Lev Grinberg: You can't be a Jewish Muslim

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

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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

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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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?"

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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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Alexander Yakobson: What's in a name?

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

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

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

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A Jewish and democratic restaurant

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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The Palestinians' chance to win a moral victory

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

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Arabic article about the issue, press here

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Hypocrisy begins at home

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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All in the Same Boat

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

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A Picture Worth 190 Words

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

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Martin Niemoller - First They Came

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

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

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)

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

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

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Heritage Lesson

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.

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Published in: Haaretz, March 3, 2010

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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.

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

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

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.

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