An American Intifada?

Watching Ferguson explode in flames and rage, I remembered scenes and feelings from only a few weeks ago when I was in Jerusalem—just as it started to spiral into violence and fear.  Police and soldiers roamed the city and filled the square by the Western Wall and on the Temple Mount.  I saw smoke rising behind the Temple Mount from fires set in protest in East Jerusalem.

There was a growing sense of dread and what Israelis call, the usual “quiet” became noisy. Then the heat got turned up further by a Palestinian running into a group of civilians and killing a toddler. The simmering cycle, felt by both sides, was clearly seething and headed for a rolling boil. People, both Arabs and Jews, wondered if this was the start of the Third Intifada?

So it was natural, and painful, to ask myself the same question as I watched the rage and pain, the violence and senseless destruction in Ferguson.  I know that comparisons between peoples and situations are fraught with danger.  Every similarity also has an equal and opposite dissimilarity.  Still, I believe, there are instructive comparisons to be made.

American People of Color, particularly African-Americans, know that they are only theoretically equal.  The law may say “we do not discriminate,” but those who represent the law give lie to our glib legalisms.  I don’t know an African-American male who has not been stopped for “driving while black.”  If the car was old and in a white neighborhood, that probably cause.  If the car was new and expensive, “well, what was a Black person doing in such a car? Must be stolen or the guy involved in drugs.” So, my Black friends believe, is the thinking of the police.  There seems to be a presumption that Black males are armed, violent and dangerous and thus warrant overwhelming force, too often, deadly force.

African American males are involved in our criminal justice system in disproportionate numbers.  Yes, this is often defended by the White Establishment that says “they” commit a disproportionate number of crimes.  Maybe, but what is crystal clear is that they are subject to higher levels of being charged and longer sentences than whites for the same transgressions.  Statistics show a presumption of guilt, not innocence.

Whatever white folks think about equal justice, neither equality nor justice is the experience of Black folks either on the streets or in the courts.  That some are offended and even outraged by Ferguson is understandable.  That there were protests and demonstrations seems appropriate.  But while a picture may be worth a thousand words, they sometimes lie—and we didn’t see what we thought we saw.

The riots, the fires, the burning police cars, the looted stores were all real, but they were perpetrated by a tiny percentage of the crowd of protestors who assembled with loud by peaceful intentions.

Lost in the noise and flames is the simple fact that people feeling oppressed wanted to bring their pain and grievances to the streets and the great majority were not interested in violence. The violent looters were not there for Michael Brown any more than the looters in LA were doing it for “Good old Rodney” several years ago.  Looters were there for looting. The cameras however focused on the violence.

So too I think with many, but not all, elements, of the Intifada. I have no sympathy for Arabs in Israel who work for the destruction of the Jewish State.  However, Arabs in Israel, both citizens and non-citizens, have legitimate grievances. They are not equal either socially or before the law.  I have sympathy for their suffering.

Only a couple of weeks ago, as I was on the border between Israel and Syria, I spoke with some Israeli Arabs (they were citizens) and they expressed the complexity of their dilemma.  They knew that they did not have true equality—whatever the law said.  But they also knew that there was no better place for them to live than in Israel.  In Syria, they would be in peril of their lives from all sides—from Assad’s Alawites, as well as from the Sunni extremists of Al Nusra and ISIS. There was no future for them in Jordon or Egypt, nor Saudi Arabia or, God help them, Libya.

Like it or not, Israel was their country, and they wanted a greater degree of equality of opportunity and justice.  And here is what the news fails to convey about the Arabs in Israel and the Intifada—and it’s quite similar to our media sins here: The vast majority of Israeli Arabs are not violent; they are neither terrorists nor criminals.  Their mothers really do not desire their children to die.  They are human beings.  The majority of violence is perpetrated in Israel, as in Ferguson, by a very small minority of young men and boys.

Yes, both there and here, there are grownup adult leaders who provoke and incite, but truthfully, young men and boys often don’t need much provocation to break and burn things.  While the pain and grievances of Israeli-Arab and African-American communities are understandable, the violence is not justified. Neither is the over-reaction by authorities who often can’t distinguish between the innocent peaceful protestors and the violent ones who throw rocks, bottles and Molotov cocktails.

Will there be a real Intifada here? No.  Is there now a new Intifada in Israel? I hope not because for whatever the differences or similarities between our countries, what is true is that violence and burning, stabbing and killing, bombing and looting do not win either support of freedom. The violent few may make great pictures and create disproportionate fear, but equality has a better chance with a Gandhi, a Martin Luther King, a Mandela.  Our problems are real; inequality is  toxic to society.  There is a lot of dry kindling and there is an absence of great and peaceful men who can show young men the better course.
©2014 Jonathan Dobrer
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