Dan Shvartsman: What are the big themes you take out of the Gaza conflict, and the initial days of the aftermath?

Dr. Bruce Maddy-Weitzman: This latest round is over. Just the way the (2nd) Lebanon War ended in summer of 2006, and since then the ceasefire has held almost perfectly, so too in this case I think that it’s fairly likely that we won’t see another round like we just saw any time soon.

What did each side achieve from this? Israel went into this determined not only to end the rocket fire, but to also change the “rules of the game”. That “Hamas shoots rockets, we shoot back,” and this tit-for-tat doesn’t change Hamas’s behavior. Beyond that, I think there was also a general desire for Israel to strengthen its deterrent posture. There was a feeling here that Israel’s deterrent posture over the last years has weakened.

I think a central goal of this operation was to send a clear message to the rest of the region and the world that it wasn’t going to allow an Iranian client-state to develop on its borders.

Hamas turned out to be far weaker than anticipated. In that regard, Israel has significantly improved its deterrent posture. It’s not just that they hit them hard, but also the incorporation of the diplomatic elements. At least on paper, the support for a change in the strategic parameters governing the Gaza area, the support for Israel’s desires is considerable. The French are patrolling off the shores of Gaza, the Americans signed a memorandum of understanding, they’re training Egyptian troops dealing with smuggling, they’re talking about interdicting Iranian ships in the Gulf of Aden.

The Egyptian participation in this sort of Western framework is a gain for Israel as well. It remains to be seen whether this framework will have real teeth and do what it’s supposed to do. So from that regard, one can say that Israel’s achievements in this operation were considerable.

They came at costs, obviously. Israel’s image has been damaged to a considerable extent among public opinion. There’s no question that more hate towards Israel will have been generated by this operation, which doesn’t bode well if you talk about the need for a long-term reconciliation.

You can even suggest the possibility that radical forces might become even stronger, particularly among Palestinians; there’s a possibility of splintering off from Hamas to represent even more Islamist, jihadi, Bin Laden-type radical views, which would make Hamas look like a positively moderate force in comparison.

Dan: How does Hamas come out of this?

Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: Hamas has always had a number of different viewpoints within it. Not in ideological terms, on that they’re united. In terms of how one achieves their goals, there have been different trends. One can point to pragmatic kinds of thinking, adapting to particular circumstances.

It’s clear that there were sharp differences of opinion within Hamas over the decision to tear up the ceasefire and goad Israel into an attack, which Hamas believed was going to be beneficial – that an improved set of arrangements would be established. Clearly, that wasn’t the case; they paid a horrific price.

Hamas is likely to demonstrate a greater degree of pragmatism, to seek accommodations, to present some kind of common front with Mahmoud Abbas, so that they can then move on and say, “this is how we’re going to deal with the opening of the crossing points, the passages to ease the siege.” This is an immediate issue for Hamas, so they can engage in reconstruction, and get legitimized as an interlocutor by the international community.

It is possible that they will achieve that over time, that more and more we’ll hear voices in the West: “You need to engage in dialogue. They’re an important force. You can’t just ignore them. You have to find ways.” And that’s a double-edged sword. By Hamas engaging, they may have to modify their behavior in ways which eventually threaten to clash with their principles. On the other hand, it means that they may be getting legitimized in a way that’s to their benefit, without them giving things up.

Dan: In the whole region, a lot of interesting things came up. What’s the significance of Syria’s statements in light of the indirect negotiations with Israel before the war?

Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: I was thinking about that too. On the face of it, a Syrian-Israeli agreement is much easier to achieve than a Palestinian-Israeli agreement. It’s straightforward, you deal with sovereign countries; it’s not an existential matter, per se. It’s not an inter-communal conflict on core ideological matters.

But Bashar Assad, I think, is going to be reluctant to pay the price that he has to pay for a peace treaty, which is shifting his alliance orientation: moving out of the Iranian radical camp and moving into the Western camp. I don’t think he wants to do that, I think he wants to have both: to maintain his connections with Palestinian and Lebanese forces, to maintain his connections with Iran, and to have better ties with the West, and he was trying to work through Turkey to get that.

But his militancy on these matters is very off-putting. I think it’s probably less likely also that the new Israeli government will want to pick up where the Olmert government left off. So I think we’ll probably again see a hiatus in the Israeli-Syrian track. Especially since the Turkish President has gone and alienated the Israeli political class with his behavior.

Dan: And that’s another country interesting effect of the war, Turkey’s sudden change of heart on Israel. Do you view that as a serious blow to the relationship?

Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: It’s problematic. The Israeli-Turkish relationship is based on common strategic interests. The forces in Turkey that are the guardians of those strategic interests are still there.

Politically, of course, the elected leadership is an Islamist party and an Islamist government, which has a different set of considerations. And certainly a significant segment of public opinion in Turkey identified strongly with the Palestinians and is very hostile towards Israel, and we saw that during the war. This is a cause for concern. Turkey’s stance is going to be watched very, very closely.

But in any case, it’s not at all clear that the new Israeli government will give the Syrian-Israeli track a priority. I’m not so sure the Americans are going to be so keen on renewing that track either, even though there’s been a lot of advice in Washington that’s said, “go for the Syrian-Israeli track right away, because it’s more doable.” Well, I’m not sure it is.

Dan: Are you not sure because of the new Gaza conflict and the issues that were raised now? Or do you think it was the same before?

Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: I was skeptical before. I’m more skeptical now. And I think because the Israeli government is about to change, that also is going to play a role here.

Now, if the Americans do get clear signals from the Syrians that they want to play, that they want this to go forward, which is very possible…everybody’s waiting for Obama. Bashar Assad’s going to want to find out where does Obama stand on this. And if he does send the appropriate signals, that will get America’s attention. And that in turn will get Israel’s attention.

Dan: What’s the significance on a broader scale that Israel, even before the war, was leaning towards Netanyahu? What does it say about the broader future prospects of Israel and peace if they’re swinging to the right?

Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: You’re right about Israeli public opinion becoming more right wing, and it’s something that’s been true over the last eight years. And yet, when you ask people how they outline a settlement, you’ll find a solid majority of public opinion is in favor of a two-state solution, in favor of a centrist kind of solution, not a right wing solution. There is a consensus on that.

There’s less consensus in Israel about the kind of hard steps that Israel would have to take to help the dynamics of a diplomatic effort, particularly on settlement matters. Israelis underestimate the symbolic effect that settlement expansion has on public opinion on the other side, and also on the opinion of leadership on the other side. Continuous settlement building is seen as an example of massive Israeli bad faith. And Israelis don’t appreciate that to a sufficient degree.

With regard to the likely Netanyahu government, that also depends on the nature of his coalition. It seems very likely to me that Ehud Barak will be his Defense Minister, which means the Labor party is in the coalition.

Which means you’re talking about a center-right government, but not a right wing government. That’s a big difference. It means you have a government that can engage and will engage with Washington. Netanyahu clearly will not want to be in open confrontation with Washington. He will try to balance off the competing domestic political forces and the need to be a statesman. And that’s why Barak will be very important for him to have, and Labor.

Dan: What do you view as the likely shifts on Iran’s status? It almost seems unrelated to what just happened, but obviously it’s the elephant in the room.

Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: It’s very related. I don’t know. Clearly, the U.S. administration is going to see if it can critically, and constructively, and robustly engage Iran on this matter. I think the fact that Dennis Ross has been appointed to be the point man on that, I think that’s an interesting choice, actually.

I know that Ross is a proponent of this sort of approach, robust engagement. Which means, find out what the Iranians are thinking, see what you can do, but also make sure that you have sticks as well as carrots. I think the fact that he knows the Israelis well, and the Israeli thinking well, will be an asset perhaps, to make sure the Americans understand where the Israelis are, and the Israelis understand where the Americans are.

But I don’t know where it’s going to go, and a lot of it depends on internal Iranian things, which I don’t have a good enough sense of. There’s always been a broad consensus in Iran that Iran should be a nuclear power. But that doesn’t mean that everybody’s in agreement on the path to get there, the timing, and how to respond to particular international pressures or incentives. It remains to be seen.

Dan: Would you say the same thing about the new Obama administration’s effect on the region, that it remains to be seen?

Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: I think everybody expects the Americans to take a higher profile on the Israeli-Palestinian, or Arab-Israeli tracks. Nobody doubted that they would be intimately involved with the Iranian matter, and how much continuity and how much change there will be remains to be seen.

There’s a lot of expectation out there for Obama. And undoubtedly it’s exaggerated, which can lead to disappointment. But it seems to me that a lot of people in this region understand that, and want America to play a positive role here.

Dan: On both sides.

Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: Yes, absolutely. The trick for the Obama Administration will be translating that desire and good will into something that makes sense for the regional actors, and makes sense for America’s interests. Big concepts, but then you have to have incremental steps. This is how things are done.

Then maybe you can look around in 2-3 years and say, “Wow, things have really moved.” As opposed to a sudden breakthrough on these issues, which are close to being intractable – but they need attention. And one hopes that they’ll receive the right kind of attention.

Dan: What do you think the overall trend in the region is, among all the different issues? Is it a positive one with incremental steps? Or will it be mostly disappointment?

Dr. Maddy-Weitzman: I think that there are some opportunities there for incremental improvement. As I said, I think that Hamas has been humbled by what happened, and that’s to the good. They’ve been taken off their high horse, even if they haven’t been crushed.

Obviously, peace isn’t around the corner. The Palestinian state-building project of the 1990s was a failure, and that’s one of the reasons why the peace process failed. What we have now are two de facto Palestinian entities, and they’re going to have to work mightily to bring a semblance of unity to their own camp. It’s essential if there’s going to be any progress on the big political issues.

Peace isn’t breaking out, that’s for sure. Let’s hope that we can start taking some positive steps, some incremental steps, and start repairing the damage that’s been caused over the last eight years.

The unabridged version of this interview is on Dan Shvartsman’s blog.

Israel is small in size of course, which is why the intractable conflict between Palestinians and Jews drags so long. But it’s also small in the way things work, as if the sort of soundstages from which America has exported its slick culture haven’t quite been built up as smoothly in Israel, so that you can see the wires from which the angels fly, the cameramen behind the screen, and the clumsy movements of the actors on and off screen.

It is inevitable that a population of 7.3 million will feel compact, as if you might run into Defense Minister Ehud Barak on the street someday and not blink. In fact, one drives by Barak’s high-rise apartment in North Tel Aviv on main highways. Without tremendous pull and with a little bit of patience and luck, a high school senior can get an interview with President Shimon Peres.

But then there is the smallness of the way the government and political parties operate. The way the war, while launched in response to the ending of a cease-fire set up long before President Obama was an inevitability, wrapped itself up tidily just before his inauguration, down to the targeting of his swearing-in ceremony as the deadline to pull out the troops. The way two of the three major parties held political primaries marred by computer breakdowns (Kadima dodged this bullet, but they also were the last party in line). The way Arab-baiting politician Avigdor Lieberman, of Yisrael Beiteinu is treated with kid gloves by his political rivals in other parties, for fear that calling him out will cost them their share of the valuable Russian vote. And then there’s the whole Arab party issue.

It’s not quite as simple as saying the Jews banned the Arab parties from the next elections out of hatred and a desire to keep the enemy down. While the Arab parties stormed out of the Central Election Committee vote to ban them chanting that Israel is, “a fascist, racist state,” there was at least a quasi-reasonable impetus for the call from Yisrael Beiteinu and another right wing party: some Arab members of the Knesset have been known to not only be sympathetic to Hamas, Hezbollah, and other “enemies of the state”, but were reported to have been in contact with those enemies. They’re also reported to have incited their constituency against this and other war efforts, and to unite in protest that at times turns violent.

Of course, that reminds the reader of plenty of other minority movements in the modern world, most obviously the Civil Rights movement in the U.S.A. that at least paved the way to our current president. If the Arabs were to manage a similar rise to near equity and open opportunity, perhaps the one-state solution wouldn’t look so imposing, and Israel would gain huge lumps of political capital, and all of a sudden the brilliant success of Israel over the last 60 years would look broader, more welcoming, and exemplary.

Instead, the country can barely see past its nose, barely past the next threat or the short term needs, which leads to three-week military poundings, Netanyahu’s return, and the banning of the main minority parties. It’s not so much that any of these decisions are on their own completely indefensible (though the last one approaches it); it’s that the big picture, the broader world’s perception, and the collection of these leanings to the right, to fear, and to paranoia all combine to make the general situation in Israel an unpromising, unpleasant one.

And it’s not just Netanyahu, for that matter: Tzipi Livni still flits back and forth between pragmatic diplomacy and militaristic posturing, and Barak, while certainly capable as a Defense Minister, has no one’s trust for the big picture. There is no uniting outsider force that can take Israel to a better place, whether through peace or through some cohesive security policy.

The country seems untroubled by its increasing international isolation, an attitude perhaps born out of 60 years of making it work underneath improbable, impossible circumstances. If we’ve made it this far, goes the thinking, who the hell is going to stop us? And why change what we’re doing?

The smallness permeates the region, there’s no denying that. Hamas’s efforts to declare victory while still trumpeting their tragedy, the constant side-choosing between Egypt and Syria, and Hezbollah’s saber-rattling, all part and parcel to the region’s problems. But Israel relies on its democratic roots, its troubled past, and its supposed moral superiority to act in a strong and bold way to protect itself. Those grounds are challenged when they go as far as to bar the main representatives to the minorities in their own country.

Kernels of hope exist. For one, the ban was quickly overturned. A recent poll suggests that the majority of Israelis want peace. And then there’s everybody’s favorite deus ex machina, President Obama, who might just swoop in and impose peace on all of us. Considering the candidates for Israeli PM are approaching a “six in one basket, half dozen in the other” phase, this may be our only hope, the only change to believe in, and the only way to break us out of our smallness. Which leaves us fighting for our turn in line along with the rest of the world.

The problems strike me when I drive in the north and see the Russian language campaign ads for Tzipi Livni. Livni, the centrist, supposedly noble candidate of Kadima, has responded to snide comments and allaying Russian-immigrant fears about her gender by advertising her “manhood to change the country.” In Hebrew, the ad substitutes “manhood” for “guts.” Either way, she has something to prove in this war.

They strike me when I read editorials from international news sources or take comments from friends back home, who think this war was calculated to take advantage of the last space before Barack Obama comes to power, or of the run-up to the February elections, or the Christmas season lull. It has nothing to do with that, I insist: When Israel and Hamas made their truce last summer, Obama’s presence was hardly inevitable, and Hamas was the one firing rockets in the week after the ceasefire ended. At the very least, Israel is fighting for their own security reasons and not out of bald-faced political opportunism, I contest. But the longer the war drags on, the more I doubt.

The problems strike me when I talk to my grandparents in the States. My grandparents have all the free time in the world to follow Russian-language news from Israel; they are the type of elderly Jews who feared Obama for his purported Islamic background and his likely support of the Palestinians.

They ask me on Skype about my safety, but a minute later state their undying support for Israel, their opinion that Hamas should be destroyed, and that all Israelis are heroes. I think about my mechanic screwing me over or how Israelis drive and bite my tongue.

And there’s little reason to fear my safety, nestled in a cosmopolitan suburb of Tel Aviv, a long 80 KMs from Gaza. Working in an American school even farther north (though not far enough north to be in reach of Hezbollah, if they should decide to join in), I operate in a circle that is not only secure but also completely isolated from the war. Sure, in the lunch room the topic comes up, but being as I don’t speak Hebrew well, I could more or less completely shut out the war if I didn’t get the newspaper each morning.

The problem isn’t quite that, of course: I’m grateful I’m safe and not eager for danger. It’s that much of the country supports the war, and the Hebrew-language press drums up patriotism, and yet no one is really affected by it. While the Gazans’ poverty-stricken lives have now received a new dollop of war, pain, and death, the majority of Israel runs as usual. People watch the news a little bit more and worry about their relatives or friends serving in the army, but the level of tragedy is drastically unbalanced.

It goes beyond justification. Hamas provoked us, they fired rockets, they rejected the cease-fire, they still vow to wipe Israel off the planet, and hence Hamas deserves what they get: that may all be true, but isn’t enough to account for civilian suffering. “But Gazans voted for Hamas and so earned punishment!” – Such is the counter-argument. I think that’s like saying that Americans abroad all deserved ass-kickings because of Bush’s policies.

Most essentially, the imbalance reminds me of a talk I had with my college coach. He, a devout but very open-minded and playfully argumentative Christian, asked me why the Darwin fish is so condoned, seeing how offensive it is to Christianity, a mockery of a symbol hearkening back to a time when being Christian was a dangerous thing.

The only response I could come up with was that when you’re the majority, sometimes you have to overlook the slings and arrows fired against you. When a student teases a teacher, a little brother his older sibling, the responsibility of the more powerful figure is to rise above the slight, meting out discipline only when necessary and productive, without stooping to the level of the weaker party.

In all respects, Hamas is this weaker party. They have much blood on their hands, and are arguably as culpable as Israel in this conflict, if not more so, but it doesn’t matter. From our safe homes we can cheer or protest, plan to support right wing Bibi Netanyahu or left wing war leader Ehud Barak, and call for help from abroad or declare our right to defend ourselves. But Israel, the Israel I live in and most of the country lives in, is not suffering, is not under wartime conditions, and the level of sacrifice there is in the country doesn’t match the pain of our enemies.

So we proceed into week 3, with daily reports about ceasefire resolutions or proposals that show promise but don’t do enough, or that don’t concern us, or that give Hamas too much, and a growing consensus from the military that it’s time to either shit (take out Hamas) or get off the pot (impose our own cease-fire). And from my safe, naïve little neck of the country, getting off the pot can’t happen soon enough, before the real shitstorm begins.

The problem is, it’s probably too late.

I admired that honest answer as it showed that he may have understood the mentality of many of his Palestinian occupied subjects. He was elected on the basis of going ahead with the peace process and I always thought that if he really understood the Palestinian mentality he would do his utmost to prevent young people like from joining terrorist organizations.

Alas, he didn’t achieve peace back then, nor do his actions now show that he really understood the Palestinian mind. Being myself a Palestinian and knowing how many of my people think, I dare put myself in the shoes of an Israeli citizen and try to reach any new conclusions.

Being Israeli I would first try to analyze the situation and try to understand what makes my neighbors or enemies act the way they act. Is it plain anti-Semitism, as I have been taught in school and by the media? But why should anyone hate me for being a peaceful and, most probably, a secular Jew? I would surely ponder that question…

I would look at my personal history: I would most likely be of foreign origin. Maybe my parents came from Poland, or anywhere in Eastern Europe, and became citizens the moment they landed at the airport. My parents would have suffered because of Anti-Semitism that nevertheless had nothing to do with my fellow Palestinian Semites.

At the same time, I would realize that my neighbors have roots that go back hundreds of years in Palestine. The houses where they were born were built hundreds or years ago and housed generations of families and friends and loved ones, only to be vacated at the creation of the state of Israel.

But the deed has been done… my Jewish family came and the Palestinian one was ousted. Now what?

How can we deal with the situation? It looks simple at first. We can fight over the same house till one of us leaves or dies. But what if the other side doesn’t leave, considering its attachment to its roots? And what if I don’t want to leave nor want to kill my neighbor?

If both sides are going to be stuck with each other, then we should find a way to live together here, and in fact help each other in this small precious land. I would be grateful because this land and its people hosted me after the massacres in Europe and the Palestinian will be happy to live in peace in his father’s and mother’s land. Yet to achieve this utopia we should share equally our benefits and rights. There could be no double standards.

If I were an Israeli I would definitely look for a way to make the Palestinians feel at home in this land and look forward to a shared future. Otherwise why would they agree to accommodate me in this tiny piece of land? My benefit as an Israeli would be to have peace and move toward stability and more prosperity.

Alas, despite those long-ago hopes we had for Ehud Barak, what is going on is completely the opposite. The Palestinians have a grimmer and darker future. They have a corrupt authority, bleak political forecast,s no peace, no equal rights – in fact, they have no rights at all but for the right to die.

Why would anyone want to live in peace in that kind of situation? What’s in it for them? Many Arabs today are citizens of Israel, and they still haven’t earned equal status, nor will they ever, it seems. The situation in the occupied territories and especially Gaza is, meanwhile, desperate.

Anyway, I am not Israeli. My roots are Palestinian. My father’s house in Jerusalem was his father’s house and his grandfather’s house before him. It was built 800 years ago and has been continuously inhabited since then.

Knowing what I know, I see how Palestinians have been denied their state and their rights and their own history and culture. We have two ways to go… either we forget we are Palestinians, or try to free Palestine. Peaceful means have so far have led to nothing. What do we do?

Ehud Barak already answered that question ten years ago. He said he would be a so called terrorist – a freedom fighter- to us.

Yet in the years that have gone by, he surely missed the opportunity to work with these freedom fighters toward a shared peace. Even now, he is making sure that for generations to come, the young children of Palestine will remember these days and these atrocities and wonder about the reality of peace initiatives and the reality of who is anti-human rights and who is anti-Semitic.

Some say that in order to stand in solidarity with Gaza civilians, we must stand in solidarity with Hamas. I have rather mixed feelings on the issue, as you can imagine. I think I can understand why Hamas have become such a popular force in Gaza, but I don’t have to like it either.

In fact, it looks like Hamas’ popularity is the best thing to happen to the Israeli far-right at this crucial juncture.”But what about the civilians being killed?” You will ask. “What about the families getting destroyed?”

“But what about the people that those families wanted into power?” – Will be the counter-question. And no amount of reasoning, no amount of shouting, even pleading, will do a single bit of good.

When I heard about the local Jordanian effort to bring food and clothes into Gaza, the first thing I had to ask was: “this aid is going to civilians, right?” (It is, of course – and the Jordanian government can presently deliver aid where it needs to be delivered, but I had to check)

Supporting Hamas, in any way, shape, or form, is off the table.

And yet, who else do the people of Gaza have, if not Hamas? The very physical realm of Gaza has become a terrible conundrum, a trap. The people protesting on the streets of Amman, yesterday, today, tomorrow, they all know this.

How do you defuse a situation in which civilians have no one left to trust but the very people who can easily, and, it seems, without many regrets – considering the reward that surely awaits the suffering in paradise – get them killed? How do you defuse a situation in which violent death no longer frightens, but hardens, hardens a spirit that has already become steeled with grief and hate?

I ask these questions on a sunny holiday in Amman, Jordan, as my neighbourhood prepares for yet another protest, as the streets lie quiet, despite everyone having a day off for the Islamic New Year. On a beautiful day like this, it’s hard to believe the level of violence that’s going on next door.

I spoke briefly to a few protesters down the street yesterday, and the one thing that stood out in our conversation was the sound of helplessness and frustration in their voices. “The world has to see,” they said. And I agreed. The world sees, and then goes flips the channel back to the ball-game. George W. Bush, in his last days in office, has waved his hand vaguely on the subject of civilian deaths. That’s all.

“Are you American?” They asked. I thought I had done a pretty good job of hiding my slight drawl.

“Ukrainian,” I said.

“A Ukrainian writer in Jordan,” they grinned. It seemed they understood these things after a quick glance. They looked like old hands to me. The protests themselves are part of a cycle these days – the never-ending, grinding cycle of death and outrage.

While living in Amman, I generally do not bring up my father’s cousin, the one who married an Israeli and moved to Israel. How do I explain the level of anti-Semitism at her old job in Ukraine to explain her decision to go? How do I humanize her? And how do I humanize the Palestinians, especially those living in Gaza, when talking to her about the legacy she has now inherited?

One of the jobs of the writer in these times is to be a conduit, but what if there is nothing left to pass on, except for visions of blood?

There are more questions than answers, today. One day, the cool eye of history will judge these events in an insightful, perhaps even impartial manner. But for the people living, and dying, within these moments, these hours, the only thing left is to ask the world to see.

The creation of the Palestinian Diaspora of 1948, in which over 750,000 people were forced to leave their homes, was made virtually at gunpoint. This year, as Israelis celebrated their 60th birthday, Palestinians remembered their Nakba of destruction and turmoil, signified by their uprooting from their land. This monstrous contrast has to be highlighted so that the world is educated about the crimes perpetuated against Palestinians.

Yet instead the Nakba of 1948 is remembered in passing. Death and destruction are treated like a casual event. Sure the Nakba is bemoaned, but the depth of the tragedy is not made apparent, as nobody has the right to question Israel.

Today Israel is seen as a a member of the world community, a nation with military and economic muscle, as well as a democratic state. Yet the facts of its creation are swept under the carpet.

Established Zionist politicians and military leaders understood there would come a day when the cat would be let out of the bag and the terrible reality of the massacres, transfers, expulsions, and destructions of whole villages would be broadcast to the whole world.

That’s why they’ve sought to legitimize themselves through literature and books written in English, targeting the hearts and minds of Western audiences and politicians. The Palestinians, the injured party, were secondary, peripheral, meaningless, as if they didn’t exist in all of this.

Over a 60-year period politicians such David Ban Gurion, Menachem Begin, Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon and Shimon Peres, have all sought to write a “history of their struggles” in Palestine/Israel and how they made it work.

The biographies and histories soon became powerful weapons and public relations tools to buy time and American support for Israel, despite the fact that the country was built on the blood of the Palestinian people, young and old, men and women, children and toddlers.

Through organizations and paramilitary groups like the Haganah, the Palmach (its strike force), the Irgun and the Stern gang, some of whom were trained and supplied by the British authorities, 13 massacres were committed in 1948 alone, and up to 100 massacres total. This is according to none other than Jewish historians.

Massacres like Dier Yassin in which around 245 women, men, children, old, young, and even pregnant women were slaughtered at point-blank are slowly being remembered for their ferocity. A ferocity that many Jews seem to be proud of.

It was 8 April 1948, a day that should be considered a black day not only for Palestinians and Arabs, but for the world and for Israelis themselves, whose establishment of a home cost another people so much.

Others massacres were ‘small’, as low as five people, but many went up to 50 and a 100. The massacres began as early as around 1946 when Zionist terrorists bombed the King David Hotel in which 91 people were killed. They continued in 1947 and increased through out 1948, so that as much land as possible could be taken.

Called their operation Plan Dalet, the Jewish paramilitary groups which, together with the reservists, were comprised of 100,000 armed men went against around an Arab army of 14,000 or so. They waanted to take as much land as possible, more than what was allocated to them by United Nations resolutions that divided historical Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Israeli.

Plan Dalet was an attempt to drive the Palestinians out through instilling fear into the local Palestinian villagers and town dwellers and force them to leave their land and their houses. People were panic-stricken, a mass-flight was induced, loudspeakers bellowed, telling people to leave for their own safety, sirens wailed.

Palestinians were made into refugees overnight. They left under bombardment. Of those captured many were killed as a lesson to others, that they too would be killed if they harbored any signs of resistance.

Despite the instructions of the Arab Higher Committee urging people not to leave, Palestinians ran to avoid being massacred and/or raped.

Palestinians left still hanging on to the keys to their homes, some at first sought refuge in nearby villages, some went over into neighboring countries into Lebanon and Syria where the idea of borders were still rudimentary. People genuinely believed it would be a matter of days and weeks before they could return to their lands, and they couldn’t that their exile would become permanent.

Survivors alive today said that when they were exiled to Jordan they tried to go back via a taxi, which was doubly difficult in those days, found that their homes had already become occupied by Jewish families.

These homeowners were ironically, the lucky ones. Other villages were quickly decimated soon after they were depopulated. To erase any memory of a prior Palestinian entity more than 500 villages were destroyed in 1948.

Meanwhile, a body of literature has built up over the years, examining just why the Palestinians were made into refugees and increasingly questioning the Israeli narrative claiming that the Arab countries told the people to leave.

Erskine Childers, an Irish journalist, wrote in the early 1960′s, in the Spectator in London, stating he found no evidence to suggest that it was the Arab countries that were responsible for the creation of the Palestinian exodus. On the contrary, he claimed that it was the Jewish paramilitaries that created the situation.

Palestinian academic Dr Walid Al Khalidi also sought to expose this Zionist myth, and so did Rosemary Al Sayigh, a British writer and academic who wrote extensively on the Palestinian uprooting. In the 1980′s Michael Palumbo also wrote about 1948.

These writings may have influenced Jewish academics that also begun to examine the creation of their own state. Dubbed as the “new historians”, they first gained prominence in the 1990s onwards. By examining state archives that were made available, many of them concluded that Israeli officials were indeed behind the Palestinian flight from their towns and villages and homes.

The author is the Responsible Chief Editor of Jo Magazine, a monthly produced in Amman. He worked previously as the Managing Editor of the Star, also in Amman between 1993 till 2003 and writes frequently on Arab and Palestinian affairs.

Just today, we are getting news of a fourteen-year-old child losing her life after a typically heavy-handed Israeli raid erupted in violence. Israel is showing the Gazans who’s boss. Vote for Hamas? Pay the price.

And yet, who was it exactly that the Gazans were supposed to vote for? Previous attempts at establishing a measure of good government have failed spectacularly. If you feel that your very existence is under siege, who do you turn to? That’s right, the guys with the guns.

I have no love lost for Islamic hard-liners. However, when I look at Israel’s policies toward this region, it seems to me that at this point, it’s as if no one is even searching for an actual solution. Gaza is troublesome and unstable, and who wants to deal with that? Why not just bleed it dry? Demoralize it to the point of it fading away?

The horrors of European anti-Semitism have paved the way for a series of new horrors elsewhere.

For example, I don’t blame Jews for wanting to leave the beloved, albeit struggling, country of my birth, Ukraine. A Ukrainian gentile is privileged in a way that a Ukrainian Jew is simply not. Swastikas spray-painted on the walls of residential buildings say it all. This side of the issue must be considered if a solution to the conflict can one day be reached.

It’s easy to talk “peace” when you don’t have to worry about grenades flying through your window at any given moment, but I would like to try.

There have been atrocities on both sides of this ongoing debacle, and the ensuing bitterness has solidified into rock-hard contempt. Fundamentalist nihilism has blossomed alongside collective punishment and impotent diplomacy.

Things cannot go on like this indefinitely. A perpetually embattled Israel, surrounded by disgruntled neighbours, is not sustainable. Who wants to live like that? No one wants to live like that.

My question is, how many Muslim, Jewish, and Christian deaths will it take before there is a collective shift in thinking?

There was a war over there.

Her father had once stood with her and spun their globe. His finger covered the entire country. He pointed it out with the white crescent at the top of one nail. Sirena had squinted at the small blot, its name printed in a nearby sea. She imagined that the whole country was probably the size of her elementary school and pictured the blue and red hallways packed with tall men and women who looked just like her dad.

Sirena couldn’t remember when the war had begun. Her father said it started a long time ago. Her sister Aisha was ten now, two years older than Sirena. Aisha couldn’t remember when the war started either, but she said she was six when the first phone call came, and she could remember how things were before it happened. Aisha said Baba smiled a lot more and he used to read stories and sing songs before bedtime. Now he just tucked the covers around you and said, “I love you, baby. Sleep well,” before flipping down the light switch and pulling the door almost shut.

“The war,” Aisha had said, and she said it with authority, “changed everything.” In the last four years, there had been five phone calls, each reporting the death of yet another cousin, aunt or uncle that the girls would never meet. Of the calls, Sirena could only remember two. She was afraid this might be the third phone call she would come to remember.

Sirena knew about war because her Baba had explained it to her when she asked him about it a few weeks before. He told her that lots of people argued about God. He said that sometimes they had the same religion, but there were small differences between what they believed, and when they disagreed, the trouble would start. When people got really angry, they would try to hurt each other.

“That’s what happened with the Jews,” Aisha had told her. “I heard Baba say that if it wasn’t for the Jews there would be no war in Lebanon and we would be there instead of here. But the Jews are greedy and they want to kill everyone. I was playing spy and listening while he was talking to Mama, but she caught me and asked me what I heard. Then she told me that there was a bad man named Hitler and he hurt the Jews. Baba got mad and said it was no excuse. Just because the Jews felt sorry for themselves, that didn’t mean it was okay for them to hurt the Palestinians like they did. And now they’re hurting the Lebanese.”

“Then what happened?”

“Mama sent me outside while she and Baba had a talk.” Aisha put her hands over her heart and made sure Sirena was looking in her eyes. “Right now, Jews are over there hurting our family.”

Sirena felt sad and angry at those Jews. “Why?”

Aisha shrugged and flicked something from her fingers. “Dunno. Some people are just mean.”

“Do all Jews hate us?”

Aisha shrugged again. “Maybe. Joshua at school doesn’t like me, and he’s a Jew.”

“Oh,” Sirena said, and thought of a girl at school who was really nice, and wore one of those stars on her necklace.

Her father had talked to her about the war one other time. He said it was the reason their family had never been to Lebanon and might never have the chance to go. Baba had told her this over breakfast one morning, sipping coffee and scooping up eggs and beans in a folded piece of bread. Sirena had leaned forward, fist under her chin, wide eyes narrowed in concentration, the way she always did when Baba explained any matter of life to her. There had been a stack of buttered toast in the middle of the table. After Baba finished counting off his friends and family members who had been killed so far and whether by bomb or bullet, his face a mask of resignation, every piece of toast had become cold and wet, but it didn’t matter to Sirena because she had lost her appetite anyway.

The disturbed rumble of her father’s deep voice filtered into her room. Sirena pushed her yellow-flowered sheets aside and put her narrow feet on the floor. She peered over her shoulder at her bedroom door. It was open just a crack, and, if she squinted, she could see across the hall into the darkness of her parents’ bedroom. She inhaled deeply and held her breath, waiting for their doorway to light up. Light would mean nothing was wrong; that her father was going to use the bathroom and then go back to sleep. Maybe this would a prank call or wrong number. She waited until her eyes became accustomed to the dark before releasing her breath. Her mouth tasted like she’d touched her tongue to a battery, and her stomach was in knots.

There would be no light tonight. She’d known it from the second the volume of her father’s voice spiked—he had to talk at a near shout to be heard over a bad connection.

Sirena stood up and straightened her blue “Daddy’s Girl” nightgown, letting it fall down over her knees. Occasionally, in her dreams, she was the one bravely calling her father and hearing his courageous reply. She was issued a rifle like the ones in the U.S. Army ads and fought alongside her relatives whose faces she knew from the black and white photographs Mama kept in a music box on her dresser. She made the call with mud smeared across her cheeks and some faceless cousin lying dead in a puddle of blood beside her, one hand reaching up and grasping her own. These dreams made her chest tight and her face wet with tears. Mama said it was because she had a kind soul.

The cool material of her nightgown against her warm skin reminded her that she was awake. This wasn’t a dream. She needed to know what was happening. She pushed her wild, dark hair out of her face, and sinking one hand into the mass to hold it back, tiptoed around the corner of her bunk bed toward the doorway.

She heard Aisha moving around with their younger sister Hadeel in the next room. She stopped, listening through the silent wall separating them, glad she was alone to investigate. Sirena opened her door very slowly, stopping it before it creaked, and stepped onto the worn carpet in the hallway. She inched toward her parents’ brown door, halting suddenly. The crackle of whispers invaded her ears. Her mother’s lips were producing comforting noises, her hand rustling against Baba’s shirt, on his shoulder, between his shoulder blades. The places where Mama always put her soft hands to comfort seemed ominous and threatening as Sirena squinted at them through the dark. The sounds were uncomfortable. The air smelled wrong, night-breathing that had turned sour. She waited.

She heard a man’s voice—like her father’s but pitched higher. Sirena moved closer to their doorway, freezing mid-step. Was someone else in the house? She hadn’t heard anyone come in. She peered into her parents’ room. The streetlamp outside their window cast enormous shadows on their bare, white walls. Mama said they wouldn’t waste money on decorations when the family overseas needed it. Sirena pushed their door open a little further so that she could see the stranger who must have come with the phone call.

Streetlight fell across her mother’s solemn face. And her father’s shaking shoulders. Her mother’s hands worked rhythmically on his back as Baba’s shoulders trembled harder and harder. The stranger’s voice was his.

He turned to look at Mama, and Sirena saw a tear on his thickly bearded face. Baba put a dark hand up in the air, the palm facing his cheek, and shook it gently forward and backward in a failed attempt to slice away whatever pain had come with the phone call. He turned his face down and placed his hand on it. The stranger’s voice stopped for a moment. A deep breath rasped against his dry lips and soggy throat, then the voice came again, in whimpers.

“Froggy throat, soggy throat,” Aisha would have teased, but Sirena wasn’t laughing. With warm shame on her face for witnessing her father in a moment of weakness, Sirena stared at her feet, sundark and olive. She tunneled her toes into the thin gray carpet outside her parents’ door for a moment before turning away.

Aisha had come out into the hallway and was poised in front of her bedroom door. Her hair was like Sirena’s; thick and dark, and standing off her head from sleep. She had one arm around little Hadeel’s shoulder. Hadeel gazed into the darkness. Brown curls sprang angrily from her head in all directions. Her pink nightshirt was twisted around her small body and partially tucked into her ruffled panties. She kept her tired eyes wide open, and she looked at Sirena suspiciously.

“Who was it?” Aisha asked quietly, taking a small step in front of Hadeel. Sirena looked at her younger sister, who was now peeking around Aisha’s side, clutching at the hem of her oversized, tie-dyed Spring Fling T-shirt. This would be Hadeel’s first phone call. She was old enough to remember this one.

Aisha leaned forward and gently poked Sirena’s shoulder. There was a probing, unanswered fear in her eyes that Sirena responded to with a lone nod. The two looked at the floor silently for a moment, mourning the loss of yet another family stranger. Aisha’s eyes tightened and she ushered Hadeel, who stood tense with awareness that something was wrong, back into their room. Hadeel went silently but with a thoughtful look on her face, as though she were piecing together a puzzle in her mind, as though she almost understood and had suddenly aged past four-and-a-half as a result.

Sirena headed back to her own bed, pausing briefly to listen to her sisters crawl under the same set of sheets. Aisha would take the outside of the bed to make sure Hadeel wouldn’t roll off while sleeping. Sirena considered joining them but left them to each other when she heard Aisha singing Hadeel “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

A vicious anger took her so that she trembled with the memory of her own first phone call, of waking up in the middle of the night, cold because it was winter. Aisha had squeezed her hand and piled extra blankets on the bed they were sharing, but Sirena couldn’t stop shivering. The cold in the air wasn’t just from the frost outside. Now she felt hot and stifled. She wanted to bang on the wall and yell at Aisha to stop singing, or maybe to change the words.

It should be: “There’s a land that I heard of where all our family dies.”

Sirena bunched up her pillow and focused on the cool of her sheets blanketing her legs. She turned from side to side, pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped the covers around her head to block out the still sour air. It was just her and her pillow in here. Her sisters were already asleep. Her parents too. The apartment was again silent. No ringing phone, no muffled cries. It seemed even the crickets and cicadas had stopped chirping.

She thought of how she would go with her sisters in the warm, Texas summer morning and collect the cicadas’ shells from the back yard. They would gather them with spoons and forks and put them in empty ice trays, then crush them up just because they made a crunching noise. Later their mother would scold the girls for using her good silverware. It was a joyful game the sisters played every day. But Sirena wasn’t looking forward to the joys of tomorrow. She could still hear her father’s small cries in her mind. She stared at the empty bunk above her, wishing that it was Hadeel’s week to sleep in her room, and willed her father’s voice to fade from her ears. Instead, she fell asleep to the remembered rhythm of his pain.

When morning came and they were collecting their cicada shells, Sirena and her sisters were asked to please come back inside. In the dining room, where they could still see the small square of brightly lit, fenced-in yard behind their condo, Baba told them their great aunt was shot by a sniper. His words scratched at the air and he spoke between stilted breaths. They waited, standing side-by-side, oldest to youngest, staring at him. They waited for some sign that everything would be okay. But Baba just looked beyond them. His eyes were swollen and his face was hard. The girls stared until Mama ushered them back outside.

Sirena and her sisters began to file through the sliding door. Sirena went first, but paused. Hadeel bumped into her and Aisha whispered harshly, “What’s the hold-up?” Sirena toed the doorframe, one hand resting against the glass.

“What is it, baby?” her Baba asked.

Sirena hesitated, uncertain but needing to know. Finally, she said, “Was it the Jews?”

“What?” Mama asked, her voice a bit panicky. “What?”

“The person who shot Aunty Samira. Was it one of those Jews?” Sirena repeated.

Her father hung his head and shook it from side to side. Her mother stood away from him, the hands that had been quietly massaging his back now hovering uncertainly in the air, her mouth silently working.

“It probably was a Jew,” Aisha said matter-of-factly, ready to steer Sirena outside. “Everyone knows they’re a bunch of lunatics. It’s their fault there’s a war. All they want to do is hurt people—”

“It wasn’t a Jew.” Their father cut her off before Aisha could make the triangle on her face with her thumb and pointer finger; the secret sign she and Sirena had come up with for a big Jewish nose.

“Then who was it?”

He looked up at Sirena from under his bushy eyebrows and sighed, “A Druze.” At the same time Mama said, “It doesn’t matter.”

Sirena looked back and forth between them. Baba spread his hands, then straightened up. “Your mother’s right,” he said, “It doesn’t matter.” His voice became deep and resonant. “Go ahead, girls. Go outside and play.”

“We’ll talk about this later,” Mama called after them, already turning her angry eyes on Baba.

Sirena wanted to ask what a Druze was, but her mother’s voice had that edge of finality that caused even Aisha to shrink in on herself. She bit her lip, angry and confused, and followed her sisters outside. The three moved in a silent line, crouching forward like a small army. Outside, they collected more cicada shells, this time crushing them under bare feet and between fingers, pretending they were gunshots crackling through the air.

S. M. Ayoub is a Lebanese-American mother, wife, writer, and recent graduate of Indiana University’s Creative Writing Program with an M.F.A. in Fiction. She keeps a daily life blog at “The Days Are Just Packed” and is currently putting together Islam on My Side – an anthology of Muslim American experience post 9/11. Ayoub lingers on themes of the Lebanese Civil War and resulting diaspora, as well as islamophobia. Her poetry has been published in The Oxford Review.

During the last three weeks before the onslaught, after an upsurge in rocket attacks coming from the Gaza Strip, Israel had imposed a tight blockade, refusing to allow anything but some humanitarian aid to trickle into the region, and not much of that. Two weeks later, the Israelis opened the doors to allow heating oil only. That same day, three more rockets were fired off at Israel from the Strip.

The Gaza Strip is roughly 25 miles long by 8 miles wide. Except for a seven mile southern border with Egypt, it is surrounded by Israel to the north and east, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. The area has been occupied almost continuously since the time of ancient Egyptians, with Philistines, Arabs, Christian Crusaders, the Ottomans, the British and the Israelis as overseers. It was even occupied by modern Egypt in the aftermath of the First Arab-Israeli War in 1948. Israel took control during the 1967 Six-Day War, along with the Golan Heights, the West Bank of the Jordan River, east Jerusalem and the Sinai Peninsula.

Israel withdrew its physical occupation from parts of the Strip in accordance with the 1979 Oslo Accords. The Oslo Accords also affirmed the Palestinian right to self-government. The Palestinian National Authority and Israel then shared control in the Gaza Strip until 2005, when Ariel Sharon unilaterally ended Israeli’s military presence and withdrew all Israeli settlements, making the Strip the first territory to come completely under the PNA. The peace, however, did not to last.

Yasir Arafat’s PLO had become cynically corrupt, tired, and had generally lost its way. As we know, in 2007, Hamas, a militant group and determined foe of Israel, was voted in by the Palestinians to replace the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip, causing a schism with the Fatah party, the PLO’s political wing, which dominates Palestinians in the West Bank.

Since the reluctant withdrawal of the Israeli settlements in 2005, Gaza is almost entirely Palestinian Arab. At least 99 percent of the population are Sunni Muslim with a scattered few Christians. The region saw a massive shift of population following the conflict of 1948, when Israel was created. By 1968, the region had grown in population six times. Right now 1.5 million people live in the Gaza Strip and it has, at 146 square miles, one of the highest population densities in the world. Eighty percent of Gazans live below the U.N.’s poverty level.

Israel and Egypt signed a treaty in 1979 that returned control of the Sinai Peninsula, which borders the Strip, to the Egyptians. As part of that treaty, a 100 meter wide band of land was designated as the Philadelphi corridor was set up as a buffer zone between Gaza and Egypt. Israel subsequently built a corrugated sheet metal barrier there during the intifadas of the early 2000s. The barrier is topped by barbed wire.

Egypt and Israel then enacted a military accord in 2005 after the Israeli military pullout. This agreement was ostensibly built on the 1979 peace pact. This pact specified a deployment of 750 Egyptian border guards along the length of the border, which is, remember, seven miles long. These guards were to man the border helping Israel defend against terrorism, arms smuggling and other illegal behavior. That was the deal.

The Rafah Crossing, the only entry-exit point along those seven miles had been controlled by Egypt and the Palestinian Authority. The E.U. was to monitor any Palestinian impulses to misbehave on their side of the wall. However, in July 2007, the E.U. pulled out after Hamas defeated Fatah in their elections for the right to speak for the Gazans. At the time of the pullout, Egypt and Israel agreed to shut down the Rafah Crossing, effectively sealing Gaza off from the rest of the world. The Israelis hoped that such a blockade would choke off Hamas-directed mortar and rocket attacks into southern Israel. It did not stop those attacks, but it did stop anything (i.e. heating oil, baby diapers, blankets, coffee and so on) from getting in. It was winter, and it was bitterly cold (Western observes, of course, regularly assume that the entirety of the Middle East is hot year-round).

Last week, Egyptian troops successfully managed to close the breaches, but not before thousands of Gazans broke out of the blockade to flood the nearby Egyptian towns for supplies. Before many of these people could return to their homes, the border slammed shut, trapping hundreds if not thousands of Gazans in Egypt. Israeli authorities pointed out that militants were among those locked outside. The militants, the Israelis claimed, were now free to cross the porous Israeli border elsewhere in order to cause more mayhem. Hamas has denied these allegations.

Those Gazans trapped inside the Gaza Strip are growing unhappy with Hamas’s continuing attacks on Israel from their staging points in Gaza. This, of course, is Israel’s strategy in the first place: squeeze Gaza and the Gazans themselves will stop Hamas’s rocket attacks. But the rockets have continued.

Israel has vowed to keep pounding suspected Hamas hide-outs with air strikes, even in the face of international criticism that Israel is using the rockets as a pretext for collective punishment in Gaza. Israel denies the charge.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says he is helpless to stop the Hamas rockets since Hamas took control of Gaza last June. However, on February 4, rockets were fired into Israel from the West Bank, not Gaza, thus provoking Israel to demand that Abbas take stronger action against Hamas.

Enter the assassins.

On February 12th, Imad Mugniyah’s car was blown up with him in it in a tony neighborhood of Damascus. No one has claimed responsibility for killing Mugniyah, a famously elusive militant suspected of masterminding bombings that killed hundreds of American and French troops in Beirut during the 1980s. However, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Iran-backed Hezbollah, pointed the finger at Israel. So have many others, citing the sophistication of the bomb itself as evidence of the involvement of Israeli Intelligence, Mossad.

Israel again denied the charge, and was not the only one to point out that Syria’s intelligence service also had the wherewithal to come up with such a weapon. Syria has also denied the charge. Nasrallah then threatened to intensify his group’s conflict with Israel and to retaliate against Israeli targets anywhere in the world.

If Hezbollah were to strike at Israel outside the borders of Lebanon and Israel, it would be a complete turnaround from the group’s current policy. The last time it did so was in the 1990s, when Mr. Mugniyah, ironically, was accused of planning bombings of Israeli targets in Argentina. Hezbollah has denied any connection to the bombings in Buenos Aires.

Mr. Mugniyah’s murder was followed two days later by an Israeli air strike that killed a Hamas commander in Gaza as well as four other Hammas soldiers.

This is the stink of war. The acrid smell of cordite, blood, fear, fire and grief.

In the Gaza Strip, spring is on the way. Not peace, of course, just spring. Flower boxes are reappearing on window sills, clothes are hung out to dry in the sun. The old men have started playing checkers and backgammon in the coffeehouses.

Life, in some fashion, goes on.

Nick Broomfield’s “The Battle for Haditha” has not yet gotten enough press. In some ways, this is understandable. Despite the explosive subject matter, this is a low-key film. There are no big-name actors, no enormous budget, and, most importantly, the picture’s stylistic elements tend toward a stark, bare-boned simplicity. Nevertheless, this is a film to see.

Broomfield cast many amateurs for key roles, among them some ex-Marines and Iraqi refugees, and this is both good and bad. There is a definite air of authenticity surrounding the film, yet the acting occasionally appears forced. Some of the dialogue struck me as contrived- although this may have something to do with the subtitles. I do not speak Arabic, but having been accompanied by an Arabic speaker at the screening, I discovered that the subtitles are not as good as they could have been.

This movie is earnest, but, in some scenes, it also comes across as didactic. Do we really need to see the chief insurgent character, a disgruntled former member of the Iraqi army, spelling out the message with lines such as: “The Americans created the insurgency by dis-banding the army”? Does the chief insurgent furthermore have to opine stiffly on the future of Iraq, noting (in a manner that suggests that he is channeling Fukuyama) the bleak possibility of the country inheriting a new leader, someone who will be a helluva lot worse than Saddam?

Yet in spite of a few missteps, this is a haunting picture. I can’t get it out of my head, and I probably won’t for a long time. Broomfield captures the comings and goings of the residents of Haditha, people whose lives are about to be shattered, with intimacy and grace. I was floored by the character of Rashied (Duraid A. Ghaieb), a young man besotted with his pregnant wife (Yasmine Hanani – who attended the screening alongside the director, and ex-Marine actors Elliot Ruiz and Eric Mehalacopoulos), keenly aware of the growing danger of staying with his family in Haditha, and yet unable to do much about it.

Alongside U.S. Marines and Iraqi civilians, Broomfield dares to portray the members of the Iraqi insurgency as human beings. These people are not just fundamentalist foreigners, they are also ordinary locals who are infuriated with what has happened to their country. This simple truth is about as inconvenient as anything Al Gore can come up with, and is bound to make American audiences squirm in their seats.

At the Q & A afterwards, Broomfield pointed out that the massacre at Haditha has been extensively researched, and the script was an attempt to stick as faithfully as one could to real-life events. The movie was shot on location in Jordan, and grim anecdotes were related: apparently, one of the Iraqi families featured in the film wanted to pack up and leave in the middle of the shoot, highlighting the adversity of refugee life for the crew and the rest of the cast.

The audience, meanwhile, was happily irreverent. People expressed their anger with the U.S. occupation of Iraq with ease, blunt questions were asked, awkward pauses were observed, and the entire occasion had a fresh, unscripted feel one so rarely gets in similar settings in the States. Kudos to the festival organizers for this, honestly.

One woman asked if “The Battle for Haditha” would get past “censorship” in the States, a question which reminded me of misconceptions people hold about the U.S. film industry. In the U.S., the real censorship lies in trying to find a distributor for a potentially controversial film. The MPAA can cripple a movie’s chance at being distributed by issuing an NC-17 rating, but such ratings are usually tied to graphic representations of sex. “Battle for Haditha” has secured a U.S. distributor and will, hopefully, be seen by at least a fraction of the people who need to see it most: those among us who continue to defend the ongoing, blood-spattered mess that has been made of Iraq.

The best moments of the film have to do with the peculiar duality of wartime violence: how it is both personal and mediated, vicious and strangely, grotesquely casual. It is the antithesis to all life, and yet it can make its perpetrators feel alive. No amount of theorizing can ultimately reveal its true nature, and Broomfield understands this. Sometimes, all you need to do is watch.