From: Benjamin Date: October 5, 2009 12:12:53 AM EDT To: Meredith Subject:Re: yjhr article
Hey Meredith,
Sorry it took me a little while to get in touch. Anyway, about the Israel article: I started thinking about it after you guys mentioned in Egypt that you'd like something from an Israeli perspective. I spent parts of the rest of the summer working with Israeli children who have lost a family member to terrorism, talked with the mostly right-wing Israelis who are part of that organization, and visited Sderot, so there's a lot I can talk about. My discomfort comes from the fact that I can't really write two sentences sympathetic to the Israeli cause without qualifying them with a list of the reasons the Palestinians have to be more upset. If I sit down to write an article about human rights in the Middle East, I'm not going to be talking about Israel's problems. That said, I don't think we're going to get anywhere in the region unless we understand that the Israelis, like Palestinians, are not generating their hatred out of nowhere, and so I think there's merit in presenting the Israeli side.
Basically, I'm confused about what kind of article would be most appropriate and honest. There's the option of working in both points of view by talking about my experience in the West Bank. Or I could just talk about Israel, but I'm not sure what exactly we'd consider an issue of human rights, and I'd need to figure out how to write an article about Israeli concerns without suggesting that they're the victims. In general, it seems like focusing more on my specific experiences and less on a wider-angle political piece would be helpful.
If you've got any thoughts on what would be right for the magazine, I'd love to hear them.
Best, Ben
Look forward to what Ben ultimately comes up with in the next issue of The Yale Journal of Human Rights to be released this November.
by Kunal Lunawat Branford College, Yale 2011 Q. What are your first associations when you hear about this region? A. Conflicts, struggles, armed barricades, hard-nosed diplomacy, human-rights violations, a frustrating and politicized status quo, cross-border terrorism, rising fundamentalism…
And so I began my journey into the Valley...
It was rather apt that the first few days of my stay were marked by the closure of the summer capital of the state, Srinagar. I was there to get a feel of what living in Kashmir is like, and truly bandhs, day-long curfews, had become an integral part of life in the region.
You would have to be ultra vigilant and in touch with your environment to find out the real reason behind the current shutdown in the city. It could be anything, from a mere political gimmick, to a preemptive move by the security forces and, sometimes, genuine public dissent at the current state of affairs in the city. What fascinated me the most was how these three factors merged into one another; often obliterating boundaries of individual reason and catalyzing one great mess, marked by sheer political ineptitude.
Take the Shopian rape case for instance. In a small town of the Shopian district of Jammu and Kashmir, two young women were raped and murdered this summer. A rather gory incident, despicable in all forms, was transformed into political mileage by the opposition. The call within the political circle seemed to be:
“A visit a day to Shopian, Will make National Conference* Go astray.”
(*National Conference is the ruling party in Jammu and Kashmir. Most of the political visits were made by the rulers of the Opposition in a bid to make the former unpopular.)
Impassioned and emotionally charged protestors took to the streets, provoking the armed forces to take action. There were barricades in sensitive areas, curfews in others, and monitoring throughout the region for fear of further repercussions. And while all this was happening, the state government, watched and mulled; a week later it set up a judicial inquiry into the incident which had been politicized, militarized, and sapped of any empathy for the victim’s family.
And while all this happened, I stumbled into these people…
We often hear of silver linings which line thick, dark masses of precipitation, but seldom come across one. Here, in the midst of standstill and chaos (Because both standstill and chaos are contradictory, yet visible in Kashmir. I guess it is nature’s beauty and man’s fight against it which make both co-exist.), I happened to meet a few people who introduced me to another side of Kashmir.
They were authors, economists, businessmen, professors and doctors: men and women who were determined improve the quality of life in their society. Yes they were affected by the debilitating political dispute, but they were also driven to look beyond it and work for the greater cause. In fact, many of them believed that by doing so, they would render the dispute sans its venom, the fear and instability that has plagued Kashmir since 1991.
And these people introduced me to what Kashmir once was…
Nature at its purest and hospitality at its best. This other Kashmir – places like Sonamarg, Gulmarg and Pahalgaon - was testimony to its claim of being paradise on Earth. These regions lay in stark contrast to the rest of the valley, almost unperturbed by the conflict which had afflicted its surroundings.
Was it Nature herself that had stood her ground and made it impossible for state and non-state actors to extend the turmoil in these regions? No. There is something more. The firm resolve of people to stay unaffected by what was happening around them, the resilience of the local populace to remain this way, come what may, and an inherent desire to retain the spirit of Kashmir had left the area in its virgin and truest form. This, I am told, was once known as Kashmiriyat, or the essence of what the Kashmir Valley stood for.
