Salman Masalha
Nationalism is a human illness. When the religion bug is added, the disease becomes metastatic. Before we can realize utopian visions we have to bring the “peoples” back to history.
Showing posts with label Israel-Palestine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israel-Palestine. Show all posts
Rabin was murdered as an Israeli
In order to achieve the Israeli-Zionist goal he crossed the red lines drawn by the standard bearers of the Jewish tribe.
Salman Masalha || Rabin was murdered as an Israeli
Under his vine and under his anthem
Before we arrive at the fulfillment of Isaiah’s utopian vision, even in a small way, it is necessary first of all for the wolf and the lamb to live each of them under his own respective vine and respective national anthem.
Salman Masalha || Under his vine and under his anthem
Looking closely at the state of affairs among all the various and variegated kinds of communities dwelling throughout the land, one can reaches the obvious conclusion: There aren’t two sides here but rather very many sides. In this land there is a huge admixture of tribes that are quarrelling among themselves. In other words, in Israel-Palestine the two nations have not yet sufficiently crystallized to reach a bi-national state.
The religious, cultural and tribal tensions exist within both the “imagined communities” as well as between them. It can also be said that the tensions between the two communities constitute the major, not to say the only, adhesive holding together the fragments of the human mosaic within each of them.
The occupation in the wake of the Six Day War complicated the matter considerably. Despite the transfer plans from the schools of various and sundry Zionist leaders, the Arab demography did not stop. Moreover, the occupation gave impetus and a great deal of help to the formation of the Palestinian identity vis-Ã -vis the occupying community. On the other side, as the occupation grew deeper a change came about in the identities of the communities called Israeli.
Ironically, this occupation ultimately brought about a halt in the development of the Israeli national identity. Thus, in face of the galloping demography the slogan of “a Jewish and democratic state” came into being, with the emphasis on Jewish. Thus, in place of the national definition the communal-religious definition rose to the surface and in full force.
Since the two communities are intertwined with each other for better or for worse, everything that happens in one of the communities immediately has implications for the other. And when Jewishness superseded Israeliness as a major definer of the Israeli communities, on the other side Islamism arose as a major definer of the Palestinian communities.
Both of the “national” identities – Israeli and Palestinian – are still embryonic and developing and are in need of nurturing. Therefore, in order to attain the utopian bi-national vision it is necessary first to bring the two “nations” back to history for the national embryo to develop in a natural way.
In this history it has to be remembered that Israeli nationalism is an integral part of the definition of Palestinian nationalism and Palestinian nationalism is a very important element in the definition of Israeliness. The one nationalism defines the existence of the other, and in the absence of the existence of one of them, the existence of the other as a crystallized national identity is cancelled.
Before we arrive at the fulfillment of Isaiah’s utopian vision, even in a small way, it is necessary first of all for the wolf and the lamb to live each of them under his own respective vine and respective national anthem. If not, the handwriting is on the wall: Either a South African future or a Balkan future awaits both of them and their descendents.
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Published in Hebrew: Opinions-Haaretz, June 27, 2012
Welcome, racists
Inaction over Syria reveals anti-Arab racism:
Rather than the fly-in serving as a 'Welcome to Palestine,' as the organizers called the protest campaign, it was aimed at expressing solidarity with Israel and stressing the extent to which Israel belongs to the activists' cultural family.
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.
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Published: Op-Ed, Haaretz, 1 August 2011
The poet's political correctness
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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The Palestinians' chance to win a moral victory
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
Arabic article about the issue, press here
Peace Without Religion
Salman Masalha
Peace Without Religion
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
Anthem for the Tribe of Israel
Salman Masalha
ANTHEM FOR THE TRIBE OF ISRAEL
ANTHEM FOR THE TRIBE OF ISRAEL
Yitzhak Rabin was murdered on the tense border between the Jewish and the Israeli. He was murdered by the emissaries of the Jewish tribe because he had the courage to try to expand the grazing lands of the Israeli tribe at the expense of the Jewish tribe. Thus the Golem took revenge on its creator.
It is not by chance that in the national anthem there is no hint of “Israeli-ness.” On the contrary, the emphasis in “Hatikva” (The Hope) is on the deepest religious facet connected to time (history) and place (the Land of Zion): “The Jewish soul yearning ... the eye gazing towards Zion ... the Land of Zion, Jerusalem." The combination of the two, the soul and the place, cannot but be mytho-religious. The Israeli national anthem is a Jewish religious prayer – and not Israeli. Therefore Israel is a religious Jewish legal entity and not a secular state. And when the leaders of the state were not wise enough, or were unable to, or perhaps did not want to break this link between religion and state, they sinned the primal sin of Zionism. Two decades later came the June, 1967 war and brought the Jewish tribe into physical contact with the places that are so laden with mythological times and values. The noose grew tighter.
To the primal sin was added another sin. In every nuance, it has never succeeded in adopting a value discourse that has self-confidence facing the religious discourse. On the contrary, Israeli secularism has been taken over by feelings of inferiority facing fundamentalist religious discourse. For this reason Israeli secularism has not attributed importance to written words and to words spoken in the public arena. The right, of all hues, religious and non-religious, has known how to exploit to the fullest the words that are laden with sanctity. And this is the great breaking-point.
Thus, again and again mythological figures have cropped up from the past – Amalek, Pharoah, Haman and even figures from the recent past like Hitler. The right, which is nurtured on religious texts and claims family and tribal values, has eyes in the back of its head like someone in the clutches of constant paranoia. It also sees the future with magic spectacles that is always showing it pictures from the monstrous past. The right tries to infect everyone with this paranoia. And it does not grow up in a vacuum. Its source is in part in the fact that deep down the right is aware that it has done a terrible injustice to the other, and the other in this case is the Palestinian.
The right, in its very essence, is imprisoned in this trap. Part of the left, not all of it, is trying to get out of it with as few casualties as possible.
Yitzhak Rabin did understand the grave danger that lies in this trap. He was aware that he has Chief of General Staff had got Israel into it. When he saw how things were, he had the courage to begin to seek ways to get out. But, being a general, he wanted the retreat to take place with the minimum of casualties. This is also the reason for his hesitancy and suspicion.
To get out of the trap Rabin was prepared to take great steps forward. He was prepared to tip the balance in favor Israeli tribalism rather than Jewish tribalism. The right’s reaction was to come to him with the racist demand for “a Jewish majority.” This demand even managed to seep into his own party. In a desperate attempt he tired to unravel the tangle and began to talk in different language. terms like racism and apartheid, of which he accused the right, came out of his mouth in despairing tones, and this is how they were described by the government broadcasting channel just a few days before the assassination.
The mourning that swept through the Arabs of Israel after the assassination was genuine and true, it sprang from the deepest source, from that border that divides biological parents from adoptive parents. This is the mourning of a child who was abandoned in 1948 by his biological parents, and after Oslo understood finally where he stood and in what family he had grown up. He had even begun to love the adoptive family and was not afraid of expressing his feelings in public. Rabin gave this child a spark of hope of adoption by the new state of Israel and of becoming an integral part of the Israeli family. However, this was also the reason for the assassination. Therefore, the public debate following the murder tried to avoid the mourning and fate of this child, who constitutes 20 percent of the citizens of Israel (50 percent of those who participated in the rally on the night of the murder, according to the assassin).
This poison potion of tribalism and religion is the place where the ideology grows that sprouts not weeds but base murderers, even if the victim is a Jewish prime minister. The shock and astonishment expressed by many people at the fact that “a Jew had done this” is indicative of hypocrisy and stupidity. This is the battle between human law and the law of the tribe and God, who know only vengeance. Yhis is also, in part, the reason for the rejoicing that was heard among small parts of the Jewish public here and abroad. I venture to predict that the next struggle will not be over the question of who is a Jew. It will be a struggle over the question of who is an Israeli. And participating in this struggle will be all the citizens of Israel, Jews and Arabs.
Jerusalem, November 1995
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Translated by Vivian Eden
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From the Memorial Book for Yitzhak Rabin:
Asher Ahavta et Yitzhak (Yitzhak, Whom You Love), ed. Zisi Stavi, Aliza Zeigler, Miskal - Publishing & Distribution, Tel-Aviv 1995
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