The Patron of Knife Intifada

TRONDHEIM (Norway): Towards the end of 2015, the Palestinian struggle for self-rule entered a new phase, named by some as “the knife intifada” and marked by the use of nontraditional weapons and unlikely attackers, including women wielding a knife or a pair of scissors, trying to kill an Israeli soldier or settler or anyone suspected to be a Jew.

Now, who may be called, in your opinion, the patron saint of this petit form of protest and resistance, whose expressions have been widely condemned as horrific terror attacks?

I cannot think of a more worthy candidate for the above title than John Steinbeck, a Nobel laureate in literature, who received (exactly seventy years ago) King Haakon VII Freedom Cross for writing The Moon Is Down (hereafter MiD) , a novella that, in the words of the King, “had bolstered the morale of his entire war-ravaged nation”. Norway was then so poor, according to Steinbeck, “that I had to pay for the cross, I mean the cost of it”.

Set in a small mining town in an unspecified country (similar to Norway), MiD describes the events following the occupation of the town by a battalion of foreign soldiers.

Apart from George Corell, a turncoat who facilitated the takeover, the people of the town, from the mayor downward, resent the invaders, and put up, in due course, a spontaneous resistance. While Mayor Orden, whose mansion is appropriated as the headquarters of the invading commander, chooses noncooperation as his chief weapon, and is eventually executed for his recalcitrance, many of his fellow citizens adopt sabotage and murder as their means of retaliation.

Annie, the mayor’s cook, annoyed by the gaze of the soldiers guarding the porch of her employer’s residence, pours boiling water over one guard and bites another. Alex Morden, when ordered by an officer to work at the coal mine, lashes out at him, but his pick axe hits the head of another officer, who gets killed. Alex is executed after a sham trial.

Lieutenant Tonder (who hopes that “we won’t drop out of this occupation after the war is over”, so that he, with no family land, and a few of his fellow soldiers might grab some farms and settle down in this nice place), tries to ingratiate himself with a woman named Molly, who turns out to be the pretty widow of Alex, but Molly stabs the would-be settler with a large pair of scissors.

In an earlier scene, Colonel Lanser (the commanding officer) recalls that a little old woman in Brussels had used her long hatpin and deception (by pretending to be a collaborator) to kill twelve of his men. The reference to Brussels is a hint, if one were needed, that the unidentified invaders are Nazis.

As observed by George Orwell, all art is propaganda, but not all propaganda is art.

MiD, written expressly as an item of propaganda, is a minor work of art, if imitation (of life by art and vice versa) is used as a criterion. The book had a mixed reception in USA, because Steinbeck had portrayed the invaders as human beings rather than ogres and beasts, but it became an inspiring story for the peoples in occupied Europe, where its hastily translated versions were smuggled (against the wishes of the occupiers) and avidly read. “The flies have conquered the flypaper” became, and will forever remain, the slogan of people who are occupied and treated as flies.

A child as young as 12 can now be imprisoned for “terrorist offences” in Israel and the occupied territories.

It is not necessary to speculate that all the lone-attackers were inspired by their reading of an Arabic translation of MiD, since rejection of occupation is a natural response; even the normally placid Norwegians were no exception to this rule.

One wonders how many pro-settlement Israelis have read MiD (in a language they understand best) and pondered over its implications; what would they say if one compared them to Lieutenant Tonder, and scissors wielding Arab women to Molly Morden; would they be haunted by the remark (made by Lanser to Corell, who expected little resistance from these “simple, peaceful people”) that, when it comes to occupation, “There are no peaceful people. When will you learn it?”.

When, indeed, will they ever learn?

(The writer is a Professor of Bio-Physics based in Norway)

(Photograph: Palestinian Child trying to save his father from being arrested by Israeli soldiers)