Sderot as Stalingrad, Hamas as blind Samson [View All]

[bemildred]

Mostly for the discussion about misuse of loaded analogies. I doubt that Bradley has that good a grip on how "the World" views things.

---

In the iconography of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, symbols can be surprisingly interchangeable. David and Goliath, for starters. Or, for example, the question of which side can lay claim to the symbolism of Stalingrad, and which side is as ephemeral and disassociated from concrete reality as Brigadoon.

Consider the question of Stalingrad. When Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield in March, 2002 - the largest military operation in the West Bank since the 1967 Six Day War and a response to the killings of 130 Israelis in suicide attacks that month alone - Yasser Arafat compared the Jenin refugee camp to besieged, bombarded and demolished World War II Stalingrad.

Veteran Israeli leftier-than-thou Uri Avnery was among the first to have invoked the Stalingrad theme, writing with something approaching Socialist Realism in an April 16, 2002 article entitled "Immortal heroes of Jenin" in the British Guardian newspaper. According to Avnery, in ordering the operation, then-prime minister Ariel Sharon and his defense minister Shaul Mofaz "created the foundations of the Palestinian nation and the Palestinian state."

"When the international media cannot be kept out any more and the pictures of horror are published, two possible versions may emerge: Jenin as a story of massacre, a second Sabra and Shatila; and Jenin, the Palestinian Stalingrad, a story of immortal heroism. The second will surely prevail."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/953207.html