By David Grossman
Picador (2002), 232 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0312420987
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The Yellow Wind By David Grossman Picador (2002), 232 pages ISBN-13: 978-0312420987 |
Reviewed by Israel Drazin - November 15, 2010
Is Israel hurting itself by retaining the West Bank ban?
David Grossman is one of the three top Israeli novelists. Each tries to resolve the Israeli-Arab conflict and bring peace. The other two are Amos Oz and A. B. Yehoshua. Grossman wrote his book to show the agony suffered by both sides. The volume is vivid and disturbing. It made Grossman one of the leaders of Israel's left. It caused many Israelis to hate him, hatred that continues today. He still receives threats from fellow Jews. Readers may want to read the excellent analysis of Grossman and his writings in George Packer's article "The Unconsoled," in the September 27, 2010 edition of The New Yorker.
Grossman visited the west bank and listened to men and women, Jewish and Arab, students and teachers, old and young, and reported the bitterness of Israelis and Arabs. He tells how Arabs live, their aspiration, frustrations, bitterness, and rage. He reveals how Arab students are stopped repeatedly from attending school by Israeli soldiers. He reports how Israeli judges judge Arabs and how they are afraid to release Arabs who are obviously innocent lest they appear overly lenient to the Arab people and encourage more violence. He writes of incidences where Israeli soldiers mistreated Arabs, physically and psychologically. He gives examples of how the Israeli presence in the west bank is breeding contempt and hatred.
He recalls the statement of Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz immediately after the 1967 war. Leibowitz said that it is impossible to be occupiers and remain moral. Grossman emphasizes that "today the real enemy is not the Palestinian or the Israeli but the extremist and the fanatic on either side." Yet, these extremists have infected Israelis and Arabs, like a spreading black plague that is savaging the morality and the future of both people.
Grossman describes his meetings with Arabs at a refugee camp on the west bank, the frustrations of the women, and how the men are afraid to talk, afraid of Israelis, spies, and fellow Arabs. The women speak of returning to parts of Israel where their grandparents once lived, land they never saw. Grossman is struck by how the Arabs remind him by their looks, words, aspirations, and actions of Jews that he knows, as well as Jews in ancient and near ancient history.
He cites a scientific study of the dreams of Israeli and Arab children. Seventeen percent of the dreams of the Jewish children had meetings with Arabs; thirty percent of the Arab children dreamed of encounters with Jews. The Jewish children saw the Arabs in their dreams as criminals. The Arab children dreamed of conflicts and battles with the Israelis. "(A)mong some thousand dreams of Jewish and Arab children, there is not one which indicates a longing for peace."
He reports on his visit to a Jewish settlement on the west bank. All of the inhabitants are militants. Some tried to plant bombs and kill Arab leaders, mayors and other politicians. He met with some fifty inhabitants in a room and asked them over and over again, very politely, can you tell me how you think the Arabs feel about you settling in the west bank? They could not answer his question. They refused to consider the feelings of the Arabs. They wanted to discuss their rights. Even a so-called moderate and well-respected rabbi had strong anti-Arab views. Grossman encountered other rabbis in other settlements with similar strong destructive anti-Arab feelings. He tells of psychological studies of the adverse affects of these settlers' attitudes upon them. They want to be pious. They see themselves as following the dictates of Torah. But they are destroying themselves and chances for peace. They are demolishing the goal of Torah. They have set a cancer within their souls.
He tells what an old Arab said about a yellow wind "that will soon come, maybe in his lifetime: the wind will come from the gate of Hell." It will set "the world afire, and people will seek shelter from its heat in the caves and caverns, but even there those it seeks, those who have performed cruel and unjust deeds, there, in the cracks in the boulders, it exterminates them, one by one. After that day, Abu Harb says, the land will be covered with bodies."
