IN PLACE

Two backward peoples

2012-01-13T09:37:00.007+02:00

Israel, Palestinians must let go of justice and join reality
The reality that will develop will not be a prophetic binational vision: The opposite is true. It will be a patently inhuman reality over which a black flag will fly, on which will be written in blood, 'This is the Balkans.'

Salman Masalha | Two backward peoples

The poet Taha Muhammad Ali, who recently passed away, revealed to us in one of his poems that it took him 60 years to realize that "water is the best of drinks / And bread is the tastiest of foods." Someone who takes so much time to understand reality can be tolerated. He's allowed to be backward and learn slowly; he'll write poems about that. But it's different when we're talking about the backwardness of a nation, and how much more so, its elected leadership.

It seems that the people who populate this land from both sides of the "national" barricade belong to "peoples" that are slow to grasp reality, at least for the past three decades. And this slowness is most evident among the leaders.

The milestones of this slowness stand out for all to see. One of these was when the Zionist movement, during its beginnings, adopted the claim that was originally Christian: "a land without a people for a people without a land." Thus, it accepted anti-Semitic claims and made them its own. But it completely ignored the reality in the country and its inhabitants. Only years later did the Zionist leaders, led by David Ben-Gurion, suddenly discover that "the land is not empty."

When the immigration waves increased, the situation in the land changed. The tensions surfaced with all their gravity. The conflict between the Zionist movement, which was orderly and organized, and the land's inhabitants who were still in a pre-national stage began to grow.

With the cynical encouragement of the colonialist powers, the situation became more complicated. The world order that crystallized after World War II put the partition plan on the agenda. The Zionist leaders knew to jump at the chance. But that wasn't the case with the Arab leaders.

After two decades of slowness on the part of the Arabs to grasp reality, the 1967 war broke out and completed the occupation of the land beyond the 1948 hudna (armistice ) lines. The war was a turning point in the conflict. It brought Zionism into close contact with the emotionally charged heritage sites on which the dream of "a Jewish homeland" was based. But it led to a situation in which Israel "swallowed" the land's residents who were beginning to consolidate themselves into a separate national movement.

History doesn't remain stagnant, nor does demography. Two decades of settlement, wars, intifadas and rapid demographic change went by until the leaders of both peoples realized there was no choice but to divide the land. With that, we all returned to square one.

Slowness in grasping the national, social and political situation has led to disasters in the past and will bring more disasters in the future. This slowness is a crime of historic proportions, committed by the leaders. The price will be paid by people, with a great deal of blood.

That's why we must put aside claims of justice - because all people who demand total justice in this conflict are cut off from reality and are merely grasping at delusions. They help themselves and those around them fall into useless dreams that make both peoples act as if they were outside history. This leads to a dark tunnel from which there is no escape; to perpetuating hatred on a primeval path.

The reality that will develop as a result will be concrete and historic. It will not be a prophetic binational vision: The wolf shall not dwell with the lamb, and swords shall not be beaten into plowshares. The opposite is true. It will be a patently inhuman reality over which a black flag will fly, on which will be written in blood, "This is the Balkans."
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Published: Opinions-Haaretz, 13 January 2012

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Proselytes are hard for Ishmael

2011-12-28T08:05:00.015+02:00

Associating part of the muezzin's call with Arabs is a Zionist invention intended to demonize all Arabs.

Salman Masalha | Proselytes are hard for Ishmael

The people who gathered among the "pictures of medal-bedecked Russian heroes" at the community center in Lod were waiting for MK Anastassia Michaeli (Yisrael Beiteinu ), who has presented a bill to silence the muezzins. One of those present termed the muezzin's call a "tool of terror," and said that muezzins use the words itbakh al-Yahud ["kill the Jews"] (as reported by Roy Arad in the Hebrew edition of Haaretz on December 20 ). We will return below to the source of the call to "kill the Jews."

Zionism, as its early leaders attested, was not interested in all Jews everywhere. It sought to create a new Jew here, and therefore sought Jews of a different type. David Ben-Gurion expressed this attitude very clearly: "Zionism is not a philanthropic venture," he said in the 1930s to the British high commissioner, and added: "We need here a superior type of Jew who will develop the Jewish homeland."

When there is a dearth of "superior types" of authentic Jews, they bring converts to Judaism. As the Hebrew newspaper Hashkafa reported in 1903, "in a region of Astrakhan are many proselytes...they also leave the Russian language and call themselves exiles in Egypt and they call Russia Assyria and long for the coming of the redeemer who will restore the Jews." (The quote is from Prof. Yuval Dror's "Russian Converts in the Galilee at the Beginning of the 20th Century," Cathedra, 1979. ) The Zionist Movement pounced on this find, because it wanted to increase the number of "Jews" in Palestine and also to bring people to this country who were skilled farmers.

Meir Dizengoff and Dr. Hillel Yaffe, who were members of the early Zionist group Hovevei Zion, helped bring these "converts" to the country, and they were sent to Hadera and colonies in the Galilee. Ben-Gurion himself got to know the converts, Russian farmers who were Subbotniks (Judaizing Christians ), during his time in Sejera. Despite tensions between the Jews and the converts, the Russian farmers proved a great help to Jewish settlement. There was another reason to bring them to the country. It involved improving Jewish blood. "It will not at all hurt Jewish blood, which has become weakened through generations of marriage (among Jews ) to mix somewhat with Christian blood," Yaffe said (also quoted in Cathedra ).

Many of those that "we needed" for the "development of the Jewish homeland" and the betterment of Jewish blood came to Israel with the fall of the Soviet Union. Many of them vote for Michaeli's party, Yisrael Beiteinu. That party took the name "Israel" and appropriated it as a "home" for itself; that is, if party followers claim "Russia is Assyria." But they might also claim they are "exiles in Egypt" and may even pray to the one "who brought us out of Egypt" or "who wrought miracles for our forefathers."

One of the converts, one Yaakov Nitchev, lived in Sejera. He allegedly took to drink after a family tragedy. It is also said that one day a year, on Simhat Torah, he permitted himself to get "as drunk as a goy." When he was drunk, he would revert to being a Russian farmer of the old days, and as with every drunken Russian farmer, the vodka would shout from his throat, bei zhidov ("kill the Jews" ).

That, it seems, is how the call was born here, at the beginning of the 20th century, in Palestinian Hebrew - itbakh al-Yahud. The Russian bei zhidov, which comes from the Russian pogroms, underwent a transformation here due to circumstances. It was translated literally-nationalistically by converts and lovers of Zion and was attached to the Arabs. Associating the call with Arabs is a Zionist invention intended to demonize all Arabs. Therefore, let the ancient sages be comforted: As it turns out, proselytes are not hard on Israel, they are actually hard for Ishmael.
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Published: Opinions-Haaretz, Dec. 28, 2011

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That's how the Zionists are

2011-12-20T09:36:00.015+02:00

A short history of Arab feelings toward Zionism:
A new Arabic monthly, Lughat al-Arab ('the Arabic language'), that began publication in Baghdad 100 years ago, published an investigative report by the editor called 'The Founder of Zionism' in its September 1911 issue.

Salman Masalha | That's how the Zionists are

The Arab attempt since the start of the 20th century to understand the Zionist movement has long produced mixed feelings. A new Arabic monthly, Lughat al-Arab ("the Arabic language"), began publication in Baghdad 100 years ago. The third issue, from September 1911, contains an investigative report by the editor called "The Founder of Zionism."

"Many talk about Zionism nowadays, but most of the people don't know what it's about," he wrote. To enlighten his readers the editor quoted an article published three months earlier in a French newspaper, by a writer from Istanbul: "Before the group came to be known as 'Zionists' the Turks called them Donmeh [Turkish crypto-Jews] ... "
Arab Spring

The article in the Baghdad journal connected Zionism to the Sabbateans and divulged for its readers details from the life of their leader, Shabbetai Zvi, who claimed he was the Messiah and that all twelve tribes of Israel would soon return to Palestine. In Cairo, the author relates, Shabbetai Zvi met a beautiful Jewess who acted oddly and purported to be the "Queen designated for the Messiah."

They married and traveled throughout the Orient; Shabbetai Zvi continued to spread his message until his imprisonment and conversion to Islam. His followers, emulating him, also converted. Shabbetai Zvi was exiled to Albania, where he died in 1676, because he continued to engage in mysticism. After the death of the "scoundrel," the article said, his followers continued in his path and their descendants now "live in Salonika and Edirne."

"Those are the Zionists and their roots. Heads of state and officials fear them as men fear lions. That is because the Zionists are serious, industrious people, cunning and alert, and they exert considerable influence on their surroundings," the article explained. It isn't hard to guess what was considered the source of the influence. The writer elaborated: "Because of the gold they hold in their hands ... Thus, in meetings with delegates, some fawn over them, while fearing machinations. For these reasons, honest state officials talk about the 'Zionist danger.'"

In fact, officials from far-flung areas in the region warned of this danger. They reported an increased Jewish presence in Iraq and in parts of Greater Syria. They alluded to the proliferation of agricultural and industrial machines and facilities, and even talked about the "routines and organization on their colonies." The official in Jerusalem wrote, "80,000 Jews live in the city, while the number of Muslims does not exceed 9,000." A Syrian official confirmed this estimate, adding, "The activities undertaken by these people are those of a nation; during holidays they wave a blue flag that has 'Zion' written on it."

On one hand, the writer tried to reassure his readers: "Whatever happens with this Zionist issue, there's no reason to worry that the Zionists will ever turn into a nation." On the other hand, he did not attempt to conceal his concerns: "You have to bear in mind that these foreigners compete with natives of the land, and so struggles and disputes about the land erupt." The Baghdad journal found reason to underscore the tight bonds that unite Jews, and referred to the "ethos of solidarity among them, which has reached the highest level."

This report projected anxieties about the unknown, alongside admiration. In conclusion, the author suggested there was something to be learned from the Zionists: "They should serve as exemplary models to others," he wrote. One hundred years have passed. It seems that nothing has changed since then, and life in the East continues as always.
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Published: Opinions-Haaretz, 20 December 2011

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Neither Arab nor Spring

2011-12-05T08:17:00.011+02:00

The vicissitudes that have, for some reason, been collectively dubbed the 'Arab Spring' are neither Arab nor Spring. One can say that they are actually living proof of the identity crisis and reverberating bankruptcy of Arab nationalism.

Salman Masalha | Neither Arab nor Spring

The vicissitudes that have, for some reason, been collectively dubbed the "Arab Spring" are neither Arab nor Spring. One can say that they are actually living proof of the identity crisis and reverberating bankruptcy of Arab nationalism. We must remember that the intifadas that brought the masses to the streets took place in countries that have been ruled by governments considered to be nationalist. They passed over the monarchies, and there is a simple reason for that.

From the first days of Islam, through to the disintegration of the Ottoman empire, the Arab world has been ruled by monarchies in the form of various caliphs. The first caliphs were Arabs who conquered land and established empires. In Arab lands, the legitimacy conferred on rulers was fundamentally tribal, and resembled monarchy. Over time, Arab rule weakened. The caliphates remained Islamic, but the caliphs were no longer of Arab descent.

Nationalism was a new idea. The founding of Arab nationalism had two phases: First there was traditional Bedouin nationalism, while urban nationalism developed later. Traditional nationalism was encouraged by Britain, the colonial power that sought to secure hold of the important areas by taking them over from the Ottomans. Lord Horatio Kitchener, who served as the British secretary of state for war during World War I, actively pursued this goal, working to restore the Arab caliphates.

We know about this from a letter sent in August 1915 from Sir Henry McMahon, the British high commissioner in Egypt, to Hussein bin Ali, the sharif of Mecca: "We rejoice, moreover, that your Highness and your people are of one opinion - that Arab interests are English interests and English Arab. To this intent we confirm to you the terms of Lord Kitchener's message, which reached you by the hand of Ali Effendi, and in which was stated clearly our desire for the independence of Arabia and its inhabitants, together with our approval of the Arab Khalifate when it should be proclaimed. We declare once more that His Majesty's Government would welcome the resumption of the Khalifate by an Arab of true race."

The region was ultimately left without either an Ottoman caliphate or an Arab one. It was divided between Britain and France, and the Arabs got the condolence prize: the Arab League.

The second phase of Arab nationalism developed in the context of the colonial powers' withdrawal from the region and the Cold War. The Arab world, which was divided into "autonomous" entities, continued to be ruled by puppets controlled from afar. Then a new player - the Soviet Union - entered the fray, and the new nationalism fell into the net of the Soviet bloc. This nationalism was created in an unnatural process. Junior officers had brutally raped their people and their lands, and a new kind of regime was born of this assault: a political bastard in the Arab world, neither a monarchy nor a republic.

These governments promised the world, and national pride, but their existence was essentially dependent on empty slogans. All their energy went into maintaining their hold on the reins of power, at any price. And that's how the Arab world got where it is today. One can say that Arab nationalism, in both its empty forms, flunked the reality test.

There is an Arabic phrase that tells us the drowning man hangs by ropes made of air. These days, the ropes of air are being held out to the Arab world by the modern-day successors of Kitchener and McMahon. This time, it is being done through assistance to Sunni Arab Islam and with prominent Turkish-Ottoman support, in the hope that the new regimes will counter the increasingly strong Shi'ite Islam at Iran's helm. But this is just another golem that is liable to turn on its maker.
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Published: Opinion-Haaretz, 5 Dec. 2011

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With yearning soul

2011-11-09T09:43:00.015+02:00

Jewish fundamentalism, which seeks to restore the Jewish and nationalist crown to its former glory, had already planted its roots in the settlements and in Israeli society during the Six-Day War in 1967.

Salman Masalha | With yearning soul

When Yigal Amir shot Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the back on November 4, 1995, he was only the messenger. The sender resided in words set down long before, in May 1948.

It is true that in its Declaration of Independence, Israel promised to "ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants, irrespective of religion, race or sex," but these words were intended only to satisfy foreign ears. The document places greatest emphasis on "the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz Yisrael," on "the Jewish people," and on this people's "spiritual [and] religious identity" and its "ancient homeland."

Such expressions could not exist outside of a religious context: "Ancient homeland" is connected to Judaism, an ancient religion. Therefore, the link between Zionism and the Jewish religion has never been severed.

It is no accident that the name "Israel" does not appear in the national anthem. The words of "Hatikva" recall a Jewish prayer carried from a distance both geographic and chronological: "A Jewish soul yearns ... The hope of two thousand years ... The land of Zion and Jerusalem." By adopting such formulations, the Zionist leaders turned the State of Israel into a state of halakha, or Jewish religious law, from the very first day.

The Zionism that aspired to establish a "Jewish home" in the Jews' "ancient homeland" did not take into consideration the fact that the land was not empty. It thus adopted the principle of population transfer, based on the same ancient biblical tradition. We know this from what was on David Ben-Gurion's desk: "At the end of the conversation, I saw on his desk a passage from the Book of Exodus: 'I will not drive them out from before thee in one year ... By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land.'" That is what the writer Haim Gouri said in a lecture at the National Security College (according to the journal "Ma'arachot," issue 359 ).

At the time, Ben-Gurion staunchly opposed conquering all of Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel ), but for tactical and demographic reasons only: "In early spring of 1949, I asked Ben-Gurion why he hadn't conquered all of Eretz Yisrael," Gouri related. Ben-Gurion's reply: "Getting entangled in a hostile Arab expanse would have forced us to make a choice we could not bear - either expelling hundreds of thousands of Arabs or absorbing them. They would have destroyed the young state from within."

Ben-Gurion left the conquest of the remaining territory for later. "We have liberated a very large territory, much more than we expected," he said in 1949. "Now we shall have to work for two or three generations. As for the rest, we shall see later."

And indeed, history didn't end there: The Six-Day War broke out two decades later. It not only brought about the conquest of the mountain ridge running through the West Bank and the broadening of Israel's "narrow waist," but also nurtured the seeds of calamity: that "historic and traditional attachment" cited in the Declaration of Independence to the soil of "the ancient homeland," so rich with biblical myths.

Rabin, who was chief of staff during that war, awakened much too late to the implications of the choice "we could not bear." Jewish fundamentalism, which seeks to restore the Jewish and nationalist crown to its former glory, had already planted its roots in the settlements and throughout Israeli society.

The main complaint about the moves Rabin initiated was that he didn't have a Jewish majority, since he relied on the support of Knesset members from outside the Jewish tribe. Rabin tried to rescue "the Jewish state" from the above-mentioned choice by adopting an "Israeliness" that included Israel's Arab inhabitants. But his actions came much too late. The "Jewish genie" was already out of the bottle.

And so the fundamentalist Jewish golem, with yearning soul, turned on its Zionist creator. And so Rabin, too, was murdered, an "honor killing" to avenge the "dishonor" he caused his family, known in Israel as "the Jewish state."

Published: Opinion-Haaretz, November 9, 2011
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The Arab world's quagmire

2011-10-24T09:36:00.008+02:00

Only a society that can engage in introspection and self-examination can emerge from its dark past and march confidently to a different future. Otherwise, it will continue to sink into the same marshy swamp.

Salman Masalha | The Arab world's quagmire

The "king of kings of Africa" is just one of the many titles that Muammar Gadhafi bestowed upon himself over the years. Last week, the entire world watched as the "king of kings" lost his life, along with all his appellations.

In a macabre dance flickering across the screen in a cellphone video, the curtain came down on the colonel's regime. He wasn't wearing one of his colorful robes or turbans, nor did he have a golden staff in his hand or a crown on his head. His hair was wild, his shirt was torn, and blood was pouring from his head and covering his face.
Muammar Gadhafi – Haaretz Archive

At his death, the "king of kings," who was trying to run for his life after 42 years of despotism, was surrounded by cheering throngs seeking to overthrow the Libyan Molech - the biblical diety to whom worshipers sacrificed their children.

The blood streaming from Gadhafi's head was not unfamiliar: Indeed, the man, a member of a tribe called Gadhaf al-Dam ("bleeder" ), had spilled much blood during his reign, both of Libyans and of others. He didn't even merit the show trial usually reserved for tyrants, like the one that preceded the execution of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.

Instead, the "king of kings" got another type of justice, in accordance with the rules that have prevailed in the Arab desert for generations. This is a desert in which a real spring refuses to take root. The cries of victory and of "Allah Akhbar" that surrounded the deposed "king" were the appropriate backdrop for this infernal altar. This time the joyful cheering was not covering up the cries of pain of a sacrificed child, but the final groans of the Molech himself.

This is how Arab leaders have died throughout their history; indeed, nearly all the caliphs that reigned in the Muslim world died similarly. Every Arab pupil learns this in history class. There are numerous examples, such as the murder of Mohammed's third caliph, Uthman ibn Affan. A description of his murder can be found in the writings of Mohammed al-Tabari, the leading Arab historian of the ninth century: "Amru al-Hamq pounced on Uthman, crushed his chest while he was still breathing, and stabbed him nine times."

Tabari even brings quotes from the assassin himself: "I stabbed him three times for the sake of Heaven. The other six times I stabbed him because of all the vengeful feelings I harbored against him."

What's more, the sources tell us that after the caliph died, people threw his body into a trash heap. He was only buried after three days, when stray dogs started to tear his body apart.

That's how this world has conducted itself from time immemorial. It sinks again and again into the dark tribal quagmire, and can't pull itself out.

The biggest impediment posed by Arab culture is the absence of a mechanism for self-correction. To understand the problem this obstacle poses, it's enough for us to remember that of the thousands of sayings ascribed to the prophet Mohammed, there isn't a single one that calls on man to conduct any kind of self-examination. And without self-examination, there can be no correction - neither for the individual, nor for society.

As long as the Arab world cannot manage to insert into its lexicon such concepts as "former president" or even "former king," it will not be able to extricate itself from the chronic backwardness in which it has been stuck for hundreds of years.

Only a society that can engage in introspection and self-examination can emerge from its dark past and march confidently to a different future. Otherwise, it will continue to sink into the same marshy swamp.
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Published: Opinion - Haaretz, Oct. 24, 2011

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The right's herds of goats

2011-09-19T07:53:00.005+03:00

Netanyahu wants to herd the Palestinians out

It seems that the prime minister, who was educated at the knees of land-stealing Zionist farmers, has grown up and become a certified goat herder.

Salman Masalha

The right's herds of goats

We often hear the claim among politicians in Israel that in order for peace to last, it has to be made between nations rather than between rulers. The use of the term, "rulers," comes up when Israel finds itself in a corner and is required by those "rulers" to pay the price of peace. As long as those "rulers" sit quietly and behave in accordance with Israeli expectations, they are not called "rulers," of course; they are "responsible leaders."

If they were to be voiced by the man in the street who really and truly aspires to live in peace with himself and his surroundings, these words could be accepted with full understanding, and even quite a bit of empathy. But when this claim is raised by the leaders of the Israeli right, who see only the continuation of the occupation and the theft of Palestinian lands before their eyes, they sound like the most ridiculous of claims.

Throughout human history, peace agreements have never been signed between nations. Nations don't stand opposite one another in a row, shake hands and pat each other on the back. Agreements of any type, all the more so when they are peace agreements between countries, are always made and signed between the representatives of nations.

There are some nations that live under one type of regime and other nations that live under another; and this will apparently be the situation in the foreseeable future. The Arab world will continue, for now, to live under regimes that are undemocratic, to say the least. Therefore, those who raise the claim about the need for peace between nations - a claim that is popular with the Israeli right - are, in the final analysis, concealing their true intentions.

Even if truly democratic elections are held in the Palestinian Authority, and even if all the Palestinians sign a declaration that they want an end to the 1967 occupation and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel within those borders, and even if they all declare that that will bring an end to the conflict, the same Israeli right, in all its variations, will find new excuses not to believe the Arabs.

The Zionists after all are experts at pushing herds of goats into the Palestinian home, and even putting up pens for them inside the home itself - and all in order to later remove a goat here and a checkpoint there, thereby giving the Palestinian some sense of relief, so that he can walk through the living room and reach the window in his own home. The Arab proverb says: Anyone who grows up on something in the home of his mother and father is destined to grow old with it.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows a thing or two about gathering herds of goats and moving them out. All the Bar-Ilan speeches cannot change his ideological stripes. These stripes are etched deep in his worldview. He has neither the desire nor the courage to erase this past and to embark on a new path.

I tend to believe things that a son says to his father in private. To this end, we should go back to 2009, to the words revealed by the father, Benzion Netanyahu, regarding the conduct of his son, Benjamin. With the consent of his son, the prime minister, the father gave an interview to Amit Segal on Channel 2 News, and this is what he said about the Bar-Ilan speech advocating the establishment of a Palestinian state: "He [the prime minister] doesn't support it. He supports it under conditions that they [the Arabs] will never accept. That's what I heard from him, not from myself. He proposed the conditions. They will never accept those conditions, not one of them," said Netanyahu Sr.

It seems that the prime minister, who was educated at the knees of land-stealing Zionist farmers, has grown up and become a certified goat herder.
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 Published: Op-Ed, Haaretz, 19 Sep. 2011

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Which people, what justice?

2011-09-05T07:50:00.006+03:00

Who doesn't want "social justice"? Or "peace" or "equality"? But underneath these pretty slogans, things look different. We frequently come up against examples that reveal the lie behind the words.

Salman Masalha

Which people, what justice?

Even if the slogan uttered by tens of thousands in the streets of Israel of late is pleasant to hear, it is the greatest of lies. Were its users asked to explain which "people," demand what "justice" for which "society," the slogan would crumble.

The state and all its institutions have never acknowledged the existence of an "Israeli people." It is doubtful that the demonstrators recognize its existence. Therefore their lofty cry of a people demanding "social justice" cannot be put into practice, in light of the absence of the existence of said "people."

There is no shortage of nice-sounding slogans. Who doesn't want "social justice"? Or "peace" or "equality"? Who doesn't long for "coexistence"? But underneath these pretty slogans, things look different. We frequently come up against examples that reveal the lie behind the words.

Take, for example, this example of someone who was certainly raised on the principles of "social justice" and Zionist "equality" - Modi Bracha, a resident of Kibbutz Ma'agan Michael and deputy head of the Hof Hacarmel Regional Council. As he explained last month in a Haaretz story about opposition to expanding Jisr al-Zarqa, "No one needs to teach me about socialism, but if a farmer received land then why should he relinquish the asset that is supposed to provide him a living?"

To spell it out to the champions of "social justice," Jisr al-Zarqa is the only Arab community that "socialist" Zionism left along the coast. The community is trapped between the sea and the coastal road, between Caesarea and Ma'agan Michael. Data from the Central Bureau of Statistics can surely add to the explication: The population density in the village is catastrophic, 7,730 people per square kilometer, compared to an average density of 321 per kilometer for the whole country.

In order to ease the overcrowding, the Haifa District Planning and Building Committee seeks to to implement a plan under which land from the neighboring communities of Ma'agan Michael, Beit Hanania and Caesarea would be expropriated to Jisr al-Zarqa and the coastal highway would be diverted to the east. It turns out that residents of the three communities are fiercely opposed to the "social justice" reflected in the plan.

They are, of course, in favor of lovely slogans about coexistence and the like: "We are in favor of coexistence and peace. Despite the differences in mentality, we are doing a lot in this regard," said Beit Hanania Councilman Arieh Freedman in the same article. "We are not opposed [to the scheme] because they are Arabs; they are good neighbors and we have no beef with them," Freedman emphasized.

Later on his worldview was revealed in all its glory: "... but from a national perspective, too, I am opposed to the idea of taking land from a Jew to give to an Arab ..." He even warns the authorities: "If the plan is approved, there will be a mass departure: People will sell their homes and the existence of the community will be threatened."

Freedman and his ilk, who are "in favor of coexistence and peace," in favor of "social justice" and the like, must be told that European Zionism searched for a place in the Middle East, and there are many Arabs who live there. One must cope with this fact of life.

So it's nice to wave the flag of the social justice that the people demand, but it seems that first of all the people must demand a clear definition of justice, and of a people.
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Published: Op-Ed, Haaretz, 5 Sep. 2011

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Right of return revisited

2011-08-25T08:23:00.013+03:00

The debate on the term return to 'an ancient homeland,' whether on the Zionist definition of the land or on the Palestinian definition, exposes an abyss between the two national movements fighting over the country.

Salman Masalha

Right of return revisited

A political tsunami is expected in September, the politicians keep warning us. Obviously the recognition of Palestinian statehood, if adopted, is expected to yank the rug from under the feet of the refugees who were raised on the dream of returning to the fig tree, the spring and the village that no longer exist.

Don't forget, the Palestinians who broke through the fence in the Golan and those who demonstrated near the Lebanese border on Nakba Day were not demonstrating only against Israel. They were demonstrating first and foremost against the Palestinian Authority. That's because all the PA's recent efforts have been focused on a United Nations debate on the request to recognize a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.

The change in the Palestinian leadership's approach to the "right of return" is reflected in Mahmoud Abbas' statement at an education and culture forum that gathered in Ramallah in May. Abbas announced "the Palestinian leadership will never give up the right of return. The return to the homeland is our final destination to end the life of dispersal as refugees."

To avoid any vagueness he said "the return is in practice, not a slogan."

"Palestine is ours, and whoever comes from the north, the center or the south and lives anywhere in it is in fact living in the homeland."

Abbas gave an example from his own life. "When I return to Ramallah or Nablus I have my foot in the homeland," he said.

His words were not mentioned for some reason in the Hebrew-language media. Apart from a brief report, the Arab media didn't mention them either.

Only Dr. Faiz Abu Shamala of Gaza commented that Abbas' statement was "a political Palestinian eclipse." Shamala said he was astonished "such dangerous declarations are evoking no reaction from the Palestinian factions" and wondered "is the right of return, on Nakba Day, diminished to the return to Gaza and the West Bank?"

He mocked Abbas, saying "if the return to Palestine meant return to Gaza and the West Bank, UNRWA's work should have been stopped, as millions of refugees in camps in Gaza and the West Bank are thus implementing their dream of return."

Shamala took the trouble to explain to Abbas the real meaning of return. "The right of return, as every Palestinian Arab understands it, is Abbas' return to Safed and Yasser Abed Rabbo's return to Jaffa. That is the right that must continue nestling in the soul, even if the current political circumstances require an agreement on a Palestinian state in the 1948 cease-fire borders."

In this case, the debate on the term return to "an ancient homeland," whether on the Zionist definition of the land or on the Palestinian definition, exposes an abyss between the two national movements fighting over the bleeding country. The collision is between two completely different national approaches and two completely different worlds.

So even if a Palestinian state is established in the West Bank and Gaza, there is no chance the refugees will implement the "right of return" in it. Because unlike the Zionist "homeland" perception, the Palestinian refugees will not see the Palestinian state as a "homeland" but as another stop on the voyage of the refugees.

It is fortunate for the Palestinians that the Israeli government is rightist and recalcitrant. Because if Israel had an "analytical" government it would certainly have prepared a surprise for the world and voted in favor of Palestinian statehood in the UN in September. This would have turned the entire dispute on its head.
*
Published: Op-Ed, Haaretz, 25 August 2011

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Israel sinking into religious-fundamentalist swamp

2011-08-10T10:20:00.015+03:00

Israel sinking
into religious-fundamentalist swamp

The intention of the proposed new Basic Law that would define Israel as 'the national home for the Jewish people' is to deny the natural rights of Israel's Arab citizens....

Salman Masalha

The demographic problem

MK Avi Dichter (Kadima) sponsored, along with 40 other MKs from various parties, a mew Basic Law that defines Israel as "the national home for the Jewish people." The proposed law includes a number of sections that, in the vernacular, piss me off.

It is becoming clearer and clearer that this Knesset, all of it, is the most populist in nationalistic terms, and the least fundamentalist in religious terms. Now they want to exchange the impossible mantra "Jewish-democratic" with something new.

It is clear that the intention of Dichter's proposed law is to deny the natural rights of Arab citizens in Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did well to explain the matter in a speech he gave in December 2003 at the Herzliya Conference: "We have a demographic problem. But it is not centered on the Palestinian Arabs in the territories, but on Israeli Arabs."

Even blunter words came from former Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra (Kadima ): "We have Arab citizens in the State of Israel. This is our greatest problem. Finish with Gaza, finish with Judea and Samaria, and the biggest problem remains."

Support for this approach comes in the section of the new bill that revokes the official status of the Arabic language, the language of 20% of Israeli citizens.

It is well known that Israeli politicians very much love to take after Europe. So it would be appropriate to let you know how Europe behaves. Finland is a European country and quite advanced by all opinions. There is a Swedish minority in Finland which is 5% of the population. In this Finland, which was once part of the Kingdom of Sweden, no one can be a public servant if they don't speak Swedish.

Similarly, it seems the "greatest danger" has pushed the legislators to introduce another racist section into their proposed law, which allows religious and national separation to enable the existence of "separate community settlement," and it also has pushed lawmakers to sink further and further into the religious-fundamentalist swamp.

Israel is fitting into the region more and more. The proposed law adds us to the club of enlightened nations such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. The law intends to make Knesset legislation and civil judges subject to Jewish jurisprudence and "Jewish tradition," in an attempt to establish Israel as a state based on unenlightened Jewish law - based on a Basic Law. In the term "Jewish tradition" is hiding a religious tradition of Jewish law.

Jewish tradition, like all other monotheistic traditions, includes a number of laws that can be described as moral abominations that completely oppose the universal declaration on human rights.

The frequent treatment of such questions does not testify to strength, but the opposite. The source of this weakness is the occupation of 1967. On one hand, this occupation has deepened via the "Zionist theft enterprise" called the settlements. On the other hand, the demographics between the sea and the Jordan River have not remained frozen.

Therefore, it is no surprise that the law was formulated in cooperation and at the initiative of the Institute for Zionist Strategies. This is to teach us that the Zionist mind continues to invent new ideas.

With a lack of foreseeable prospects for a national solution in Israel, the situation will reverse itself. The day is not far away that we will begin using the infamous Zionist language, but this time in reverse. This time we will start to speak of the "Jewish camp" or the minorities - the Jews of course. I will even go so far and introduce the phrase "honorable Jews." You have been warned.
*
Published: Op-Ed, Haaretz, 10 August 2011

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Gideon Spiro | They call that a Left?

2011-08-07T09:54:00.004+03:00

"There is no need to prefer benighted regimes in order to express opposition to the Israeli Occupation. As a citizen who has been asked to vote for Hadash, I feel insulted by this style. I expect leaders of the party, Jews and Arabs alike, to dissociate themselves from those words..."...

Gideon Spiro | They call that a Left?

Dr. Salman Masalha is a poet and translator who has a column in the newspaper Haaretz. Salman has gifts that are rare in Israel. He is totally immersed in Jewish and Arab culture. He has native-speaker mastery of both languages.

In his latest column (26 July 2011), under the headline above (“There is no Arab left-wing in Israel”, in the English version), he reports to his readers about words written by Muhammad Nafaa, the Secretary of the Communist Party, on the party’s website in Arabic. The Communist Party, the dominant component of the Hadash parliamentary list, takes pride in being both Jewish and Arab. I very much admire that fact. And this is what he wrote: “The Syrian dictatorship, the North Korean and the Iranian, are dozens of times preferable to the American, Israeli and NATO occupiers and all their Arab collaborators, especially in the Gulf states.”

This is a style that takes us decades back, to the Stalinist era, when the slogan was, “better to be wrong with the Soviet Union than to be right without it.”

No one can accuse me of being soft on the Israeli Occupation or the American ones (in Iraq, in Vietnam); but to prefer the North Korean dictatorship that is starving its people, the Iranian one where homosexuality is a crime and opponents are hanged in public squares, or the Syrian one that is slaughtering its citizens, over the Israeli or American occupations, is a very non-Left position. There is no need to prefer benighted regimes in order to express opposition to the Israeli Occupation. As a citizen who has been asked to vote for Hadash, I feel insulted by this style. I expect leaders of the party, Jews and Arabs alike, to dissociate themselves from those words.
*
28 July 2011

Translated from Hebrew for Occupation Magazine by George Malent

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Haim Baram | There is a Jewish-Arab left

2011-08-01T11:53:00.006+03:00

In response to "You call this a left?":

Haim Baram

There is a Jewish-Arab left

I am sure that Salman Masalha's article ("You call this a left?," July 27 ) was flattering to Jewish readers and affirmed their prejudice, already pervasive, that most Arab citizens are nationalistic and that the affliction has even spread to Hadash and the Israeli Communist Party (Maki ). There is nothing more convenient for an oppressor than to receive assurances of his righteousness against the oppressed. My friend Masalha produced, as is his wont, a cogent article in which few could discern the barren moral and ideological landscape.

Masalha claims that "the left is supposed to bridge the gap and the national tension by positing a civic agenda..." From a few remarks of Maki's secretary general Mohammed Nafa, he concludes that such a left wing "does not exist."

Nafa was mistaken when he appeared to be supportive of the murderous tyrannical regime in Syria, but he was right when he said: "We will never surrender to the Israeli prostitution that is trying to portray Israel as a victim."

Nafa's priorities are certainly logical. Arab citizens cannot change the situation in North Korea, Iran or even in Syria. Their task is to fight here to free their people in Palestine and for full equal rights in Israel. Since the government of Israel and the United States have been collaborating for more than 40 years to preserve the oppression, Nafa sees the struggle against then as the most important thing of all.

The task of the left is not to bridge gaps by means of a civic agenda. That is the traditional task of the conservative-liberal bourgeousie. The left is supposed to fight for justice and equality, against oppression and the hegemony of force in the international arena. The national struggle of an oppressed people is the raison d'etre of the left; the nationalism of the fundamentalists in the United States and Israel, whose purpose is to perpetuate discrimination and repression, is unacceptable.

The Cuban revolutionaries believed that national emotions in Latin America were fuel for the anti-imperialist struggle. That was true then and it is true now.

There is therefore no symmetry between the nationalism of a settler in Kedumim and that of a resident of Gaza. Terror against civilians is unacceptable, but the intent of national unity in Gaza is to liberate the Palestinians from occupation and siege; the intent of national unity in the name of "Zionism" is to perpetuate the occupation and create an apartheid state here.

The uniqueness of Hadash is in the fact that the Arab citizens who support the movement identify with the national aspirations of their people; however, they reject not only terror but also the negation of the rights of the Jews here. Masalha also knows, and concedes halfheartedly, that Hadash educates toward Jewish-Arab brotherhood not only in Bat Yam or Tel Aviv, but in Sakhnin, Nazareth and Taibeh.

Nafa, as quoted by Masalha, does not say that he supports the evil regimes in Syria, Iran or Korea (and they are evil, make no mistake ). He only asserts that the Jewish-Arab left in Hadash must "be more involved" in the struggle against the Israeli and the American occupation. That is the opinion of everyone who is part of the socialist left.

North Korea is an abomination, but it must not serve good Israeli radicals as an excuse to vote for Meretz - which comes out against all wars after they are over - instead of Hadash, which blends a social and a political line that should engender widespread support.

Nafa must see to it that his positions are not perceived as supporting Syria and the wicked regime there. But when Masalha ignores the role of Israel and the United States in the regional and global arena, it helps the enemies of the left and the enemies of peace.
*
Published: Op-Ed, Haaretz, 1 August 2011

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There is no Arab left-wing in Israel

2011-07-26T10:00:00.011+03:00

You call this a left?

The left is supposed to bridge the gap and the national tension by positing a civic agenda that crosses ethnic boundaries. The question is whether there is such a leftist agenda among the Arabs in Israel.

Salman Masalha

There is no
Arab left-wing
in Israel

There's no left without Arabs, states Oudeh Basharat (Haaretz, July 19 ), adding: "Had the 11 MKs of the Hadash faction and the Arab factions evaporated during the vote on the Boycott Law, the difference in favor of supporters of the law would have increased from nine to 20 votes."

It's true, there's no left without Arabs; but this slogan is only a half truth. The left is supposed to bridge the gap and the national tension by positing a civic agenda that crosses ethnic boundaries. The question is whether there is such a leftist agenda among the Arabs in Israel. Because in order for there to be a genuine left in Israel, there also has to be some kind of Arab left. And it seems that such a left does not exist.

Basharat did well to try to distinguish between his party, Hadash, and the other Arab factions - because Hadash is, in essence, a Jewish-Arab party, centered around the Israeli Communist Party (Maki ). However, Basharat cannot deny that Hadash has long since lost its unique character on the Israeli political landscape, and its leaders, especially on its Arab side, are not preoccupied with an ideological, social and political discussion, but rather with slogans and a chauvinistic, populist competition with the other groups in the Arab sector.

Blatant evidence of this can be found in the words of Mohammed Nafa, the secretary general of Maki, which were published in Arabic on the Hadash Web site. You have to read his words in order to understand the deterioration of the party that in the past presumed to be Jewish-Arabic, with a progressive civic and social agenda. The secretary-general of the party unashamedly comes to the defense of the murderous and tyrannical Syrian regime: "We will never surrender to the Israeli prostitution that is trying to portray Israel as a victim," he writes to his readers in Arabic, adding: "We must be more involved in the struggle against the Israeli and American occupation rather than in attacking the Syrian regime. The Syrian, North Korean and Iranian dictatorships are far preferable to the American, Israeli and NATO occupiers and all their Arab collaborators, especially in the Gulf states."

So the party that is supposed to fly the flag of the left aligns itself with the benighted ayatollahs of Iran, with the North Korean dictatorship - one of the darkest regimes on earth - and with the murderous tribal regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad that for months has been massacring Syrian citizens and cutting the throats of those who desire and are pursuing freedom.

Can the "pearls of wisdom" of the secretary-general of the Israeli Communist Party be a part of any leftist agenda? I doubt it. It seems that aside from the blind hatred for the United States and Israel that in the past decades has become a kind of populist Arab religion, he has nothing to offer, certainly not an agenda that a genuine left is supposed to present to Jews and Arabs in Israel.

Basharat comes to the correct conclusion in his article: "Only an alliance between the Arabs and the sane forces among the Jews can stop the slide into fascism. The rank and file Arab citizen must be given the sense that he has a good reason to go out and vote - that he has allies."

It's true, an alliance of the sane, Arabs and Jews, could serve as a dam to block the fascism that is suddenly sweeping the country. But it would seem that the words of the secretary-general of Maki, which we have cited here, not only fail to attest to sanity, but leave no reason for a rank and file Arab or Jewish citizen to vote for a party whose spiritual leader is a person who espouses such views.
*
Published: Op-Ed, Haaretz, 26 July 2011

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Rabbi Lior's racism is not his fault

2011-07-04T13:18:00.008+03:00

Rabbi Dov Lior did not invent the wheel. He only hung the monotheistic dirty laundry out in public.

---

Salman Masalha

It's not Rabbi Lior's fault

First, let me say this: As a descendant of one of the Sons of Noah who has violated all manners of prohibitions, I am doomed to any number of odd and sundry deaths. The choice offered to those of my ilk is one of the following three: death by sword, death by stoning or death by strangulation. In his "Law of Kings," Moses Maimonides (the Rambam ) specifies that for violating the Noahide laws I am sentenced to death by the sword, unless I have sex with a Jewish maiden who is engaged to be married, in which case I shall be stoned to death; alternatively, if she is already married, then I am to be strangled to death.

I am addressing this matter in light of the tempest over the detention for police questioning of the recalcitrant Rabbi Dov Lior, who did not report for an interview despite repeated supplications from law enforcement authorities.

I don't understand what all the fuss is about. None of the racist things attributed to one rabbi or another, or one Muslim sheikh or another, are new. Anyone who looks at the laws of the monotheistic religions can easily determine the root of the problem. Monotheists not only like to enter the bedrooms of others; they not only stuff themselves into other's guts in an endless search for something that made its way there without permission; they not only put veils, burkas or headscarves on their pious women, who pray for children - monotheists from all their religions and all their sects love to spill blood, lots of blood. This must be said. The naked truth must be told.

There are some good-intentioned, if entirely naive, souls who are quick to quote verses such as "Love your neighbor as yourself." They seek to coat the bitter pill by presenting some positive side of religion. But they forget that "your neighbor" refers solely to another Jew. The verse (Leviticus 19:18 ) commands: "Thou shalt not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." In his explication of the verse Rambam specifies that this applies to all members of the House of Israel who follow the Torah and its commandments, and that it is a mitzvah to hate anyone who does not accept the Torah.

Not to mention "Haviv adam shenivra b'tzelem" ("Beloved is man who is created in the image" ), which is cited incessantly as supposed proof of humanity of any kind in humanism in general and in Judaism in particular. Here, too, the reference is to Jews only. According to the sages, only Israel, Jews, are called "adam," "and not the nations of the world." Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Hacohen Kook ("Haro'eh ), providing a persuasive explanation to his flock: "The difference between the Israeli soul, its independence, its inner yearning, its aspiration, its characteristics and disposition, and the soul of all the other nations, is greater and deeper than the difference between the soul of a human being and the soul of a beast." What could we possibly add to these warm sentiments?

All the greatest experts in halakha (Jewish law ) follow this concept. For the sake of example, here's the explanation of Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel (the Maharal ): "The perfection of creation, which relates to the human in particular, applies to Israel and not to the nations." He added that the gradation of Israel in comparison to the other nations is comparable to the gradation of the human being in comparison to non-speaking animals.

If this is the situation, then why are so many politicians and self-declared defenders of the law picking on the respected rabbi of the national religious movement? The "enlightened" rabbi did not invent the wheel, after all. He only hung the monotheistic dirty laundry out in public. The populist politicians show off their dirty clothes in their media-blanketed appearances at every available opportunity (see under: Jewish democracy ), and in their eyes the rabbi is guilty of slander.

It must be said, clearly and unequivocally: The moral impurity resides in the benighted teachings of monotheism. Until everyone with the pretense of being cultured recognizes this, in this region and throughout the world, there will be no light at the end of the tunnel.
*
Published: Op-Ed, Haaretz, July 4, 2011

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On Artistic Freedom in the Nationalist Era

2011-07-02T14:03:00.019+03:00

Salman Masalha

On Artistic Freedom
in the Nationalist Era

As I am not a state, I have
no secure borders nor an army
guarding its soldiers’ lives night and day and there is no
colored line drawn by a dusty general in the margins
of his victory. As I am not a legislative
council, a dubious
parliament wrongly called a house
of representatives, as I am not a son
of the chosen people, nor am I
an Arab mukhtar, no one will falsely accuse me of being
a fatherless anarchist who spits
into the well round which the people
feast on their holidays, rejoicing
at their patriarchs’ tombs. As I am not a fatalist or member
of an underground, building churches,
mosques and synagogues in the hearts of children
who will no doubt die for the sake of the
Holy Name in Heaven,
as I am not an excavation contractor
or earth merchant, nor a sculptor
of tombstones polishing memorials
for the greater glory of the dead,
as I have no government, with
or without a premier, and there is no
chairman sitting on my head, I can
under such extenuating circumstances
sometimes allow myself to be human,
to be a bit free.
*
Translated by Vivian Eden

Published: Books-Haaretz, July 2011
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&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://batsir76.co.il/track/--3"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;על חופש היצירה בעידן הלאומי by בציר 76&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;***
Most recently, this poem, from the volume “Ehad Mikan” (“In Place,” Am Oved ), was chosen by the rock band Batsir 76 as the single for their new album, “Folk Yisraeli” (Israeli Folk ), which they will launch on July 9, 2011 at Tmuna theater in Tel Aviv.
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The Nakba no one's talking about

2011-06-20T08:06:00.013+03:00

When many Arabs flee an Arab country because they fear an Arab regime with pretensions to waving the flag of Arab nationalism, then this so-called nationalism becomes dubious and ought to raise questions.
..

Salman Masalha

Syria exodus is the Nakba
no one's talking about

For some reason, recent days have reminded of the events of Black September that took place in Jordan in 1970. At that time, the Jordanian military was exerting so much pressure on Palestinian militants that some of them actually chose to turn themselves in to Israel Defense Forces troops in the Jordan Valley.

This is coming to mind now because of what is happening in Syria, where another Arab Nakba is taking place before our eyes. This Nakba is the lot of the Syrian people. But this time, those behind the Nakba are not Zionists. They aren't Jews or French or godless British or Americans. Neither the Little Zionist Satan nor the Great American Satan is behind this Nakba. This time, the Satan is Arab, flesh of our flesh.

When thousands of Arab citizens - men, women and children - are massacred, when many others flee an Arab country because they fear an Arab regime with pretensions to waving the flag of Arab nationalism, then this so-called nationalism becomes dubious and ought to raise questions.

This is all the more the case when non-Arab Turkey is the country to which people are fleeing. Yes, the same Turkey that is regularly mentioned in Arab national discourse as the height of defilement and the source of all Arab ills. And all because of the Ottoman Empire, which ruled over the Arabs for hundreds of years and to which Arab nationalists have long attributed all the falterings of the Arab world.

Several years ago, when I asked a Turkish friend about this Arab complaint, he burst out laughing. I asked him to explain why he was laughing and he told me that the Turks had a similar complaint, in reverse: There are some who argue that Turkey was left to falter because it had ruled over the Arabs.

Let's set aside the nationalists on either side for a moment, since salvation is not going to come from them. On the contrary, nationalism is a sick evil, and nationalists love to either join together or chafe against one another. They feed off each other and create new nationalist mutations that are more dangerous than their predecessors and more resistant to remedies.

And so the tribal, ethnic, Syrian Ba'ath regime, which is massacring Syrian Arab citizens just because they are seeking freedom, makes a joke out of all the Arab nationalist ideological slogans that Syrian and similar governments have been promoting for many years.

These governments have never been nationalist and have never attempted to build a nation-state worthy of its name. The nationalist slogans served as opiates for the uneducated masses, the foolish advocates of nationalism. Military, tribal and ethnic Mafias lurked beneath the sugar coating of these slogans.

Recently, Lebanese novelist and playwright Elias Khoury, one of those foolish advocates of Arab nationalism, got angry at Moroccan author Tahar Ben Jelloun, who said at a conference at a Beirut university that there was no such thing as the Arab world.

Ben Jelloun should be cautious about those kinds of statements, wrote Khoury, adding that the things you say in a cafe should be different to the things you say from a university podium. In other words, Khoury wants Ben Jelloun to be a hypocrite, to feel one thing in his heart - as expressed in private or in cafes - but say something else before the public at large.

This "deviant" Moroccan author is thus intended to serve some kind of fictitious nationalist concept that is supposed to rule Arab discourse. He is being called on to be a populist trumpet for this concept, irrespective of whether it has any foundation in reality.

And so it seems that our Nakba is also a cultural Nakba. As long as the Arab discourse seeks to cautiously stay away from the sensitive nerves of the Arab experience, as one stays away from fire, no remedy is in sight for the sickly situation. Indeed, it will remain uncorrected.
*
Published: Op-Ed, Haaretz, June 20, 2011

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*
Related Arabic article, press here
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Obama as an Arab reformer

2011-05-25T09:54:00.006+03:00

As the American President has said, the mass demonstrations all over the Arab world do in fact indicate more than anything else "a longing of freedom" that has been building up for years.
---

Salman Masalha

Obama as an Arab reformer

If we ignore the reference to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, U.S. President Barack Obama's most recent speech to the Arab world was the speech of an Arab reformer. The words should have been said by an Arab leader who is worthy of the title "leader."

"The nations of the Middle East and North Africa won their independence long ago, but in too many places their people did not," Obama said. In other words, all these declarations of independence after the retreat of colonialism were nothing more than a deception. Because, as the president said, "In too many countries, power has been concentrated in the hands of the few."
Tahrir Square

Many years of Arab "independence" did not bring prosperity. They brought neither work nor social welfare, neither freedom nor creativity. Corrupt and oppressive rulers lined their pockets and handed over these corrupt and oppressive governments to their successors, whether through palace coups or by bequeathing control of the country to sons or cronies.

The mass demonstrations all over the Arab world do in fact indicate more than anything else "a longing of freedom" that has been building up for years, as Obama said. This yearning for freedom is an essential part of human nature everywhere. Thanks to globalization and to the technological developments that have made it possible for information to reach every corner of the planet, the gates of the modern world have opened. Young Arabs in Tunis, Cairo, Damascus or anywhere else in the Arab world compared their lives with those of young people in other parts of the world, and they too began to yearn for freedom and for lives as free people, like the young people of London, Paris, Tokyo and New York.

On the other hand, there has been a steady unplanned increase in the population of the Arab world over the years, and education has stagnated and sunk into the world of yesterday, longing for an imaginary past. The rulers and their cronies continued to oppress the people and become rich at their expense. Failing universities sent millions of degree holders out to the labor market, without any possibility that they would get productive jobs. As international reports have noted for years, there is not a single Arab university to be found among the 500 best universities in the world.

So it is no surprise that even though the Arab world has a population of hundreds of millions, its exports are equal to those of a small country like Switzerland. The rulers of the Arab world rested on their laurels - or rather, on their countries' deposits of oil and natural gas. And the momentum of economic development in these countries is deceptive, since those who stand behind it - oil companies, scientists, engineers and even the construction workers who build the skyscrapers and the artificial islands, are generally not Arab.

Populism has reigned in Arab discourse. It was not only the rulers who betrayed their people. The intelligentsia cooperated with the rulers, in return for crumbs. There is a well-known Arabic saying about such people: If you see a cleric knocking often at the ruler's door, be aware that he is a thief. And in fact, it was clerics as well as political leaders who attributed the ills of the Arab world to colonialism and the West, and even to Israel, to the point where "antagonism toward Israel became the only acceptable outlet for political expression," as Obama put it.

It should also be noted that one of the main reasons for the chronic ills of the Arab world is the attitude toward women. The tribal, patriarchal Arab society has blocked the path for women, and by doing so has silenced half of society. "History shows that countries are more prosperous and peaceful when women are empowered," Obama said, correctly.

Had any Arab leader delivered the speech in Arabic and addressed an Arab audience, Arabs would probably be saying: Behold, an Arab king has arisen. But for the time being, although there are kings, presidents, sultans and princes in abundance, there has yet to be a king like Martin Luther.
*
Published: Op-Ed, Haaretz, 25 May 2011

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Vivian Eden | EGYPT ON TELEVISION

2011-05-24T15:01:00.001+03:00

Vivian Eden

EGYPT ON TELEVISION

We watch Egypt on television
just one country away.
Off the screen, down the side streets
behind closed windows and doors
many people wait.

The television tells them truth and lies.
They watch the footage shot on high:
Tops of men’s heads all look the same,
like lentils for sorting on a plate.
Where is my husband, my father, my son?
Girls and women wait.

Amina opens her math book, but dreams.
She will write a novel about these days.
There will be a tall, blond newsman,
British, French, perhaps a Dane.
The heroine, Amina, will save his life.
She will, of course, become his wife.
Young girls dream and wait.

Ali is five. His father says: No,
You can’t go to the square with me.
Ali pouts: But I am big. I’ll take a stick.
Dad insists: Big boys stay home.
They must take care of Mom and Sis.
Ali thinks: When I am six

I’ll make the revolution too.
Big boys hate to wait.

In a kitchen Bushra makes the tea.
A son – whose is he? –
climbs a tank, smiles his thanks
to someone’s brother,
the soldier who lends him a hand.
Under whose command?
Where does he stand?
People keep pouring down the streets.
We watch and wait.
*
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Alexander Yakobson | Who's afraid of equality?

2011-05-14T00:53:00.003+03:00

Alexander Yakobson

Who's afraid of equality?

Why won't writer Emile Habibi, an Israeli Prize laureate, appear on one of the banknotes bearing the likenesses of writers, asked Salman Masalha ("Shekels as tools of the regime," April 24 ). He was immediately attacked by belligerent commenters, sending him off to Gaza and swearing in the name of the Jewish state.

But there's nothing wrong with that proposal, nor does it contradict the Jewish nature of the state. The system of official Israeli symbols, including the portraits on the banknotes, should faithfully reflect the fact that Israel is a country that grants national independence to the Jewish people. But who said that that is the only thing it should reflect? In principle there is no reason why it shouldn't also reflect the existence and the culture of the country's Arab minority, among other things.

The symbol of the state is a menorah surrounded by two olive branches, based on the verse in Zechariah: "A gold candelabrum with two olives trees." The olive is one of the symbols of the country, and it's an important symbol of Israeli Arabs. The two branches could be turned into two olive trees to the right and left of the menorah. That's still a menorah "with two olive trees." If this step is accompanied by a clear statement that its purpose is to give the Arab public a part in the system of official symbols, which is supposed to represent it - such a modest change is likely to be of positive significance; not in the eyes of Arab chauvinists, who won't be placated by anything, but in the eyes of those who really want to feel that the state is theirs too.

And why doesn't such a proposal have a chance of being accepted in the foreseeable future? Partly because of those same commenters who are ready to send to Gaza an Arab citizen who wants to feel at home in the State of Israel of all places - and the politicians who represent them. But no less because of the leadership of the Arab public and most of its spokesmen in the Israeli media, whose main cause has become the rejection of the Jewish people's right to a state. In such an atmosphere, a change of the type suggested here will be regarded by the Jewish public not as a step toward justice for the Arabs, but as a step towards injustice for the Jews. There is no chance that this community, or any community in the world in similar circumstances, will agree to that.

Salman Masalha, in his fascinating articles, often belittles Jewish nationalism. In his favor, it should be noted that he belittles Arab nationalism equally. I do not share this attitude, but I greatly admire his courage and his consistency. Although I disagree with him, he believes that he is fighting for equality.

But what we hear from the Arab leadership and elite in such documents as "The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel" is a very different voice. This voice is saying to the Jewish public: Yes, there are two nations in this country; our nation has a right to a state, whereas your nation has no such right. We are by no means trying to turn the Jewish and Arab citizens in Israel into the members of one civic nation - an Israeli nation. Our Arab-Palestinian nationality is very important to us; we have our nation and you have yours, and your nation has no right to a state. That is why we reject the Jewish state in Israel and favor an Arab state alongside Israel.

This discourse of the Arab leadership - not necessarily of the Arab public, whose viewpoint, according to the surveys, is far more complex and more moderate - is trampling on equality in the guise of defending it. This makes no positive contribution to the relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel.
*
Published: Haaretz, May 4, 2011
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A Feeble Middle East

2011-05-07T10:31:00.004+03:00

The rise of Shi’ite Islam under Iran’s leadership necessitated encouragement to Sunni Islam, to step into the breach versus Iran. The conclusion was simple: From the Arab world – which is mostly Sunni – no salvation will come either for the Arab world or for the Western world.
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Salman Masalha

A Feeble Middle East

The king of terror is dead. He has many heirs in this region. They will crop up on the backdrop of the Arab world’s continuing failure to cope with modernity. This is a world that has been raised on the recitation of tales from a glorious past, but when it looks around it is astonished to find it is now somewhere near the lowest rung of the ladder. The point of contact between the imagined past and the degenerate present is the bottomless source of terror.

When the dust of battle has settled, everything will get rolling in the region again. Something interesting is happening here. On the one hand, NATO aircraft are killing Gadhafi’s son and some of his grandchildren. They have come to the aid of the Libyan people – that is what they all say. On the other side of the Mediterranean the “enlightened” world is not lifting a finger in light of the slaughter Bashar Assad is perpetrating among his people.

What does Gadhafi have that Assad doesn’t have? Why is he getting pressured personal treatment and the deployment of crushing force? Is this because Libya is Europe’s backyard and has lots of oil, whereas Syria has hardly any black gold? Is this the way of the hypocritical “enlightened” world?

Gadhafi is not a worse dictator than Assad. The difference between the two is like the difference between bubonic plague and cholera. Compared to those two Arab tyrants, Hosni Mubarak, the deposed Egyptian president, will be considered a pussycat and a pacifist.
And maybe there is something else here. In the Western world they’ve learned a thing or two during the past decade about the ways of life in the Arab world. This world, with all its types of regimes, has utterly failed the test of creating a nation state worthy of the name. The failure is seen on every screen. The revolts do not testify to a new Middle East at the gates but rather to a feeble Middle East. It is becoming increasingly obvious that there are only three strong nation states in the Middle East: Iran, Turkey an Israel. The common denominator shared by the three is that they are not Arab.

The West learned on its own flesh that this region conducts itself by other codes. Iran has continued to entrench its standing by means of its religious ideology. The toppling of Saddam Hussein shattered the illusion of the existence of a unifying “Iraqi identity” and gave an encouraging shot in the arm to Iran, which is forging ahead.

Thus in the West they realized it was necessary to rethink the region and act accordingly. The rise of Shi’ite Islam under Iran’s leadership necessitated encouragement to Sunni Islam, to step into the breach versus Iran. The conclusion was simple: From the Arab world – which is mostly Sunni – no salvation will come either for the Arab world or for the Western world.

Thus the way was paved for the rise of Turkish Sunni Islam. This was accomplished by weakening the power of the Turkish army, the guardian of Ataturk’s secular constitution and by Europe turning its back and posing obstacles to Turkey’s entry into the European Union.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his party were glad of the role that became incumbent on them to fill. This is because the Turkish Islamists dream of the restoration of Ottoman glory. The slogan of concern for the Palestinians has always served as opium for the oppressed Arab masses. The Turks learned this method. The Turkish flotilla that set out for Gaza and the one that is planned are means for improving Turkey’s stature in the eyes of the Sunni Arab masses. And all this is in order to position Turkey as a counterweight to Iranian influence.

In this way it is possible to understand why United States President Barack Obama decided to address the Arab world through Turkey in his first speech. These days he is making a point of contacting Erdogan and expressing his concern about what is happening in Syria.

At the end of March a secret meeting took place in Ankara between the head of the Central Intelligence Agency and his Turkish counterpart. The two discussed the future of the Syrian regime, the situation in Libya, the relations between Israel and Turkey, the situation in Iraq, Afghanistan and other matters of mutual interest. The head of the Turkish intelligence agency met with Syrian President Bashar Assad. Erdogan, too, went on a visit to Iraq and discussed the status of the Sunnis there. He met with the Shi’ite leader ‘Ali Sistani and discussed the uprising in Bahrain.

It appears the world has come to the conclusion that there is nothing new in the Arab world. This is a weak and irremediable world. Only an Arab reckoning of conscience will distance the region from the danger.

published: Haaretz, May 6, 2011
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Shekels as tools of the regime

2011-04-24T12:16:00.008+03:00

Salman Masalha

Shekels as tools of the regime

The issuance of new bills with pictures of writers is a chance for the government to show its concern for Arab citizens - writer Emile Habibi for instance.
---

Let’s talk about money and power. More precisely, the subject is the set of symbols that can be found in any wallet. The media reported recently that the Bank of Israel will be issuing new banknotes. Instead of portraits of political leaders, the bills are supposed to carry likenesses of writers and poets.

Banknotes move from one person to another, and as they circulate they represent a way for the regime to inculcate its messages. Bills have glorified the ruler and memorialized key events during his reign. It’s very important to read the fine print, we’re told. And it’s true, you have to read what’s printed on the notes, not just the amount of money they represent. You can grasp the essence of a government by perusing the bills it prints.

So let’s say a few words about Israeli banknotes. They have more than financial value; they have added political value. The paper money in Israel apparently serves as an organ of Zionist propaganda. Anyone killing time in a queue can stop and scrutinize lines attributed to former President Zalman Shazar on the NIS 200 bill and consider where his tax money is headed: “And despite the darkness of the dispersions, each community had to engage teachers of children at the expense of all its inhabitants. The wealthy and indigent, those with many children and those without, single and married people − all had to bear the burden of Torah study.”

Someone else on line can study words attributed to another former president, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, on the NIS 100 note: “Our goal is to cultivate, as much as we can, the process of uniting hearts among all tribes of Israel that are returning to the homeland.” And also: “I believe that only a single, consolidated, united force will be able to fulfill this people’s exalted historic destiny; only such a force will be able to defeat any assailant and enemy.”

Nor are the holy city and the Temple neglected in people’s pockets. The city is depicted on the NIS 50 bill in the following words, written by novelist S.Y. Agnon: “All the time I felt as though I had been born in Jerusalem. In my dreams I saw myself standing with the Levites at the Temple, singing hymns to King David − harmony that has not soothed any ear since our city was destroyed and its people dispersed.”

Former Prime Minister Moshe Sharett declares on the NIS 20 bill that finally Jewish soldiers and a Jewish army have arisen as a wall of defense for all Jews: “In every generation, Jews were exiled from the Land of Israel to offset those who immigrated to it. This time, thousands left the country not as victims of weakness but as exponents of strength. For the first time since our exile, soldiers from a Jewish army went to the front as members of a people rooted in its land, and possessors of its own culture.”

Indeed, all citizens, particularly Arab citizens, should read the fine print on every shekel to understand their place. Using symbols, the regime fosters Arab citizens’ alienation from the state. The most conspicuous example is the lack of Arab writing on police cars, vehicles that symbolize the rule of law in a state that is supposed to be the state of Arab citizens as well.

The issuance of new bills with pictures of writers is a chance for the government to show its concern for Arab citizens. For instance, the writer Emile Habibi ‏(1922-1996‏), an Israel Prize winner, could have been added to this list of currency-honored figures. Yet once again, the government has failed a test. It appears that an Arab citizen in the State of Israel isn’t even worth a shekel.
*
Published: Op-Ed, Haaretz, April 24, 2011

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Hebrew

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Tal Nitzan | Maimed Lullaby

2011-04-02T13:18:00.010+03:00

Tal Nitzan

Maimed Lullaby

To Tal Ashraf Abu Khattab, born in Gaza on May 1, 2010

The baby who bears my name is a month and two days old.
Unaware she has been born into hell, she wrinkles her tiny nose
and balls her hands into fists like babies everywhere.

Her four kilos and the cake her grandpa didn’t bake
weigh on my heart.
If I send her a teddy bear, it will sink like a stone.

The sharp fin traces its circles. I climb up,
my foot on the deck, shame and alarm on my face.
My baby has been left behind.

***
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For Arabic, press here
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If I were an Assad

2011-04-02T11:20:00.009+03:00

From the hard disk:
An article in Haaretz Magazine, April 19, 1996

How I conducted Syrian policy and gave ideas to Huntington?

Salman Masalha

If I were an Assad

Possibly some kind of imposed solution will put an end to the election fray now making headlines in Lebanon. However, when the warriors of the Apache tribe return to their bases, after the grapes* are harvested, they will be leaving a lot of wrath behind. This wrath can be suppressed for a while but it and the rest of the cards in the game remain in Syria’s hands – that is to say, in my hands.

Will I hurry to sign a peace agreement with Israel? I know that at this time the power is in the hands of the Western world – the United States and Europe. I know that in the global conflict in this region there is no chance the Western world will be on the side of the Arab-Muslim world against Israel. This is because in Western eyes Israel is the site of Christianity’s cultural roots. Ultimately the war is a culture war.

I ask myself: Assad, should getting the Golan back divert me from the path of achieving the goals of the Arab nations, the way I and the Ba’ath Party believe in them? No. The Golan Heights are important but the goals of the Arab world – which I and the Ba’ath Party carry on our shoulders – are even more important.

Since ancient times the Arab world has been split into a number of blocs that have always competed with one another for hegemony: the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq, Egypt and North Africa. The Arabian Peninsula and North Africa are on the margins of the Arab national myths, and there they will remain. Iraq has been paralyzed since the Gulf War. All the Egyptians like to do is talk. We are all that remains. Syria is destined to take over the reins in the conflict between Arab nationalism and the West, of which Israel is the spearhead.

In this conflict I have already chalked up a considerable number of successes. Lebanon is under my protection and this has been given a seal of approval. The West, including Israel, is accepting this as a fact. I do not go to visit “the president of Lebanon” in Beirut. He comes to Damascus to consult with me on every matter concerning Lebanon. There is no Syrian embassy in Beirut because Syria and Lebanon are one and the same.

Palestine, too, is a province of Greater Syria. I, Assad, leader of the Ba’ath Party, the standard-bearer of Arab nationalism, cannot send an ambassador to Tel Aviv. The Lebanese and the rest of the Arabs would say: Now Syria is appointing an ambassador to the Zionist entity but he is not appointing an ambassador to Lebanon, which is a member of the Arab League.

Israel and Yasser Arafat are amusing themselves with agreements they have signed. But I know they don’t stand a chance. The agreement Arafat has made with Israel is an unfunny joke. Arafat has become the head of the Palestinian council of mayors, a flying mukhtar. For every step he and the members of his ridiculous council take, permission from Israel is needed. And therefore, an even fiercer intifada will happen in the future.

And when that happens, will the regime in Jordan, when the majority of the inhabitants are Palestinian, still stand? I doubt it. And when there is an earthquake in Jordan, whom will they ask to restore order in that province of Syria? A rhetorical question. Jordan will follow in Lebanon’s footsteps, with Arab agreement and Western silence. This is because the West, including Israel, will have to choose between two alternatives: Either Jordan will be controlled by the fundamentalists or it will be controlled by a secularist like myself who knows how to deal properly with Islamic fanatics.

Then, at that stage, I will be willing to accept the Golan Heights, without giving up a single centimeter, and in exchange of for that you will get peace, i.e. a quiet border and nothing more. Where is it written that peace means open borders and an exchange of ambassadors? Peace is a sulha, a dispute resolution between tribes, and it doesn’t mean you need to marry a girl from the rival tribe.

If the West does not accept my conditions and does not take into account the interests of the great Arab nation (and of Islam, if I so decide), I can make a lot of trouble for it. Many options are open to me. I can join up with Iran, I can also join up with Iraq, I can make Jordan implode. Above all: I can go back to making Israel’s life a misery in Lebanon. I am holding a lot of cards and I am not rushing anywhere. I have all the time in the world.

*The Grapes of Wrath was a military operation carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in southern Lebanon from April 11 to April 27, 1996, after Hezbollah Katyusha fire on Israel.
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Israel's favorite Arab dictator of all is Assad

2011-03-29T08:20:00.022+02:00

Israel's favorite Arab dictator of all is Assad

Both Assad senior and Assad junior advocated resistance against Israel. This slogan was hollow, serving the regime merely as an insurance policy against any demand for freedom and democracy.
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Salman Masalha

President Assad

is the favorite

As strange as it sounds, everyone in Israel loves Arab dictators. When I say everyone I mean both Jews and Arabs. The favorite dictator of all is president Assad. As Assad junior inherited the oppressive regime in Syria, so did both Jews and Arabs transfer their affection for the dictator from Damascus from Assad senior to his son.

Following the intifada in the Arab states, Bashar al-Assad maintained in an interview to the Wall Street Journal that the situation in Syria is different, adding that Syria is not like Egypt. He also emphasized that Syria was not susceptible to sliding into a similar situation, because it was in the "resistance" front and belongs to the anti-American, anti-Israeli axis.

Well, Assad is right. The situation in Syria is indeed different. The Syrian regime is more like Saddam's defunct regime. The Ba'ath Party that ruled Iraq and the one still ruling Syria both held aloft flags of pan-Arab national ideology. But slogans are one thing and reality is another. All the ideological sweet talk was only talk. For the Ba'ath Party, both in Iraq and in Syria, constituted a political platform to perpetuate tribal, ethnic oppression.

Indeed, the situation in Egypt is completely different. If we put aside the Coptic minority, then Egyptian society is homogenous religiously and not tribal at all. The demoted Egyptian president, Mubarak, never had a tribal-ethnic crutch to lean on. The Egyptian army is also different and not at all like the Syrian or Iraqi armies.

For example, when the United States invaded Iraq, the Iraqi army splintered into its tribal and ethnic fragments. The soldiers took off their uniforms and each joined his tribe and ethnic community. Saddam too adhered to those tribal codes. He did not flee Iraq but went to hide in the well-protected areas of his tribesmen. This is what happens in these societies. In the land of the cedars, as soon as the civil war broke out, the Lebanese army dissolved into its ethnic components and disappeared.

True, Syria is not Egypt. Syria is also different in terms of the price in blood inflicted by the tyrannical Syrian regime. The Syrian tribal government is based on the force exercised by the security branches ruled by the tribesmen and their interested allies.

Inherently, a tribal regime of this kind will always be seen as a foreign reign. This kind of reign can be called tribal imperialism, which rules by operating brutal terror and oppression. This is underscored when a minority tribe rules, like in Syria. Thus every undermining of the government is seen as a challenge to the tribal hegemony and a danger to the ruling tribe's survival. Such a regime by its very nature is totally immersed in a bloodbath.

Both Assad senior and Assad junior advocated resistance against Israel. This slogan was hollow, serving the regime merely as an insurance policy against any demand for freedom and democracy. The Syrian "resistance" government has not uttered a peep on the Golan front since 1973. Instead, the "resistance" regime was and still is ready to fight Israel to the last Lebanese, and if that doesn't do the trick - then to the last Palestinian.

As voices in Israel have recently spoken out in favor of Hamas' continued rule in Gaza, so many Israelis are worried these days over the Syrian regime's welfare. Astonishingly, not only Jews are praying secretly for the Damascus regime's survival, but many in the Arab parties as well. These parties' leaders have been dumbstruck, their voices have been muted and no outcry has been raised against the Syrian regime's massacre of civilians.

All the hypocrites, Jews and Arabs alike, have united. It seems Assad has wall-to-wall support here, as though he were king of Israel.
*
Published: Op-Ed, Haaretz, 29 March 2011

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Hebrew | Arabic | Greek

*
On the same topic: Elaph, 26 March 2011
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Whose imagination?

2011-03-09T08:10:00.009+02:00

"Compared to the 'Jewish-democratic' imagination that has been developing for some years, the Arabs, especially their representatives in the Knesset, are notable for their lack of imagination."

Salman Masalha

Whose imagination?

For several months we have been witness to various and sundry Knesset bills that have turned Israeli legislation into a circus. First some religious conversion bill or another, then a bill regulating admission to "Jews-only" communities; next, a bill against foreign boycotts of the settlements, and a loyalty law whose purpose is to deny citizenship. And all this, with an air of arrogance.

Which brings to mind the saying that the Arabs are gifted with a vivid imagination, intended not as a compliment to their literary skills but rather just the opposite.

The truth is that there is no greater slander than the one ascribing to Arabs a well-developed imagination. Compared to the "Jewish-democratic" imagination that has been developing for some years, the Arabs, especially their representatives in the Knesset, are notable for their lack of imagination. Again and again, they fall prisoner to the same, old, all-purpose slogans, incapable of extricating themselves.

The passage of the amendment to the Citizenship and Entry into Israel Law, as well as assorted conversion and housing bills, constitute a golden opportunity for a reevaluation of the Arab imagination.

When the yearning hearts of cabinet ministers and Knesset members turn democracy into a circus, these moments of grace should be turned to use. And since we are talking about circuses, I would like to enter the ring and try to be a thrilling, surprising acrobat, in the spirit of when in Rome .... You say we have a vivid Oriental imagination? Terrific. I'll give you that vivid imagination to the nth degree. Below are a few legislative initiatives to lay on the desk of the parliamentary circus of the "Jewish-democratic" state:

The first bill to be submitted to the Knesset shall state: "Any elected official who has been tried and convicted of breach of trust, abuse of office, giving or receiving bribes or of any offense involving moral turpitude shall be stripped of citizenship" Is this not a law we can all support? I'd like to see all those corrupting and corrupted individuals squirm - all those abusers of their office and sieg heilers. I'd like to see, for example, how cabinet members with the name, say, Yishai, would react. And how MKs with the name swindler and Asmodeus would respond.

The second bill shall be framed as follows: "The granting of Israeli citizenship to any individual, without discrimination on the basis of creed, race or sex, shall be conditional on fluency in the Hebrew language." That, too, is surely a worthy proposal, is it not? I'd like to see the close-ups of the "Jewish-democratic" stammerers, old and new. I'd like to see how all kinds of spokesmen would react, whether some Lieberman or another Doberman.

Here's another revolutionary draft law: "Receiving citizenship on the basis of the Law of Return shall apply solely to Jews whose Jewishness is recognized in accordance with Jewish religious law" - in other words, someone whose mother was Jewish or who converted to Judaism in accordance with halakha, and who has no other religion. Converts will receive citizenship only if they have accepted the "burden of mitzvot" and maintain a religiously observant lifestyle. All this, so that no one would be tempted to think that Judaism is child's play, not to mention a matter for begging and baksheesh. As Ahad Ha'am said, "More than Israel kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath kept Israel."

And if Israel's "Jewish" Knesset rejects these proposals and continues with its conversion games in order to grant citizenship to "goyim," then so much the better. That would be an opportunity to offer the Palestinian refugees, for instance those in Lebanon, the option of undergoing a more lax conversion and to apply to "make aliyah" to the land of their forefathers. They would be welcomed back with a generous absorption benefits package and the state would see to it that they be sent on an official campaign of "Judaizing the Galilee." In so doing, they would finally realize the right of return to their historic homeland. They will settle and renew the destroyed Palestinian villages, both as Palestinians and as "Jews of Middle Eastern descent."

"For with wise counsel shall you make more" (Proverbs 24:6 ). So here are a few proposals from the vivid Arab imagination. And redemption shall come to Palestine, and to Israel.

*
Published: OP-Ed-Haaretz, March 9, 2011

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Politicians as mercenaries

2011-02-27T08:15:00.014+02:00

Arab MKs must beg forgiveness for Libya visit
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Salman Masalha

Politicians as mercenaries

The whole world is watching the misdeeds of the Libyan tyrant. Muammar Gadhafi spares no instrument of repression: He dispatches planes to sow death indiscriminately and sends African mercenaries to slaughter his own people. Gadhafi knows, deep within, just how small he seems in the eyes of the world, but cannot shed his role as megalomaniacal tribal despot.

The entire world saw him stand before the camera, in his robe and turban, with his Green Book. He lectured loudly, as befits the leader of Libya - the country he sees as "leader of the world." He spoke approvingly of the modes of response used by other world powers on the level of Libya, such as Russia, the United States, China and Israel.

I will not dwell on the hypocrisy of the West with regard to the events in Libya, which are obvious to even the naked eye.

I shall instead speak of Arab hypocrisy here, closer to home. The hypocrisy of the Arab Knesset members and public figures who a few months ago went to grovel before the Libyan despot.

They returned to Israel to boast and publish, in Arabic, their stories and pictures from the thrilling meeting with the "king of kings" and other such hyperbole a la MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List-Ta'al ).

All the Arab parties, organizations and ethnic-religious communities were represented in the delegation there. MK Mohammad Barakeh of Hadash, Hanin Zuabi and Jamal Zahalka of Balad, Talab al-Sana of United Arab List-Ta'al and a motley crew of people of lofty status and groveling spirit. They all came before him, bowed and shook his hand. He inspected them from behind dark glasses before seating them at the edge of his tent and lecturing them on demographics.

Former MK Azmi Bishara, who after fleeing Israel became a commentator on the television station of another little tyrant, also sought shelter in Gadhafi's tent. But because he too is a small megalomaniac he would not agree to join a delegation of Israeli Arabs.

He wanted a separate audience, he longed to talk to Gadhafi as one megalomaniac to another. Bishara is no different than most hypocritical Arab intellectuals, merely the loyal servant of despots as long as their regime is strong.

Then all of a sudden, when Gadhafi's regime was began to fail, Bishara remembered the Libyan people. Typically, he never said a word about the injustices of Syria's despotic regime, which for decades has been repressing freedom-loving citizens. Here's what Syrians think of Bishara's hypocrisy: "Doesn't the Syrian people deserve the freedom and rights that he enjoyed in Palestine, thanks to his Zionist enemies?" questioned Subhi Hadidi, a Syrian intellectual living in exile in Paris.

The truth is that Arab intellectuals of Bishara's ilk are like carrion-eaters. Like a pack of hyenas they wait on the sidelines, seeing which way the wind in the Arab political jungle is blowing; they watch the fall of a tyrant and then swoop in to grab a portion of "glory" from the body's remains.

All the Arab public figures who went to Libya were as political mercenaries in the service of Gadhafi the tyrant. They should now publicly express remorse and beg forgiveness, first from the Libyan people and next from the Arab citizens they purport to represent.

A public accounting is not only necessary but would also show that they have learned their lesson and intend to mend their ways. If not, Israel's Arab citizens should turn their backs on them and toss them in the garbage, just as Arab nations are rising up against their corrupt leaders. And the sooner, the better.
*
Published: OP-Ed, Haaretz, February 27, 2011

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Welcome Back to History

2011-02-16T10:53:00.006+02:00

Islam, like other imperialist ideologies, still needs enemies to flourish. Enemies have served Islam in the past as fuel for its wagons. Without enemies Islam declines and stagnates...
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Salman Masalha

Welcome Back to History

For centuries the Arab world has been living in chronic sickness. One basic reason for this sickness is the mixture between Islam and male tribalism. The male Arab tribal codes that are deeply rooted in the Arab societies and still affect the Arabs these days prevail equally in monarchies or dynastic regimes and so-called republican regimes. This is why you see presidents bequeath their regimes in particular to their sons, not their daughters, as in the case of Syria and as was planned to occur lately in Egypt before the Egyptian people took to the streets. It’s worth noting that the only Muslim countries in which women have been elected and have served as heads of states are non-Arab countries, such as Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia and Bangladesh.

Islam and male Arab tribalism constitute a toxic mixture. Especially when there is a lack of a fundamental principle, the principle of self-reckoning. The absence of such a principle leaves no way to acknowledge and correct mistakes and sins made by an individual, a leader or a society as a whole.

The combination of Arab tribalism, Islam and the absence of self-reckoning makes all Arab regimes oppressive ones. This has been the case throughout Arab history since the beginning of Islam. In fact, Islam is an ideology of Arab imperialism. For this reason Islam has needed enemies since its advent. In order to solve inner tribal disputes among the Arab tribes, Islam sent tribal warriors to fight other nations outside the Arabian deserts promising them food, goods and Garden of Eden etc. This ideology was behind making the Arab Islamic empire.

The dispute within the Arab Islamic empire since the rise of Islam has been a tribal one mixed with the issue of so-called religious kinship legitimacy - the close kinship relationship to the Prophet’s tribal branch.

With the rise of the non-Arab political and military powers within the Abbasid Caliphate in the 9th century and until the fall of Baghdad into the hands of Hulago in the year 1258, the Arab World went into a state of stagnation that has lasted until the present. Almost 1,000 years of stagnation. This period includes nearly four centuries of the Ottoman Empire.

After the First World War and the decline of the Ottoman Empire, in the Sykes-Picot Agreement the Arab World was divided between European colonial powers, mainly France and Britain. A few decades later, and in the wake of the Second World War and the retreat of the colonial powers, Israel was founded in Mandatory Palestine, recognized and supported by both the Soviet Union and the Western powers.

During the Cold War the oil-rich Middle East became a major arena for wrestling between the West and the Communist bloc. The Cold War split the Arab World into two orientations.: the pro-Western regimes on the one hand and on the other the so-called national “socialist” regimes, influenced by the Soviet Union and headed mostly by military officers who took power in some parts of the Arab World, such as Egypt, Syria and Iraq. Both the Arab monarchies and the republican regimes have been oppressive and have never brought any kind of well being to the Arab nations.

The policy of the United States has always been hypocritical and never really meant all the slogans about freedom, democracy, human rights and the like. On the contrary it has supported dictators and corrupt tribal leaders in the Arab World. America’s thoughts have focused on oil. The stagnation of all parts of the Arab and Islamic World continues. This was in the background of the Shi’ite Islamic revolution in Iran against the oppressive regime of the Shah, who was supported by the West.

The rise of the ideology and the power of the Islamic mujahidin in Afghanistan fighting the Soviet Union’s hegemony and the communist influence was a proxy war launched, supported and funded by the USA and its allies, mainly Saudi Arabia. The defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan brought the decline of the Soviet Union and communism in Europe and most of the rest of the world.

After the end of the Cold War and the fall of Berlin Wall, a naïve discourse emerged in the West led by Francis Fukuyama’s approach proclaiming the end of history and the triumph of Western liberalism. This naïve approach has faced an immediate and opposite response.

Empires need enemies, as I noted above. Once the Soviet enemy disappeared, there were thoughts in the West about finding a new enemy. This new enemy is Islam and Islamic imperialist ideology. And this is the real meaning of Huntington’s “clash of civilizations”, in response to Fukuyama’s “end of history”.

Along with the Shi’ite Islam that took power in Iran, the Sunni Islam that the West used in deploying the mujahidin against the Soviet Union is now a Golem turning against its founder in the West. This brought the Islamic terror that led to the September 11 attacks.

It should be taken into account that since its beginning and by its deep theological nature Islam, which was founded in the Arabian Peninsula on a Judeo-Christian background, has been focused on Judeo-Christian theology. This is why you can hardly find Islamic writing concerning other faiths beyond the Judeo-Christian cultures.

Bearing in mind the rise of an Islamic party in Turkey after the Turkish people despaired of becoming part of the European Union, what we see now facing the sick Arab World is the rise of two non-Arab national powers: Persian nationalism anchored in Shi’ite Islamic doctrine in Iran and Turkish nationalism anchored in Sunni Islamic doctrine in Turkey. The two non-Arab powers are vying with each other for hegemony in the Arab World, and both of them are struggling against the Western powers’ hegemony in the region.

Islam, like other imperialist ideologies, still needs enemies to flourish. Enemies have served Islam in the past as fuel for its wagons. Without enemies Islam declines and stagnates. For this purpose, in addition to what was stated above, there is the continuation of the Israeli Jewish Zionist occupation in Palestine supported by Western Christian Powers.

This confrontation reminds Muslims of their struggle with Jews and Christian in Arabia during the first years of Islam. And in fact there are a lot of modern Islamic writings which try to shed religious light on the Israeli Arab conflict and try to find and emphasize the similarities between our times and those early Islamic times. This new-old theo-political confrontation will keep this oil-rich part of the world a tense place. Foreign powers are able to set fires in parts of this region, driving the Middle East to be the biggest consumer of Western, mainly American, military equipment, as well as a market for all other products. It’s worth bearing in mind that this part of the world does not produce or export any thing of value except what it pumps out of the ground.

It's Middle Eastern history in the making.

February 2011

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The American golem

2011-02-10T09:21:00.018+02:00

The U.S. isn't interested in Mideast peace
Washington wants the region engulfed in flames; it just wants to control their height.

Salman Masalha

The American golem

It should be said explicitly: The United States is not interested in attaining peace in the Middle East. Peace in the region is not its top priority, and it has never corresponded with its interests.

These things might sound strange to anyone who is not sensitive to the mood in the region. Whoever believes the Arabic television station Al Jazeera is a mouthpiece of radical Islam, which endangers American interests, is invited to refresh his memory and update his imagination, because this radical Islam has actually been fostered by various American administrations.

A simple question should be answered: How did the populist channel find a home in the small emirate of Qatar, of all places? It is well known that the largest U.S. air base in the Middle East is located in Qatar. The WikiLeaks documents revealed that Qatar was a base from which American bombers took off for missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that it is now offering itself to the United States as a base for an attack on Iran - and even expressed its wish to take part in a war against Iran and bear most of the costs of maintaining the base.

What's more, the ruler of Qatar, in a meeting with U.S. Senator John Kerry in early 2010, even expressed understanding for the Israeli position and the feelings of the Israelis - saying the people of Israel cannot be blamed for not trusting the Arabs, as their country has lived under threat for a long time. This is the same Qatar that gave a royal welcome to President Shimon Peres, opposition leader Tzipi Livni and other Israeli officials.

These stories, along with the emir's ties with Israel, are not reported by Al Jazeera. But at the same time, this populist channel continues to smear other Arab regimes for their ties with Israel. Sound fantastic? Not necessarily.

All the Bin Laden videos somehow find their way to Al Jazeera. This is because this station has another designated role: undermining the Arab regimes and creating a state of chaos. The chaos is what corresponds with American policy, because Washington wants the region engulfed in flames; it just wants to control their height.

The flames in the Middle East serve the American economy. In this context, it is enough to mention the $60 billion arms deal signed with Saudi Arabia last year - the largest in U.S. history. The deal will provide tens of thousands of jobs within American industries.

Given this background, it is easy to understand Washington's interest in continued tension in the Middle East. The tension pushes countries to sign large arms deals, which produce tens of thousands of jobs in the United States. As such, the American interest lies in its continued policy of inflaming passions - through Al Jazeera as well - to perpetuate concern within the Arab regimes, whose existence depends on American support. Thus the United States can continue claiming that promoting arms deals with the wealthy countries of the Mideast stems from concern for the region.

That is why the White House is not making any effort to press Israel or promote Israeli-Palestinian peace, because this could advance peace throughout the region. Such a peace, from the perspective of the arms dealers, could leave industries idle and cause the layoffs of tens of thousands of American workers. This is how Al Jazeera actually serves as a tool in the service of the American pyromaniacs.

That is the entire U.S. doctrine in a nutshell. The problem with the doctrine is that the American golem may again turn on its maker. There is already evidence of this on the ground.
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Published: OP-Ed, Haaretz, Feb. 10, 2011

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No light at the end of the tunnel

2011-01-19T08:21:00.013+02:00

Salman Masalha

No light at the end of the tunnel

Relax. What happened in Tunisia is not about to repeat itself in other Arab states. The toppling of a dictator by a popular uprising indeed brings a breath of fresh air and perhaps even a ray of hope to many in the region, but there is still a long way to go before we can celebrate democracy there.

First of all, we have to wait and see if democratic elections are indeed held in Tunisia in two months, with more than one candidate for president and more than one party. If not, then everything has remained the same.

Secondly, Tunisia is not like the other Arab states to its east, because 99 percent of its population is Sunni Muslim. So anyone imagining anything like the Tunisian scenario in other Arab countries is dreaming: He does not understand the forces at work on the ground and has not considered these states' ethnic, religious and governmental structures.

Since the colonial powers retreated, the Arab world has not succeeded in building even one nation-state worthy of the name. The state of Iraq, for example, has not created an Iraqi people, nor has the state of Syria created a Syrian people. In both countries, dictatorship was the only glue that held all the pieces of the religious, ethnic and tribal puzzle together. When the dictatorship fell in Iraq, the whole Iraqi entity collapsed.

A Tunisian scenario is impossible in states composed of collections of tribes and religious communities and ruled by tribal regimes that behave according to ancient traditions of repression. A popular uprising in such a place poses an existential threat to the tribal and sectarian regime, so the regime will perpetrate a bloodbath against the rebels before giving way to yet another repressive regime.

The failure of Arab nationalism to create a civilian nation-state worthy of the name is what brought about the rise of Islam. But this is a mirage, harking back to a distant past. The nostalgia for the "glorious" past is the most prominent expression of these societies' impotence in the present. The backwardness of the Arab world is evident everywhere: in education, health, rising unemployment and pervasive government corruption.

In this world, there is no creativity in any sphere. This is a world of strident consumerism with no hope on the horizon. This is a world in which rulers in their final days bequeath the regime and its corruption to their sons, who will most likely continue their fathers' repression and corruption until the next bloody regime change, and the next.

The Arab world has a ready explanation for all its troubles: a Jewish, Zionist and imperialist conspiracy. Expressions of this conspiracy include distributing chewing gum that causes sexual arousal in women, an intent to corrupt Arab culture and society, and dispatching guided sharks to attack tourists on the Sinai coast in order to destroy Egypt's tourism industry. Spreading infantile tales such as these is a type of opium for the ignorant masses, who seize upon the "Zionist conspiracy" and fall into a stupor. In the Arab world, the "Zionist conspiracy" opiate provides an easy and safe way to avoid genuinely confronting the problems at home.

Disasters and failures are unable to spark genuine debate. The reasons for this are structural, rooted in the Arab-Islamic culture, because unlike other cultures, Islamic culture has not created mechanisms for self-criticism. There is not a single tradition attributed to the Prophet Mohammed that requires the Muslim believer to engage in self-criticism.

The absence of such a principle is the root of this society's problems, because self-criticism in a culture is a mechanism that makes correction possible. Without such a mechanism there will be no correction. And that is why it is difficult to see any light at the end of the tunnel.
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Published: Op-Ed, Haaretz, January 19, 2011

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*
Arabic article on the same topic, press here
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Rabbis of the Dry Bones

2010-12-29T09:36:00.011+02:00

"Racism surfaces when a society loses its self-confidence and turns to seeking ways to defend itself against what is different and perceived as increasingly threatening." ...

Salman Masalha

Rabbis of the Dry Bones

The rabbis’ letter in support of Safed’s Town Rabbi Shmuel Eliahu, the demonstrations against renting apartments to “foreigners” and slogans like “Jewish girls for the Jewish people” reveal only the very tip of the iceberg of sinister racism that had been dormant and wrapped in shabby feathers. This racism hid itself for many years behind barren discourse about a state with a formative “Declaration of Independence” in which there is civil equality and so on. All those who lauded the declaration have been in the forefront of those who have been trampling it early and late in the cabinet and the Knesset.

The despicable letter signed by dozens of rabbis is the peak of “the vision of the filthy dry bones” of the religious racism taking on flesh and sinew in Israel. This letter shows more than anything that the odious Kach movement was not a transient episode. It shows that Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of that movement, was not at all a loose cannon in the rabbinical world. He was a darling son of a racist monotheistic theology, like the other branches of this abominable tribal theology that arose in our region.

We are told Zionism aspired to liberate a religious group, to have it undergo a revolution of consciousness and to make it like all other nations. This, at least, is what is said by its disciples. So they say, as in the old joke about the rabbi and the harried husband who came to complain. However, a quick look at what is happening here makes it easy to see the deception. Indeed, see what a wonderful thing: From the moment the Jewish state arose it hastened to push aside civil secularity and adopted “Hatikvah” as its national anthem – an anthem the entire essence of which is religious.

You don’t need a weatherman to say which way the wind blows in words like “a Jewish soul yearns” or “an eye gazes toward Zion.” Thus a state was created in which at the base of its national anthem is a kid of religious prayer – Jewish and not Israeli. In other words, by means of the anthem Israel became a Shari’ah state – a Jewish country ruled by religious law and not a secular, modern, civilized country.

Not two decades elapsed after the establishment of “the Jewish state” and Israel found itself, with its yearning Jewish soul, not only yearning but also captive in the honey trap of the occupation of greater Zion. And thus the tribe with the religious anthem touched times and places laden with a mythical historical past. Thus, after the Six Day War of 1967 the Jewish-theocracy state removed the mask from its face and the Judeo-religious noose tightened around the slender neck of Israeli secularism.

The compound of tribalism and religion is a toxic compound that gives rise to fanatical murderers. This poisonous mixture led to the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin because he tried to draw a line separating Israeli tribalism from Jewish tribalism. The right, which usually draws its strength from religious tribalism, took to the city squares. Before Rabin was assassinated, he was often accused of not having “a Jewish majority.” This charge is what ultimately led to his murder, in the context of secularization and desecration Jewish “tribal honor.”

Racism surfaces when a society loses its self-confidence and turns to seeking ways to defend itself against what is different and perceived as increasingly threatening. This defensiveness is sometimes manifested through an “Iron Dome” directed at a danger from outside. No one talks about the deep root from which are growing the branches of racism flourishing in the streets. The root of the problem lies deep in the minds of those wishing to restore racist monotheist beliefs to their former glory.
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Published: Op-Ed, Haaretz, December 27, 2010

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The media fanned the flames

2010-12-07T09:43:00.015+02:00

Salman Masalha

The media fanned the flames

It wasn't only pinecones that burst, flew far from the trees and ignited more fires in the forests. The media also set up studios and sent out reporters who stoked another fire, on top of those that engulfed the Carmel.

Faced with the tragedy of the bus that went up in flames with its occupants, the evacuation of residents from their homes and the appeals for aid from other nations, their mission this time was to transmit, in live broadcasts, "information" received from anonymous sources about the existence of some kind of "conspiracy." The reporters were quick to report outbreaks of fire in various places and point to an alleged "guiding hand" behind the fires.

But the "guiding hand" was not a hand, but rather an anonymous arm of the government, which leaked this "information" to reporters on the scene in a desperate attempt to obscure the authorities' inability to deal with the fire and distract attention from their own negligence and failures by collectively accusing the residents of Isfiya and Daliat al-Carmel, and through them the entire Arab community, of responsibility for the fires. Facing off against these anonymous sources were "knowledgeable sources" in ultra-Orthodox circles who pulled out the default mantra of Sabbath desecration, which for the ignorant explains everything.

Against the background of general panic over the fire department's helplessness, broadcasters reported willingly for a kind of media reserve duty. Every reporter who had a chance to face the camera was quick to report, whether maliciously or innocently, the alleged information he was getting by text message from those anonymous sources.

The media, in all its forms and outlets, must do some thorough soul-searching. The irresponsible behavior we witnessed, in the form of transmitting "information" without bothering to check its veracity, is the type of ember that will continue to glow under the surface long after the flames die down. Such embers whip up the flame of hatred between Jews and Arabs, and they will ignite an even greater fire when the opportunity arises. And there is no lack of opportunities for an eruption in this security-conscious land.

On the other hand, the fire can serve as an opportunity for leaders of the Arab community to do some soul-searching and demonstrate wise civic leadership on behalf of the people they are supposed to represent and all the country's residents. The heads of Arab local councils often complain, justifiably, about the central government's failure to deal with the Arab sector's problems: the rising crime in Arab communities, the relatively high number of Arab drivers involved in car accidents and other ills that must be thoroughly addressed. Here is a chance to encourage young Arab men and women to volunteer for national service in the fire department. Because, as we just saw, evil flames of all kinds can devour everything good.

Volunteering for the fire brigades will send various civic messages: We're all in the same boat in the battle to preserve nature. We're all in the same boat in the battle to save life and stop the killing on our roads. Both nature and the roads belong to all of us, and it is our duty to safeguard them not only for ourselves, but for future generations.

National service in the fire department also has an educational aspect that is no less important: contributing to the general good regardless of petty, populist politics. Such national service could also open many fields of interest and study to young men and women later in life.

If everyone joins together to do some soul-searching, maybe there will be a silver lining in the cloud of smoke.
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Published: Op-Ed, Haaretz, December 7, 2010
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Dreams

2010-11-26T14:07:00.023+02:00

Salman Masalha

Dreams

............................ To Rumi

Beyond my door which faces west
Lives a woman who'll never rest.

She likes to tease my nomad soul
With words she keeps for gloomy fall.

But now she flies across the sky,
And tries to find a place too high

To paint it blue for me to look
And tie my heart like horse to hook.

I dive in blue or fly in beams.
Some say it's love. I say my dreams.

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An MK by any other name

2010-11-14T08:58:00.018+02:00

How European Zionism

has corrupted 'Jewish Arabs'

Salman Masalha

An MK by any other name

Carmel Shama was fed up, so the lawmaker decided it was time to reconnect with his ethnic roots. Responding to all the confusion over his identity, he asked the Interior Ministry to add an appendage to his name so that he could officially become MK "Shama-Hacohen."

Many people had mistakenly taken him for a Druze. Indeed, when he visited Auschwitz, MKs praised him for showing "solidarity with the Jewish people." He has also frequently been asked to voice his opinion "on Arab matters as a member of that community." Apparently, that was a bit too much for him to handle.

Here, then, is a blatant example of how "Ashkenazi Zionism," from Europe, has corrupted the souls of those referred to as "members of the Mizrahi group," from the Middle East and North Africa.

It bears noting that the original reason Israelis were required to list their national ethno-religious identities on official documents was to help Ashkenazi institutions distinguish between Jews and Arabs, since many Jews who came from Arab countries had Arab names. At first there were only two categories listed: Jews and Arabs. At a later stage, "Druze" was added as a separate category.

Because Interior Minister Eli Yishai refused to implement a High Court ruling to list Israelis who have undergone Reform conversions as Jews, in recent years, information on nationality appears merely as a series of asterisks on identity cards. But other identifying marks that distinguish between "Jews" and Arabs are still there.

Take, for example, a name like "Yosef Hadad." Based on the name alone, it is impossible to know if the bearer of this name is an Arab or Jew. Trained policemen, however, can instantly spot the difference. To promote the "worthy" goal of separating Arab and Jewish citizens, officials at the Interior Ministry were willing to waive the requirement to list the name of the "Jewish grandfather." So supposing that this Yosef Hadad is a Jew, his grandfather's name will not appear on his identity card. But if he is an Arab, his grandfather's name will be displayed proudly. Isn't that a rather elegant form of apartheid registration?

As years went by, nationalist tensions motivated many "Jewish Arabs" to try to distance themselves from their ethnic identity. Yet how could they when their outward appearances, musical tastes, favorite foods and lifestyles were so much a part of the cultural milieu from which they emerged?

The only way for them to make this break was to adopt conspicuous Jewish religious identity markers, prominent among them skullcaps and Magen David pendants. Indeed, the extent to which Magen David chains dangle on their necks and skullcaps cover their heads corresponds directly to the extent that they deny their Arab ethno-nationality. The most grotesque expression of such denial is the Hasidic clothing and hats worn by Shas members. To put it another way, a hat burns on the head of every self-denier.

Ethnic separation has, and continues to be, alive and kicking among citizens of this country. MK Shama-Hacohen can take it easy though. We can even seize the opportunity to give him a gift of two Druze MKs, MK Ayoob Kara (Likud ) and MK Hamad Amar (Yisrael Beiteinu ) - who together sound more hard-line than Avigdor Lieberman and Rabbi Eliezer Shach put together. In fact, if they listed "Hacohen" next to their surnames, they could kill two birds with one stone: first, they would stop shaming the Druze; second, the name change would drive MK Shama-Hacohen crazy.
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Published: Op-Ed, Haaretz, November 14, 2010

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Logic for Jews only

2010-11-04T08:50:00.010+02:00

It seems Professor Avineri is cutting the very branches of logic he seeks to hold on to, one after the other.

Salman Masalha

Logic for Jews only

Professor Shlomo Avineri raises difficult questions and wishes to discuss them, adding: "Anyone who, like me, supports a solution of two states for two peoples and wants to see Arab citizens of Israel gain full civic equality can, and perhaps even must, pose them" ("The right questions," October 5 ).

The issues concerning the melange of tribes residing in this country are not at all simple. The definition of what a people is, in this context, is quite complicated as both peoples are still in formative stages. Throughout human history, nations have vanished and other peoples have awoken one morning, felt they were a nation and began to interact as such in cultural and political frameworks.

The questions Prof. Avineri seeks to raise are difficult ones. But this is only an apparent difficulty - because upon reading his arguments, it seems he is cutting the very branches he seeks to hold on to, one after the other.

Let's assume that it is indeed true that "a majority of Israel's Jewish citizens distinguish between 'the State of Israel' and 'the Land of Israel,'" as he claims. The question then becomes why he demands something different from the other side, in saying "it should be clear to us, and to them, that Acre and Jaffa and Be'er Sheva are not part of Palestine."

If this is the logic guiding him, the same logic should apply to the other side - which should thus distinguish between the State of Palestine and the Land of Palestine. There is no contradiction, therefore, in Acre, Haifa and Jaffa being part of the Land of Palestine, even if they will not be part of the State of Palestine - just as Hebron will simultaneously be part of the State of Palestine and the Land of Israel. That is how healthy logic works, and that is how healthy peoples act in the framework of international law.

The second question raised by Prof. Avineri is also problematic. "The second question is directed at Israel's Arab citizens. Some of their leaders prefer to refer to themselves as 'Palestinian citizens of Israel,' and that, of course, is their right. But it is impossible to ignore the fact that following the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, this definition is liable to seem problematic," he writes.

Let's continue along the lines of this logic, and put it this way: The question is directed at Jewish citizens of the nations of the world. Some of their leaders prefer to refer to themselves as Jewish citizens of the United States, France, Russia, etc, and that, of course, is their right. But it is impossible to ignore the fact that following the establishment of an independent Israeli state, this definition is liable to seem problematic. Does Prof. Avineri accept that this, too, is problematic?

And in the same context, it would be interesting to know to what nation Prof. Avineri would say figures like Benjamin Disraeli, Alphonse Ratisbonne and the composer Felix Mendelssohn belong. To the Jewish people? And if not, why? You could go so far as to say that if the most famous Jewish boy were to arrive at Ben-Gurion Airport a second time, seeking to immigrate, Prof. Avineri's representatives would, at best, send him off on the first flight back overseas. Just a reminder to Prof. Avineri - the name of that famous Jewish boy is Jesus.

It seems such questions are inconceivable from his perspective; that is why he won't even consider them. This whole entire debate demonstrates how Prof. Avineri repeatedly climbs the branches of the tree he himself planted and nurtured, but, astonishingly and repeatedly, cuts down the very same branches with his own hands, to the point that he has become a licensed tree cutter.

It's nice that Prof. Avineri wants to see "full civil equality for Israel's Arab citizens," but for that equality to be complete, it also has to exist logically. To this point, I have not been able to fathom the logic of his words.
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Published: Op-Ed, Haaretz, November 4, 2010

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The War of Gog and Demagogue

2010-10-29T16:01:00.013+02:00

Salman Masalha

The War of Gog and Demagogue

Here is a scenario: A devout Evangelical Christian is elected president of the United States. Fundamental to his ideology is the return of the Messiah and therefore he devotes all his efforts to bringing about the End Time and hastening the coming of that Messiah. Does this sound fantastical to you? Not entirely. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were not far from this outlook.

There is no need to cross the Atlantic to see how such processes are taking place before our very eyes. A president like this, though on a somewhat smaller scale, has already been chosen by the ayatollahs and the scenario is already playing out in our region. The president of Iran is an “Evangelical,” only this time a Shi’ite Muslim.

A single sentence from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech in southern Lebanon has not been given sufficient attention. He has repeated this sentence on a variety of occasions and it encapsulates his religious and political worldview. Ahmadinejad made a point of saying at Bint Jbeil that the Mahdi – the Hidden Imam, the Shi’ite equivalent of the Messiah – will come in the near future, in our own times, and bring justice. He also said that when the Mahdi comes, he will be accompanied by the Messiah as his supporter and disciple. As in some branches of Judaism and Christianity, the coming of the Mahdi is a cornerstone of the branch of the Shi’a dominant in Iran.

However, an examination of the Shi’ite literature concerning the coming of the Mahdi reveals something very interesting and surprising. It emerges from this literature that when the Mahdi reappears and sets out on his way from Iraq, he will be joined by 27 persons from the people of Moses (in Arabic qawm Musa) – that is to say, Jews. Among those joining the Mahdi’s retinue are figures like Joshua Ben Nun and King Solomon. Moreover, the Mahdi will pray and utter the ineffable name of God, in the Hebrew language: “When the Imam issues the call to prayer, he will offer a prayer to Allah under his Hebrew name,” we learn from a tradition cited by Al-Nu’mani, a 10th century Shi’ite scholar.

Often, the Hidden Imam’s high status in the Shi’ite literature is compared to the stature of Joshua and the reign and law he will institute will be “like the reign and law of David and Solomon,” according to another 10th-century scholar, Al-Kulayni. Apparently the representatives of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect Naturei Karta who visited Iran and met with Ahmadinejad are aware of some of these traditions.

Of course these and other traditions serve the Sunni Muslims to goad the Shi’ites. Often the Sunnis taunt the Shi’ites that their Mahdi is none other than “the Jewish Messiah,” who prays and utters Allah’s name in Hebrew. Shi’ite scholars see this as a point in his favor, as someone who “knows languages.”

In any case, the tension in our world today between the Arabs and Iran is very ancient tension. Echoes of this tension are heard in the Shi’ite traditions. When the day of the Mahdi’s coming arrives, according to the Shi’ite tradition, the fate of the Arabs will not be glorious, to put it mildly: “When the Mahdi comes, only the sword shall speak to the Arabs and to Quraysh (Muhammad’s tribe),” as we are are told by the scholar Al-Nu’mani. Another tradition says the Mahdi “will slaughter them the way the butcher slaughters a sheep.”

It is always possible to find such things, some of them entertaining and some of them less so, in every religion, in every place and at every time. However, in a part of the world where religious myths are the daily bread of ignorant masses and an elected government, messianic beliefs of this sort are liable to be extremely dangerous. This is because there will always be some reckless disciples, in every ethnic group and religion, who will want to hasten the end time by every means at their disposal. And this is especially so if these people, be they here or there, are leaders who have access to all kinds of dangerous buttons.
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Published: Op-Ed, Haaretz, October 22, 2010

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All the professor’s cats

2010-10-02T15:02:00.005+02:00

Salman Masalha

All the professor’s cats

For years a certain peddler roamed the streets with a laden sack on his back, declaring he has many good things. Every morning he set out to try to sell his wares. However, only the sharp-eyed knew what he kept in the bag.

One day, a “Canaanite slave” passed through the town and threw down a banana peel. The peddler, who was so engaged in concealing the contents of his bag of good, slipped and fell. However, he continued to hold on tight to the sack and its contents. This peddler had a fine reputation in the town and he is a very respected professor.

Recently Prof. Shlomo Avineri tried in every possible way to conceal his wares from everyone (“A Palestinian people yes, a Jewish people, no?” Haaretz English Edition, August 13, 2010). As a concerned Zionist he exalted the role of “the Zionist revolution” in transforming the Jews into a nation like all nations. He went so far as to make a ridiculous comparison between a Jewish nation and a French nation.

In a second article he published on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year (“Biladi, Biladi”, Haaretz English Edition, September 8, 2010), Prof. Avineri left no room for doubt as to his hidden intentions. Apparently a “sensitive Jewish nerve” under his Zionist skin has been damaged. This nerve is making him edgy and keeping him awake nights. Once again he limps to his desk, types his worst nightmare onto the screen and in on go spills out the contents of the “Zionist revolution” sack.

It is worth pausing first over the headline given to his article. “Biladi, Biladi” cries the Hebrew (and English) headline, in transliteration (of the title and opening words of the Egyptian national anthem), and this in order to pluck at the Hebrew readers’ most sensitive strings with the aim of injecting primordial fear into their world, as though this were another Arabic battle cry. It is important that the readers understand what this headline means and not stumble about in the fog. Indeed, translated into Hebrew the title will sound familiar to every man and woman in Israel. The Russian-born Hebrew poet Shaul Tchernikovsky (1875-1943) wrote the Zionist line “My country, my native land” – which is exactly what this headline says and this is a phrase often uttered by Prof. Avineri and many others. The transliterated title aims at arousing panic by means of using the savage sound, the Arab sound that is not understood.

From reading the article it also emerges that the bag Prof. Avineri carried on his back for years indeed contains many “good” things; a trick here and a trick there, a cat here and a cat there and all manner of goods including some Meir Kahane. Prof. Avineri sets forth for the readers an imaginary horror scenario by means of which the tried to warn of a “disaster” lying in wait for the state of Israel: “‘We're all Israelis, equal citizens in our common homeland," declared the Knesset speaker,’” he has the speaker of the Knesset declare in an imagined future session of Israel’s parliament.

Prof. Avineri’s Zionist lie is revealed in this last article. Here, his “Zionist revolution” that exalted belonging to the Jewish “nation” has vanished into thin air in favor of belonging to the Jewish religion.

It seems to me he deserves an Olympic medal for the impressive backwards somersault he executed in his return to the religious origins that shaped him. Indeed, in his second article he reveals in a single stroke everything he previously tried to hide. Suddenly, his main concern is “Jewish sovereignty.” Suddenly he returns to “the synagogue,” to “the Jewish people” and “the God of Israel.”

Equal citizens? A shared homeland? Democracy? Equality and things like that? You’re kidding. Forget it. It’s warmer and cozier in the bosom and in the laws of the Jewish shtetl, the backwards hamlet in the eastern European Pale of Settlement.

True, the “Canaanite slave” has a Canaanite soul and like the Jewish soul in the Israel’s national anthem “Hatikvah,” it too “throbs.” However, according to Avineri, who is familiar with his religious tradition, the law for a Canaanite slave or servant is not the same as for a Hebrew servitor.

Your faithful servant had naively believed that Shlomo Avineri is a professor of political science who propounds democracy, equality, the rule of law and an enlightened state. I was wrong. It turns out he is just another revered Jewish master teacher who lays down rabbinical rulings.

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For Hebrew, press here

See:
Salman Masalha, "A Jewish and democratic restaurant"
Shlomo Avineri, "A Palestinian people, yes, a Jewish people, no?"
Alexander Yakobson, "What's in the name?"
Uri Avnery, "Poisonous Mushrooms"
Lev Grinberg, "You can't be a Jewish Muslim"
B. Michael, "A Pravoslavic and republican tomato"
_________________________________

Arabs, speak Hebrew!

2010-09-27T08:14:00.005+02:00

Salman Masalha

Arabs, speak Hebrew!

Many Arab eyebrows - those of politicians and populist education officials - will no doubt be raised when they read this headline. At the same time, we should discuss the issue of language with due seriousness and detached from the sensitivity connected to it.

The Education Ministry recently published data on achievement levels in the school system. One finding particularly caught my eye - on achievements of students examined in Hebrew, especially Arab pupils. The report spoke of the catastrophic situation in the Arab community and said Arab students had the lowest average grade in Hebrew language. The grade in Arabic for Arab Students was only slightly higher.

Recent research by Prof. Zohar Eviatar and Dr. Rafiq Ibrahim of the University of Haifa's psychology department explain the problem from another angle. The researchers compared the speed and accuracy of comprehending texts among Arabic speakers, Hebrew speakers and English speakers. They found that the right hemisphere of the brain is involved in learning to read in Hebrew and English but not at all in learning to read Arabic.

This stems from the graphic complexity of Arabic writing, they believe. Arabic letters are joined together and change shape according to their location in a word. In addition, many letters are distinguished from one another by minute graphic signs alone. Thus Arabic writing's graphic uniqueness becomes a heavy burden on children when they are learning to read.

The data explain the considerable gap between students at Arabic-language schools and those at schools where the language of instruction is Hebrew or English. The data also partially explain Israel's low standing compared with the developed countries in international tests of schoolchildren. This gap, linked to the language's sad situation, exists in the entire Arab world. It's not by chance that not one Arab university is among the world's best 500 universities. This finding has nothing to do with Zionism or Israel.

Everyone knows that the Arabic taught in schools is compared with Hebrew or any other foreign language, but it is not the language Arab children speak at home. The mother tongue they speak at home is totally different from the literary Arabic taught at school. This situation exists throughout the Arab world.

The Arab public in Israel is not isolated from the general Arabic linguistic arena. The Arabic-language media, especially radio and television, do not provide the linguistic richness of formal Arabic. The opposite is true: They perpetuate linguistic superficiality that leads to intellectual superficiality.

Despite all this, an educational revolution is possible here. The positive results of such a revolution would be felt in just a few years. To this end, we need the courage to put the ultimate educational demand on the table: The Arabic and Druze departments at the Education Ministry must be abolished immediately and all the syllabi must be united into one core syllabus for everyone. Some 80 percent of the syllabus should include the teaching materials required for a modern and advanced education. For the remainder, special emphasis on the cultural interests of a segment of the population should be permitted.

We can conduct yet another revolutionary experiment - choose from the Arab community one or more class and decide that the language of instruction there, from kindergarten through high school, will be Hebrew. If we carry out an experiment like this, I'm convinced the positive results will not be long in coming.
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Published: Opinion-Haaretz, September 27, 2020

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For Hebrew, press here

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When Ovadia, or Abdullah, reigneth

2010-09-01T09:15:00.010+03:00

Salman Masalha

When Ovadia, or Abdullah, reigneth

The Days of Awe lie ahead of us. Awful days in Hebrew and in Arabic. Every man will not sit under his vine nor will every senior citizen recline under his fig tree, but rather night and day they will study "Torat Hamelech: Laws of Life and Death between Israel and the Nations," the laws of hatred that are spreading through Israel.

We have already seen the rabbis mustering support for Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, the author of the book, which deals with the laws of life and death between Israel and everyone else and discusses the laws with regard to killing gentiles in times of peace or war.

And again, yes again, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the "spiritual" leader of Shas, delivers a sermon and smites us once again: "May our enemies and those who hate us die, Abu Mazen and all these evil people should perish from this world. God should smite them with a plague, the Ishmaelites, those Palestinians - evil, bitter enemies of Israel," as he is quoted as having said this week.

As the author of the Book of Proverbs might have written, there be many things which are too wonderful for me, yea, many that I know not. The way of the politicians from here and from there. The way of a politician, who like a fish fills his mouth with water upon hearing words of denunciation. The way of the man of religion, who creeps like a serpent upon a rock and ambushes easy prey with a sermon before the Days of Awe. The way of a racist politician who shuts his ears upon hearing these things here whilst hastening to quote from every stage similar things from the other side. The way of the man of religion who behaves like an adulterous woman, swallows the imprecations, wipes his mouth and says: I have heard no evil, or in other words: The rabbi's words have been taken out of context. About this sort of thing the author of the Book of Proverbs has already written of the land when the earth trembles: "A servant when he reigneth."

I hear these things and I read the reactions to them that haven't been tardy in coming, from here and from there. I don't know whether to laugh or to cry. As fate would have it, the words of the abusive rabbi sound very familiar to me in translation from the Arabic. As if the rabbi's name were not Ovadia but rather Abdullah, and as if it the sermon was not in Hebrew, but rather in Arabic.

From here the calls in Hebrew are repeated: "May those who hate us die and God should smite them with a plague, those Ishmaelites ..." And from there are heard, as though in a mirror, the same words of abuse in Arabic: "God, smite and destroy the Jews, descendents of monkeys and pigs, make their wives widows, make their children orphans..." - and other such pearls of pure Semitic.

"If heaven-forbid a Muslim cleric were to express himself against the Jews in those same words he would be arrested immediately," Balad MK Jamal Zahalka hastened to write to the attorney general, calling upon him to indict the rabbi. Apparently the energetic parliamentarian doesn't know anything at all about the heritage of Arabic imprecations.

If they were to arrest all the preachers of hatred in Hebrew and in Arabic, the Israeli, Palestinian and pan-Arab prison services would have their hands full. People, from here and from there, often wonder where all those rabid words come from. However, as is their habit, they always refuse to lay their finger on the root of the evil. They all prefer to bury their heads in the sand. And the sand in this Semitic expanse is quicksand, very much so.

Therefore, the time has come to tell it like it is. There is no need to go into contortions of strange and varied explanations. All the evil words, both in Hebrew and in Arabic, are nourished by the hatred from that same sewer, that same teat called monotheism. And when in this udder God and a tribal code mingle, only a toxic mix can emerge.

There is an antidote to this poison. Only courage is needed to use it. It is called separation of religion and state. Or in other words, if you will: taking the Holy One, blessed be He, away from the law.
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Published: Opinion - Haaretz, September 1, 2010
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For Hebrew, press here
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B. Michael: A Pravoslavic and republican tomato

2010-08-27T14:43:00.015+03:00

B. Michael

A Pravoslavic and republican tomato

Prof. Shlomo Avineri (Haaretz, August 13, 2010) debates Salman Masalha, who ridiculed the expression “a Jewish and democratic state” and compared it to the expression “a Muslim and democratic state” (Haaretz, August 8, 2010).

Avineri decides to learn from this barb that Masalha has supposedly denied the existence of a Jewish people and its right to self-definition, and charges ahead full tilt to defend the people, the state and the expression “a Jewish and democratic state.”

But Avineri is making life easy for himself. With convenient and useful consistency he ignores one crucial and fundamental fact: The state of Israel is the only country in the world where the exclusive authority to determine who belongs to its people is in the hands of the clergy of some transcendental, mythical entity, which does not participate much in the public discourse and is not subordinate to any mortal (except those who serve it…).

Avineri also tries to compare the Jewish people in Israel to other peoples in the world. As he sees it, “a Jewish state” is like a Palestinian state, a Dutch state, a Polish state, an English state. Every state has its people. But this comparison is baseless. It’s not a qadi who decides who is Palestinian. It’s not the Archbishop of Canterbury who decides who is English. It’s not a cardinal in Warsaw who decides who is Polish and it isn’t the ayatollahs in Iran who decide who is Persian. Only here, only in Israel, have all the usual tests of ethnic and national affiliation been abolished. Not culture, not language, not birthplace, not historical background, not a common fate … none of these decide. Only the seal of the clerical bureaucrats determines whether or not a person belongs to the people and the nation.

The result is a rather absurd paradox: Instead of the state of Israel realizing the right of Jews to self-definition, it has become the only place in the universe that denies them their right to define themselves. Everywhere else in the world a person is allowed to define himself as a Jew, and Jewish communities are able to embrace him to their bosom in any way they choose. No law prevents them from doing this. Only in Israel has this right been outlawed.

And the paradox redoubles when we realize that while the Jewish people everywhere in the world is indeed a people in every respect, it is only in Israel that it has once again become solely a religious community, a cult the definition of which has been given over entirely to clerics and their certifications of ritual fitness.

It can be said this is the worst failure of what Avineri calls “the Zionist revolution.” It intended to transform a people into a nation and it has ended up turning part of that people into a religious community.

Therefore until such time as the state of Israel comes to its senses and takes away from the clerics the exclusive authority to decide who belongs to that people whose right to self-definition it purports to realize – Salman Masalha is right: “A Jewish and democratic state” is a ridiculous phrase, just like “a Muslim and democratic state.”

And if this comparison is insulting to Prof. Avineri, he is invited to ponder the following equation: “A Jewish and democratic state” is a logical and very meaningful concept much like “a Pravoslavic and republican tomato.”

Jerusalem, August 15, 2010

***
See:
Salman Masalha, "A Jewish and democratic restaurant"
Shlomo Avineri, "A Palestinian people, yes, a Jewish people, no?"
Alexander Yakobson, "What's in the name?"
Uri Avnery, "Poisonous Mushrooms"
Lev Grinberg, "You can't be a Jewish Muslim"

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Lev Grinberg: You can't be a Jewish Muslim

2010-08-23T07:43:00.013+03:00

Lev Grinberg: "Instead of bringing about the secularization of Judaism, Zionism turned religion into the central element of the definition of national identity, and turned the State of Israel into a tool of the religious redemption project.".....

Lev Grinberg

You can't be a Jewish Muslim

Just like the story about the late Israeli politician Moshe Sneh, who raised the tone of his voice because his arguments were not persuasive, Professor Shlomo Avineri raises the tone in his reply to Salman Masalha, both of whose opinion pieces appeared on these pages earlier this month, and paints him as a racist. But Masalha did not claim that there is no Jewish people or that Jews do not have the right to self-determination. His argument is simple: If the state is defined by religion, it cannot treat all its citizens equally, as required of a democratic system of government.

Its true that from its inception, Zionism intended to turn the Jewish people from a religious community into a modern nation, but Avineri ignores the regrettable fact that the project of secularizing the Jewish people has failed. Israel has no legal definition for Judaism other than the religious definition, it does not recognize an Israeli national identity defined on the basis of citizenship, and it does not recognize a Hebrew nationality that is culturally defined.

The comparison to other countries where religion and nationality are linked is irrelevant, because those countries have a secular definition of the state and citizenship. You can be a Polish Jew or an Egyptian Jew, but you can't be a Jewish Muslim or a Jewish Christian.

In the attempt to make the Jewish people a nation like all others, Zionism strove to unite it through one language and concentrate it in one territory. There were arguments and struggles over this, and they were decided in favor of preserving the centrality of religion in the definition of the national collective. Instead of picking one of the languages that Jews spoke day in and day out, Hebrew, the holy tongue, was chosen.

Regarding territory as well, absolute secularists did indeed think that Jews could be settled in Uganda or Argentina, but the gravitational pull of the Land of Israel was decisive. The Bible was transformed from a religious text into Zionism's title deed, the justification for the demand for ownership of the territory. In other words, instead of bringing about the secularization of Judaism, Zionism turned religion into the central element of the definition of national identity, and turned the State of Israel into a tool of the religious redemption project, especially after the capture and settlement of biblical areas since 1967.

Defining the State of Israel solely as democratic and revoking the special privileges of Jews does not contradict Zionism, and certainly not Judaism. The connection to Judaism will remain in the calendar and the Hebrew language, in the name of the state and in the Jewish majority (if we manage to free ourselves from our rule over the Palestinians in the territories).

Democracy is based on universalist Jewish values, such as "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" and "Ye shall have one statute, both for the stranger, and for him that is born in the land." That requires separation of religion and state, something that will be good for both. Because in the current situation, not only does religion corrupt the state, but the state corrupts religion and pushes it toward nationalistic extremism.

Why isn't Israel a modern, democratic nation-state? I suspect that the secular Jews are not ready to relinquish the special privileges that the Jewish state grants them. With no other definition for Judaism, they are ready to accept the yoke of the religious establishment and give up democracy and equality. In my view, that is the meaning of the continued impossible defense of a Jewish and democratic state.

Woe to such Zionism: conservative and complacent, lacking imagination and vision. After such a bitter failure, we should start thinking of tikkun, of repair. Tikkun is a kosher concept; it's both Jewish and democratic.
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Published: Opinion - Haaretz, August 23, 2010

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For Hebrew, press here

***

See:
Salman Masalha, "A Jewish and democratic restaurant"
Shlomo Avineri, "A Palestinian people, yes, a Jewish people, no?"
Alexander Yakobson, "What's in the name?"
>Uri Avnery, "Poisonous Mushrooms"
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Uri Avnery: Poisonous Mushrooms

2010-08-22T14:06:00.011+03:00

Uri Avnery

Poisonous Mushrooms

BEFORE THE victory of feminism, there was a popular Israeli song in which the boy asks the girl: “When you say No, what do you mean?”

This question has already been answered. Now I am more and more tempted to ask: “When you say Zionism, what do you mean?”

That is also my answer when asked whether I am a Zionist.

When you say Zionist, what do you mean?

LATELY, ASSOCIATIONS for the defense of Zionism have been springing up like mushrooms after rain. Poisonous mushrooms.

All kinds of American Jewish multi-millionaires – many of them Casino kings, brothel moguls, money launderers and tax evaders - are financing “patriotic” Israeli groups in Israel, to fight the holy war for “Zionism”.

The assault takes place along all the fronts. Jewish organizations aim at cleansing the universities of post-Zionists. They threaten to induce other donors to withhold their donations, they terrorize presidents and rectors and frighten professors and students.

Americans may be reminded of the sinister era of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who blighted the life of thousands of intellectuals and artists, pushing many of them into exile or suicide. Europeans might be reminded of the days when “Aryan” professors informed on their treasonous colleagues, and students in brown shirts threw their Jewish colleagues out of the windows.

This is only one sector of the broad offensive. One group has proudly announced that it is teaching hundreds of professional Zionists how to cleanse Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia, of post-Zionist items and plant Zionist ones in their stead.

THE TERM “post-Zionism” is starring in the propaganda of all the dozens – and perhaps hundreds – of the associations financed by the Las Vegas multi-millionaires and their likes in the United States in order to restore the Zionist glory of old.

Why this term, of all others? They mean the leftists, but those who attack the “leftists” are liable to be called “rightists”. However, the members of the extreme right want to be seen as belonging to the patriotic center. Nor is it nice or enlightened to speak out against “liberal” or “progressive” professors. “Post-Zionists” is the Israeli equivalent of the “Reds” of Senator McCarthy or the “Jews” of his predecessors in Germany.

BUT WHAT is “post-Zionism”? Why not simply “anti-Zionism”?

As far as I know, I was the first to use this term. That was in 1976. I was testifying in a libel case that my friends and I had lodged against a publication that had accused the “Israeli Council for Israeli-Palestinian Peace”, that we had just founded, of being “anti-Zionist”. In trying to explain my view to the judge, I said that Zionism was a historic movement, with both light and shadow, which had fulfilled its role with the establishment of the State of Israel. From then on, Israeli patriotism has taken its place. “Post-Zionism” means that with the founding of the state, a new historic era began. A “post-Zionist” can admire the achievements of Zionism or criticize them. He is not by definition an anti-Zionist.

The judge accepted my arguments and found in our favor. She awarded us handsome compensation. Now I am the only living Israeli who has a judicial confirmation that he is not an anti-Zionist – much as only a person released from a psychiatric hospital has an official confirmation that he is sane.

Since then, the term “post-Zionist” has acquired wide currency in academic circles. It has also acquired many shades of meaning, according to the people who use it.

But in the mouths of our new mini-McCarthys, it has become a simple denunciation. A post-Zionist is a traitor, an Arab-lover, a lackey of the enemy, an agent of the sinister world-wide conspiracy to destroy the Jewish State.

SHLOMO AVINERI, a respected professor of philosophy, recently published an article in which he fervently argued that Israel is a Jewish state and must remain so. The article has already stirred up a vivid debate.

I have received some protests from people who mistakenly thought that it was I who wrote the piece. That happens from time to time. Years ago the respected British weekly, The Economist, printed my name instead of his, and next week published “an apology to both”.

But the difference is considerable. Avineri is an eminent professor, a student of Hegel, an expert on Zionist history, a former Director General of the Israeli Foreign Office, and a devout Zionist. I, as is well-known, am not a professor, I never even finished elementary school, I never was a government spokesman and my attitude towards Zionism is very complex.

In his article, Avineri argued passionately that Israel is a Jewish state “as Poland is a Polish state and Greece is a Greek state”. He was responding to a Palestinian citizen of Israel, Salman Masalha, who had asserted that there cannot be a “Jewish state”, much as - he says - there cannot be a “Muslim state” or a “Catholic state”.

How can one compare, Avineri cried out. After all, the Jews are a people! Israel belongs to the Jewish people, whose religion is Judaism.

Logical, isn’t it?

BY NO means. The analogy does not fit.

If Poland belongs to the Poles and Greece to the Greeks, Israel belongs to the Israelis. But the Israeli government does not recognize the existence of an Israeli nation. (The courts have not yet decided upon the petition by some of us to be recognized as belonging to the Israeli nation.)

If Avineri had demanded the recognition that Israel belongs to the Israelis as Poland belongs to the Poles, I would have applauded. But he argues that Israel belongs to the Jews. This immediately raises some basic questions.

For example: Which Jews? Those who are Israeli citizens? Clearly, this is not what he means. He means the “Jewish people” dispersed all over the world, a people whose members belong to the American, French, Argentine nations – and, yes, also to the Polish and Greek nations.

How does a person become an American? By acquiring American citizenship. How does a person become French? By becoming a citizen of the French republic. How does a person become a Jew?

Ah, there’s the rub. According to the law of the State of Israel, a Jew is somebody whose mother is Jewish, or who has converted to the Jewish religion and not adopted any other religion. Ergo: the definition is purely religious, like that of a Muslim or a Catholic. Not at all like that of a Pole or a Greek. (In Jewish religion, it’s only the mother, not the father, who counts in this respect. Perhaps because one cannot be quite sure who the father is.)

There are in Israel hundreds of thousands of people who have immigrated from the former Soviet Union with their Jewish relatives, but are not Jewish according to the religious definition. They consider themselves Israelis in every respect, speak Hebrew, pay taxes, serve in the army. But they are not recognized as belonging to the Jewish people, to which, according to Avineri, the state belongs. Like the million and a half Israeli citizens who are Palestinian Arabs. The state does not belong to them, even though they enjoy – at least formally – full civil rights.

Simply put: the state belongs, according to Avineri, to millions of people who do not live here and who belong to other nations, but does not belong to millions of people who live here and vote for the Knesset.

WHO HAS decided that this is a Jewish state? Avineri and many others assert that the character of the state was decided upon by the resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations of November 29th, 1947, which partitioned the country between a “Jewish state” and an “Arab state”.

Not true.

The UN did not decide upon a state which belongs to all the Jews in the world, any more than upon a state that belongs to all the Arabs in the world. The UN commission which investigated the conflict between the Jews and the Arabs in the country then called Palestine decided (very sensibly) that the only possible solution was to allot to each of the two national communities a state of its own. Nothing more.

In short: the words “Jewish” and “Arab” in the UN resolution have nothing to do with the character of the two states, but only define the two communities in the country that were to establish their states. They have no other meaning.

BUT A professor who comes to this conclusion would be hounded as a “post-Zionist” who must be expelled from his university. According to our little McCarthys, even the debate is absolutely verboten. Verboten to think. Verboten to write. Strictly verboten to speak. In every university there would be Zionist overseers to receive reports about the lectures of professors, check their publications, report what they hear from students who inform on other students, and safeguard ideological purity. Much like the “politruks” – political commissars – in the Soviet Union. Much like the cadres of the “cultural revolution” in China, when thousands of professors and other intellectuals were sent to labor camps or remote villages.

But the results of their labors may be very different from what they expect. Instead of making the term “post-Zionism” a synonym for treason, they may make the term “Zionism” a synonym for fascism, gladdening the hearts of all those around the world who preach a boycott of the “Jewish state”. When the Israeli universities are cleansed of non-conformist thinkers, it will indeed be easy to boycott them.

When you say Zionism, do you mean the humanist vision of Theodor Herzl or Avigdor Lieberman’s Jewish fascism?

(Saturday, August 21, 2010)

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source: Media Monitors

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For Hebrew, press here
For German, press here
***

See:
Salman Masalha, "A Jewish and democratic restaurant"
Shlomo Avineri, "A Palestinian people, yes, a Jewish people, no?"
Alexander Yakobson, "What's in the name?"

The poet's political correctness

2010-08-20T11:12:00.011+03:00

Salman Masalha

The poet's political correctness

"Music from the Maghreb is poor, limited and unsophisticated," a Kurdish-Turkish musician whispered in my ear during a concert held in southern France last month, as part of the "Mediterranean Voices" festival. As I am not an expert on the secrets of music I tried, upon returning to Israel, to clarify the issue with a friend, who is a Palestinian musician.

"Indeed, that's the way it is," he resolutely confirmed, and went on to elaborate - comparing music of the Maghreb to work by a particular artist who numbers among the "national Palestinian poets," and whose writings he described as ornately hollow and devoid of content. Had such statements come from a critic of European origin, the foolish apostles of political correctness would, no doubt, have hastened to brand their spokesman a racist.

This brought to mind the "Mizrahi" storm that erupted in the wake of Natan Zach's remarks on Israeli culture, exposing the tension between backers of the East and upholders of the West. Epithets like "high culture," "low culture" and "racism" were immediately tossed around.

I have often found myself watching from the sidelines during such affairs, as though my role is to "let the Jews now arise, and play before us." Yet as it seems to me the topic does not belong to this region's "minority group" - that is, the Jews (both those from Arab and Western lands ) - it's time I cease being an amused, passive observer.

Human history, from its start to the present, has witnessed ups and downs in all spheres of life, including cultural affairs. People of all ethnicities, genders, colors and races created in the past, and continue to create today, both high and low culture. The fad of political correctness - which in recent decades has taken hold in cultural studies and public discourse - obstructs judgment seeking to distinguish between good and bad, beautiful and ugly, high and low.

This approach places anything presented as culture on the same normative scale, and even insists on paying respect to everything. But the obstruction of all criticism of what is exhibited publicly is actually responsible for the decline in human culture, not the opposite.

We can therefore say there is high culture and low culture; there is no need to avoid confronting such issues. Is it difficult, for example, to understand that racism and discrimination belong to low culture, while equality between all human beings falls under high culture? The fact that high culture is not the exclusive possession of the West, and low culture is not monopolized by the East, requires no elaboration: Both levels exist in all cultures.

The only parameter dividing between the two types of culture is the extent to which they refine the human soul. High culture refines the soul and sharpens wisdom, whereas low culture adds layers of insensitivity to the soul and mind.

More than anything, all of the cliches that have circulated following Zach's comments reflect a lack of any kind of serious discussion on the topic. The responses sound as if they've been ripped from a gut filled with sublimated cultural tensions that no one has the courage to expose, for fear they will be branded a racist.

The filth called political correctness - which gives cover to dark racism - should be uprooted. Not all criticism, not even criticism at its most blunt, stems from racism. It is permissible and even laudable for all subjects to be discussed. We have a duty to criticize, judge and even take clear positions, even when the views sound unpleasant.

Without being derided as a racist, one can say that the culture of ratings, Peeping Tomism and false expertise that is manufactured by the West belongs to the category of low culture.

One can also say, without being considered a racist, that much of what is deemed "Eastern" lyrics and song falls under low culture, both in terms of its music and its content.
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Published: Opinion - Haaretz, August 20, 2010

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For Hebrew, press here

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Alexander Yakobson: What's in a name?

2010-08-19T09:30:00.009+03:00

Alexander Yakobson: "Masalha complains that in the Israeli reality, the expression "Jewish, democratic state" sometimes serves as a rationalization for discrimination and the exclusion of the Arab minority. Of course it does....", writes in Haaretz in response to "A Jewish and democratic restaurant"...

Alexander Yakobson

What's in a name?

At this advanced stage of the never-ending argument about "the Jewish, democratic state," there's no reason to expect major innovations. How can a state be both Jewish and democratic, someone (for instance, Salman Masalha in Haaretz, August 9 ) will predictably ask. How can a democrat deny the right of the Jewish people to a state, someone else will predictably reply.

Is the problem, perhaps, not the right to a state, but rather the term "Jewish state," which invites anti-democratic interpretations? Perhaps it would be better to find a new term that expresses the same principle? But more than any other formula, the "Jewish state" is a legitimate, internationally recognized term: The UN partition resolution stipulated in 1947 that the land should be divided into a "Jewish state" and an "Arab state" in order to confer independence on the two peoples living in it.

The resolution also required both states, Jewish and Arab, to establish democratic systems and guarantee minority rights. How, then, can one claim that the Jewish state, "by definition," cannot be democratic?

Masalha complains that in the Israeli reality, the expression "Jewish, democratic state" sometimes serves as a rationalization for discrimination and the exclusion of the Arab minority. Of course it does. The question is whether relinquishing the expression would do anything to impede discrimination. This is a total illusion.

Let's assume we were to erase the term "Jewish state." How would that affect the restaurant proprietor whom Masalha suspects of being on the verge of declaring his establishment to be "Jewish and democratic" (so as to justify the exclusion of Arab customers )? In that case, the restaurant owner would have no problem declaring his establishment to be "Israeli" and designed for real Israelis - those who belong to the people of Israel. What would stop him from interpreting the term "Israeli" in such a fashion?

Today, when the "Jewish state" is anchored in the official lexicon, proponents of ethnic discrimination and religious coercion are, of course, happy to make use of the term for their own purposes. But they would have no problem making the same exact use of terms such as "Israel," "Israeli" and even "the Israeli nation." The name "Israel" can easily convey the same legitimate meanings as the term "Jewish state," as well as the same illegitimate interpretations.

Perhaps, then, the root of the problem is the name "Israel" itself? Perhaps we should find a neutral name for the state, such as Switzerland on the Yarkon? Maybe. Meantime, it's worth having a look at what's happening in the original Switzerland.

The flag of that state bears the symbol of the cross, but that does not suffice for its citizens. They recently lined up at the ballot box, in their customary orderly fashion, and voted by a decisive majority for a law banning the construction of minarets in their beautiful country. That's how they preserve the Swiss character of their state. It turns out the name "Swiss Confederation" can indeed be interpreted in such an exclusionary fashion.

Whoever thinks this vote represents only a passing Swiss mood is mistaken: According to a series of surveys, the reason similar laws have not been approved in other West European countries is that in those countries, it is harder to initiate referenda. According to these surveys, large numbers of Europeans want to ban the construction of mosques - and not just minarets.

We are far from being Switzerland, that long-standing, well-established, placid and prosperous democracy in the heart of Europe. Of course, there are more than a few prejudiced people and outright racists here (be they restaurant owners or not ). But if we compare the situation facing Switzerland to that facing the State of Israel, we will find that we have no reason to be ashamed of the typical Israeli restaurant owner.
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Published: Opinion - Haaretz, August 19, 2010
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For Hebrew, press here

***

See:
Salman Masalha, "A Jewish and democratic restaurant"
Shlomo Avineri, "A Palestinian people, yes, a Jewish people, no?"

Shlomo Avineri: A Palestinian people, yes, a Jewish people, no?

2010-08-13T14:31:00.008+03:00

In response to "A Jewish and Democratic Restaurant,"
Shlomo Avineri Writes in Haaretz:

Just as Jews are not the ones who will determine whether the Palestinians are a people or not, Salman Masalha cannot determine whether the Jews are a people or not. It is a question of self-determination.

Shlomo Avineri

A Palestinian people, yes, a Jewish people, no?

Like many readers, I enjoyed the delicate irony, sharp wit and clever Arab tales featured in Salman Masalha's op-ed ("A Jewish and Democratic Restaurant," August 9 ). But these virtues cannot compensate for the fundamental misunderstanding that underlies his concluding declaration: "There is no such thing as a Jewish democratic state, just as there is no Muslim democratic state." That is where the dog is buried, to continue the animal metaphors.
A boy peering from under an Israeli flag

A boy peering out from under an Israeli flag in April, 2010.
Photo by: Reuters

At the root of this sentence lies a deep, tragic misunderstanding that characterizes many Arab positions on Israel's identity. In the standard Arab view, "Jews" are comparable to "Christians" or "Muslims." In other words, they are a religious group, not a nation. And it is not only Arabs who think this way: There is no doubt that for hundreds of years, Jewish identity was perceived by Jews and non-Jews alike primarily as a religious identity, and some still think so.

But the essence of the Zionist revolution is the view that the Jews are a nation, and as such, they have the right to national self-determination in a political framework. This principle was accepted by the United Nations on November 29, 1947, in its decision to partition British Mandatory Palestine into two states - Jewish and Arab (not Jewish and Muslim-Christian ).

Israel views itself as a Jewish nation-state, exactly as Poland views itself as a Polish nation-state and Greece as a Greek nation-state, or as the Palestinian state, when it arises, will view itself as a Palestinian nation-state.

To be sure, Jewish identity has a religious component, both historically and in our contemporary reality - just as there is a religious dimension to Polish national identity and a Muslim dimension to Arab national identity (Mohammed is not perceived exclusively as the prophet of Islam; Christian Arabs too view him as a hero of the Arab nation ).

One of the problems that complicates attempts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is this very issue - the fact that the Arab side has difficulty recognizing that Jews in the state of Israel view themselves as a nation. Identity is a matter of self-definition, not external definition. Just as Jews are not the ones who will determine whether the Palestinians are a people or not (there are more than a few of us who have yet to be reconciled with the existence of the Palestinian people ), Salman Masalha cannot determine whether the Jews are a people or not. It is a question of self-determination.

Anyone who rejects the Jews' right to define themselves as a nation denies them a fundamental human right, to which Jews, just like the Palestinians, are entitled. Arab refusal to accept Israel as a Jewish state attests to something very deep and troubling: unwillingness to accept the Jewish people's right to self-determination.

Because what is at issue is national identity, not religious identity, there can indeed be a Jewish democratic state, just as there can be an Arab democratic state. That, incidentally, is what is written in the constitution of Lebanon, an Arab state that, for all its problems, maintains a political system based on elections and democratic principles.

Clause B of the Preamble to the Lebanese Constitution declares: "Lebanon is Arab in its identity and in its associations." Clause D stipulates: "The people are the source of authority and sovereignty." In other words, Lebanon views itself as an Arab, democratic state.

The constitutions of Syria and Egypt also define their countries' identities as Arab and their systems of government as democratic. While there are, to say the least, problems with the democratic aspect of these countries' regimes, it is nonetheless clear that the drafters of the Syrian and Egyptian constitutions believed that, in principle, there is no contradiction in a state being both Arab and democratic.

And so Arab and democratic is fine, but Jewish and democratic is not? In my dictionary, there is a whiff of racism in this distinction.
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Published: Op-Ed, Haaretz, 13 August 2010

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For Hebrew, press here.

See: Salman Masalha, "A Jewish and Democratic Restaurant".

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A Jewish and democratic restaurant

2010-08-09T10:08:00.016+03:00

Salman Masalha

A Jewish and democratic restaurant

Compared to other countries, Israel has been blessed with many scientific inventions. If that were all there were to it, we could stop at this point and simply give thanks.

The problem is that in recent decades we have witnessed Israeli ingenuity in the invention of political concepts. It begins and ends with the slogan "Jewish state and democracy." This is an invention that can be compared to Ya'akov Meridor's famous lightbulb of the 1980s, which was supposed to light up all of Ramat Gan. Just as nobody bought this magic lamp, no clear-minded person could possibly buy this unfounded political turn of phrase. Only in Israel, it appears, do the chivalrous proponents of "Jewish and democratic" try to hitch the ox of "Jewishness" to the ass of "democracy."

Just recently we witnessed the collision between the ox and the ass in the controversy surrounding the "Jewish and democratic" school at the West Bank settlement of Immanuel. If that's the way things are at a Jewish school, it's not hard to imagine what would happen if we examined the state of affairs between Jews and Arabs.

This invented political turn of phrase was not so visible and prevalent in Israeli public discourse before the Six-Day War. It reached monstrous proportions due to the long occupation, which put Israel in a niche where it came to resemble the fox that swallowed a sickle, in the popular Arab tale. Not only did the fox swallow the sickle, it swallowed the screwdriver of the Gaza Strip. The fox could neither digest nor get rid of what had gotten inside it.

Since the occupation did not end and demographic facts continued apace, someone decided to get rid of the Palestinian screwdriver that had gotten stuck in Israel's knee. This removal was called the "Gaza withdrawal." But the demographic sickle remains stuck in the soft underbelly of the Israeli fox.

What is called in the Israeli dialect "the left" fell consciously into a trap set by the right and adopted the mendacious slogan "Jewish and democratic" to win some middle-of-the-road votes and attain Jewish tribal legitimacy. At a critical juncture, a Jewish tribal transformation swept up the state, cresting in the assassination of a prime minister.

There is great significance in the sequence of the words "Jewish and democratic," a phrase that has turned into a mantra uttered in every public discussion. The right relates only to the first part of the slogan, and compels "the left" to discuss the definition of "Jewish." The right would prefer to defer discussion about the essence of the word "democratic" to a later stage of debate about "final-status agreements." Until such time, the right will persist with attempts to cripple steps by the Supreme Court and other branches of government beholden to democracy. It will do its utmost to remove all substance from the term.

Interviewed by the daily Maariv on July 2, Nazareth Illit Mayor Shimon Gafsou expressed consternation about the increasing number of Arab residents in his town. "It would be wrong to forget that Nazareth Illit is a microcosm of the State of Israel," Gafsou said. "It's a Jewish and democratic city, but most of all Jewish."

It seems the phrase is constantly bandied about because it has no weight. With all the rhetoric about "Jewish and democratic," it's hard to see anything Jewish or democratic in the country. The day is not far off when we hear about the establishment of a "Jewish and democratic restaurant," as well as "Jewish and democratic fashion."

What then should the confused, sickle-ridden Israel fox do? He should internalize what is written in the book of Deuteronomy: "Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass together."

There is no such thing as a Jewish democratic state, just as there is no Muslim democratic state. Religion and democracy can never dwell under one roof.
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Published: Opinion, Haaretz, 9 August 2010

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See:
Shlomo Avineri, "A Palestinian people, yes, a Jewish people, no?"
Alexander Yakobson, "What's in the name?"
Uri Avnery, "Poisonous Mushrooms"
Lev Grinberg, "You can't be a Jewish Muslim"

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For Hebrew, press here

The Palestinians' chance to win a moral victory

2010-07-12T11:18:00.022+03:00

Salman Masalha

The Palestinians' chance
to win a moral victory

In an era of political correctness, there are those who think it appropriate to adjust the message to the audience to which it is directed. I don't agree. In my view, political correctness is a defilement - sweet talk that obscures blatant racism. There is a universal morality that transcends religions, peoples and nations, and is binding on anyone who belongs to the community of humankind.

So when I speak about Gilad Shalit, for example, I call him "the captive Israeli soldier." That's right. Captive and not abducted, which is the term they try to feed the public here. In Israel, they prefer to forget, or deliberately try to make others forget, that Shalit was not abducted. He was taken captive as a soldier in a military operation carried out against an army, in the context of the Palestinian national struggle against the decades-long Israeli occupation. That basic fact turns the act into a legitimate one, carried out by a people fighting for its national liberation.

So far so good, but from this point forward there are other things that have to be said. I have already published them in Arabic for an Arab audience, because it's important for the Palestinians to hear that the Shalit case belongs to them too. It is appropriate that these things be heard in Hebrew as well, and read by all manner of brainwashed Hebrew speakers. The remarks also have to do with the Israeli Palestinians (yes, there are such creatures, who also read and speak Hebrew ).

There is no doubt - this I believe, this I want to believe - that Israeli captive Gilad Shalit is being treated humanely by his captors in Gaza. All of us hope a prisoner exchange deal is carried out quickly, and that the Israeli captive returns to his family and the Palestinian prisoners return to theirs.

Nonetheless, the silence by Palestinian intellectuals over the case is troubling. Hamas is demanding a large number of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Shalit's release.

No one has asked himself what this means from a moral standpoint, in terms of the way the Arabs view the value of each individual Arab. How much is an Israeli prisoner worth compared to Arab or Palestinian prisoners?

The silence of Arab Knesset members is also conspicuous. They cry out, and rightly so, about the injustices of the Israeli occupation and the suffering it causes the Palestinian people, but not a word is heard from them taking a clear moral stand on Shalit. That is their duty. They must rise and wholeheartedly tell the Hamas government in Gaza and Khaled Meshal, who pulls the strings in Damascus, that there are things that are simply unacceptable. They can and must say that refusing to allow the Red Cross to visit the Israeli prisoner is a moral stain on the Palestinian struggle as a whole. If Shalit is a prisoner of war, and he is, then he is certainly entitled to all the rights accorded prisoners of war under international law.

The Palestinian side, which has suffered for decades from the Israeli occupation, can demonstrate moral superiority over the occupier by allowing Shalit's family to visit him, or at least by allowing Red Cross representatives to visit him, just as they visit Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

I have never understood why the Arab side is forsaking the moral arena, leaving it for others. It is acting as though matters of morality are none of its concern. Those who choose to abandon the moral arena should not be indignant over their poor image in the eyes of the world.

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Published: Opinion - Haaretz, July 12, 2010

For Hebrew, press here

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For Greek, press here

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Arabic article about the issue, press here

Hypocrisy begins at home

2010-06-24T15:58:00.005+03:00

Salman Masalha

Hypocrisy begins at home

It may be that the whole world is dazzlingly two-faced, but we should nevertheless focus on the hypocrites in our own region, since after all, hypocrisy begins at home.

Some six months ago, while it was still licking the wounds caused by the barbs hurled at it from all sides because of the lead it cast in Gaza, Israel was given a chance to improve its image. It seized the opportunity presented by the horrendous earthquake that devastated Haiti and rapidly dispatched a relief delegation. Thus, while denying the children of Gaza pencils and notebooks, Israel poured aid into a country thousands of kilometers away.

Perhaps now, in the wake of the Turkish flotilla affair, there are specimens of the local breed of hypocrites who are silently praying for some natural disaster to strike somewhere in the world that will enable Israel to unsheathe this rusty propaganda weapon once again.

But hypocrisy is not confined to Israelis. It seems that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has learned a lesson from Israel: The Turkish flotilla to Gaza was in fact one big public relations exercise. Erdogan noticed that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was raking in the whole popular Arab jackpot called Palestine, and he also wanted to grab some of it. The Palestinian-Israeli jackpot is a photogenic one, and every home with a satellite dish on its roof watches what happens to it.

And now there's talk of another "humanitarian" flotilla in aid of Gaza. Another convoy of hypocrisy, well-covered by the media, is setting sail, this time from Lebanon, of all places. Now that the Lebanese have boosted their national pride by registering the world's biggest dish of hummus in the Guinness Book of Records, they are bidding for the record in hypocrisy, soon to be seen on television screens everywhere. For it is not humanitarian motives or concern for the Palestinians that are making all these hypocrites restless. All they want is spectacle, footage and headlines. Because as we have already said, the Israeli-Palestinian arena is the most photogenic arena in the world.

If they had any genuine humanitarian concern, the Lebanese would stage protests against the harsh blockade that has been imposed on the Palestinian refugee camps in their country for decades. You have to read Amnesty International's reports on the situation of the Palestinians in Lebanon to comprehend the humanitarian disaster there. This hypocrisy was best described by a European volunteer in those camps, who told the organizers of the new flotilla: "You love the Palestinians in Gaza and hate your own Palestinians."

Since 1948, the Palestinians have been a pawn in the hands of the Arab and Muslim regimes. The problem was exacerbated because the Palestinians themselves willingly accepted that role. And so we are witnessing a situation in which the Palestinian nation, even before it has taken on a coherent shape, has split into two: Gaza, backed by Iran and Syria, and the West Bank, backed by Egypt and Saudi Arabia. And then there are the "opsimists" (to use the oxymoron coined by the late Palestinian author Emil Habibi ) - the Israeli Palestinians sitting on the fence and trying to please everyone.

One reason for all this is the absence of a Palestinian leadership - political, social or cultural - worthy of the name. Six decades after the Nakba, the Palestinians have not even managed to turn themselves into a nation with a clear national agenda.

It looks as if this place, the cradle of monotheism, will continue to be a pawn in the hands of regional and international powers, a region so well covered by the media that all of the world's hypocrites rush over here to try to wipe away the moral stains that have tarnished them.
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Published: Op-Ed, Haaretz, June 24, 2010

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For Hebrew, press here

All in the Same Boat

2010-06-03T22:59:00.021+03:00

Salman Masalha

All in The Same Boat

The analytic mind who holds the political security portfolio in the “didn’t know, didn’t hear, didn’t see” government of Israel has finally found the light at the end of the open sewer.

“The hasbara (public relations, propaganda) in the operation was flawed,” said Defense Minister Ehud Barak in the Labor Party cabinet ministers’ forum.

Flawed?

Now the very energetic and very catalytic spokesman for the pirate army is bombarding the media with immaculately edited films and cheap, colorful propaganda pictures. However, the more films and pictures the spokesman distributes, the more he sinks himself and those who send him, both the state and the government, in the pool of quicksand into which they have jumped.

The energetic spokesman has distributed a film in which supposedly a stun grenade explodes on the rubber dinghy of the naval commando soldiers who closed in on the Marmara. However, no edited film can launder the piratical crime committed by the Israel Defense Forces out in the Mediterranean Sea. The spokesman only forgot to mention one very simple fact: This grenade is an IDF grenade the soldiers lobbed in their attempt to get control of the huge uproar taking place on the deck. It can’t be helped that this is the stun grenade that fell on the rubber dinghy circling the Marmara to cut it off.

The more one watches the films and examines the pictures distributed by the hasbara captains, the clearer the pictures become and expose their wretchedness. Here is another photo distributed by the IDF spokesman. So, what do we see in this “incriminating” picture?

The analytical minds that sobered up looked for more and more incriminating findings and gathered together the objects in the previous picture. Thus in the new picture we see some more simple kitchen knives as well as the same knife with a curved blade from the previous picture.

After an exacting search two more “very incriminating” items were found in the ship’s toolbox. The analytic mind’s catalytic spokesman carefully added them and arranged them clearly in the foreground of the new color picture. It is easy to discern that there are two rusty saws, which had apparently been lying around in some crate without anyone having touched them or used them for a very long time.

I show this picture to a friend and explain my findings from the picture. Sarcastically, she replies: “Very evil people, those Turks. It was all planned. They knew that rusty tools can cause tetanus and other horrible diseases.”

In the caption under the pictures published on the Ynet site the IDF Spokesman says: “The activists on the deck were armed with knives,” and “No one is really talking about the knives that were found on the ship.”

About this we shall say: You are right. So here we are, talking about them.

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See also: "A Picture Worth 190 Words"

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published also in: Middle East Transparent

For Hebrew, press here

A Picture Worth 190 Words

2010-06-01T16:00:00.011+03:00

Salman Masalha

A Picture Worth 190 Words

The IDF, Israel’s pirate army, which has taken nine lives and wounded scores of other civilians who sailed in the humanitarian aid flotilla to the Gaza Strip needs a propagandist to distribute “suspicious” findings and launder the crime.

There is no need to say much about the picture distributed by the IDF spokesman. Just a brief glance at the picture suffices to teach us about the “analytic minds” in the heads of its leaders. The picture has been distributed, of course, to serve Israeli propaganda after the dimensions of the crime it committed at sea were revealed to the world.

What is seen in the picture?
Here is the list:
13 ordinary kitchen knives
4 ordinary pocketknives
1 knife with a curved blade
2 ordinary screwdrivers
1 voltage-testing screwdriver

So, what can be said about the picture?
Considering the hundreds of people who set sail on the decks of the Turkish ship Marmara, apparently its kitchen for serving the hundreds of passengers is quite wretched. Never mind the ship’s toolbox.

The “wretched propaganda” picture reveals a wretched army as well as a government wretched from head to toe.

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See also: All in the Same Boat

For Hebrew, press here

Martin Niemoller - First They Came

2010-06-01T08:52:00.009+03:00

Martin Niemöller

First They Came

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the Socialist
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.

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For Arabic translation, press here.

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Go to Arabic, Thou Sluggard

2010-05-19T12:25:00.005+03:00

Salman Masalha

Go to Arabic, Thou Sluggard

We often hear about the bleak situation of the Hebrew spoken by students in the schools. In a document published after the latest matriculation exams, senior Education Ministry inspectors once again sounded the alarm. The report also included recommendations to teachers for improving the situation by focusing on thinking and analysis, in order to give students tools for dealing with tasks through deep understanding of the material.

Reports and recommendations of this sort are published from time to time and we often encounter statements to the effect that students have difficulty with questions requiring analysis and understanding or fail to accomplish tasks because they do not understand words and concepts and the like. However, despite all the reports, papers and recommendations submitted in recent years, there has been no improvement. These documents have not succeeded in causing a turnaround because they are off the mark.

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue,” according to Proverbs 18:21. It could be said that all human creativity, in all areas of culture including the exact sciences, is dependent on language. Language is the tool for thinking and the richer a person’s language is, the richer his thinking will be, and vice versa. Moreover, it is not enough that language be the province of the few. Richness of language, including grammar and syntax, must be the province of every student in the schools.

To what is this comparable? To a society in which the wealth is in the hands of the few while the majority of the citizenry is living in poverty. Such a society will be considered poor because the wealth is not spread through the entire society. The same is true of richness of language. Without instilling richness of language into the society as a whole, there is no meaning to the dictionary wealth standing on the shelf or in the hands of a few.

The deterioration of the level of young people’s language in recent years is in part caused by the media, in which companies and individuals with commercial interests and their chase after ratings dictate the content. The captains of the broadcasting networks put the emphasis on various sorts of voyeuristic programming. When instead of bringing on the air intelligent, knowledgeable individuals and scientists whose language is rich and whose minds are acute, they highlight feeble-minded and inarticulate celebrities – so it is no wonder the level of the language of young people who flock to the follies of celebrity is so low.

The growing gap between spoken Hebrew and standard Hebrew is pushing the language into the corner Arabic has been inhabiting for generations now. The duality in the Arabic language plays an important role in delaying the development of Arab societies – as noted, complex thinking and creativity are not possible without rich, precise language.

The Hebrew language is undergoing a process of desertification similar to the desertification that has been experienced by the Arabic language. This processes is causing the achievements in the schools to deteriorate. As the gap between the spoken and the standard language grows wider, and as long as richness of language is not instilled in everyone in the society from an early age, scholastic achievements will continue to deteriorate.

To reverse this process, the language wilderness must be made to bloom and richness of language must be instilled in all the students and teachers in Israel, both Jews and Arabs. The spoken language, be it Hebrew or Arabic, is not only distancing and alienating the population from the rich, precise language of creativity – it is also leading to shallowness of thought regardless of age.
To those who are seeking the root of the problem it can therefore be said: Go to Arabic, thou sluggard, consider its ways and be wise.

Published in Haaretz Online, Opinion, May 16, 2010
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CAT’S REVENGE

2010-05-01T13:00:00.011+03:00

Salman Masalha

CAT’S REVENGE

When cats decide to sleep
nothing disturbs their night.
It's we who make the noise
going from fight to fight.

When cats decide to dream
nothing can change their minds.
It's we who spoil their night
with snores of many kinds.

One snores as if he speaks.
Sometimes it sounds like French,
but you who sleep so deep
on a bed made of a bench.

-- no way for me to try
to show you my cat's revenge.

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Libyan Junk(et)

2010-04-29T13:11:00.015+03:00

Salman Masalha

Libyan Junk(et)

This week's visit to Libya by an Israeli Arab delegation signifies a loss of both political and moral orientation. The group, which included representatives of all Arab political parties, sectors and communities, exposed the depth of political confusion among those who pretend to represent Israel's Arab citizens. The visit did nothing to gain respect for either the delegation members or their constituency.

These members despise each other no less than they despise Avigdor Lieberman and his ilk in the Zionist parties, in some cases even more so. But wonder of wonders, all of a sudden they all came together to fly off and enjoy the hospitality of none other than Muammar Gadhafi, the man who more than anyone else represents the ugly side of the Arab regimes, the tribal autocracy. This capricious and unpredictable individual can unblinkingly say one thing and the opposite in the same breath, and no one will dare to ask him to explain, out of fear that the question will be the last he ever asks.

After a meal offered by their host came the groveling speeches, which included all the tired old slogans and the superlatives that despots of the lowest kind expect to hear about themselves. Outdoing everyone was MK Talab al-Sana, who asked the tyrant whether Libya would open its universities to Arab students from Israel. And his wish was immediately granted.

Instead of concern for schools and education here, al-Sana wants to send students to Libya. But this orotund and energetic legislator did not say where he is contemplating sending these students, or what he expects them to learn there. Perhaps to the Libyan Institute for Nano-Embroidery, or the Libyan Academy of Barbecuing Science?

After the flattery, the great leader, His Majesty the King of Kings and Emperor of Emperors, reportedly sat his guests down and gave them two solid hours of his infantile theories. He urged them, inter alia, to take two, three or four wives each, and to have lots of children. Not one of them had a word to say in reply.

It must be said loud and clear: Not only are such trips by Arab representatives to kowtow before Arab despots an insult to the intelligence, they also harm the just struggle of this country's Arab minority. Just by going to such places and saying what they say there, they are deepening mainstream Israeli society's rejection of the Arabs - the rejection against which they have been fighting a just fight for years. By not resisting the temptation to accept the invitations of Arab dictators, whoever they happen to be, they become tools of those dictators.

Astonishingly, those taking part in the junket included members of political parties like Balad, which brandishes the banner of "A state of all its citizens," and Hadash, which day in and day out emphasizes that it is a Jewish-Arab party. All of a sudden, all these MKs forgot that they have sworn an oath of loyalty to the State of Israel in the Knesset, and whom and what they are supposed to represent. They forgot that "all its citizens" means Jewish citizens, too. They forgot that a "Jewish-Arab" party includes Jews, too. They forgot all their fine and correct slogans and flew off to take shelter in the tent of the unknown.

Delegations like these reveal the civil, political and national immaturity of this country's Arab leadership. They point up the chronic emotional, social and political abandonment suffered by Arab citizens and their leaders.

This trip to Libya has exposed the wretchedness of the people who claim to represent and lead Israeli Arab society. Arab citizens deserve a better type of leadership - one that is serious and mature.

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Published in: Op-Ed, Haaretz, April 29, 2010
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Peace Without Religion

2010-03-31T13:46:00.005+03:00

Salman Masalha

Peace Without Religion

Nationalism is a disease that has infected mankind ever since it gathered in tribes, color and races. And when mankind invented monotheism, the situation became even worse.

It is not easy to recover from this disease. It is only possible to contain it in the meantime by allowing “national pride” to every nation until it reaches the obvious conclusion: Even though it is a “proud nation,” it is just another social animal in need of the company of other nations.

The continuous wallowing in the “religious-historical” mud in search of justifications for existence is what is driving both peoples in this country out of their minds and launching them beyond the force of historical gravity. There, in the outer space of history they will meet many dead souls.

Nevertheless, there is a way to end the conflict in this all too promised and dangerous land that has known so much blood. In order to arrive at a solution, the first principle guiding the leaders of the tribes, known here as peoples, should be the need to bring both of them back into history. Both the Israeli side and the Palestinian side need courageous and honest leaderships. There is a need for good intentions, not winks and rolling eyes. However, good intentions are not yet evident on either side -- neither among the Jews nor among the Arabs.

To fulfill this vision, it is necessary to clear the landmines of belief in historical right, religious faith and emotional ties from sites and places. To this end, it is necessary to eliminate religion in all its forms and with all its troubles from the equation of the political solution.

The Green Line (pre-Six Day War border) must be established as the border between the two states and declared to be the line demarcating the end of the political demands from the state of Israel on the one hand and the state of Palestine on the other. This end to demands would not be between individual Jews and Palestinians, but rather an agreement between political entities operating in history in the framework of international law. The end of demands would not mean individual Jews do not have a spiritual connection to parts of the land that will be in the state of Palestine, nor would it mean Palestinians as individuals do not have an emotional connection to parts of the land that will be in the state of Israel.

A Jew who prefers to remain beyond the border in the territories of the state of Palestine will be a Palestinian in every respect. A Palestinian in Israel will be an Israeli in every respect. Palestine will be an Arab, not a Muslim, country and Israel will be a Hebrew, not a Jewish country. Both Arabic and Hebrew will be official languages in each of the countries, with all that entails. The two languages will be official not in the context of “know your enemy” and not only as an act of good will, but rather from within the understanding that both these languages are important for knowing, understanding and loving the land.

Those who are amusing themselves with dreams of solutions of reconciliation commissions and a single state as in South Africa have completely misunderstood the difference between the two cases. In South Africa, for the most part both Blacks and Whites are Christians and thus have been able to meet and reconcile under the roof of their shared faith. Here, we have no such church that will accommodate both Jews and Arabs. Therefore in this land reconciliation can happen only outside the places of worship. Religions, and especially the monotheistic religions, do not tend to reconcile; they would lose the basis for their existence if they did.

The handwriting is on the wall, in huge capital letters. The continued occupation and the wallowing in religious-historical mud are drowning both tribes in blood. This will not lead to a South African solution, but rather to a Balkan situation, if not worse.

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Published in Hebrew: Haaretz, March 31, 2010

Heritage Lesson

2010-03-03T11:00:00.039+02:00

Salman Masalha

Heritage Lesson

Here is a civics lesson about the Zionist heritage, which has recently basked in the limelight of another government decision.

It has often been observed that poetry and lies have much in common, and this also applies to the state of Israel's founding document - the Declaration of Independence. It will "foster," it told me, "the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants... it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants." The document also calls upon "the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel" - not the "members of minorities," so beloved by the Zionist media - "to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions."
However, since its establishment the state has not kept its promise. It continues to conduct itself like a Zionist occupation regime on every inch of the land. True, the military government has been lifted and "the Arab inhabitants" are usually free to move around in their homeland and even send representatives to the Knesset - but this is the sum total of the equality that was formulated and promised.
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The alienation between Arabs and Jews can be seen everywhere. It has not arisen solely in the context of the national conflict, but is rather a result of an establishment policy which has expropriated Arabs' lands to build communities "for Jews only" and has pushed the Arab inhabitants into localities under an "ethno-Zionist siege" on all sides.

The Israel Police, which is responsible for maintaining public law and order, provides the most blatant evidence that the Israeli regime behaves as if it is a foreign regime. It abandons the Arab localities to the rule of criminal gangs, intervening only when concern arises that the crime might spill over into Jewish locales. The Arab alienation from the police - a symbol of the regime - is apparent, among other things, in the absence of Arabic writing on police vehicles. How does an Arab citizen feel about a police force that appears in his community, but does not include any writing in his language? Does this not symbolize, more than anything else, that the police represent an occupation regime, a foreign regime? How would the inhabitant of some Jewish locale feel if there were no writing in Hebrew on police vehicles, but only a foreign language?

The alienation is also evident with regard to the central government. This is the only democratic country in the world where one-fifth of the citizens - who are declared to have equal rights, at least on paper - have no representation in the government or in "provisional and permanent institutions." And this is the case even before we start talking about budgetary allocations, master plans, the building of cities and communities, education, culture, industrialization and more.

This national alienation is evident in the apartheid reflected throughout the media. Anyone watching talk shows on television will immediately notice a balance in terms of the guests in the studio: There is a religious person and a secular person, a settler and someone from Peace Now. Only the Arab citizen is absent from every discourse.

Were the Arab Knesset members blessed with any imagination, they would pull the words "on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions" out of the Declaration of Independence and formulate them into a bill. After all, what makes a malicious Jewish populist any better than a malicious Arab populist? There is no dearth of Arab populists who would feel right at home with the Jewish populists in the studios or on ministerial committees. If the proposal is accepted, we will advance the principle of equality. If it is rejected, we will have exposed the lies and deceit of those who take the name of the Declaration of Independence in vain.

***

Published in: Haaretz, March 3, 2010

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The Arab Holy of Holies

2010-02-12T18:18:00.011+02:00

Salman Masalha

The Arab Holy of Holies

Last Saturday (February 7, 2010) a demonstration against violence towards women in Arab society was held in Nazareth, at the initiative of the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee. It isn’t every day that Arab women win reinforcements in the shape of marchers from the entire spectrum of Arab politics in Israel. The ink on the placards carried in the procession had barely dried when reports were published of yet another woman who was killed.

Some say “family honor killings” in Arab society is another variation of violence towards women. However, it is impossible to ignore the fact that while in other societies the murderers are husbands or lovers, who commit the murder in a context foolishly called “romantic,” in Arab society these crimes are committed by brothers, fathers and male cousins as well. Arab intellectuals, who evade responsibility by equating the two phenomena, fall into trap that locates them in a dark corner: Stipulating an equivalency between the two phenomena obliges them to explain what is “romantic” about the murder of a woman by her brother, her father or some other male relative.

To get tot the root of the problem it suffices to read an article Sheikh Kamal Khatib, deputy head of the Islamic Movement in Israel, wrote in January of 2007. The article reflects the prevailing norm in many levels of Arab society, in all the communities – Muslims, Druze and to a lesser extent Christian. Khatib harshly attacked the demand to defend women’s rights and compared it to colonialist conspiracies.

Khattib’s remarks came in response to an article written by attorney Samar Khamis of the Adalah Legal Center for Minority Rights in Israel. She spoke about the oppression of the Arab woman and gave as an example forced marriages and the sanctification of virginity. “The call to revoke the sanctity of virginity,” wrote Khattib, “is tantamount to slashing with a dagger and crudely attacking our religious, moral and national holy of holies.” What angered Khattib more that anything else was the existence of the Aswat (Voices) organization of Arab gay women: “What service do such women give apart from corrupting, destroying and abandoning our people’s morality, image and identity?” thundered Khattib in his article.

The perception that loads the entire burden of “Arab honor” onto women’s shoulders draws its strength from the tribal structure, which is the main obstacle to the society’s development. The roots of the problem lie, on the one hand, in the total lack of understanding of the essence of masculinity, and on the other hand in the fact that the Arab male lives in a state of cultural, religious, social and political oppression. The battered Arab man has grown up in an oppressive tribal structure in which he seeks out the weakest link in order to beat it, oppress it and even murder it. In this way he relieves his frustration by loading his “lost personal honor” onto the woman’s shoulders.

The deep meaning of this outlook is that none other than the Arab man himself denies himself his personal honor. Since he is also denied his social, cultural and political honor he finds, in a circuitous and also cowardly way, a substitute for demonstrating his masculine honor. This is in the extremely low way of demonstrating superiority towards the Arab woman.

In order to bring about a change there is a need for a revolution of consciousness, the aim of which is to liberate the Arab male from the oppression in which he is sunk. Education, both in the home and at school, must transmit the perception that honor stems from the individual himself. The individual’s personal honor is connected solely to the individual himself and no other individual has any connection to this honor. The distorted perception of male honor is what is destroying Arab society and these issues necessitate profound and courageous discussion.

It has been my good fortune to number among my best friends some Arab lesbians. I can say that the contribution these women make to society is far greater that that of many Arab men, whose entire maleness boils down to puffing their chests and growing mustaches.

***

Published in Hebrew: Special to Haaretz Online, February 11, 2010,

***
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For Hebrew, press here

Longings for Jerusalem

2009-11-26T10:43:00.014+02:00

Salman Masalha

Longings for Jerusalem

It’s been many a day since first I came to Jerusalem in the 1970s. After all these years I’ve learned that their number can be considered as the blink of an eye in comparison to all the years of the city that falls and rises, falls and rises like a doll whose center of gravity is on the bottom. Jerusalem’s many days are its magic and the curse that has hovered over it ever since its dusts and stones became holy.

I drive to East Jerusalem and I think to myself that this city is so burdened with so much past – how will it find the leisure to think about the future? But it isn’t the city, or the dust or the stones that have made Jerusalem what it is. Only the people who have placed it at the core of their being. And the moment they did so it took control of them. It wrapped itself around them tightly and since then it has given them no rest.

There was a time when I’d walk in the grip of enchantment through the dim alleys of the Old City. I admit that I haven’t done this for quite some time. I go past the Damascus Gate and find that the Border Police who stood at the gate in the 1970s are still standing in the same place. As though the occupation has stood stock still.

After about a dozen years the intifada erupted in East Jerusalem as well and the city that had been joined together by asphalt and concrete, rifle and bayonet, once again went its separate ways, but this time not towards peace. Blood flowed in the streets of Jerusalem, Arabs and Jews lost their lives on the altar of the sanctity of stones and dust, as occupier and as occupied, in the war of tribes fighting over the past.

At one time Ziad Abu Zayyad dreamed about peace and he continues to dream about peace in Jerusalem: “’But first of all the Palestinians should be a liberated people. This is the first thing. That we return to our land. That we return to Jerusalem … Maybe to a distance of 200 meters from the Damascus Gate.’ He says these things to me in the heart of Jerusalem. How strange,” writes Amos Oz of his meeting with Ziad Abu Zayyad in the offices of the newspaper Al Fajr (The Dawn) in East Jerusalem. The newspaper breathed its last and stopped appearing and Abu Zayyad now roams the world with a Palestinian passport in his pocket and flying first class, as an elected member of the Palestinian Council.

The longings for Jerusalem from those days are longings for control of Jerusalem. This is what Ali Al-Khallili, a Palestinian poet and the editor of a literary supplement wrote back then when he dwelt in the ehart of Jerusalem: “In its beginning a cloudy day, / before, and also after, Salah al-Din / like all the people, all of them / again and again we will long / for the Arab Jerusalem / the celestial Jerusalem / the forgotten Jerusalem / and the Jerusalem engraved in every book. / We long and we walk though the magical lanes / Are we here?” (from: “A Cloudy Day,” Jerusalem, 1984).

He walks through the lanes, touches the city’s stones – and continues to long for it. His “Are we here?” is the key to understanding the situation. As long as you don’t control it, you will long eternally for Jerusalem. Every day and every hour, more than it reveals its complexities this Jerusalem reveals the complexes of those who love it, or more precisely – its lovers. When the city responds to them, they turn their backs on it and neglect it. They will always want it unattained, because only thus, when it is part of a fantasy, will they continue to seek it, to plead and pray to it, and to write poems to it.

Some of my best friends are secular Jews. One of them even describes himself as very devoutly secular. A week ago he managed to astound me when he said to me, perhaps seriously and perhaps in jest: “You Palestinians could do a really good deed. Instead of fussing over all kinds of nonsense, go look for the Red Heifer’s hiding place and get rid of her.”

Apparently they want the Arabs to do even this work for them. Of course this is not at all bothersome. I mention his remark as I talk with an ultra-Orthodox Jew on a hill overlooking the Old City. You look to me like someone who pondering a separation from East Jerusalem, I say to him. Why? He asks, puzzled. The Palestinians, I say, are establishing a state and its capital is East Jerusalem. There’s been so much talk of this that in the end it will happen, he replies, without managing to conceal his sadness upon hearing what I say.

He visits the Western Wall, he infrequently passes though the Old City market and he dreams there will be wealthy Jews who will buy a lot of shops in the market. “It’s impossible to do transfer by force,” he says. “It’s necessary to buy houses and do things legally,” he continues. “The country’s leaders are so hapless. Altogether, facts should have been established on the Temple Mount right in 1967, the way they did at the Wall. The Temple Mount is a sore. A very painful sore. All the governments have been wrong since 1967. They have been wrong in that they didn’t establish facts on the ground right after the war. They should have taken control of half the Temple Mount -- this place is the Jews’ Holy of Holies, while for the Arabs it’s of the third rank.”

So what will happen, I asked. Just pray. Pray all the time that the coming explosion catches us in a better position. “The Red Heifer,” he says, “is a sign that we are now very close to the coming of the Messiah. There will be a very strong earthquake, which will destroy everything, and then a Temple, complete and ready, will come down form Heaven.”

Don’t you think you’re crazy? I ask him, and he replies: It’s a matter of faith. And I glance over at the Old City, like a person who wants to get another picture before it collapses under the burden of apocalyptic fantasy. In a region that lives according to myths and sanctifies vanities, the Red Heifer isn’t just another domesticated animal for yielding milk and serving as an attraction for children. A Red Heifer is the pistol that appears in the first act of the horror play. I remember my secular friend’s remark and I think to myself – maybe he has something there.

Everyone seeks his own Jerusalem. The moment he obtains it, he starts to look for it in some other place. A young Palestinian poet, who also returned to Palestine in the wake of the Oslo agreements, had to take himself back to his exile in Sofia in order to write about Jerusalem: “From by balcony / I see Jerusalem at night / paths leading to me. / Prayers in memory of the blood. / Broken longings / silent bells. / Here the soldiers lean / and there is my smell. / Here is the dance floor that was never completed / and there a bird for worry. / From my balcony / I see Jerusalem at night / and I remember my friends / who still dream of return” (Khaled Darwish, from “Scenes” Sofia - Ramallah, 1995).

And today is the first Friday in the month of May, 1997. Fridays in Jerusalem were colored in a wealth of hues as many Palestinians, from town and village, flocked to the city, some to worship at the mosques, some to engage in commerce and some to do both – two birds with one stone. Today, in the wake of the closure policy imposed by the Israeli authorities, the city has effectively been cut off from the rest of the West Bank. Only few are allowed to enter the city and the Palestinian city is fading. Since the intifada the repeated closures most of the institutions have abandoned the city. Only here and there something remains.

Half-way between the place where the Mandelbaum Gate stood and the national headquarters of the Israel Police, on a side street, stands “a stone Arab house,” not far from “the stone Arab house” Amos Oz described. The eucalyptus tree at the entrance rising above the houses of the pastoral neighborhood does not loosen its grip on me. It takes me back many years to the village overlooking the Sea of Galilee and the Golan Hills to the east. I remember reaching out with my hand and touching those hills even before I knew Rachel Blauwstein’s Hebrew poem about doing that—“There are the Golan Hills” – for which Naomi Shemer later wrote a popular melody. There too, in the yard of the elementary school I attended, stood a eucalyptus tree under which strictly kosher Arab teachers pounded the Zionist creed into us concerning the key role played by the eucalyptus in the draining of swamps. In the days of the early “pioneers.” Since then they have dried up a lot of water along the Jordan.

This handsome “Arab stone house” has been serving for a number of years as the Al Wasati Gallery where Palestinian artists show their works. This is one of the few cultural institutions established in East Jerusalem in recent years. Suleiman Mansour, a leading Palestinian artist, manages the place. He sits at a desk laden with papers and chain-smokes. He looks a bit worried. I ask him: What’s up? He replies that he has been worried lately about the matter of where he lives. Mansour is a resident of Jerusalem who in recent years found himself living outside the city, like many of Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents. The creeping transfer policy is putting its imprint on east Jerusalem. Arab construction is restricted and usually this is private construction that over the years went through mayor Teddy Kollek’s sieve. In recent years it appears that the holes in the sieve of his successor, Ehud Olmert, are becoming blocked. When there is a closure, says Mansour, his mother, who lives a few hundred meters away, can’t visit him because she is outside of Jerusalem.

This is the encounter with the occupier that Ali al-Khalili speaks about. The Jews, says Ali al-Khalili, were soldiers. Those were the first Jews he met. And therefore, when he crossed the Green Line after the 1967 war he discovered children and old people, just like the children and old people in Nablus. Now he lives in Ramallah and is in charge of cultural centers in the Palestinian Authority.

I ask him how his world has changed during the past decade and he replies: First of all, there was the intifada and after that the Palestinian Authority came in. These two things, he says, helped greatly in the formation of a separate Palestinian identity. Had the occupation continued, there would have been a danger of the Palestinian identity getting assimilated inside Israel. Now we’re in the process of building the Palestinian identity and state. I try to challenge him and ask: Even though you can’t get to Jerusalem? And he answers me hesitantly: Yes, even despite that. We will talk about Jerusalem, and it will be the capital of Palestine, just as it is the capital of Israel.

I walk though the exhibitions at Al Wasiti in East Jerusalem, and again find myself facing the gate to the city that was joined together, with the mosques at its center. In the background, the voice of Egyptian singer Abdelwahab continues to croon over the Voice of Palestine: “Our paths crossed again and all our dreams came true.”

Today is Friday, and I am on my way to East Jerusalem. And there is not a single scrap of those clouds in the sky that in Alhallili’s poem presaged a spell of dusty desert heat in the city and on the radio they are warning against burning twigs in the forests and the parks because the fire could spread quickly. Since the fire that raged last year, this reminder is repeated on all the news broadcasts. I tell myself there is no danger a fire will ignite suddenly in Jerusalem, because hardly any twigs are left here. The asphalt and the concrete and the heaps of stones are taking over ad closing the city off from all sides.

And if the fire does spread in Jerusalem, it will come from the flame in the dry bones beneath the surface. One tunnel has already ignited a conflagration, and it was put out only with difficulty. There the eternal flame flickers that is destined to devour the entire Middle East. I push aside these apocalyptic thoughts and cross the line that in the past connected/separated the two parts of the this schizophrenic city’s soul.

“The old Arab stone house” where the editorial offices of the newspaper Al-Fajr were located is still standing. The “dawn” that was supposed to break seems to be tardy. The place, not far from the Damascus Gate, is shrouded in gloom. Only the noise from Highway 1 disturbs the slumber that is occupying East Jerusalem at such an early hour of the evening. As though it were a high-tension line that hums in the heart of the city. And it isn’t that it disturbs the repose, it also cuts in half the city that has been joined together. There, near the traffic lights, every morning men stand offering for hire the strength of their limbs, their “porter’s kit” and the suffering in their eyes. Young boys from the Hebron hills ambush the red light in order to peddle their wars to driver waiting for the green light that in minutes will take them to the very heart of the Green Line, straight into the heart of West Jerusalem. This is a different city, they say – lively until the wee hours of the night.

It isn’t simple in Arab Jerusalem. Everyone has their eyes on it. But the moment they touch it, they leave it to its own devices and head for West Jerusalem. “I hadn’t planned to visit Jerusalem, because I knew that for several months now it hasn’t been easy to get there for anyone who isn’t an Israeli by birth, or holds Israeli citizenship. But my energetic sister, who had visited Ramallah a year earlier, was emphatic that visiting the country without going to Jerusalem would be considered an incomplete visit.” He was walking down Salah a-Din Street. “The last street in Jerusalem, ad I immediately remembered our last street in Fakahani, in Beirut. And it seems we are fated always to be in our last street. However, are we destined to lose our last street another time?” And thus a group of visitors goes to the overlooks to gaze at the Old City. They gaze and they tour, but they don’t go into the Old City. Instead they go over to West Jerusalem with the feeling: “How odd and painful it is to enter Jerusalem, fearful. And after all these years, what kind of feeling is it to know that you are the real owner of this place, and here you are going in like a thief in the night!”

He ends the diary: “And thus I found I had intended one thing and ended up at a different thing. I had intended to visit Al Qatza, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, to walk on the ancient paving stones of the Via Dolorosa, and I found myself roaming the Israeli pedestrian mall. Does this fact have any meaning?” (from: A Diary: Several Hours in Jerusalem,” by Rasmi Abu Ali, a Palestinian writer, published in Al-Hayat, London, December 21, 1996).

And this Jerusalem looks to Palestinians as though it fell from the Oslo airplane in the middle of the Palestinian night. And God alone can save it. And in God’s holy war games, there will be no winners roaming the streets. More than anything it will look like a forbidden city. Only ruins and stones, the lovers of which decided to pile up as a memorial. Lines and lines of tourists, of all nations, will come to gaze at the city that ate its inhabitants, Jews and Arabs.

I walk around in Jerusalem and it increasingly seems to me like a heap of dry twigs. Or a mythological zoo. Burdened beyond recognition with history. Too much past and history are present in this city. Because of so much past it is impossible to see the future. I take a last look at the city and see the smoke rising over its roofs. Yet again the skies of Jerusalem have gone gray. Rain in May is a rare thing in this city. I wipe the drops off my face and suddenly they seemed to me like tears.

--

In the wake of “In the Land of Israel: Essays,” by Amos Oz, 1983.

The article was published in Hebrew the Independence Day Supplement of Yedioth Aharonoth, May 11, 1997
***

For Hebrew, press here.

All Clear

2009-10-07T14:24:00.018+02:00

Salman Masalha

ALL CLEAR

Amir hadn’t laughed so hard for quite some time, and certainly not upon hearing an announcement from the Home Front Commander. With his forces alert on all fronts he had learnt on his own flesh, the country’s flesh, the meaning of the Jewish experience. The more he tortured her, the more pleasure she felt and burst into yelps of joy that cut through the silence.

When Nurit Tzur phoned Amir to ask how he was doing “in these crazy times,” as she said, there was a somewhat jocular tone to her voice, though it didn’t quite conceal her tremendous anxiety. “Don’t forget to bring your mask,” she reminded him again before she hung up.

He had met Nurit Tzur – Nushnush to her friends – several years earlier. At that time, the time of the popular Palestinian uprising in the occupied territories, she was living not far from his rented apartment in downtown Jerusalem.

One day Amir had gone to the neighborhood café where he was a regular, whether to meet friends or just for another anthropological session of observing the clientele. From afar, as he was still walking down the street and as he walked through the gate into the garden of the café, he noticed that a new girl had joined the table. Her laugh could be heard from quite a way off and she looked as though she were sitting with old friends. He pulled a chair away from another table and sat down next to her at a corner of the table that was free.

One of the guys -- Shimon or Nir, he can’t remember now – hastily introduced him to her: “Amir, Nurit,” said his friend and returned heatedly to the topic of the conversation. It wasn’t long before the argument died down and the conversation continued along calmer lines.

Unaware of the trap into which she was stepping, Nurit turned to him and asked: “I understand that you’re Amir. Amir who?”
Shimon, whose ear was always finely attuned to what was happening around him, was quick to tell her: Amir Cousin,” as everyone laughed. Shimon always had wisecracks of this sort upon hearing questions about “the northerner,” as he defined Amir, who had come from far away and settled in the holy city.
“Cousin?” Nurit wondered aloud, pursing her lips a bit?

“Not Cousin. A cousin, one of our Semite cousins,” Itzik corrected, eradicating with a single stroke the misunderstanding that Shimon had perpetrated.

“Ah, now I get it,” chortled Nurit, her laughter rolling form ear to ear.

Later, when everyone was lingering on the sidewalk before dispersing, Nurit related that apparently she too was going against the flow in that she too had left the Tel Aviv area and come to live in Jerusalem. “Jerusalem’s provinciality – I think it suits me better,” said Nurit, explaining her move from the trendy metropolis to the capital.

“Provinciality is a relative thing,” said Amir, as though he knew a thing or two about the provincial.

“There. Over there, on the other side of the neighborhood, that’s where I live now,” said Nurit, pointing, as they said goodbye, and her hand seemed to be caressing the treetops that moved in the gentle Jerusalem breeze.

***

In those days the word intifada had already begun to be naturalized into the Hebrew language. Initially, the media talked about disturbances, and as they weren’t ending and it didn’t look as though quiet would once again prevail in the occupied territories, the news people started using the term uprising. However, the sentries of the Hebrew language hastened to deplore the use of the Hebrew term, which is derived from the same root as the fancier and more right-wing of the two terms used for their war of independence, as well as the term for the Hebrew resistance and revival, and so as not to corrupt the youth. Thus, gradually the Arabic word infiltrated and dwelt secure in the tent of the Hebrew language.

A certain commentator on Arab affairs, versed in the Arabist tradition that is usually cut off from actual Arab experience, went one step further. He took the trouble to rummage in dictionaries and with a sarcastic grin smeared from ear to ear all across the screen, he brought his ridiculous merchandise to the viewers. Looking straight into the camera he opened his mouth and burst into an Arabist exegesis as though he had come upon a great treasure: “The original meaning of the word intifada in Arabic is: a camel’s orgasm,” explained the hyperactive commentator.

A few days later, at the usual table at the café, Nir turned to him and asked his opinion of the commentator’s linguistic “scoop.” Amir, however, with a typical wave of his hand, dismissed both the commentator and his discovery as utter folly, adding that he doubted that there is an Arab alive on this earth who knows this information, or takes it seriously. “The Arabs of today,” declared Amir, “barely know how to read those dictionaries that are no more than fallow land where rookie Arabists graze.”

During the course of the gales of laughter that ensued from the juicy discussion that had at long last descended from the meaning of life and other weighty matters to animal orgasms, Amir learned something about the orgasms of sea turtles in the Galapagos. Indeed, Nir had just recently returned all excited and enthusiastic about what he had seen on the distant islands.

“That’s where they should have established the Jewish state,” said Nir, trying to pour some oil on the flames of the argument that had died down.

“And who is going to do the construction work on the buildings there, who is going to till the land?” Itzik demanded.

“We’ll bring over Arabs like Amir and his friends,” said Nir, adding: “We really can’t live without Arabs.” After a brief pause, he continued: “And then, presumably everything will start all over again,” summing up the Zionist experience. More than anything else, Nir was impressed in the Galapagos by the cries of the coupling turtles that fill the primeval landscape. Nir likes to talk about sex a lot and about orgasms. He always said, half-seriously: “Politics is something people engage in and sex is something they talk about.”

“And how do you tell the difference between a he-turtle and a she-turtle?” Amir inquired of Nir.

“Search me,” answered Nir, adding in a challenging tone: “And what does our peasant and nature boy have to say on this issue?”
Amir couldn’t bear the condescension in Nir’s voice and riposted, to the laughter of the other people around the table: “Go to the turtle, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.”
Nurit, who had also begun to sit at the table with the regulars, addressed herself to this issue that was heating up and added a new dimension when she asked with a smile: “Do she-turtles fake orgasms?”

***

The years go by quickly, apparently from the force of habit, thought Amir as he sipped his coffee, exhaling the cigarette smoke that made its way from his lungs back into the open air. Quiet had not returned to prevail in the land, because truth to tell it had never existed. And to all this was now added another threat, signs of which could be seen everywhere you looked. The packs and purses hanging over the backs of chairs had been joined by another accessory, a cardboard box dangling from a black plastic strap.

The fear of what might come was different now than it had been in other periods. Saddam Hussein’s threats to destroy half of Israel if his country were attacked hovered in the air. No one knew what surprises were up the sleeve of that man from Baghdad who had killed thousands of his countrymen with poison gases. In Israel they had already taken the precaution of distributing ABC – atomic, biological, chemical – masks to the all the inhabitants and had advised them to purchase masking tape to seal off the windows in advance of the trouble he might be sending their way.

Amir was uncomfortable with the hysteria all around but he was compelled, under not very moderate pressure from his friends, to report to the mask distribution center and take one. With a fair amount of misgiving he went to the distribution center, received a short explanation about its use from a young girl soldier and accepted a cardboard carton with a black plastic strap. When he got home he put the carton in the closet and did not even try to open it to see what was inside.

As the tension grew and the Iraqi attack seemed closer than ever, people were asked to take the cardboard boxes with them wherever they went. People were seen walking about town with a cardboard box dangling from their shoulder. People were seen crowding at the bus stops carrying the masks with them on their way to work or on their way home. Some people tried to conceal the masks inside plastic bags from the grocery store and some, mostly young girls, went so far as to paint their boxes bright colors or draw flowers on them.

***

Like a night borrowed from the stories, night fell on Jerusalem. The war was raging in far-off Iraq and missiles were striking in various places in Israel. “Why am I thinking about Shimon now, right at this moment?” Amir asked himself and he did not have a satisfactory answer. As the years passed, he found himself sinking ever more deeply into his isolation. He often felt as though a wave of a magic wand had detached him from the here and now and sent him floating in other worlds. Disturbing thoughts would come to him, erasing the here and now along their way.
“What are you thinking about?” asked Nurit, in an attempt to get him talking and elicit some irresistible charm from him in this situation in which she had found herself.

“Nothing,” he whispered into her ear, in a desperate attempt to not to reveal emotions that could cast a pall on the moment, and then he added a few worlds of encouragement: “I’m thinking about you, about us.”

“And maybe I want to avenge that liberated Palestinian girl who couldn’t bring Shimon to his knees, who couldn’t get past his Zionist guilt feelings about fucking the Palestinians on the one hand, and on the other crying about how they can’t fuck Palestinian girls” – this thought kept buzzing in his mind. Shimon had once confessed to him, during the first war in Lebanon, that he had not been able to respond to the flirtatious overtures of Souad, the daughter of a Palestinian public figure. “When the IDF is fucking Palestinians in Lebanon, I can’t fuck another Palestinian woman,” he had confided into Amir’s astonished ear.

“And maybe I have Shimon on my mind now because I find myself in Nurit Tzur’s bed, and she’s the daughter of Michael Tzur, a top Israeli officer?” This thought continued to distract him as his hand slid down her shoulder, gliding slowly down the slope landing on a moving hip, like someone trying to outline dunes that stretch to the horizon. like someone trying to outline dunes that stretch to the horizon. “And what about my guilt feelings?” Amir continued to torture himself.

He surveys her soft body as his hand rests on her breasts and a warm nipple tickles his palm. He sees the whites of her eyes and recalls pure white patches of snow resting on the mountain peaks of the north. He greedily suckles the water of life from her mouth as though it were the Sea of Galilee and lowers the level of tension that is hovering over the land. His hand slides down the slopes of her back as though it were a bird circling and soaring on the updrafts of warm air rising from the green fields, then landing on the country’s narrow hips in the approach to a narrow plain that gathered at her navel. Far, far away at the edge of the bed her heel stretched taut like a spring that had coiled the moment his body reported the penetration of a force in the area of the sink holes of the Dead Sea.

Here the whole land was spread before him, thought Amir to himself. He just had to stretch out his hand to touch it, to fondle it as much as he wanted, to occupy it, to free it inch by inch with no resistance. Here she is, so close he could see the blue of her eyes, the gold tumbling on her shoulders, and now all her gates are open to him. Here she is, so close and yet so far.

***

Wondrous are the ways of this land, muses Amir. Such thoughts could surface even for no particular reason on another long night with Nurit Tzur, in whose bed he now found himself stretched out, exposed to her, and she exposed to him. Rather than slaking his thirst in her springs, satisfying his hunger on the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that grows in her breasts, he finds himself redeeming the land inch by inch, and it seems as though he could go on knowing her forever.

Silence reigned outside. Quiet sheltered the house in the pastoral neighborhood and only regular breathing and groans with new notes rose from the bedroom she had turned into a sealed room, following the precise instructions of the Home Front Command. And as Amir was immersed in his war of liberation, suddenly the rising and falling wail of the siren was heard, rising and falling, rising and falling.

Nurit’s fears of this war were so compelling that upon hearing the siren she quickly pushed him away before he could perform the final act of liberation and bring about an all clear. She leapt from the bed and rushed to put on her ABC mask, urging him to put on his. As an act of sharing his fate with hers, he too donned the mask.

The mask changes the man, thought Amir,his eyes following Nurit as she walked over to turn on the television. Suddenly the both of them looked like creatures from outer space who had landed on a strange planet, on a stricken planet.

Not many minutes went by before the all-clear signal was sounded and they both hastened to take off the masks and breathe easy. However, despite the all-clear siren, Amir could still see the anxiety on her face.

“If heaven forbid something terrible happens in this country, will you keep me safe?“ Nurit asked in a somewhat jokey way that revealed her huge fear.

“Keep you safe from what? From whom?” Amir answered her with a question.

“Nuuuu – you know. You’re just pretending not to understand,” she pleaded as though he had the answer.
In a desperate attempt to divert the conversation to other matters, so as not to create conflict at a moment of togetherness, he blurted as though casually: “The Sabbath will keep you safe, Nushnush.”
She didn’t laugh and said, affronted: “Excuse me? What’s that you say?”

“I was just joking,” answered Amir, as they sat there embracing and staring at the television screen, watching the live broadcast.

“There has been a hit in the Central Area. There are no injuries,” reported the Central Command Spokesman, live. Upon hearing the reassuring words, the two looked at each other and suddenly burst into laughter until their eyes were filled with tears and strange and varied smells of rubber filled their noses.

***

Translated by Vivian Eden
______

The Hebrew was published in Maariv, May 7, 2008

***

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Hearts and Diamonds

2009-09-27T13:38:00.013+02:00

Salman Masalha

Hearts and Diamonds

At this summer’s end, ill-assorted sounds mingle in the air. During the days of this month of Ramadan that has just knocked at the city gates, unsynchronized voices of muezzins cut through the sky. Each voice, in its own way, rises from the recordings played through the minarets of the mosques scattered around the Arab city. Upon hearing these voices suddenly church bells ring out in a competing dance of sound that becomes louder and louder until it too fades away and makes room for other sounds arising from nature that are, in their own way, trying to be part of the city’s unfinished symphony.

It seems that the pinecones, looking like bats hanging from the branches of the trees, have begun to burst, perhaps this time with laughter, upon hearing the strange sounds carried on the hot air. No one touches the bats, as there is a prohibition on harming them because according to legend they once helped put out a fire in the city. When flames engulfed the Temple the bats flew to the sea and asked its permission to take some of its water to Jerusalem to douse the flames. And if the laughter of the bats crackling from the trees were not enough, then when this is done and it seems as though silence is descending on the city, suddenly the voices of the bulldozers roar into action as they excavate and clang against the rock with a deafening racket.

I look for King Solomon, who will tell the genies to save me from the punishment of the bulldozers. In the Arab tradition, King Solomon employed genies in the work of building the city and the Temple. The excavations carried out by the genies disturbed the inhabitants’ rest and the townspeople could not bear the noise the genies made. They took to the streets to demonstrate and raised an outcry against the regime.

Solomon convened his viziers and the genies under his command for a consultation. The king addressed the genies and said: “What kind of genies are you? Don’t you have some way of excavating into rock without making that deafening noise?”

“There is only one genie who can help you,” replied one of his genies. “His name is Sakhr and he lives far, far away in a distant sea.” Upon hearing this, Solomon immediately ordered that this Sakhr be brought to him.

***
Clamor and uproar, I recall, have been heard in this city ever since first I set foot here. King Solomon doesn’t live here any more, I tell myself, and there isn’t anyone who is going to lower the level of noise, there isn’t anyone who is going to stop the excavations in stone and there isn’t anyone who is going to put an end to the sawing into the stone the way disturbing thoughts saw into an unquiet soul.

Not far from here, on a hilltop looking out over the Old City a blue and white flag flutters in the breeze. This is a different blue and white flag that came from far away, beyond the sea. Robert Bruce, the King of Scotland, very much wanted to come to Jerusalem but as he could not realize this dream he commanded that after his death his heart would be interred in the soil of Jerusalem, the land where Jesus was crucified. When the Bruce passed away, his knight the Black Douglas took his heart and placed it in a silver coffer, a kind of casket befitting the heart of a king, and carried the heart with him.

Fighting the Saracens in Spain, Douglas threw the heart in its casket into the battlefield and said: “Go first, brave heart in battle, as thou wert wont to do and Douglas will follow thee.” Afterwards the casket was found pierced by spears. It was returned to Scotland and there Bruce’s heart was buried in a church in Edinburgh.

The Scottish soldiers who came to Jerusalem with the British forces in World War I had not forgotten their admired king’s last will and testament and founded the Scottish Church here on the hilltop in commemoration of Bruce’s “brave heart.”

***
Only dust and ashes. One past is followed by another past and thus time piles up layer upon layer, dripping from the sky over the city that has no tomorrow. The many days of this city have known blood and sweat. However, not only are there many days in the city of Jerusalem, there are also many strangers in it. Often very strange strangers.

Strangeness in this city is different from strangeness in other cities. Strangeness here is the essence of poetry. Jerusalem has ever been, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, will forever be an attraction for a jumble of the dazed and the moonstruck. All kinds of pilgrim dreamers and lunatics – from kings to the most humble, from every nation, religion and color, have flocked to it. Unlike any other city in the world, its name is associated with a phenomenon of mental disturbance, certified by learned doctors, called “the Jerusalem syndrome.” The medical men say that there are those who come to the gates of the city and believe that they have been endowed with prophetic powers, messianic powers that presage the end of days. There are so very many days in this city, but no end yet.

And thus it happened that in the seventh decade of the last century I too came through the gates of the city as a stranger, though I was not yet moonstruck. The Jerusalem of those days looked to me like a magical place. All I remembered of it was a roof looking out over the Damascus Gate and the Old City. I came to the city that had not yet been “reunited,” as the Hebrew cliché would have it after the war that was still to come at the beginning of June, 1967. The Hebrew name of that war, the Six Day War, was taken from the story of Creation in the Book of Genesis. In Arabic, however, a special term was invented for it: Naksa, a term that nods to the huge defeat of the Arab armies. The Naksa, then is a bowing of the head and a temporary retreat prior to the great Arab revival, and it will be as though the Arab head had never hung down low. That Naksa, however, has lasted now for more than four decades, and counting.

Back then, I came from the far-off Galilee on a elementary school trip. Barbed wire fences split west from east. The east was governed by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan – so near and far was the east. We, the survivors who remained in the homeland after the nakba -- catastrophe -- of 1948, stood here in the west on the roof governed by the kingdom of the Israelites and looked out wonderingly at the walls of the Old City, the vibrant market square, the hubbub at the Damascus Gate and the masses of people being swallowed up into the walls.

And then on a summer’s day a decade later I found myself sitting in a café in the city’s center. Now and then people cast a glance at the “summons” issuing from the hubbub, but continued on their way. People of all colors and speaking every language were going about their business in the city’s navel until suddenly a rhythmic cry was heard: “The Holy Land, deceivers and sons of whores …” The man and the voice made their way through the crowd, coming closer, passing by me and moving on until both of them, the man and the echoing voice, disappeared behind a building up the street. Only traces of the voice remained behind. They were etched, here and there, as restrained smiles on the faces of passersby in the path of the man and the voice.

During the course of the years I have seen how this city has changed its appearance. Step by step hills have been excavated, a wall and towers have sprung up on the horizon and new walls have closed in on the city and on the hearts of its inhabitants. Not far from that café, they are still digging and digging in this city. They are trying to build the infrastructure for tracks for a light rail system, or so they say. It isn’t a track to hearts that they are laying in Jerusalem, but rather a track for a train that will cut clumsily across the city, a train that goes from nowhere to nowhere as though trying to unite east and west. But this city has no east and it has no west. Only an axis of time spinning over a gaping maw, like an inverted tumor sucking everyone who comes through the gates into the black hole called Jerusalem.

***
When Solomon commanded his genies to bring him Genie Sakhr in order to find a way to stop the noise, the genies told the king that this was a very difficult mission. They explained that this Sakhr is endowed with tremendous strength and that there is only one way to overwhelm him and bring him: Since it is Sakhr’s habit to come once a month to a particular spring on a certain island to drink his fill of water, in order to bring him it would be necessary to dry out the spring and replace its water with wine. He will come, they went on to explain, he will drink until he becomes drunk and he will lose his strength. Solomon listened carefully to what the genies had to say and then commanded them to bring Sakhr to him in any way possible, adding that it made no difference to him what method or trick they used to get the job done.

***
The city of Jerusalem is built of legends. In the attempt to find legitimacy for the new religion that had sprung up in the desert, Islam sent Muhammad from the Arabian Peninsula to Jerusalem riding on al-Buraq, that same winged horse that had belonged to King Solomon himself, as a Muslim tradition tells us. Here Muhammed parked al-Buraq hitched to the rock, and from here he ascended to heaven. However, unlike the Muslim tradition, the Jewish tradition did not allow Moses to enter the promised land and this city because he chose to beat a rock rather than reason with it. The Jewish tradition left him to gaze on Jerusalem from afar, there on a hilltop across the river.

I walk along another hilltop, in the neighborhood of Abu Tor, and gaze out over the Old City and that desert across the river. I look up at the sky, trying to imagine Aaron’s coffin as the Children of Israel saw it circling in the sky over the city.

This hill I am standing ons now is Tur Haroun – Aaron’s Hill – according to an Arab tradition. The legend relate that when the Children of Israel worshiped the Golden Calf, Moses wanted to come here and talk to his God. His brother Aaron asked to go with him, saying: Take me with you, for I am not certain that the Children of Israel will not do anything new in your absence. Though Moses was angry and did not like the idea, in the end he did take Aaron with him.

As the brothers were walking along, they passed two men who were digging a grave. Moses and Aaron went over to the gravediggers and asked: “Whose grave is this?”

And the gravediggers replied: “This grave is intended for a man exactly that size,” and pointed to Aaron. Then they said to Aaron: “For the love of God, get into the grave so we can measure it.”

Aaron removed his clothing and stepped into the grave and laid down in it. At that very same moment God took Aaron’s soul and the grave closed over him. Moses gathered up Aaron’s clothing, turned on his heels and went back the way he had come, weeping over Aaron’s death.

When Moses returned to the Children of Israel without Aaron, they accused him of having killed his brother. Moses, who did not know how to explain his brother’s disappearance, prayed and cried out to his God. God answered Moses’ prayer and showed the Children of Israel Aaron’s grave circling in the sky above this hill, Tur Haroun.

***
The genies set out, as Solomon had commanded them, with the aim of bringing him the terrifying genie from far away. They came to the spring that the genie habitually visits, replaced its water with wine and hid themselves to wait in ambush for him. Several days went by and Sakhr didn’t appear, until they almost gave up. As they were puzzling their genie minds over what to do, all of a sudden Sakhr the Genie popped up out of nowhere, striding lightly towards the spring. To his surprise, he found that wine instead of water was flowing in the spring and he didn’t know what to do. He turned on his heels and left without slaking his thirst. After several days during which Sakhr returned to the spring without drinking, he finally broke, drank until his thirst was quenched and keeled over drunk as Lot. The genies who had been waiting in ambush fell upon him and tied him up and carried him off to Solomon’s court.

As flames poured from his mouth and smoke from his nostrils, Sakhr addressed Solomon: “Your Majesty, what is the meaning of bringing me from far away, as you know that I do not go among humans?” Solomon explained to him the fuss and the outcry that had arisen in the city because of the noise the genies were making as they excavated the rock. The king added that it had come to his attention that only he, Sakhr, knows the way to reduce the noise level.

The fuming Sakhr, smoke still pouring from his nostrils, nodded and said: “You have to bring a whole eagle’s nest here with the eggs inside, as upon the face of the earth there is nothing that can see as well as the Eagle.”

Solomon turned to his viziers and his aides and ordered them to do as Sakhr said. And indeed, the nest was brought and placed on a mountaintop in the desert, and orders were issued to build walls of transparent armored glass to enclose it.

When the Eagle returned home, he found neither the nest nor the eggs where they had been. He soared into the sky and circled way up high until he saw the stolen nest on the distant mountain in the desert. He landed there, but he could not make his way to the nest and the eggs because of the transparent armored glass wall enclosing it. He tried pecking the glass with his beak and scratching it with his claws, but to no avail. He despaired and flew away.

The next day the Eagle came back to where the nest was, bearing the samur stone in his beak. He circled high above the nest and dropped the samur, which split the glass enclosure. Then the Eagle dove from on high, picked up the nest and flew away. The samur the Eagle had dropped remained there. Sakhr went to the site, found the stone and brought it to Solomon.

***
Jerusalem is surrounded by hills. Among the hills there is one hill where there is a cave that resembles a house. In the distant past, people would visit that cave, the dwelling. When night falls on the hill, the cave is illuminated by a glowing light, even though there are no lanterns nor lamps nor candles inside it, as the Arab legend relates.

Ever since I read that story, I’ve been roaming the hills of Jerusalem searching for that cave, that illuminated dwelling. Recently, I found it. I am keeping its location secret and from time to time I go there to be alone. Deep, deep inside the cave there is a spring from which twisting rivulets spread in all directions. In these rivulets flows a sparkling liquid the color of wine. With all that noise all around, I have made up my mind that next time I visit there I will quench my thirst with the red, red liquid and I don’t care if I lose my strength.

***
Solomon, who knew the language of the animals, ordered his genies to bring him the Eagle. Solomon spoke with the Eagle and asked him about his samur stone, and where it can be found. The Eagle explained that the stone can be found on a very high mountain far, far away to the west.

Then Solomon spoke to his genies and told the to fly swiftly to that mountain with the Eagle and bring him back some of that special stone. The genies went and brought back as much of the special stone as they could carry. Some say that the samur is the diamond, with which from then on the genies excavated and cut the stones of Jerusalem without making noise and without disturbing the tranquility of the inhabitants.

King Solomon doesn’t live here any more, I say to myself, whereas the racket of bulldozers clanging on the rock of Jerusalem is filling the sky over the city and giving me no rest. To distract myself from that nuisance at this moment, I stand up and pour myself a glass of wine and light a cigarette. Then I set the glass down on the windowsill and watch red, red tears slide down the inner side of the transparent glass, gliding back on the walls like dewdrops of diamonds gradually blending with the red glow over the Old City at sunset.

Jerusalem, August-September 2009

Translated from Hebrew by Vivian Eden

***
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All Birds Lead to Rome

2009-09-18T13:30:00.012+03:00

Salman Masalha

ALL BIRDS LEAD TO ROME

At the end of the 1950s, I was a young boy, and quite naïve and innocent. It never crossed my little Arab mind to wonder about the hidden intentions of the flocks of birds that would land, as the olive harvest approached, in the fields of olive trees of the village of Maghar that looks out over the Sea of Galilee. Every autumn, when a cloud of black birds crossed the horizon and settled on the olive groves, the villagers would go out carrying all kinds of noisemakers and hasten to scare away the invading birds with the aim of saving the olive harvests, the main source of their living in those days. However, by the time the villagers arrived in the groves, the birds had already eaten their fill of the oily fruit and would fly away taking with them provisions for their journey. The cloud of birds would detach itself from the tops of the olive trees, climb beyond the hills into the sky and fly westward until it disappeared beyond the horizon.

Thus, year after year and season after season, the flocks of birds returned, ate their fill and flew off westward to the sounds of the villagers’ noisemakers which more often than not were spiced with explosions from double barreled hunting rifles. We, the children, were also able to contribute to the preservation of the food chain by eating our fill of the black birds.

Many olive harvests came and went and many flocks of birds flowed through the olive groves before I grew up and set out for Jerusalem to acquire knowledge and wisdom. However, with the wisdom that Jerusalem afforded me, my naïveté drifted far away never to return. And now, many years later, I find myself sailing away again and again on journeys in search of that lost innocence, of that vanished Paradise.

I say that I sail away, but for anyone who lives in Jerusalem it is difficult to use the expression taken from the world of water. It takes an hour to drive from Jerusalem to the Mediterranean Sea, and sailing from the city can only be on the wings of metaphor. Yet nevertheless, anyone who is really determined to embark on a voyage can use the pages of books as sails.

***

The American writer Mark Twain was appalled when he came from the distant West, in the middle of the 18th century, and entered Jerusalem. He was able to immortalize what he saw in the city in the pages of his diary:

It seems to me that all the races and colors and tongues of the earth must be represented among the fourteen thousand souls that dwell in Jerusalem. Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of Moslem rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself, abound. Lepers, cripples, the blind, and the idiotic, assail you on every hand, and they know but one word of but one language apparently--the eternal "bucksheesh." … Jerusalem is mournful, and dreary, and lifeless. I would not desire to live here (The Innocents Abroad, Chapter 53, 1869).

However, unlike Mark Twain, I have been living in Jerusalem for three decades. And now another bleak night is descending on the city and the darkness that is enwrapping it at the beginning of the third millennium seems to have descended on it from another time and another world. There is a tradition that cites Abdullah Ibn-‘Abbas, the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and one of most important recorders of traditions. This tradition teaches us that “all the adornments of Bayt al-Maqdis – that is, Jerusalem – came down from Paradise. But al-Rum – the Romans – put their hands on them and took them to their city, Rumiyyah (which is Rome). And it is also told that riders could travel the distance of five nights on horseback by the light they shed,” and not know a moment’s darkness.

And in the Jerusalem darkness of the present I ask myself how it happened that in the 7th century A.D. Abdullah Ibn-‘Abbas told the story about the ornaments that were taken from Jerusalem to Rome to shed light there for the distance of five nights of riding. And I can’t escape the thought of a different light. Is this not an echo of traditions that had spread in the east about the beautiful ornaments of Jerusalem that were looted there by the Romans in the year 70 A.D.? And what is this light if not the light of the Menorah, the pure golden candelabrum that was lit with olive oil and is memorialized in the carving on the Arch of Titus?

***

Once again it is the time of the olive harvest and the season for producing the oil is at the gates. On a Jerusalem night that is darker than ever, I am trying once again to navigate the byways of the distant past. Yes, the past. Because we in the East are always looking for our future in the past, perhaps because we here have too much past. Yes, we in the East march forward but our eyes are in the back of our head. And thus we fall and rise and fall and rise without having the sense to stop for a moment and screw our heads on the right way around. And here I am sailing way to faraway places in search of that hidden and stolen light.

Many people have come and gone between East and West, whether in times of war or in times of peace. And just as the East enchanted some of the travelers (though not Mark Twain) from beyond the seas who landed on its shores and were smitten by its charms, or stole light from it that they spread in the West – the West has always enchanted the people from the East who set foot on the land of Europe beyond the sea.

In the 9th century A.D., Al-Walid b. Muslim of Damascus, a protégé of the Ummayads, cites one of the merchants who set sail on the Mediterranean Sea on a trading voyage. The trader relates: “We ride the sea and the ship deposited us on the shores of the Kingdom of Rummiyah, which is Rome. We sent a letter to the people of Rome, saying: We would like to trade with you. The people of Rome sent a messenger to us whom we accompanied in the direction of the city of Rome. Along the way we climbed one hill and another hill and another mount, and behold! We saw at some distance away a greenish area like the surface of the sea. And when we saw what was revealed to our eyes we cried ‘Allaahu akbar,’ and invoked the name of God to say Allah is great and there is none like unto him. The messenger, who was astonished to hear our cry, inquired as to the meaning of it. Why have you said Allaahu akbar? And we answered him: This is the sea, and it has been our tradition for generations to invoke the name of the almighty God when we catch sight of the sea.

And here I am in Jerusalem trying to follow the footsteps of those merchants, trying to figure out how the Arabs made it their custom to call out the name of God in the cry Allaahu Akbar, when they catch sight of the sea.

Before all the provinces of Syria fell into the hands of Ma'awiya ibn Abu Sufyan, he thought about invading the lands of the sea. Ma'awiya was in the habit of sending messengers bearing letters to the Caliph Umar ibn al Khattab, who dwelt in the Arabian Peninsula, begging the ruler to allow him to muster armies and prepare ships, with the aim of setting out to invade the kingdoms of the sea. While Ma'awiya was resident in the city of Hums in Syria, he sent a letter to the caliph in which he told him about the island of Cyprus, and its proximity to the shore of Syria, and this is what he wrote: "In one of the villages in the district of Hums the inhabitants can hear the barking of the dogs and the crowing of the roosters that belong to the inhabitants of the island." However, the caliph did not want to give the order before he also heard other opinions. He wrote the commander Amr ibn al'As: "Describe to me the sea and its riders." And the latter replied: "It is a large creature whose rider is a small creature, and there is nothing except the water and the sky. If it is calm – the heart is fearful, and if it is in motion – the mind is lost."

Upon hearing such descriptions and others about the sea, the caliph reconsidered the issue and wrote to Mu'awiya: "I swear by He who sent Muhammad to bring the world of the true faith to the world, I shall not allow any Muslim ever to ride it, as I have learned that the Syrian Sea surrounds the longest provinces on the face of the earth, and night and day it asks God's permission to flood the land and drown it. How can I give the soldiers permission to ride upon this infidel?"

This infidel? I read this over and over again and ponder the story and suddenly my heart cries out like Archimedes. Eureka! I've found it! I've found it, I say to myself. If so, then it is the sea's unbelief that impels the Arabs to cry out Allaahu akbar when they catch sight of the sea, as though in their hearts they are imagining that they are invading the lands of the infidels. But these people of whose journeys the Damascene tells us, have not come as invaders, but rather as merchants whose ship has brought them to Rome. But a tradition is a tradition, and crying Allaahu akbar is a custom that they have inherited from their forefathers of long ago and there is no alternative but to act according to it.

When the Roman messenger heard the cry of Allaahu akbar issuing from their mouths, and upon hearing the explanations that the merchants gave him about their ancient custom upon encountering the sea, the dumbfounded messenger was overcome with laughter. Once it subsided, he turned to them and said: This is not the sea at all, but the rooftops of Rome, for all the roofs are covered in sheets of molded lead.”

However, it was not just the roofs of Rome that confused and dazzled the people of the East. When they entered the city they roamed through its streets and its markets – the agoras, the palaces and the cathedrals. They saw the works of art of which Rome was so full, both painting and sculpture, and they could not but be amazed by what their eyes beheld. Like Mark Twain, they returned home and wrote about their experiences. The testimony to their amazement remains fresh to this day.

About the Romans, one traveler wrote: “They are men of medical knowledge and practice, and of all the peoples of the world, they are considered the best with respect to the craft of painting. Their painter paints a human being and does not leave out a single detail. If he so desires, he makes him young, and if he so desires he makes him old, and if he so desires he makes him ancient, but this does not suffice for him. As if this were not enough, if he so desires he makes him handsome, and if he so desires he makes him laugh, or cry. And he distinguishes between the laughter of the joy at someone else’s discomfort and the laughter of embarrassment, between gales of laughter and a smile, between the laughter of a happy man and the laughter of a madman.”

***

Hundreds of years have elapsed since the merchants invoked the name of God at the sight of the sea of rooftops and the lovely ornaments of Rome. Times of peace and times of war have alternated since, and now we discuss the Mediterranean as a basin of cultures that have enriched one another. However, it would seem that the more we bring this topic up for discussion, the more it exposes the deep truth that is concealed by lip service and fine words. Bringing up this topic again and again exposes the deep abyss that exists between East and West, between North and South.

And this abyss is not new. It is necessary to knock on the gates of myth in order to learn something about the relations between the cultures of the Mediterranean Sea. From an Arab myth that was widespread during the Middle Ages we can learn something about this basin. In the distant past, this Mediterranean around which we are living and which we are trying to praise did not exist at all, for the sea came into being as a result of a struggle between the North and South.

An Arab writer of the Middle Ages sets forth the story of the emergence of this sea thus: “I have read,” he writes, “in quite a number of books about Egypt and the lands of the Maghreb that after the Pharaohs vanished from the earth there ruled kings of the Bani Dalukka dynasty. Among these kings were Darkon bin Melotes and Zamatra. These two kings were very wise and also very powerful. In addition, they also dealt in magic. And the Romans desired to vanquish the Kingdom of Egypt and rule in their stead. But the Egyptians found a stratagem and a way to defend themselves from the Romans. They punched a hole in the great ocean to the west, Bahr al-Zulumaat, which is the Dark Sea, and the waves of water that burst through flooded and drowned lands and many flourishing kingdoms, until the water reached the shores of the land of Al-Shaam, which is Syria in the east and the land of the Romans in the north. And since then the sea has been a barrier between the land of the Romans and the land of Egypt.”

Thus, this sea was created to serve as a barrier between the North that wants to conquer and dominate and the South that defends itself. And when the paths of the North and the South, the East and the West diverged, their views of the world also diverged.

Over the generations this sea has come to separate between the individual and the tribe. It separates the individual freedom and the democracy that developed on its northern side, from the tribal tyranny that allows the individual no freedom of action on its southern and eastern shores. And where the individual has vanished, variety and creativity have also disappeared. The Mediterranean Sea today constitutes the border between the grapevine and the date palm, and, if you like, between wine and the prohibition of wine; between the product that grows better over time and the date as a fruit of the here and now that leaves nothing behind.

In the past this struggle between the northern shores of the Mediterranean and the cultures to the east and the south of it produced another Arab myth that explains the Romans’ staunch invincibility in face of their enemies. Arab traditions relate that around the king’s throne in Rome stand a hundred columns covered in gold, and on each column stands “a bronze statue in the shape of a man holding in his hand a bell on which the name of a certain nation has been engraved. And these inscriptions are talismans. And if any king of those nations plotted to invade the kingdom of Rome, the statue of that nation would begin to move and the bell would ring. In this way the kingdom of Rome found out about the plot and could plan and defend itself.”

But the kingdom of Rome, as a symbol of the Western world, not only defended itself but also attacked, occupied and exploited the South for decades and centuries. Evidence of the West’s attitude towards the East may be found, for example, in Mark Twain’s citation, in “Innocents Abroad” (Chapter 50), of a text by one “William C. Grimes” – a composite of a number of travel writers of his day – who traveled to the East and committed his impressions to writing: "I never lost an opportunity of impressing the Arabs with the perfection of American and English weapons, and the danger of attacking any one of the armed Franks. I think the lesson of that ball not lost." Has anything changed since then?

***

Once again, autumn is descending on Jerusalem, the olive harvest is here and I turn a page and another page until I find not only the ornaments and the light of the East were taken to Rome. Now I discover one thing more: that the olives from the village of Maghar were carried by the birds to Rome in their beaks and their claws: “And in front of the church there is a large piazza surrounded by walls. In its center there is a brass pillar on there stands a golden statue of a bird with a talisman inscribed on its chest. The bird holds an olive in its beak, and in each of its claws. When the olive harvest season comes, this bird chirps and than all the birds of its species from all over the world arrive, each bearing three olives in the beaks and their claws and they drop them on the head of the statue. The gates of this piazza are locked and trusted sentries are posted there. When the piazza is filled with olives at the end of the harvest season, the sentries gather and crush the olives. They give the king and the patriarchs and the nobles their share and the rest of the oil is used for the lamps and lanterns in their places. All the oil in Rome comes from this talisman.”

And I say to myself that apparently ever since the sea came between Rome and Egypt, between North and South and between West and East, the West has turned to more sophisticated methods. Treaties have been signed between the West and the East, and gifts have changed hands between them. As part of this, and among the wealth of gifts, Rome has known how to slip in a gift of another sort: “When Kabadh (the king of Persia) made peace with Caesar (the king of the Romans), Caesar sent him many gifts. Among the gifts was a statue of a singing girl, made of gold. At certain watches of the night the statue would sing and contentment and sleep would steal over everyone who heard the singing …”

While the inhabitants of the East have been asleep on their watch, the flocks of birds have continued to land in their groves, to take the harvests and to transfer them to the West. So deep is this sleep that has stolen over the peoples of the East, that it would appear that to this day they have not succeeded in awakening from it.

***

Translated by Vivian Eden

For Hebrew, press here.
For Arabic, press here.

_________________________

Going Back with Words

2009-09-04T15:10:00.011+03:00

Salman Masalha

Going Back with Words

'Isaba al-Jurjani, a medieval Arab poet, divided the world's civilizations into two. One is that of the Persians, who belong to Sasan, founder father of the Persians, the second is that of the Arabs who belong to Qahtan, founder father of the Arabs. The Persians in his verse are praised as being the best of peoples, but the best place to live in is Babylon, and the best of Islam is Mecca. But the best of all places in the whole world is Khurasan. In medieval Muslim times the Khurasan region, which nowadays stretches through parts of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, was the place where the Abbasid revolt against the Umayyad dynasty (661-750 A.C.) began, led by Abu Muslim al- Khurasani and brought to its end.

In an interview given to an Arab journalist before September 11, Usama bin Ladin leapt over centuries of history and political borders by calling the country he stayed in, Afghanistan, by the medieval Islamic name, Khurasan. This remark can shed some light on the ideology and cultural background that guide him.

A very deeply rooted attitude towards history and civilization in Muslim thought is inherent in the concept that describes the era of the Prophet Muhammad (570-632 A.C.), and the era of the four Righteous Caliphs that ruled the Muslims after his death (632-661 A.C.), as the most glorious era in Islam. This attitude towards life leaves no chance for an Arab or a Muslim to look forward. On the contrary, for centuries the Muslim and Arab mind always goes backward, as they see glory in past times only. No place for tomorrow, unless it serves the cause of the Islamic ideology. There is no place for the future unless it is the future of the Day of Judgment, a day when the faithful Muslim will win the life in Eden, and win eternal life with the Houri virgins. On that very day God "will deliver to every Muslim a Jew or a Christian and say: That is your rescue from Hell-Fire", as the Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said, (Sahih Muslim, no. 6665).

Arab and Muslim thinkers in our time must have the courage to face and deal with these traditions in order to show another alternative to new Arab generations. They must do that for their nations and for the benefit of their new generations. Without facing these sensitive issues, nothing can be built for the future. At the same time, this step must meet with genuine backing from all freedom supporters all over the world.

The recently published UNDP report, which deals with the human situation in the Arab World shows no way to escape from the Hell, in which the Arab nations found themselves. This Hell, in many of its aspects, is in fact a self-made one, supported and encouraged by the hypocritical Western world.

For decades the Western world has been supporting the most reactionary regimes in the Arab and Muslim World. For decades, Arab and Muslim liberal intellectuals found themselves fighting on two battle fields; on one hand they are facing the reactionary streams based on folk religion and misinterpretations of faith, and on the other hand they face the so-called secular regimes supported by the Western countries.

In fact, these regimes have never been secular by any means. On the contrary, they are based on inferiority complexes when facing the religious streams. This is the reason behind the fact that most of the Arab and Muslim oppositions have found their way to the mosques. There they found themselves protected to some extent facing the regimes that suffer from their inferiority complexes towards religious clerks. This situation must end, and this can be achieved only with a real support from liberal streams and freedom supporters around the globe. If this support is not be given to Arab and Muslim liberal powers, the situation all over the Arab and Muslim World will get worse and worse, and surely this will affect the whole world.

Something can be done and achieved quickly without any delay. The first step to be taken is to find a just and democratic solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This solution can be based only on Israeli withdrawal from all occupied Arab lands since the 1967 war and the establishment of a Palestinian democratic state that will live side by side with Israel. The European Union can play a great role in this direction by accepting both states, Israel and Palestine, as special members in the EU. A step like this, supported by the USA and the whole world community, will neutralize one of the most dangerous conflicts on earth that might turn into a global war between civilizations. Such a step can also show another alternative, a different future for the new generations in the Arab World, a future that has been blocked for decades by oppressive regimes and dictatorships all over the Arab world. When a prosperous and different future is put before these generations they will stop looking backwards.

In order to deeply understand the Islamic and Arab approach towards life, It is necessary to refer to poetry again. In a poem called "The Clock", Musa Maroofi, a modern Afghan poet, gives us some insight to what has happened in the last decade: "In our kitchen in Vienna/ A clock ticks./ Its hands herald the time/ Moving forward./ In our kitchen in Kabul/ A clock ticks./ Its hands heralds the time/ Moving backward./ The first adores the future,/ The second worships history./ Both moving fast,/ They pull the time in opposite directions./ But the time is running away/ In search of the present./ Alas, by the time it finds the present/ The present will be history."

Furthermore, if we are dealing with history and traditions, I would like to mention another tradition attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. He said: "The Devil (al-Dajjal) will come out from the East, from a land called Khurasan, and he will have followers with tough wide faces". It appears that the Prophet Muhammad had forecast, in this tradition, the appearance of the Devil and his followers coming out of Afghanistan.

April 2006
***

GM Sheikh: "Kahat Kabir"

2009-08-20T11:12:00.027+03:00

"Kahat Kabir" - Says Kabir

Visual interpretations after Kabir's verses
by
Gulam Mohammed Sheikh

1- (1997)

"Ya ghat bheetar soor chand hai
Ya ghat nau lakh taara"

"The sun and moon reside in this vessel
so do nine hundred thousand stars."
***

2- (2001)

"Ek achambha dekha re bhai
Thaada sinh charaave gai"

"Look brother, I saw a great wonder!
A lion was guarding a herd of cows!"
***

3- (2002)

(Kahat Kabir, Walled City)
"Kaajar keri kotadi kaajar ka hi kot.."

"The little hut of soot in a castle of soot.."

***
English by GMS

GM Sheikh: photo by Salman Masalha

For Arabic translation, press here.

ETERNITY, Kabir (d. 1518)

2009-07-23T08:35:00.014+03:00

Kabir (d. 1518)

ETERNITY

The kings shall go, so will their pretty queens,
courtiers and all proud ones shall go.
Pundits chanting the Vedas shall go,
and go will those who listen to them.
Masochist yogis and bright intellectuals shall go,
go the moon and sun and water and wind.
Thus says Kabir only those can remain
whose minds are tied to the rocks.

Translated by Arvind Krishna Mebrotra

"Kahat Kabir", painting by Gulam Mohammed Sheikh

***

For Arabic translation, press here.

Hopeless

2009-04-03T19:25:00.006+03:00

Salman Masalha

Hopeless

The shape of the new Israeli government as it looks right now means one thing. It means the postponement of the dealing with the main issue that has caused this land to bleed in the past decades. I mean the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Looking at both sides, the shape of the coming Israeli government on the one hand and on the other the internal Palestinian geographical and political dispute that has created Palestinian agendas in Gaza and in the West Bank, we see a deep crisis that doesn't help in moving forwards genuine efforts to deal with issue, let alone to taking steps towards solving the problem.

The Labor Party's decision to join the new coalition, pushed by its leader Ehud Barak who is supposed to continue serving as the defense minister in the next government, may indicate that there are hidden things that might happen and that this country might be facing in the near future with respect to the Iranian nuclear issue.

Bearing this in mind and in light of what I've said above, it seems that speaking now about bringing an end to the Israeli occupation sounds unrealistic with this government.

Hope in such a situation can be found only if the international community, the USA and the EU as well as others, decides to put pressure on Israel to end its occupation and on the Palestinians to recognize Israel's right to exist. The international community can give assurances and aid to both if they choose to take this path. Otherwise, this conflict will keep causing suffering to both nations in this part of the world as well as far beyond this area.

Jerusalem, March 28, 2009

***

What's Next?

2009-02-16T08:22:00.007+02:00

Salman Masalha

What's Next?

Speaking about peace after the war on Gaza may look difficult, but it is time to deal with the core issues that are preventing peace between Palestinians and Israelis: Israelis must think Israelis first, not Jews, and Palestinians must think Palestinians first, not Muslims. Otherwise the conflict will become a deep religious fracas over holy tombs, with no room for compromise. In recent decades, it seems that both sides have been sinking slowly into this bloody religious ocean.

To pull both sides out of this filthy water there is a need for heavy international pressure: on Israel to withdraw completely from the occupied territories including East Jerusalem in order to form a Palestinian nation state, and on the Palestinians to genuinely recognize Israel’s right to exist as an Israeli nation state.

At the same time, both states must constitutionally separate religion from state. Europe, which played a major role in creating the problem, can be a vital part of the solution by ensuring the acceptance of both Israel and Palestine into the European Union once they reach this solution. If not, this bloody tragedy will surely reach Europe sooner or later.

***

Published in German in: Kunst+Kultur

For German, press here.

Scenes

2009-02-11T12:31:00.003+02:00

Salman Masalha

Scenes

The street paved with illusions
like an unraveled dream,
the sleepers on the bedding of their humiliation
and the awake on a broken sidewalk.
The weepers over their bitter fate
and the seekers of success,
The hiders of their prayer in their hearts
and those who have gone with the wind.
The boat forgotten beside the river
in the morning light -
pictures from the exile that the night
flung in my path and then departed.
O night that has forgotten the dew on my heart,
take me to a land that has garbed itself in death.
My body is a lamentation.

Translated by Vivian Eden

***
For Arabic, press here.

One Man, One Vote

2009-02-06T17:41:00.009+02:00

Salman Masalha

ONE MAN, ONE VOTE

From fragments of children in a shadeforsaken camp
Concentrated especially for infant rest, there beyond the separation fence,
To anxiety victims who trod protected avenues to the local
Grocery that has declared a seasonal sale
Of aged tears: For every hundred you give to the neighbors, get
One tear for yourself, for free,
*
From the heart that is steeled towards the heart that is stilled and a fate that is sealed
On heaps of nameless dreams, to another package of deterrence
At a bargain price, obtained by the minister in charge
Of subsidized targets, once more,
*
From the myriad flag colors to the myriad word colors spilled
At streetsides in orange, red, white and blue,
To children’s blood smeared on clods of fertile earth, like
Death, in the East,
*
From wrinkles of clouds that have retreated from the galloping sun
Disengaged from the wayward, proud, generous and fierce horizon,
To the silence hovering over the graves of the children of this land
Who grew to the glory of the homeland, Israel-Palestine,
All around,
*
Into the back yard I will again cast one last
Polished and thoroughly perplexed glance.
And when it returns it will recount its adventures to my heart,
Like a dovecote of soul. This is the tree, under which you have sat,
That has stripped off its leaves and is no longer the refuge
That shaded from the heat. It is the wind that has forgotten
To bring its clouds to this land and will not return to play in
The clotheslines readied on the balcony for a winter
To come – nu, let it come! – It is the mountain
That for years has maintained a green face, on its summit
A yellowing torch that is fruitless and fading.
*
And if so, who will utter in public the prayer of a
Man to the heart of impervious Heaven? Till when
Will the cry in the womb of the earth that is teeming
And grieving over this yellow evil still be restrained?
*
Nonetheless, if you’d like an enlightened tale, to shine
A light unto the nations, there is one, only one, who
Knows how to ease all at once the muscles
Of bleakness gripping this drought-stricken land.
*
And if this is the case when you set out to seek
The one who will light a fine bonfire to shine in the
Ruined field, for a robbers’ romp, just write down one
Commandment, one thought. Or write, in huge letters, the
Following message onto the wall:

Only Salman who diligently and in colloquial
Biblical language digs more new graves
Is the man who properly understands
Both Arabic and Hebrew.
For Salman, gentlemen, is

Not a poet, a leader.

February, 2008

Translated by Vivian Eden

***

For the Hebrew text, press here.

Two Enemies in the Same Pit

2009-01-14T14:12:00.013+02:00

Salman Masalha

Two Enemies in the Same Pit

One of the most difficult problems facing the Islam-based Arab societies is the absence of a culture of reckoning of conscience. In other societies reckoning of conscience is an established element of the culture and allows for self-correction, but in the Arab societies there are no such mechanisms. Religion does not provide these mechanisms, the corrupt regimes are not interested in such mechanisms and the Arab intellectuals, apart from a very few exceptions, do not provide these goods.

Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish has passed away and will not be able to address the war in Gaza now. However, before his death Darwish published, in July of 2008, a poem entitled “Scenario Prepared in Advance,” a hypothetical scenario about two enemies who find themselves in a pit. The one is the poet himself and the other is “The Enemy,” with a capital “T,” without specifying his identity as the reader can easily figure this out for himself.

And now the pit of Gaza is gaping wide open and the two enemies have fallen into it. And now the Palestinian is once again finding himself impotent in face of his self-deception. In an article published in the Ramallah-based Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam (January 10, 2009), Palestinian commentator Hani al-Masri protests that the reaction of the Palestinian public in the West Bank to the dimensions of the killing and destruction in Gaza appears wan. In his eyes, this reaction “looks more like solidarity actions that are organized elsewhere in the world and less like actions that should be coming from members of the same nation. Even the solidarity actions in other places have been larger than the solidarity that has been expressed by the public in the West Bank.”

Time after time the lament on the bitter Palestinian fate surfaces without any attempt to conduct a real reckoning of conscience. “We are weak, we are defeated … therefore forgive us our dead children,” writes Abdullah Awwad, firing the arrows of his criticism at the Palestinian leaders: “Why are Abbas and Mashal not going to Gaza?” inveighs Awwad. “A leader should be among his people. It is not the television screen that is the place for leaders … and up until now not a single one of the leaders has appeared among the fighters, among the people” (Al-Ayyam, January 8, 2009).

Palestinian author Ali al Khalili regrets that the Arabs and the Palestinians have entirely abandoned the role of the victim and have left this role to the murderer who has all the might. “The amazing thing,” writes al Khalili, is that “the world is accepting this Israel perception” (Al-Ayyam, January 8, 2009). Al-Khalili stresses that he wants to take advantage of the “Holocaust” of Gaza to restore the role of victim to the Palestinian, because in his opinion this is the role destined for the Palestinian in face of the Israeli murderers.

The only Palestinian intellectual who has written sharp criticism of Hamas is Hassan Khader. The aggressive attack on Gaza, he writes, has aims beyond one military achievement or another that Israel can obtain. Its aim is to carry out experiments with the fourth generation of weapons and to carry out experiments in new tactics of warfare. The Hamas has provided Israel with all the conditions for this attack. The Israelis know, says Khader, that God has given them the gift of ideal enemies, who produce a lot of noise and rhetoric. “The Hamas militia,” he adds, “has not kept any allies or friends, neither for the Palestinians nor for their cause. The Hamas organization has done everything possible in order to convince anyone who has not yet been convinced that in truth the Palestinians are Goliath and therefore they must be dealt with by force” (Al-Ayyam, January 6, 2009).

The poem that Darwish published before his death ends like this: “Here, in this place, murderer and dead man are in the same pit / and some other poet will have to continue this scenario / to its end.” And now, in the wake of the war in Gaza, another Palestinian poet, who is an Israeli citizen and an honorary candidate on the Hadash party list for the Knesset -- Samih al Qasim, a pretender to the title of national poet – has taken upon himself the job of finishing the scenario. In a poem entitled "Sermon for the Friday of Redemption," he writes: “I am the king of Jerusalem. Descendent of the Jebusite. Not you, Richard …/ From the Negev to the highest peaks of Galilee / Gather up your swords, gather up your shields, Richard / and start emigrating. / You are destined to wane, I am destined to wax … / The time has come to emigrate, Richard … I am the king of Jerusalem / leave me the cross / leave me the crescent / and the star of David … / If you wish, you will emigrate alive / and if you wish, you will emigrate dead” (from the Internet site of the Israeli Hadash party, January 10, 2009).

In contrast to this bogus rhetoric, Hassan Khader’s words shine like a lighthouse: “It is an irony of fate that the bogus Goliath is threatening the real Goliath … and declaring that Israel’s end is near while the real Goliath is battering the Palestinians, bombing them and weeping,” Khader summed up (Al-Ayyam, January 6, 2009).

In a poem that Darwish published following the violent takeover of the Gaza Strip by Hamas, he refers to Palestinian self-deception: “How we lied when we said that we are exceptional … Believing your own lies is worse than lying to others,” he wrote (Al-Hayyat, June 17, 2007).

As I write these words, the bloody game is still being played. It appears that both the players and the audience here in this place are continuing to demand more action in the unfinished tragedy. Therefore, in order to finish the bad scenario that is being written by bad people here where we are, this place needs above all a wise and courageous director to put an end to the Israeli-Palestinian blood wedding. And since there aren’t any wise playwrights and directors here where we are, the director must come from outside this place, in the form of heavy international pressure to end the Israeli occupation and to establish a Palestinian state on all the territories that have been occupied since 1967 and to push the Palestinian and Arab side to a genuine internalization of the recognition of the state of Israel. If not, almost certainly this tragic play will embark on another world tour of bloody performances.

Jerusalem, January 12, 2009

***

Published in German: 14. Januar 2009, Neue Zürcher Zeitung

Published in: Middle East Transparent, English, Arabic

For the Arabic text, press here.

For the German text, press here.

For the Hebrew text, press here.