By Patricia Lee Sharpe
Here’s the gist of it: because Palestinians in Gaza chose Hamas, Gaza has been turned into a concentration camp, and even the children of those naughty voters must be punished, according to Israel and its primary financial and moral (ahem!) backers in the Bush administration. As a result, Palestinian students can’t count on exit visas to study abroad, even when they’re awarded the full scholarships they need to do so. Not even when those scholarships are sponsored by Israel’s official friends in the U.S.
So, Palestinian children are to be punished for the sins of their fathers even unto the umpteenth generation. This sort of thinking goes back to the Bible. It’s purpose, several millenia ago, was to account for the baffling cosmic injustice by which good people suffered very bad things. The explanation: God designed it that way. You’re in trouble because you had a bad daddy or mommy ad infinitum.
Well, that explanation may work, sort of, for some people, to account for the consequences of natural phenomena like tsunamis and earthquakes and tornadoes. Unavertable catastrophes kill a lot of innocent people and even some saints, no doubt. Such premature mortality doesn’t seem fair, but people often feel better if they can find a “good reason” for the horror.
Actually death by typhoon, etc., isn’t fair, because fairness has nothing to do with nature.
But the Israeli exit visa policy has nothing to do with god or nature. It’s a political decision, and it’s hubris or sacrilege for humans to think they may act like god. On the human level, meanwhile, the notion of punishing children for the sins of their fathers is not only unjust inhuman and unjust, it’s ludicrous. It assumes that a person’s future can be predicted at a very early age. It also assumes that children always or mostly turn out like their parents.
On what sage-worthy grounds might an Israeli security staffer deny an exit visa? The kid threw stones at Israeli soldiers when he/she was 12 or 14? He/she shouted anti-Israeli slogans or scribbled anti-Israeli graffiti? He/she has a father, mother, cousin, uncle who is/was a Hamas member or supporter?
In practice, no such factors reliably predict anyone's future philosophy or behavior. For example, when I entered college, I was a Christian, a Republican and an ardent Israel supporter. I am none of these now, and I have changed no more than many people do over a lifetime.
Sometimes children adopt the parental religious orientation or profession; sometimes they don’t. Some children get more liberal as a result of travel and education. Some get more conservative. Furthermore, we all know that siblings can be as different as night and day. Thus, there is no way to know how a young or inexperienced person will react when exposed to foreign countries and cultures.
To give the devil his due, it’s true that some foreign-educated engineers and doctors have become terrorists. Yet most turn out to be beneficial members of society. Is it reasonable to punish 1000 potential agents of good in order to avert the minuscule risk of one (or less) going amok? The Israeli policy of denying foreign education to Gazans is a crude and vicious business of punishing children for the supposed sins of their fathers, a policy of totally gratuitous cruelty.
It’s cruel in another way, too. It assumes that parents will do anything you want them to do if you make life hard for their children. It assumes, in this case, that Gazans, at a certain point of deprivation and humiliation, will hug their babies, fall on their knees and beg for forgiveness, after which they will humbly vote as Israelis want them to vote. By now, it should be clear that such self-negation will not happen. Not even the Bush administration is willing to let Gazans starve.
Fortunately, then, most of the trapped children will grow up, but there’s a consequence to consider. Although the principle of non-predictability applies across the board, I strongly suspect that a larger proportion of those who never experience a more benign environment will be angrier and more vindictive than those who left to study at Harvard or Michigan State or Bryn Mawr. Or Oxford. Or Heidelberg.
How could the U.S. have slavishly acquiesced in this policy of punishing youth for the sins of the grown ups? I don’t understand it, but I am deeply grateful to those who spilled the beans and hope (not very optimistically) they will not be punished for disclosing this injustice. There is nothing like public humiliation to cause policy change. The Palestinian Fulbrighters will travel.
I am no less happy to see that exit visas will also be issued to hundreds of Gazans who had been denied the opportunity to travel to other countries for education.
However, nothing can be taken for granted. Vigilance will be required, lest the prison gates be locked again, after this little brouhaha dies down. And should an administrative “bottleneck” occur again, I suggest that the proper U.S. response should not be to revoke Palestinian grants or to plead for reversal, but to immediately reassign all Israeli Fulbright grants to Muslim students elsewhere in the world.
Not all Fulbright awards go to young students, of course, but visas for older scholars are equally defensible. Surely no Israeli official in his or her right mind can believe that a Palestine without professionals and academics will be good for Israel’s future security. Unless, of course, Israel’s true goal really is the genocide, total expropriation or perpetual serfdom that some Israelis, at least, seem to envision for the Palestinians.