The View from Israel
newyorker.com
Jeffrey Goldberg talks about the Israeli reaction to Saddam Hussein’s capture.
Posted 2003-12-18
The New Yorker staff writer Jeffrey Goldberg has reported extensively on Israel and the Middle East; he was in Israel when the news of Saddam Hussein’s capture was announced. Here, with The New Yorker’s Daniel Cappello, Goldberg discusses the Israeli, Palestinian, and Kurdish reactions to the news.
DANIEL CAPPELLO: How did Israelis react to the news of Saddam’s capture?
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: As with everything here, there were sort of mirror-opposite reactions. The Israelis, of course, are counted among the victims of Saddam; people here still remember that Saddam fired thirty-nine Scud missiles at them in 1991. So, from the official perspective, Israel, along with many other countries, is considering bringing charges against him. Judging just from the reaction of people I spoke with and from what is in the media, I would say that most Israelis were pleased that a man who stated in 1990 that he would “burn half of Israel” with chemical weapons if they attacked Iraq is being brought to justice. Also, Israelis very closely identify with the fortunes of the United States, so when something good happens for the United States Israel is generally quite pleased.
I’ve been spending some time with people in the defense establishment, and, interestingly, even though there’s a great deal of relief in the defense community in Israel, there’s also a realistic view of the difficulties ahead. I don’t want to say that Israelis are pessimistic, but they do have firsthand experience with the difficulty of putting down insurgencies. So one of the things you hear in the defense establishment here is that it’s great to capture Saddam, but it’s mostly symbolic. They don’t think that America’s troubles are by any means over, and they think it’s an open question of how much staying power America has.
I understand that you were also on the West Bank. How did Palestinians and other Arabs react to the news?
The feeling ranged from unease to outright sadness, tinged with anger, not only toward the U.S. but also toward Saddam—for not shooting when he was discovered. One person I spoke to who was in the Fatah leadership remarked, somewhat cynically, how Saddam, famously, over the past three years, provided money to the families of suicide bombers. At first, he paid ten thousand dollars per bomber, then last year it went up to twenty-five thousand dollars per bomber. And this person from Fatah made the obvious but nevertheless interesting observation that Saddam’s devotion to the cause of suicide fighting didn’t extend to himself. What’s so interesting is that the pathology is very deep. Palestinians identify with Saddam because he identified with Palestinians. Moderate Palestinians, of course, sit back and see what a disaster the relationship with Saddam has been for the Palestinian people. But just a few days ago, on the so-called Arab street, I saw a pro-Saddam demonstration in Nablus. It was a small one, but there have been larger demonstrations in Gaza. One recurring theme in Palestinian politics is that Palestinians think they have trouble picking the winning side, and Saddam is a classic case in point.
The Palestinian community supports Saddam for two reasons. First, they feel that he stood up for them, even though his support could be judged as destructive. Second, he’s an enemy of the United States, and any enemy of the United States automatically earns their respect. This is connected to another recurring theme, that of “humiliation,” and the fact that, in their view, America continues to subject the Arab people to humiliation.
In the recent past, America has been put in a position to try to understand the differences between its culture and others—is this another instance of that?
It’s about the body and also about the belief that you’re not supposed to treat powerful men that way—you can’t show them looking dishevelled. It all goes back to how one perceives it. If you and I saw an American politician having a throat culture, we wouldn’t think less of him; we might laugh, we might think it amusing that even our great leaders have to subject themselves to the indignities of a checkup. But here it was taken as this terrible violation of his body and of his dignity.
Let’s talk a little more about the significance of the capture. You have written about the genocide perpetrated by Saddam against the Kurds, who inhabit Iraqi Kurdistan, in the northern part of the country. What does the capture of Saddam mean for the Kurds?
It sparked a reaction that’s something beyond joy, deeper than joy. It doesn’t happen very often in the world that a dictator gets called to account for the murders he has committed. The Kurds were the subjects of an actual genocide, by the modern definition of the term. I spoke with a couple of Kurdish friends of mine in the past few days, and they expressed utter disbelief that this was actually happening. Kurds, the largest ethnic group in the world without a state, are not used to being the recipient of justice. Whether in Baghdad, Damascus, Iran, or Turkey, they have always suffered the indignity of being an occupied people. There’s an expression they use about themselves that has become a cliché in Kurdistan: “The Kurds have no friends but the mountains.” When I was in Kurdistan during the war in northern Iraq, American troops were greeted with roses and dancing and singing. When the Kurds realized that the Americans were actually going to go through with this, one Kurdish leader I remember, Jalal Talabani, who is on the Iraqi governing council now, said to me, “For the first time in my lifetime, I can change that expression to, ‘The Kurds have no friends but the mountains and the Americans.’”
What role are the Kurds playing in the current state of Iraq?
Well, the foreign minister is Kurdish-Iraqi. The Kurds are fully represented on the Iraqi governing council. And they have formed an alliance with the southern Shiites against the Sunni middle. So the Kurds, with all of the imperfections of the current governance of Iraq, are playing a more central role in creating the future of Iraq than they’ve ever played before.
How do you think the trial of Saddam might play out, in terms of public opinion in the Arab world? It will expose his crimes, but might it also give him a bully pulpit?
It is like the Slobodan Milosevic scenario, isn’t it? I think he might bluster, and it’s his right, but I read a bit about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, and it had a profound effect on the society. Just the public airing of testimony will ultimately have an ameliorative effect, and it’s beyond my imagination that Saddam has an argument that will be bought by more than a minority of Sunnis. Obviously, the sort of endlessly grinding Milosevic trial comes to mind, but I feel that it’s going to be a wonderful thing. By wonderful, I mean wonderful and terrible, to hear the testimonies of the victims and of the relatives of the victims of not only the Anfal campaign, not only the genocide or the chemical attacks, but of the way Saddam’s regime used to torture and murder and rape on a daily basis as a means of political control. The trials might have a unifying effect on the people, as sort of a daily reminder of what they went through collectively.
You have written about the terrorist group Hezbollah, and, specifically, about the structure of its terrorist cells around the world. What effect has the American occupation in Iraq had on Hezbollah?
Hezbollah has been quiet internationally. For sure, it has engaged the Israelis on the northern border, but that heats up and then it cools off. Hezbollah has a real problem. There are a hundred and thirty thousand American troops in Iraq, and Hezbollah’s primary sponsor, Syria, is weak. The working assumption of people who follow these things is that if President Bush is reëlected he will turn his attention to Syria, and, from the American perspective, one of Syria’s principal sins is the sponsorship of Hezbollah. So I think what you’re seeing in Hezbollah is an enforced quiet. Hezbollah supporters in Lebanon and elsewhere believe that this President, unlike previous Presidents, does not bluff. So I think Hezbollah is biding its time and waiting to see how the situation in Iraq works out.
Does the capture of Saddam bring us closer to a stable, sovereign Iraq?
People say that this will force the insurgents to question what they’re doing. I’d like to believe that, but that’s sort of the classic American sin, which is to ask the question “What would I do in that circumstance?” and then come up with the rational, logical American answer. Is it a huge symbolic blow? Yes. Does that mean that the insurgents will behave the way we’d like them to behave? No. People are going to continue to get killed. It’s going to be terrible. One of the things that people have to understand is that the hardcore insurgents, the so-called dead-enders, have got nothing to do but keep blowing things up. On the other hand, the capture will have an interesting effect on the typical Iraqi, especially the young Iraqi. All they’ve ever known is Saddam and his terrifying godlike power over every aspect of their lives. To see him come out of a hole, dishevelled and disoriented, and to see him on film as essentially putty in the hands of the Americans, this will have a huge psychological effect on those people. But, in terms of stopping the insurgency, I wouldn’t make any bets on that. |
