Nathan Englander's Inability: A Non-Fiction Short Story

A few days ago I posted a rather long and detailed critique of Tom Suarez's book accusing Israel of being a terror state, not so much due to its current actions but based on its creation which he sees was instrumentalized solely through the terror committed against the Arabs and the British by all the Jewish underground organizations.  That book almost totally ignored the historical context of the period of 1900-1948 besides getting dozens of facts wrong (the book continues into the 1950s but it is more of the same screeding by Suarez).

I now see these words of Nathan Englander published in the NYTimes:

I just couldn’t shake it — we’re killing them because they killed us and they’re killing us because we killed them. Everyone always avenging. I just couldn’t shake this notion of the inability to see the other side.

and he does the same thing. It's all just tit-for-tat. Mindless I-smack-you-and-you smack-me. We Jews are no better than the Arabs. We're all a bunch of losers.

But I am always reminded of Dr. Israel Eldad's quip:

Yankel and Moshe are hauled into court for fighting. The judge, who also happens to attend the same synagogue as these two miscreants and grew up with them in the neighborhood, calls them over to the bench and says:

"Okay, chaverim, let's see how we can stop a full-scale legal contretemps. Yankel, how did the fight begin?"

"Yuiz, er Judge," says Yankel, "it started when Moshe hit me back." 

And to transplant the real-life humor to the Middle East, the Arabs have always - since Jews came back to the Land of Israel in increasing numbers these last few centuries, and sought to purchase land, living first among the Arabs in Jaffa, Hebron, Tiberias, Safad and Jerusalem's Old City - employed their weapons of violence.

The first Jew murdered by an Arab just for purchasing property in the modern era is Avraham Shlomo Zoref. In 1851.

Here's a list, not complete, of Jews murdered between 1873-1920.

Jews set up self-defense units: Bar Giora, HaShaomer, Gideonim.

Defense.

Original Palestine was truncated by 75% and Transjordan was created.

The Arabs rejected territorial compromise in 1937.

And in 1947.

They rioted and pillaged and raped.  In 1920, in 1921, in 1929, in 1933, during 1936-39.

They renewed their terror in the summer of 1947 and on the morrow of the UN's November 29, 1947 Partition Plan, they went to war.

In the 1950s, there were the fedayeen.

In 1964, the Palestine Liberation Organization was founded which renewed terror (Nathan, what were the borders of the 'Palestine' they sought to violently liberate?).

After the Six Days War the Arabs initiated, they rejected peace at Khartoum (Three Noes).

Rejected Menachem Begin's 1977 autonomy plan as they did Yigal Allon's 1968 plan.

And everything else offered.

Oslo was sabotaged by Arafat's terror campaign.

Englander is best at fiction.  Not at history or politics.

He does, however, have an inability.

P.S.  This was a non-fiction short story.

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