At several turns in his argument, Halper relies on history to shed light on conflicting interpretations. Fortunately, Halper knows Zionism much better than mostadmirersofitscurrentexcesses.Tobe sure, he is aware of the exclusivist strain that surfaced as early as Herzl and that [BOOKS] REBUILDINGHOMES, BUILDINGPEACE ANISRAELIINPALESTINE:RESISTING DISPOSSESSION,REDEEMINGISRAEL byJeffHalper,PlutoPress,2008 ReviewbyEdGaffney T his volume is full of hope. Not naïve Panglossian optimism that imagines that “things always get better and betterinthisbestofallpossible worlds”(anyattentivevisitorto the Palestinian Occupied Territories will have observed the very opposite ). But courageous hope that remains steadfast in the face of enormous obstacles toahumane,justresolutiontothelongestrunning conflict in the modern world. Hope that responds to a violent situation not with more violence, but with the bold willingness to interrupt a seemingly endless cycle of retaliation by a refusal to continue to act out the role of enemies of the othercommunity. Ananthropologistbytrade,JeffHalper has written a book that is sometimes autobiographicalbutneverself -important.The most telling of these personal accounts took place on July 9, 1998, when a very large contingent of the Israel Defense Forces came to destroy the home of his friends Salim and Arabiya Shawamreh. Halper just happened to be in the area when Arabiya called him on his cell phone to report the traumatic events. When Halper arrived on the scene with two busloads of Israeli peace activists, the soldiers firedshotsintheirdirectionwarningthem to back off. Halper managed to reach the front door and tried to persuade the commander to cease and desist. The commandertookoutapileofmapsandstarted explaining why demolishing homes was “just doing my job,” as he put it (with no sense of irony in the invocation of Eichmann ’s defense in Jerusalem in 1961). As a Caterpillar bulldozer rumbled up the hill toward the Shawamreh home, the academic knew with certainty that the 76 T I K K...