Volume 7 - Issue 2 - Spring 2004

Al Aqsa Concerned with Palestinian Issues Bi-Annual

Vol 7 No 2 Spring 04 / Safar 1425

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The Politics of Palestinian Textbooks Fouad Moughrabi

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Don’t Say You Didn’t Know About the Arab Citizens of Israel

Education and Hate

Richard Kuper

Mazin Qumsiyeh

Education as a Tool of Expulsion from the Unrecognized Villages

Boycott as Resistance: The Moral Dimension Omar Barghouti

Ismael Abu-Saad

Al-Aqsa Published By Friends of Al-Aqsa PO Box 5127 Leicester LE2 0WU England Tel: ++ 44 (0)116 2125441 Mobile: 07711823524 Fax: ++ 44 (0)116 253 7575 e-mail: info@aqsa.org.uk Website: www.aqsa.org.uk

Contents VOLUME 7 NUMBER 2 SPRING 2005 RABI‘ AL-AWWAL 1426

Editorial

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The Politics of Palestinian Textbooks DR FOUAD MOUGHRABI

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ISSN 1463-3930 EDITOR

Education and Hate MAZIN QUMSIYEH

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Boycott as Resistance: The Moral Dimension OMAR BARGHOUTI

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Ismail Adam Patel SUB-EDITOR

Rajnaara Akhtar

PRINTERS

Impress Printers, Batley. © 2005 Friend of Al-Aqsa

Don’t say you didn’t know about the Arab Citizens of Israel RICHARD KUPER

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Education as a Tool of Expulsion from the Unrecognized Villages ANTHONY MCROY

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BOOK REVIEW

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WE WELCOME

Papers, articles and comments on any issue relating to Palestine and the Middle East conflict.

We especially encourage writings relating to the History, Politics, Architecture, Religion, International Law and Human Rights violations.

The word count should not exceed 2,000 words.

Reviews of Books relating to the issue of Palestine are also welcome and should not exceed 1,000 words. Letters on any related topics can also be sent and the Editor reserves the right to edit letters for the purpose of clarity. All contributions should be in Word format, Times New Roman font size 12 and sent to the Editor either via email or on a disc at the above address. It must include the author’s full name, address and a brief curriculum vitae.

We are One? Jewish Identity in the United State and Israel

by Jerold S. Auerbach RVIEWED BY SAMUEL JACOB KURUVILLA

The Myths of Zionism

by John Rose RVIEWED BY ISAAC HASANOVICH

Disenchantment: The Guardian and Israel

by Daphna Baram REVIEWED BY RUMEANA JAHANGIR

The Catholic Church and the Question of Palestine

by Livia Rokach REVIEWED BY DAVID A GARDNER

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E D I T O R I A L

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erily! They used to hasten to do good deeds, and they used to make Dua to us with hope and fear, and they used to humble themselves before Us”. May Allah’s blessing be upon all His Prophets from Adam to His final Messenger, Muhammad H. Since the death of Yasser Arafat, the political map of the Middle East has been going through dramatic changes.

It appears, with the passing of Arafat, gone too is the old guard with its common rhetoric trumpeted at every peace negotiation and conference. Unfortunately, even premature celebrations have been curtailed as the newguards of the Middle East are brought to Western capitals only to exhibit follies worse than that of their predecessors. The Western cart is too alluring and everyone wants a piece of the action, as this may be their only chance to make it to the history books, even if it be to the cost of their people.

The Palestinian struggle that remained silent for decades was forced to burst forth by the inhuman and draconian actions of Israel. The Intifadas were not a temporary show of anger to be distilled with a phoney agreement that allows Arab leaders access to Western capitals and makes Israel look bad and the West appear sympathetic. They were and are an endless struggle against the worst form of oppression and injustice that can be visited upon a people. 56 years of sorrow and 37 years of repression cannot be brushed under the red carpets because the internationally recognised right of selfdetermination is no longer imperially amenable.

History will no doubt witness 21st century Western imperialism in the form of puppet heads of state whose sole function is to give legitimacy to the invasion of sovereign land by the powerful. The façade provided by the new ‘democratically’ appointed governments of Afghanistan and Iraq is a stark example of phoney legitimacy for an otherwise obvious colonial style invasion. In Palestine, through manipulative measures, democracy was denied to two-thirds of the populace, thus providing a gateway for the ‘appointment’ of Abbas as the legitimate leader.

The war that was started by the words: “His Majesty’s government looks with favour upon the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jews”, has engulfed the Holy Land in a sustained battle never before witnessed in History.

An exclusive Jewish claim to the blessed land has led to the fabric of life for every Palestinian being the struggle for

survival. We wait with abated breath to see if Abbas will prove his worth and hold tight to the legitimate struggle, or heart-wrenchingly concede to Israeli demands for yet more Palestinian land.

Israel claims ‘peace’ as its aim, complains of its fear amid ‘hostile’ nations, yet paradoxically employs brutal occupation practices against a civilian population. One need only scratch the surface of Israel’s public relations veneer to discover the real agenda, and witness the provocation that draw Palestinian responses which are aired to the world as Palestinian ‘attacks’ against Israel.

Yet the absence of those willing to scratch that surface is starkly apparent, feeding the silent screams of Palestine.

The state of Israel was established following a deliberate war, witnessed by its very founders, such as Moshe ‘without the helmet and the gun, we cannot build a house nor plant a tree’ Dayan. Historically, colonialists have recognised that the injustice perpetrated by land acquisition in such a manner inevitably bears fruit for the statement ‘what our sword has won in half a year, our sword must guard for half a century’. Thus, the Palestinian struggle is not only legitimate but simply reflective of human nature for those whose land was stolen, homes demolished, lives extinguished and dignity robbed.

The Palestinian struggle kindles deep emotions in all those associated with the greatest apartheid of our time, that of South Africa. The world rallied together to answer the call: “I have dedicated my life to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideals of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for, and to see realised… if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die”. These very thoughts are echoed time and again in Palestine.

How many more years of bloody conflict before the world wakes up, moves to its stations and forces Israel out of its flagrantly apartheid policies as it did with apartheid South Africa? Only when the world once again realises the truth of the struggle, ‘Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where one class is made to feel that society is an organised conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe’.

The world needs to witness an awakening from the slumber, recognise the legitimacy of this struggle, and once again pursue the universal human value of freedom and equality, this time, in Palestine.

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A YOUTH EXCHANGE PROGRAMME WITH AN NAJAH NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, NABLUS, PALESTINE 4 Al-Aqsa

The Politics of Palestinian Textbooks Dr Fouad Moughrabi*

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ontroversies over the form and content of school textbooks are not new. Over the years, right-wing groups in the United States have launched numerous campaigns against textbooks deemed ideologically offensive or antipatriotic. In the 1930s, for example, such groups targeted Harold Rugg’s Man and His Changing World on the grounds that the book was antiAmerican, anti-business, and socialist. In the mid-1970s, Kanawha County in West Virginia witnessed a heated controversy over schoolbooks led by conservative parents and religious and business leaders that eventually resulted in school boycotts and violence.

This example illustrates important dimensions of the politics of textbooks. In the first instance, controversies within countries such as the United States represent a form of struggle over what constitutes “legitimate knowledge.” As Michael Apple has argued, what counts as legitimate knowledge, namely, whose knowledge is most worthy is often “the result of complex power relations and strug gles among identifiable class, race, gender/sex, and religious groups.” In other words, by focusing on what is included and excluded in school textbooks, these controversies serve as proxies for wider questions of power relations in society. In the second instance, the issue of school textbooks is an aspect of the ideological and political conflicts among states previously at odds over the uses of history.

It should come as no surprise, then, that what textbooks Palestinian school children read and what they are taught have emerged as issues in the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. One could argue that raising this issue is appropriate if the contending parties are making steps toward peace and reconciliation.

Under such circumstances, it is fair to examine whether the Palestinians are making a serious

effort to promote values of peace and coexistence in their new curricula. It is equally valid to examine whether Israeli curricula also are trying to promote these same values. In essence, each party’s view of the “Other” goes to the heart of the conflict and heavily influences the modalities of its possible resolution.

The New Palestinian Textbooks The Palestinians, who are still not masters of their own destiny, assumed control of their own educational system only in 1994, following the Oslo Accord that gave them limited autonomy. Until then, they had to rely on Jordanian textbooks in the West Bank and on Egyptian texts in the Gaza Strip. These books were severely censored by the Israeli occupation authorities until 1994: The word “Palestine” was removed, maps were deleted, and anything Israeli censors deemed nationalist was excised. Furthermore, the Palestinians inherited from the Israeli authorities a dilapidated educational system badly in need of repair. No investments in educational infrastructure had been made since the beginning of Israeli occupation in 1967, resulting in a significant decline in the quality of education as well as in access to educational resources.

In 1994, the Palestinians established the first curriculum centre on the basis of a formal agreement between UNESCO and the newly established Ministry of Education of the Palestinian Authority (PA). The centre, directed by the late Ibrahim AbuLughod, began its work in October 1995 with a team of researchers analyzing the existing curriculum. They consulted with educators and teachers throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip and produced a

Whose knowledge is most worthy is often “the result of complex power relations and struggles among identifiable class, race, gender/sex, and religious groups.

* FOUAD MOUGHRABI is director of the Qattan Center for Educational Research and Development, Ramallah, Palestine.

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The Palestinian narrative, while not contested by objective nonArab and nonZionist scholars or even Israeli scholars associated with the “new historians” revisionist interpretations of 1948, is one that mainstream, and especially rightwing, Zionists reject

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blueprint containing the basic principles that should govern a unified Palestinian curriculum.

Birzeit University professor Ali Jarbawi, a member of the team, carried out a comprehensive analysis of history and social science textbooks, conducted workshops with teachers to obtain their assessment of the texts in use, and analyzed questionnaires that had been sent out to a random sample of history and social science teachers. Specifically in terms of writing Palestinian history, Jarbawi was guided by the following questions: What Palestine do we teach? Is it the historic Palestine with its complete geography, or the Palestine that is likely to emerge on the basis of possible agreements with Israel? How do we view Israel? Is it merely an ordinary neighbour, or is it a state that has arisen on the ruins of most of Palestine? This may well be one of the most difficult questions, but the answer to it need not be the most difficult.

The new Palestinian curriculum should be creative, pragmatic, and truthful without having to engage in historical falsifications.

Since that time, new textbooks: language, history, science, civic education, national education, etc., have been prepared for grades one and six and were introduced in September 2000. The PA Ministry of Education’s plan was to introduce new textbooks for two more grades every year (grades two and seven in September 2001, grades three and eight in 2002, grades four and nine in 2003, and so on). In preparing the books, the ministry tried to incorporate five basic principles suggested

by Jarbawi.

The first of these principles is that the curriculum should be predicated not on giving students facts as if they were eternal truths that must be memorized, but on encouraging them to become critical thinkers. Second, students should be encouraged to make independent judgments and intelligent choices, with careful attention to be paid to individual differences within the classroom. Third, the new curriculum should generate a concept of citizenship that emphasizes individual rights and responsibilities and that establishes a linkage between private interests and the public good so as to encourage responsible and intelligent political participation. Fourth, democratic values such as justice, personal responsibility, tolerance, empathy, pluralism, cooperation, and respect for the opinions of others should be emphasized. Fifth, students should be taught how to read primary texts, to debate, link ideas, read maps, interpret statistics, and use the Internet as well as how to verify facts, sources, and data critically and scientifically.

In the application of these principles, the new textbooks, as can be seen from the two grades that have been issued so far, rely less on facts and more on a student-centred approach. By and large, they avoid dealing with unresolved political issues. They do not provide a map of Israel because the latter has yet to define its borders, and they do not provide a map of Palestine because its borders remain to be negotiated. The texts do, however, reflect the Palestinian narrative, which is basically that of the native in conflict with a settler colonial movement. The narrative presents the establishment of the State of Israel in most of Palestine in 1948 as a disaster (nakba) for the Palestinians, a majority of whom became uprooted and were forcibly expelled from their homes.

The Palestinian narrative, while not contested by objective non-Arab and nonZionist scholars or even Israeli scholars associated with the “new historians” revisionist interpretations of 1948, is one that mainstream, and especially right-wing, Zionists reject. It is therefore probably inevitable that the new educational materials used in the schools under the PA would attract the attention of Israeli and proIsraeli groups that view even benign attempts to depict the Palestinian narrative as evidence of an “anti-Israeli bias.” The most prominent of these is a JewishAmerican nongovernmental organization called the Centre for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP), whose research director, Itamar Marcus, lives in the West Bank settlement of Efrat.

Framing The Issue On the eve of the al-Aqsa intifada, CMIP issued a report that claims to be an “evaluation” of Palestinian textbooks.

Entitled “The New Palestinian Authority School Textbooks,” the report states the following principal conclusion: Ever since the PA (Palestinian Authority) became responsible for education in 1994, Palestinian children have been learning from their schoolbooks to identify Israel as the evil colonialist enemy who stole their land. . . . The new PA schoolbooks fail to teach their children to see Israel as a neighbour with whom peaceful relations are expected.

They do not teach acceptance of Israel’s existence on the national level, nor do they impart tolerance of individual Jews on the personal level.

This message soon took hold in policy circles to the extent that, in the midst of an uprising, in which the fragile Palestinian economy has been wrecked, and in which an entire population is forced to live under virtual siege conditions, what textbooks Palestinian students read has become a major theme in the debate on how to end the violence.

President Bill Clinton drew attention to the issue just before leaving office in remarks at the Israel Policy Forum in New York, when he called on the Palestinians to change the “culture of violence and the culture of incitement that, since Oslo, has gone unchecked.”

CMIP’s report is the result of a joint research project with the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace of the Hebrew University, a partnership that endowed it with a measure of academic respectability. Even before the report was completed in the fall of 2000, CMIP had studied temporary textbooks introduced by the PA on an experimental basis for the 199899 academic year and presented its findings to a Washington gathering of members of the U.S. Congress and the Clinton administration in September 1998. To American politicians inclined to be reflexively pro-Israeli, CMIP’s summary analysis of the PA curricula struck a chord. Pro-Israeli lawmakers demanded that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright use her good offices to make sure that UNESCO and the World Bank stop funding the publication of textbooks by the PA. The U.S. Congress also demanded that UNRWA stop using these textbooks in UNRWA-run schools. In response, UNRWA made clear that its mandate required it to use books approved by the host country, though it can and will produce enrichment materials focusing on human rights, democracy, peace education, and creative conflict resolution that can supplement existing textbooks.

It added that it would conduct a comprehensive review of textbooks in use and take measures to counteract any racist material that might be found. UNRWA did in fact review textbooks, but limited itself to the old Jordanian and Egyptian textbooks still in use in most grades in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, respectively, and did not review the new textbooks introduced by the PA in 2000-2001.

CMIP claims that UNRWA’s review confirms its own findings of bias and incitement, a specious claim since UNRWA’s findings on the Jordanian and Egyptian textbooks could not, ipso facto, confirm CMIP’s findings on the new Palestinian textbooks.

What is beyond dispute is that the effects of CMIP’s campaign have already been nothing short of disastrous. In December 2000, for example, the Italian government, referring directly to the CMIP study, informed the Palestinians that it could no longer finance the development of the new Palestinian school curriculum.

At the same time, the World Bank notified the PA Ministry of Education that money allocated for the development of school texts and teacher training would have to be diverted to other projects. This rush to judgment led to similar reactions by a number of other donor countries.

Whereas many international leaders and institutions were quick to try and convict the Palestinian textbooks without even bothering to examine them, there have been some more temperate voices within Israel. For example, in the leading Israeli daily, Ha’aretz, Akiva Eldar wrote that “the Palestinians are being rebuked where they should in fact be praised” and went on to quote Ruth Firer, head of a research team from the Truman Institute, as saying:

What textbooks Palestinian students read has become a major theme in the debate on how to end the violence

“We were surprised to find how moderate the anger directed towards Israelis in the Palestinian textbooks is, compared to the Palestinian predicament and suffering. This surprise is doubled when you compare the Palestinian books to Israeli ones from the 1950s and 1960s, which mentioned gentiles (only) in the context of pogroms and the Holocaust.”

Eldar also notes Firer’s finding that the new texts are freer of negative stereotypes than the Jordanian and Egyptian books, and adds that the “defence establishment has investigated and confirmed this finding.”

Firer herself attributes a political motivation to the right-wing researchers at CMIP, saying that they have no educational or methodological skills and only want to prove that it is impossible to achieve peace with the Palestinians.

Examining The Texts The CMIP made two main allegations: (1) that the texts “de-legitimise” Israel; and (2) they rely on old “anti-Semitic” books.

These charges merit serious consideration because they have provoked the strongest attacks.

To American politicians inclined to be reflexively proIsraeli, CMIP’s summary analysis of the PA curricula struck a chord

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De-legitimising Israel

The notion that Israel is a settler colonial entity that forcibly expelled Palestinians and destroyed their villages has been embraced by serious scholars, both Israeli and non-Israeli

According to CMIP: The new PA textbooks continue to promote total delegitimisation of Israel. Israel is mentioned only in contexts that breed contempt, such as having expelled and massacred Palestinians.

Worse still, Israel is grouped in the new PA sixth grade education under the section “colonialism” together with Britain, as the foreign conquerors of “Palestine” in the last century. . . . This contempt expressed for Israeli “settlements” and “occupation” is not directed at the areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but to Israeli “settlements” and “occupation” since 1948. In the PA education Israel’s delegitimisation does not contest the lands under Israeli administration since the 1967 Six-DayWar, but contests the very existence of the State of Israeli itself.

From a reference that follows, it is clear that the CMIP is referring here not only to the new sixth grade textbook, as it states, but more specifically to the section “Problems in Palestinian Society.” Looking at the section in question, one finds at the top of page 16: Let us think about the following and try to answer. 1. We read the title of the map (“Israeli Settlement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip”, on the previous page); 2. We mention some settlements close to where we live; and 3. We try to examine Israel’s purpose in erecting settlements on Palestinian soil.

In the second and lower portion of the page, the text goes on to read: We deduce the following: first, special problems: 1. Colonialism: Palestine was subjected to British occupation after World War I (1917) and Israeli occupation in 1948 with British assistance. The Israeli occupation destroyed most Palestinian towns and villages and expelled the Palestinian inhabitants, forcing them to abandon their land and villages. 2. Settlement: Israel pursued a new policy of settlement during its occupation of Palestinian lands by establishing agricultural, industrial, and residential settlements; 3. The Israeli occupation ignored the social, educational and health needs of the Palestinian people; 4. Israel controls the water aquifers under Palestinian soil; 5. The Palestinian economy is totally dependent on the Israeli economy; and 6. The Judaization of Jerusalem and the erosion of the

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Palestinian identity of its Arab citizens.

The notion that Israel is a settler colonial entity that forcibly expelled Palestinians and destroyed their villages has been embraced by serious scholars, both Israeli and nonIsraeli, and although there is absolutely no mention of massacres anywhere in the textbook, massacres perpetrated by Israeli soldiers during 1948-49, too, are well documented by Israeli and other historians.

As for the charge that the textbook “contests the very existence of the state of Israel” by referring to “settlements” as of 1948, this is sheer falsehood. The map that accompanies the text, entitled “Jewish Settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip”, shows precisely those settlements, and it is clear that all questions about settlements refer to this map. Nowhere in the text is there any mention of settlements within the so-called Green Line.

Still referring to the same sixth grade textbook, the CMIP report states that: “The primary terrorist organization operating against Israel since the signing of the Oslo Accords is the Hamas, whose members terrorized Israeli citizens with suicide attacks, primarily on buses. The terror wing of the group is called the “Az Aldin Al Kassam” (sic) squad, named after the terrorist who fought the British and Jews before the establishment of the State of Israel. The new PA schoolbook glorifies Kassam, including this large picture.”

In this passage, the report implies that the Palestinian textbook mentions Hamas, which in fact it does not. But on p.15 there is a photograph (though a rather small one) of Izzeddin al-Qassam, who was killed in 1935 on the eve of the 1936-39 Rebellion against British colonial rule in Palestine, along with two other illustrations: a photograph of a group of rebels during the rebellion and the aforementioned map of Israeli Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Beneath the illustrations is the following text: “We think of the following and try to answer: 1. We note the name of the country that colonized Palestine between 1917 and 1948; 2. We mention the means used by the Palestinian people to struggle against British colonialism; and 3. We note the name of the Arab leader who died in Ya’bed in 1935 fighting against British colonialism.” It is clear that the CMIP report misleadingly seizes on the mere mention of Qassam (and

only as a martyr in the struggle against British colonialism) and the presentation of his photograph to imply PA endorsement of suicide attacks and bus bombings.

Anti-Semitic Books CMIP’s charge of anti-Semitism rests on one section of the sixth grade textbook: “An old book introduced this year into the PA curriculum is filled with virulent anti-Semitism.

The book entitled “Our Country Palestine”, written by Mustapha al-Deba’a (sic), was published in 1947 and expanded in 1965. With the aim of endearing (sic) “Our Country Palestine” upon the children, the new textbook, “Our Beautiful Language” for sixth grade, devotes three pages to the book (p. 110-112), lauding both the book and its author, proclaiming it a “Great Book” and elevating it and the story of how it was written to the level of Palestinian legend. Moreover, the new PA schoolbook includes the class activity of going to the school or city library for the book.”

The CMIP report then lists examples of anti-Semitism in Our Country, Palestine, including a banner alleged to be on the title page of volume 1: “There is no alternative to destroying Israel” and the page dedication “to those who are battling for the expulsion of the enemy from our land.”

The section that introduces Mustapha Murad al-Dabbagh begins on p.108 of the sixth grade Arabic-language textbook. The facing page shows a pre-1948 photograph of Jaffa. The narrative presents the author as a man who devoted his life to education and knowledge at the service of his people. The text then reproduces an excerpt from the introduction to volume 1, part 1, of the book, published in 1965, in which Dabbagh provides a moving personal account of the fall of Jaffa and the circumstances of his departure. This is the only part of Dabbagh’s work that Palestinian students read, for contrary to the CMIP’s claim, it is not required reading in the PA curriculum. Here is a translation: “I could never have imagined when I wrote the first volume of this book in 1947 that the Nakba would befall us in the following year, uproot the people, and disperse them as storms disperse the sand.

After the Jews occupied the Manshiah Quarter of Jaffa in late April 1948, they began to move in with their everincreasing power on other quarters of

the city. Although our fighters, few in number and poorly ar med, resisted bravely, they were unable to stop them.

The situation then began to deteriorate; water and electricity were cut off, and we began to run out of bread. Finally my cousin, who had rented a small boat in Egypt and brought it to Jaffa to help evacuate his brothers, managed to convince me to go along. I carried only a small briefcase that contained the more than six-thousand-page manuscript of my book on the history and geography of Palestine. This was my only book, my life’s work, on which I spent more than ten years collecting materials, cataloguing them, and then writing.

This is the only part of Dabbagh’s work that Palestinian students read, for contrary to the CMIP’s claim, it is not required reading in the PA curriculum

I found a place on the boat, with my cousin and some friends along with other refugees. The sea was rough and the waves were high as strong wind blew over us and heavy rain began to fall. As the boat began to take on water, the captain shouted instructions that we should reduce the load, otherwise we would surely all drown.

I held on tight to my briefcase but, in the middle of the storm, I was inadvertently shoved by one of the sailors, and it went flying into the sea.

After years of exile and following a period of depression suffered as a result of the Nakba, I decided to return to my book, to put it back together again, to present it to the Arabs in general and the Palestinians in particular so they will recall their lost country and try to recover it. I returned to my book because memories dominate me and compel me, and I cannot do otherwise.

I finished the first volume that describes the geography and history of Palestine from ancient times till the arrival of the Islamic armies. I will pursue my research on other periods of Palestinian history, the geography of villages and towns. I pray that Allah will enable me to accomplish my task.”

‘Our Country, Palestine’ is an encyclopaedic ten-volume work on the Al-Aqsa 9

Branding as “antiSemitic” a work that scholars consider a classic Arab reference on Mandatory Palestine serves the political and ideological agenda of CMIP

Propaganda apparatus has been highly effective, and too few people, especially in American political circles, have questioned the motives for or accuracy of the CMIP report

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history and geography of Palestine.

Comparing its actual contents against the charges stated in the CMIP report, one finds on the title page of volume 1 a banner containing a sura from the Qur’an recalling the Prophet’s night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem. Nowhere does one find, either in volume 1 nor in any of the ten volumes, any banner proclaiming that there is “no alternative to destroying Israel”. Similarly, it could only have been with malicious intent that the CMIP report falsely translates the book’s dedication, which in fact reads, “To those who have struggled to keep Palestine Arab”, as “To those who are battling for the expulsion of the enemy from our land.”

Branding as “anti-Semitic” a work that scholars consider a classic Arab reference on Mandatory Palestine serves the political and ideological agenda of CMIP and the Jewish settler movement, which is to confiscate and settle as much Palestinian land as possible before any final agreement on borders can be reached between Israel and the PA. For the group of right-wing settlers that produced this report, the presence of Palestinians and the prospects of an independent Palestinian state pose a serious threat to their vision of ongoing Zionist settlement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Unfortunately, however, their propaganda apparatus has been highly effective, and too few people, especially in American political circles, have questioned the motives for or accuracy of the CMIP report.

A striking example of this tendency is a June 2001 letter to President George W. Bush, cosigned by Senators Clinton and Schumer, that repeats the false CMIP charge: “A book that is required reading for Palestinian six graders actually starts off stating, ‘There is no alternative to destroying Israel.’”

In all likelihood, Senators Clinton and Schumer received their infor mation not directly from the CMIP report but from a full-page advertisement based on CMIP “findings” that appeared repeatedly in major U.S. and Israeli newspapers throughout November and December 2000 under the large heading “There is no alternative to destroying Israel”. Sponsored by a group called Jews for Truth Now, which soon achieved a prominence that went far beyond the circles reached by the CMIP, the ad repeated some of the allegations disseminated

by CMIP. At all events, the international attention on Palestinian textbooks eventually prompted the PA’s Ministry of Education to respond to the criticisms:

“We have referred to Israel in some of the Palestinian textbooks as the occupier, and this is what Israel in fact is on our land. This is what the United Nations calls Israeli presence on our land in its resolutions. We hope that Israel will end its occupation of our land, and when it does we will stop using this word.”

An Alternate Framing The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as well as the destruction of Palestinian society in 1948 are central to Palestinian collective identity. The problem for the educational system is how to teach these common experiences in a way that satisfies the need to impart factual knowledge without also imparting stereotypes of and prejudices toward the country and people that Palestinians hold responsible for their dispossession. In other words, how can the issue of history texts be framed? What questions should be raised and how should texts be read and evaluated?

The value of the new texts as teaching tools ultimately must be determined by Palestinian teachers, who will mediate these texts to the students. The Qattan Center for Educational Research and Development already has conducted a focus group discussion with history and civics teachers to inquire about their use of the new texts. On the positive side, the teachers say that the new texts try to reflect reality, emphasize tolerance, and provide a student centred approach to learning. On the negative side, teachers complain about the amount of material to be covered especially since only one period a week is allocated to civic education. Others complain that the amount of material forces students to memorize in order to do well on the tawjihi (high school matriculation) exam. Asked “which Palestine” they teach, one teacher said, “I feel it is my duty to explain things in detail.

I talk about the cities that we have recovered and those that are still occupied.

I have to explain what areas A, B, and C are because the students ask numerous questions and they hear about that on the outside. If I do not answer them thoroughly and truthfully, they will lose interest.”

The First Curriculum Plan put forth by the Ministry of Education affirms that while Palestine has a unique history, culturally it belongs to the Islamic and the Arab worlds. It also emphasizes that Palestine cannot be presented as just an ordinary political entity that will have to work out normal relations with its neighbours. It is clear that the Palestinians are more preoccupied with the task of state building and trying to cement a new civic identity than with how to write the history of the conflict with Israel in their textbooks, and one hears few debates about how the history of the conflict should be written.

Yet Palestinian scholars and historians need to engage in critical self-reflection and historical revisionism so as to produce a more accurate history of their society using rigorous standards of historical research based on available archival materials and oral history. By its nature, a revisionist Palestinian history is bound to be oppositional and critical, but the facts as ascertained by objective scholars, including Israeli ones, bear out the Palestinian narrative in its broad lines, so there is no reason not to proceed. Palestinian history as written for school children should not be apologetic, nor should it try to accommodate whatever scripts others may wish to impose for political reasons. Finally, it is essential that Palestinians write their own history, because otherwise those who want to negate their history will write it for them.

Conclusion The claim that the new Palestinian textbooks incite students against Israel has been widely accepted as truth in the United States and Israel. The report on which such claims were based was issued by CMIP, a JewishAmerican organization with known links to the Israeli settlement movement in the West Bank. Yet none of the American politicians who repeated the allegations or the Western donors who hastened to cut off funding for Palestinian textbook development bothered to have the report’s claims checked against the actual texts. If they had, it would immediately have been clear that the report was based on innuendo, exaggeration, and downright lies.

Indeed, the real message of CMIP’s campaign

against the textbooks is that peace with the Palestinians is impossible, that Israeli settlement in the occupied territories must go on, that force is the only language that Palestinians can understand.

In fact, the new Palestinian school textbooks make a special effort to promote tolerance, openness, and democratic values.

The PA Ministry of Education, despite the extraordinary conditions of siege and violence under which it is operating, introduced new textbooks for two more grades in September 2001. The new textbooks, according to those who have seen them, demonstrate the same concern for promoting tolerance, openness, and democratic values. But even if all the grades in Palestinian schools carried absolutely exemplary textbooks, and even if all the teachers preached amity and concord, it is doubtful that such values could take hold in the ever deteriorating conditions of recent years. For ultimately, the Israeli occupation, with its daily cruelty and humiliation, is a far more powerful text than any schoolbooks could ever be. As Sami Adwan remarked, “How can a Palestinian write in a textbook that Israelis or Jews should be loved, while what he is experiencing is death, land expropriation, demolition of homes, and daily degradation?

Give us a chance to teach loving.”

In a forthcoming study, Nadim Rouhana argues that conflict reconciliation, as opposed to conflict resolution or conflict settlement, seeks to achieve a kind of relationship between the parties founded on mutual legitimacy. For this to occur, issues of justice, truth, and historical responsibility as well as the restructuring of social and political relations need to be addressed.

If a Truth and Reconciliation Commission were ever established at the end of the historic Israeli-Palestinian conflict, perhaps a committee of Israeli and Palestinian educators eventually could produce guidelines for new history textbooks that would contribute to the creation of a more peaceful environment in this troubled region.

It is essential that Palestinians write their own history, because otherwise those who want to negate their history will write it for them

Ultimately, the Israeli occupation, with its daily cruelty and humiliation, is a far more powerful text than any schoolbooks could ever be

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Education and Hate Mazin Qumsiyeh*

T

he Human reaction to surroundings, value systems and outlook about others are all shaped by their environment, which fundamentally includes the education systems. Most scientists agree there is very little impact from genetic predisposition and thus a child raised in surroundings of a particular culture and value system is bound to absorb these value systems even if they are not formally taught to do so. Thus, the environment children are raised in is manifestly important to the future of the world they will shape as they grow up.

I have always lamented about what future the Middle East would have had if the early Zionist immigrants were interested in integration and in fostering a human and humane society to challenge both the feudal and paternalistic Palestinian society, and the European Ashkenazi Zionist separatist society; thus molding a combined society avoiding the ills of both and forming a pluralistic society for all its people. I argue in my book “Sharing the Land” of Canaan that this is still the only solution that will bring lasting peace. But given existing reality, we should look at what has happened and why; to address how we may create a new environment of tolerance and coexistence.

Palestinians were mostly fellahin (farmers) living off the land in extended families with cultural and religious values and heritage which evolved over hundreds of years in the land of Canaan. A mixture of values existed, some of which would today be considered negative and some would be highly admired. They include: • strong family ties; in most cases much stronger than ideological affiliations • love of the land (people generally lived for generations in the same area) • a male dominated society (irrespective of religion), hierarchical structures

• deep religious convictions (the three dominant Palestinian religions were Islam, Christianity and Judaism) • great value given to fertility (number of children) • resistance to “the other”” (be it different religion, different tribe, different ethnicity) • emphasis on group rather than individual needs and desires (Arabic culture encourages individualism as long as it is not directed against the religion, the tribe or the “group”).

The environment children are raised in is manifestly important to the future of the world they will shape as they grow up

Of course, history shows us that societies do change and evolve. This change became accelerated in the 20th century in various parts of the world, enhanced by the cross-fertilization of cultures, by ease of communication, and by the technological revolution. The past 54 years certainly brought dramatic changes to the people of Palestine and also to its new inhabitants (Jewish immigrants). Disconnected Jewish societies were brought together in Palestine to make an Israeli society which later evolved into a thriving Western society but with unique Jewish influences. Palestinian society faced a much more complex set of changes and difficulties. In addition to having to face the onslaught of modernization with all its positives and negatives for the society, Palestinians had to cope and respond to being uprooted from their land, exiled, oppressed and vilified by a well organized media campaign. How these societies adapted and responded to the challenges facing them is beyond the scope of this essay. I hope that we understand the misperceptions about how societies educate their children and why.

Much has been said about schools and education in the nascent Palestinian

* MAZIN QUMSIYEH is a self-syndicated columnist and his articles have appeared in media ranging from the San Francisco Chronicle to Boston Globe to Al-Ahram. He was a cofounder of ‘Al-Awda’, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition.

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In Israel the educational system for the most part is segregated into “Arab” (mixed Christian and Muslim) and “Jewish” systems.

These two systems are administered separately

The education system imparts more waroriented values than democratic ideals to Israeli students

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authority areas. Most of the writing on the subject was by well funded (millions of dollars with large staff) Zionist organizations bereft of ideas about how to suppress the truth of their colonial settler onslaught against the natives. Thus, they are merely trying to “score points” and to dehumanize the native Palestinians. In doing so, they hope to show that the reason for the violence (which kills vastly more civilian natives than colonial settler civilians) is not the oppression, dispossession, or occupation but is simply that people are being taught to hate Israelis (or even Jews).

But the facts can be easily determined with close examination of the educational systems.

Background Between 1994-1999, schools for Palestinians in the occupied areas have come gradually under Palestinian control (after being under Jordanian and Israeli control for decades). The curriculum in these schools are still being examined and evolving. Yet, they have been vilified by some Zionist groups established to feed the idea that Palestinians (and even “Arabs and Muslims”) are violent and teach their children violence. The Palestinian educational system is rather a new system and much has been said about it. But let us examine first the much more established Israeli educational system (which now had 54 years to evolve).

In Israel the educational system for the most part is segregated into “Arab” (mixed Christian and Muslim) and “Jewish” systems.

These two systems are administered separately.

Further, the Jewish school systems are divided into state secular and state religious (Orthodox, Tali, Haredi or Ultra-Orthodox). Each separate system receives separate funding.

Segregation into different school systems that are separate and unequal violates Covenant Article 18 (1) and (4) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of the United Nations, to which Israel is a signatory nation. The UN Human Rights Commission emphasized that the convention prohibits discrimination based on religion.

The discrimination extends to higher education with special governmental allocations through the Ministry of Religious Affairs to Jewish religious schools known as Yeshivas. Students in those schools receive living expenses and have no limitations on their years of study. The numbers supported by these programs rose from 50,000 in 1980 to 180,000 in 1997. No similar government programs are available to support either

Muslims or Christians in Israel. For years, the support was also limited to Orthodox communities and has also not been extended to Reform or Conservative higher education institutes. Even when the supreme court ordered funds allocated on nonOrthodox Jewish schools, the Religious Affairs Ministry ignored these rulings.

In an article in Ha’aretz titled “Recruiting in the kindergarten” Orna Coussin reported on a conference examining the militarism prevalent in Israeli schools.

There is nothing out of the ordinary about decisions made by Education Minister Limor Livnat - they ride the wind that has been blowing for years from the Education Ministry. Livnat has done away with a history book suspected of advocating post-Zionist views. She is investing in an alleged new subject - Israeli heritage - and is thus implementing the Shenhar Report that advocated more Jewish studies in schools. She has ordered all schools to fly the national flag.

On the other hand, she is not increasing the budget for civic studies, nor is she implementing the Kremnitzer Report that spoke of the urgent need to expand this curriculum. She is cutting teaching hours from the state curriculum and channeling millions of shekels to schools in the settlements.

All these decisions are merely the natural progression of a long-standing trend - the education system imparts more waroriented values than democratic ideals to Israeli students. Even Livnat’s predecessors - Meretz ministers - did little to change this.

On the opposite side of the same coin, the Hebrew University and the Kibbutz Seminar held a conference on “Militarism and Education - A Critical Perspective.”

Researchers and activists at the conference said not only is there a lack of education toward civic values and democracy, but that schools are actually teaching militarism.

The escalation in the conflict with the Palestinians and the manner in which it is being accepted, almost without objection or resistance by the citizens, is to a large degree a product of education. Education toward militarism is being implemented in a number of ways, says Hagit Gur-Ziv from the Center for Critical Pedagogy at the Kibbutz Seminar.

In the Hebrew edition of Ha’aretz, June 28, 2002, Aviv Lavie reported on the increased military indoctrination at Kindergartens.

“Ms. A watched the teacher parade the children dressed in what seemed like IDF uniform and march them to and fro as they call out “left, right left,” and “attention!” or “at ease!” The military parade was accompanied by children singing at the top of their lungs: “Soldiers of Israel, march on and stay on guard, both day and night.” 1 To be fair, many nations besides Israel and the Palestinians try to inculcate patriotism and militarism in their youngsters. But it is an issue that should worry all human rights advocates especially when this patriotism is about countries with an ethnocentric philosophy that excludes segments of their societies from this patriotism. After all, no one expects Palestinian citizens of Israel to show patriotism to the star of David or to pledge to defend the “Jewish state.” This is especially true when nonJews are being discriminated against in all spheres of life including the educational system. Human Rights Watch reported in November 2001 on Discrimination in the Israeli Education System against non-Jews (“Israeli Arabs”).

“Nearly one in four of Israel’s 1.6 million schoolchildren are educated in a public school system wholly separate from the majority. The children in this parallel school system are Israeli citizens of Palestinian Arab origin. Their schools are a world apart in quality from the public schools serving Israel’s majority Jewish population. Often overcrowded and understaffed, poorly built, badly maintained, or simply unavailable, schools for Palestinian Arab children offer fewer facilities and educational opportunities than are offered

other Israeli children. This report is about Israel’s discrimination against its Palestinian Arab children in guaranteeing the right to education.”

The report’s tables and numbers were expected but were never widely exposed: “10.4% of the Jewish students dropped-out of schools in 1998-1999 by the age of 17, compared with 31.7% of the Arab Palestinian students. 45.6% of all 17 years old Jewish students passed the matriculation examinations (Bagrut) in 1998-1999, while only 27.5% of Arab students passed. Moreover, 88.6% of Jewish students were qualified for university admission, compared with only 66.9% of Arab students. 44.7% of Non-Jewish students who applied to universities were rejected, but only 16.7% of Jewish students were rejected. In 1998-1999, when 94.3% of Jewish students received their first academic degree, only 5.7% of Non-Jewish students received it.”

The Ministry of Education’s commentary was given by Orit Reuvini, spokeswoman of the ministry: “The situation in the Arab education system is a result of policy which was applied over years and it can’t be fixed immediately.”2

Nearly one in four of Israel’s 1.6 million schoolchildren are educated in a public school system wholly separate from the majority. The children in this parallel school system are Israeli citizens of Palestinian Arab origin

Notes 1. Up on the Jungle Gym, Charge!” By Aviv Lavie, Ha’aretz, 6/28/02; http://www.haaretz.co.il/ hasite/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=181315 2. Panorama, December 7. The report can be read at: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/israel2/

Al-Aqsa Editor The Articles published in this journal do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or of Friends of Al-aqsa

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Boycott as Resistance: The Moral Dimension Omar Barghouti*

W

here is the world? Is it dead?” exclaimed the bereaved mother in Rafah on Al-Jazeera. Before her lay the lifeless body of her little child.

Faced with overwhelming Israeli oppression, Palestinians under occupation, in refugee camps and in the heart of Israel’s distinct form of apartheid have increasingly reached out to the world for understanding, for compassion, and, more importantly, for solidarity. Palestinians do not beg for sympathy. We deeply resent patronization, for we are no longer a nation of hapless victims.

We are resisting racial and colonial oppression, aspiring to attain justice and genuine peace.

Above all, we are struggling for the universal principle of equal humanity. But we cannot do it alone. We need international support.

The question of Palestine was created by the world - mostly the western part of it and it is the world that must rise to its moral responsibility to resolve it. The renowned French philosopher Etienne Balibar captures this exceptional feature saying that the Palestinian cause is a “universal” one because “it is a test for the recognition of right, and the implementation of international law.” 1 Indeed, in few other causes in modern history has the fundamental primacy of the rule of law and moral principles been put to such a fatal challenge.

Given its uncontested military superiority, the unquestioning and allembracing support it enjoys from the world’s only empire and the lack of political will by Arab and European states to hold it in check, Israel has been gravely violating international law, with audacious impunity, showing little if any consideration for the UN or world public opinion. Only consistent, systematic and broad international pressures can help end Israel’s oppression and injustice, through ascertaining its status as a pariah state.

This article focuses on the ethical dimension of boycott, a tactic which I regard not only as a justified form of international intervention, but an imperative one as well. More specifically, academic and cultural boycott is examined, due to its evidently controversial nature.

The Palestinian call for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel2 is specifically premised upon Israel’s systematic and ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people which takes three basic forms:

Palestinian cause is a “universal” one because “it is a test for the recognition of right, and the implementation of international law.

First: Israel’s rejection of the Palestinian refugees’ right of return to their lands and properties, as stipulated in international law, and denying any responsibility for the Nakba — the massive dispossession and

* Omar Barghouti is an independent Palestinian political and cultural analyst whose articles have appeared in the Hartford Courant, BalletTanz, Open Democracy, Z Magazine, Counterpunch, Al-Adab (Beirut), AlAhram (Cairo), Daily Star (Beirut), among others. His article “9/11 Putting the Moment on Human Terms” was chosen among the “Best of 2002” by the Guardian. He contributed to the recently published book, “The New Intifada: Resisting Israel’s Apartheid” (Verso Books, 2001). He advocates his ethical vision for a unitary, secular and democratic state in historic Palestine.

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Committed “leftists” often grieve over the loss of Israel’s “moral superiority” after occupying the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, as if prior to that Israel were as civil, legitimate and law-abiding as Finland!

Israeli universities - all government controlled - have not only been complicit in planning, maintaining and furnishing the justification for various aspects of the occupation, but have also directly participated in acts of colonization

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ethnic cleansing campaign carried out by Zionists around 1948, transforming close to 800,000 Palestinians into refugees. A virtual consensus exists among Israelis, including academics and other intellectuals, on rejecting the legally and morally binding rights of Palestinian refugees3.

The most peculiar dimension in the popular and academic Israeli discourses on the creation of the state is substituting the concept of “independence” for colonization and birth for destruction. Even committed “leftists” often grieve over the loss of Israel’s “moral superiority” after occupying the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, as if prior to that Israel were as civil, legitimate and law-abiding as Finland! Ironically, while stubbornly rejecting Palestinian refugee rights, Israeli academics have played a central role in the massive campaigns demanding, and often winning, restitution, repatriation and compensation rights for Jewish refugees of the World War II era.

Second: the military colonization of the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 1967, with all what it entails in land expropriations, house demolitions, indiscriminate killings, and, most ominously, the colonial wall - declared illegal by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in July 2004 - which serves to facilitate Israel’s unremitting land grab and gradual ethnic cleansing of Palestinians4. Israeli universities all government controlled - have not only been complicit in planning, maintaining and furnishing the justification for various aspects of the occupation, but have also directly participated in acts of colonization. Besides the voluminous record of individual acts of collusion by Israeli academics, the academic institutions themselves have never refrained from committing colonial crimes.

The Hebrew University has been slowly but consistently expropriating lands and expelling

their Palestinian owners in occupied East Jerusalem.

Tel Aviv University (TAU) refuses to date to acknowledge the fact that it sits on top of an ethnically cleansed Palestinian village5. Some of TAU’s departments are also organically linked to the military and intelligence establishment.

Bar Ilan University not only operates a campus on the illegal colony of Ariel near Nablus, but has also awarded Ariel Sharon an honorary doctorate for his role in the March 2002 reoccupation of Palestinian cities, which witnessed atrocities in Jenin and Nablus as well as wanton destruction and indiscriminate killings in all the major Palestinian cities and refugee camps in the West Bank.

Ben Gurion University has supported in various ways the slow ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian Bedouins in the Negev or has witnessed in condemning silence the decades-old policy of racial discrimination prevailing there. In one glaring example, its scholars conducted from 1995 to 2000 a confidential study6 commissioned by the Health Ministry on the high incidence rate of severe birth defects and cancer among Palestinian Bedouins living near a polluting Israeli industrial site. Although the researchers established a clear correlation between the industrial pollutants and the mortality rate of the Palestinian citizens in the area - “65% higher than among equivalent communities in Israel” - as well as their cancer rate - “double the national average” - the findings were kept secret in accordance with the academics’ agreement with the ministry. It was only recently leaked to the press, by chance.

Haifa University boasts one of the most racist academics in Israel: Prof. Arnon Sofer, the infamous “prophet of the Arab demographic threat,” who relentlessly and influentially provides academic justification for ethnically cleansing Palestinians including citizens of Israel - in innovative shapes and forms 7 . Moreover, the University has itself sponsored a wide campaign attempting to cover up a Zionist massacre in the Palestinian village of Tantura, near Haifa, during the Nakba, and went through motions to fire, discredit or silence Prof. Ilan Pappe and one of his students for daring to reveal the facts about this massacre.

It is perhaps common knowledge now that the Palestinians have suffered grave human losses due to Israel’s 37-year-old

occupation. But what seems to escape the mainstream opinion makers is that during the current intifada, the Israeli army has crossed many of its former red lines, committing crimes that are reminiscent in form - though certainly not in scale - of Nazi crimes against European Jews, as British MP Oona King had once stated8. And the Israeli army accurately represents and is supported by Israeli society at large, mainly due to the fact that the IDF is still, relatively speaking, a people’s army9.

From forcing a Palestinian violinist to play at a military roadblock near Nablus 10 , to executing a 13-year-old refugee girl in Rafah in cold blood11, to engraving the Star of David on the arms of teenage Palestinian boys, to inscribing ID numbers on the foreheads and forearms of Palestinians, young and old 12, Israel has acted with nauseating criminality and shocking impunity. Despite all this, Israeli academics and intellectuals who have explicitly called for an end to the occupation have remained in a depressingly tiny minority.

Moreover, no Israeli academic body or professional union has to date publicly called for an end to occupation and the other forms of Israeli oppression. If this does not define complicity, what does?

Third: The third form of Israeli oppression is hardly ever mentioned in the western media or in academia: the system of racial discrimination against Palestinian-Arabs13 who are officially “citizens” of Israel, a state which categorically precludes them from its selfdefinition and severely punishes them when they eventually shout “j’accuse!”. The entire

state apparatus, including the education system, is designed to keep PalestinianArab citizens of Israel disempowered, largely dispossessed and lacking equal status in the laws and practices of the state.

Moreover, despite being the natives, the indigenous population of the land, or perhaps because of it, they are increasingly being viewed by the Israeli Jewish settler majority as unwanted, or, worse, as a demographic threat that ought to be dealt with, resolutely. Polls have steadily shown that a solid majority of two thirds of all Israeli Jews supports “encouraging the Arabs to leave” by various means14.

In every vital aspect of life, from land ownership to access to higher education and jobs, Israel has been practicing its own form of apartheid for 56 years. Of all the areas of racial discrimination, education stands out. A ground-breaking Human Rights Watch study published in 2001 concludes: “The hurdles Palestinian Arab students face from kindergarten to university function like a series of sieves with sequentially finer holes. At each stage, the education system filters out a higher proportion of Palestinian Arab students than Jewish students. ... . And Israel’s courts have yet to use ... laws or more general principles of equality to protect Palestinian Arab children from discrimination in education.”15 Despite the above, I agree with those who argue that Israel is not identical to South Africa; that it is more complex, more multi-dimensional and even more sinister, in some respect. But, no matter how we define Israel, the fundamental and undisputed existence in it of a system of racial discrimination based on religious/ ethnic identity is what motivates calls for South Africa-like sanctions against Israel.

“Apartheid,” “Zionist settler-colonialism,”

Israeli army has crossed many of its former red lines, committing crimes that are reminiscent in form - though certainly not in scale - of Nazi crimes against European Jews, as British MP Oona King had once stated

Palestinian Arab students face from kindergarten to university function like a series of sieves with sequentially finer holes. At each stage, the education system filters out a higher proportion of Palestinian Arab students than Jewish students

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It can be concluded that a sufficient family resemblance between Israel and South Africa exists to grant advocating South Africa style remedies

It is better that there be one massive crime, after which we will exit and lock the gate behind us.

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“Jewish supremacy,” ...etc. are all variations on the name of the ailment. What matters is how best to cure it. Taking into consideration all 3 dimensions of Israel’s oppression mentioned above, it can be concluded that a sufficient family resemblance between Israel and South Africa exists to grant advocating South Africa style remedies.

Some distinguished supporters of the Palestinian cause16 have argued against applying South-Africa style sanctions and boycotts to Israel for various reasons, most significant of which are: • The Holocaust’s memory makes calls for boycotting Israel widely detested and prohibitively unpopular - As Etienne Balibar says, “Israel should not be allowed to instrumentalize the genocide of European Jews to put [itself] above the law of nations.”17 Beyond that, by turning a blind eye to Israel’s oppression, as the U.S. and most of official Europe often do, the west has in fact perpetuated the misery, the human suffering and the injustice that have ensued since the Holocaust. Only the oppressed are different now; they are “the victims of the victims,” as Edward Said said.

As for the unpopularity argument, recent breakthroughs in the positions of the US Presbyterian church, the Anglican church and some progressive Jewish-American organizations, not to mention the fast spreading grassroots boycott movement in Europe, indicate that there is an encouragingly growing acceptance of the need to boycott Israel in western countries. Those who were active in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa often remind us that also they faced what seemed like insurmountable hurdles when they first started in the late 1950’s.

• Israel is essentially a democratic country with a vibrant civil society, and therefore it can be convinced to end its oppression without sanctions - How can an ethno-religious supremacy that is also a colonial power ever qualify as a democracy?

Israel may be a democracy for its Jewish citizens, but it is apartheid for its Palestinian citizens, as argued earlier. New York University professor Tony Judt, for instance, calls Israel a “dysfunctional anachronism,” categorizing it among the “belligerently intolerant, faithdriven ethno states.”18 • Unlike in South Africa during apartheid, the majority in Israel is opposed to sanctions - Of all the anti-boycott arguments, this one reflects either surprising naiveté or deliberate intellectual dishonesty. Are we to judge whether to apply sanctions on a colonial power based on the opinion of the majority in the oppressors’

community? Does the oppressed community count at all?

• Israeli academics are largely progressive and at the vanguard of the peace movement, and therefore they must be supported not boycotted This is simply a myth propagated and maintained by Israeli academics who count themselves in the “left.” The vast majority of Israeli academics serves in the army’s reser ve forces, and therefore directly knows of and participates in the daily crimes. Moreover, with the exception of a tiny yet crucial minority, Israeli academics are largely supportive of their state’s oppression or are acquiescently silent about it.

Some infamous cases are worth mentioning here for illumination: Israel’s most celebrated philosopher, Asa Kasher, provided “ethical” justification for extrajudicial killings, even when a large number of innocent civilians are deliberately killed or injured in the process.19 Israel’s foremost military historian, Martin Van Creveld, of Hebrew University, advised the Israeli army in 200220, in the Jerusalem regional weekly, March 1, 2004, to commit swift genocide against the Palestinians, explaining that, “Perhaps 5.000 or 10.000 killed won’t be enough, and then we will have to kill more.” He concludes by saying, “it is better that there be one massive crime, after which we will exit and lock the gate behind us.” Like any proper peacenik, his ultimate objective remains to “exit” the occupied territories.

Benny Morris has recently argued that completely emptying Palestine of its indigenous Arab inhabitants in 1948 might have led to peace in the Middle East21. In response, Baruch Kimmerling, professor at Hebrew University, wrote: “Let me extend Benny Morris’s logic.... If the Nazi programme for the final solution of the Jewish problem had been complete, for sure there would be peace today in Palestine.”22 Far from being isolated examples, such explicitly racist and criminal positions are quite popular in Israel today. They are not only condoned in universities, but highly praised, judging from the prominent stature enjoyed by Kasher, Van Creveld, Morris and their ilk.

From a slightly different perspective, some academics have argued that boycotting Israel is counterproductive and may lead to:

• Losing the ability to influence Israel’s possible path to peace - What influence? Europe hardly has any right now. Even in the U.S., the Israeliziation of US foreign policy, particularly regarding the middle east, has reached new depths, effectively tying the hands of any prospective American pressure aimed at curtailing, not to mention changing, Israel’s oppressive policies. On the rare occasions when Israel did at all contemplate changing its policies, it was mainly due to facing concerted pressures by the international community.

• Radicalizing the Israeli right and pulling the rug from under the feet of the left - What left? Those in Israel who officially call themselves “the left”, the Zionist left, more accurately, easily make the far-right parties in Europe look as moral as Mother Teresa, especially when it comes to recognizing Palestinian refugees’ rights. On the other hand, the morally consistent, non-Zionist left, is a very tiny group, whose members may inadvertently end up losing benefits, privileges and funding as a result of boycott. This should compel us to nuance our boycott tactics to decrease the possibility of that unnecessarily happening. But, we all know, this is not an exact science (if any science is). Rather than focusing on the error margin, we must emphasize the positive impact boycott can have on the overall academic establishment in Israel. The price that some conscientious academics may pay as an unavoidable byproduct of the boycott is quite cheap when compared to the price Palestinian academics, and indeed Palestinians at large, have to pay for the lack of boycott or any similarly effective pressures on Israel. The most urgent type of support the international community can provide to the Palestinian academy is to adopt various forms of boycott against Israel’s academic institutions, forcing them to disengage themselves from their direct and/or indirect collusion in their state’s oppression. This will serve not only the Palestinians, but also, in the longer term, the moral left in Israel, academics included.

Challenging the fanatic, militaristic establishment may strengthen its grip on power in the short run - extreme populism and the rise of fascist tendencies in Israel today attest to that; but in the longer run it will weaken that establishment, just as in South Africa. Repression under apartheid did not die down in a smooth downwards spiral, after all.

• Indirectly increasing the suffering of Palestinians who stand to lose financially and may even be subjected to deteriorating conditions of oppression by a wilder, more isolated Israel - More suffocation? Even

South Africa’s leading human rights advocate, archbishop Desmond Tutu, horrified by the elaborate, multi-layered siege Israel has set up in the occupied Palestinian territories 23 , drew many similarities between Israel and apartheid South Africa, calling for boycotts against the former similar to those applied on the latter24.

Some sincere advocates of Palestinian rights have argued that boycotting Israel is a self-righteous act that ignores the pressing need to alleviate the immediate suffering of Palestinians under occupation. But, as I have argued elsewhere25, regardless of all intentions, this type of logic is not only patronizing, claiming to better know what’s best for Palestinians, but also based on an unconscious premise that Palestinians have somewhat less than normal human needs.

Implied in it is the supposition that food, shelter and basic services, which would be better ser ved without boycott, the argument claims, are considered by Palestinians to be more profound or dear than their need for freedom, justice, selfdetermination, dignified living and the opportunity to develop culturally, economically and socially in peace.

From an entirely different angle, some argue that, in spite of all the above, it is still necessary for Palestinian academics and intellectuals of all people to maintain and foster open communication channels with their Israeli counterparts, to debate, to share, to convince, to learn, to overcome the “psychological barriers” and ultimately to reach a common vision and a common struggle for peace.

I beg to differ. Those who imagine they can wish away the conflict by suggesting some forums for rapprochement, detente, or “dialogue”, which they hope can lead to authentic processes of reconciliation and eventually peace, are either clinically delusional or dangerously deceptive.

First, given the financial luring and political arm-twisting that typically come as part of the package of western “suggestions” for collaboration, the latter are more often than not perceived as right out dictates.

Second, any sincere joint projects aimed at reaching a just peace must be fundamentally based on rejection of all oppression and recognition of equal humanity. Prior to establishing equal humanity any communication is strictly an exercise in asymmetrical negotiations

The Zionist left, more accurately, easily make the far-right parties in Europe look as moral as Mother Teresa

The price that some conscientious academics may pay as an unavoidable byproduct of the boycott is quite cheap when compared to the price Palestinian academics, and indeed Palestinians at large, have to pay for the lack of boycott

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Action is needed to translate the formal commitment into a process for change and ethical transformation

between oppressor and oppressed. Only after equality is established can such communication rise to the level of dialogue. The mutual recognition of equal humanity is therefore a fundamental precondition for, never a consequence of dialogue. As the late Edward Said used to say: “Equality or nothing!”

Third, if a member of the oppressors’ community theoretically accepts, on principle, the requirements for justice without acting to attain them, while simultaneously enjoying the benefits brought about by occupation, racial discrimination and the illegal use of Palestinian refugees’ properties, then he/she would still be indirectly responsible, and ethically accountable for the injustice his/her state is committing. Reflection without action cannot suffice to exonerate a member of an oppressive group. Action is needed to translate the formal commitment into a process for change and ethical transformation.

Israelis who always ask the Palestinians for a political price to be paid in advance in return for their “noble” recognition of a meager subset of Palestinian rights are not really seeking justice or a moral end to the conflict.

Some shamelessly seek European funds; others do it for prestige or fame; and some even participate in this typical colonial behavior as a form of taming the Palestinian shrew, or inhibiting resistance to oppression.

Striving for peace divorced from justice is as good as institutionalizing injustice, or making the oppressed submit to the overwhelming force of the oppressor and accept inequality as fate.

Those who attempt to change the perception of the oppressed rather than help end oppression itself are guilty of moral blindness and political short-sightedness.

Prolonging oppression is not only unethical, it is also pragmatically counter-productive as it perpetuates the conflict.

Striving for peace divorced from justice is as good as institutionalizing injustice

In conclusion, I wish to emphasize the necessity of applying an evolving, com22 Al-Aqsa

prehensive, institutional boycott against Israel’s academic, cultural, economic and political organizations. Without principled and effective support for this minimal, nonviolent form of resistance to oppression, intellectuals and academics will be abandoning their moral obligation to stand up for rights, for justice, for equality and for a chance to establish the primacy of universal ethical principles.

Notes 1. Etienne Balibar, A Complex Urgent Universal Political Cause, Address before the conference of Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace (FFIPP), Universite Libre de Bruxelles, July 3rd and 4th.

2. The Palestinian call for boycott, issued by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), and supported by close to 60 of the most important professional, educational and cultural unions and organizations in the occupied Palestinian territories, can be read at: right2edu.birzeit.edu/ news/article178 3. “The Palestinian leadership would be well advised to take very seriously the united front in Israel that opposes a right of return,” read the lead editorial in Ha’aretz, August 18, 2003.

4. According to peace activists Gadi Algazi and Azmi Bdeir: “Transfer [Israeli euphemism for ethnic cleansing—OB] isn’t necessarily a dramatic moment, a moment when people are expelled and flee their towns or villages. It is not necessarily a planned and well-organized move with buses and trucks loaded with people ... .

Transfer is a deeper process, a creeping process that is hidden from view. ... The main component of the process is the gradual undermining of the infrastructure of the civilian Palestinian population’s lives in the territories: its continuing strangulation under closures and sieges that prevent people from getting to work or school, from receiving medical services, and from allowing the passage of water trucks and ambulances, which sends the Palestinians back to the age of donkey and cart. Taken together, these measures undermine the hold of the Palestinian population on its land.” Cited in: Ran HaCohen, Ethnic Cleansing: Past, Present, and Future, www.Antiwar.com, December 30, 2002.

5. The Palestinian village’s name is Sheikh Muwannis 6. Ran Reznick, Ramat Hovav has double number of birth defects and cancer, Ha’aretz, June 1, 2004.

7. One example is the “Mitzpim Project,” supervised by Sofer, which calls for the “conquest” of areas populated by PalestinianArabs inside via Jews-only settlements and roads. haaretz.com/hasen/spages/481680.html 8. Following a visit to the completely fenced Gaza Strip, Oona King, a Jewish member of the British parliament commented on the irony that Israeli Jews face today, saying: “...in escaping the ashes of the Holocaust, they have incarcerated another people in a hell similar in its nature - though not its extent - to the Warsaw ghetto.” Israel Can

Halt This Now, The Guardian, June 12, 2003. guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,975423,00.html 9. According to surveys of Jewish-Israeli views on conscription, the primary factor indicating support for the continuation of the “people’s army” heritage, a solid majority favours it. For example, refer to the authoritative April 2001 Peace Index poll conducted

by Tel Aviv University at: tau.ac.il/peace/Peace_Index/ 2001/English/p_april_01_e.html 10. Chris McGreal, Israel Shocked by image of soldiers forcing violinist to play at roadblock, The Guardian, November 29, 2004. guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/ 0,2763,1361755,00.html 11. Amos Harel, Absolutely Illegal, Ha’aretz, 23/11/ 2004. haaretz.com/hasen/spages/504878.html 12. Serge Schmemann, At Least 17 Are Killed in Israeli Raid at Palestinian Camp in Gaza, New York Times, 12/3/2002.

13. According to Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, “Although the Palestinian citizens of the State of Israel represent approximately 20% of its population, this community suffers from institutionalized discrimination that produces severe socio-economic gaps between the Jewish majority and the Arab minority. No significant investments are made to eliminate these gaps. On the contrary, the Arab population continues to suffer from under-budgeting and discrimination in many areas including employment, education, property and planning policies, and health care services.” phr.org.il/Phr/ Pages/PhrArticle_Unit.asp?Cat=37&Pcat=4 14. Yulie Khromchenco , Poll: 64% of Israeli Jews support encouraging Arabs to leave, Ha’aretz, June 22, 2004.

15. Human Rights Watch, Second Class: Discrimination Against Palestinian Arab Children in Israel’s Schools,

September 2001. hrw.org/reports/2001/israel2 16. Noam Chomsky, for instance, describes sanctions as “probably harmful and at best pointless,” arguing that, “In the current real-world circumstances, a call for sanctions, even if it were justified, would be greatly welcomed by the right wing extremists and hard-liners, because they could easily convert it into another ‘proof ’ that everyone wants to kill the Jews and so we must rise to the support of embattled Israel to prevent another Holocaust.” ZNet, May 31, 2004. http://blog.zmag.org/ttt/archives/ 000492.html 17. Etienne Balibar, ibid.

18. Tony Judt, Israel: The Alternative, New York Review of Books, Vol. 50, #16, October 23, 2003. nybooks.com/articles/16671 19. Reuven Pedatzur, The Israeli army’s house philosopher, Ha’aretz, February 24, 2004.

20. Ran Hacohen, Against Negotiations, Antiwar.com, March 28, 2002. antiwar.com/ hacohen/h032802.html 21. Benny Morris, A new exodus for the Middle East, The Guardian, October 3, 2002. guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/ 0,10551,803417,00.html 22. Baruch Kimmerling, False logic, The Guardian, October 5, 2002. guardian.co.uk/letters/story/ 0,3604,805123,00.html 23. Desmond Tutu, Apartheid in the Holy Land, The Guardian, April 29, 2002. guardian.co.uk/ israel/comment/0,10551,706911,00.html 24. Desmond Tutu, Of Occupation and Apartheid Do I Divest?, CounterPunch, October 17, 2002.

25. Desmond Tutu, Of Occupation and Apartheid Do I Divest?, CounterPunch, October 17, 2002.

Books Available For Review 1.

Suicide Bombers Allah’s New Martyrs, by Farhad Khosrokhavar

2.

The Palestine-Israel Conflict - A Basic Introduction, by G. Harms,et al.

3.

Pilgrims and Peacemakers, Garth Hewitt

Interested individuals contact Friends of Al-Aqsa

Al-Aqsa 23

24 Al-Aqsa

Don’t say you didn’t know about: the Arab Citizens of Israel Richard Kuper* Israel prides itself on being ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’. Israel’s declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948 said that the state of Israel ‘will promote the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; will be based on the precepts of liberty, justice and peace taught by the Hebrew Prophets; will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex’.

The United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 of 29 November 1947, on which the legitimacy of the state of Israel is founded, declared “All persons within the jurisdiction of the State shall be entitled to equal protection of the laws.” Article 26 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 1966, and ratified by Israel states: “All Persons are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection of the law. In this respect the law shall prohibit any discrimination and guarantee to all persons equal and effective protection against discrimination on any grounds such as race, colour, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”

After the 1948 war about 130,000 Arabs remained within the newly created Israel’s borders. In accordance with UN Resolution 181 they became Israeli citizens. They and their descendants today number around 1,050,000 citizens. How are they treated? The evidence shows that Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel are systematically discriminated against in every aspect of life, from housing to education, from health to the right to work. Some people go so far as to say that within the Green Line Israel operates apartheid-like policies.

There is an unresolved and perhaps irresolvable tension between Israel as a Jewish state and Israel as a democratic state in which all citizens are equal. Can Israel live up to the terms of its own Declaration of Independence?

Each year the US government publishes Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. The report published in February 2004 states: ‘The [Israeli] Government did little to reduce institutional, legal, and societal discrimination against the country’s Arab citizens, who constituted approximately 20 percent of the population but did not share fully the rights and benefits provided to, and obligations imposed on, the country’s Jewish citizens.’

Evidence shows that Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel are systematically discriminated against in every aspect of life.

Discrimination against Arabs citizens of Israel: There is direct discrimination arising from the fact that Israel sees itself both as a democratic state and as a Jewish state. It has no clear idea as to how to reconcile these two aims.

At the same time, many criteria for receiving benefits or privileges discriminate against Arab citizens, and this is reinforced by a deep-seated anti-Arab racism that prevails in large sections of Israeli society.

Examples of Direct Discrimination * There is no Constitutional Equality: Israel hasn’t got a written constitution, and, although it has passed a set of ‘Basic Laws’, these do not include the right to equality. In practice the emphasis on the Jewish nature of the state compromises the equal rights protection for the Palestinian Arab minority. * Political Participation is unequal: The 1992 ‘Basic Law: The Knesset’ stops participation in the elections if a platform implies the

* Text drafted 13th May 2004 by Richard Kuper. Fact Sheet provided by Jews for Justice For Palestinians www.jfjfp.org Al-Aqsa 25

A party platform calling for full and complete equality between Jews and Arabs in a state for all its citizens can and has been disqualified.

“denial of the existence of the state of Israel as the state of the Jewish people”. So a party platform calling for full and complete equality between Jews and Arabs in a state for all its citizens can and has been disqualified. In no other democratic state in the world could a party calling for equality for all be disenfranchised. * Citizenship Rights are unequal: The Law of Return grants every Jew the right to immigrate to Israel. And any Jew who does so (and their spouses, children and grandchildren) is automatically given citizenship. Palestinian Arabs can only get citizenship by birth, residence or naturalisation (after meeting many stringent conditions). * Jewish Organisations have a special constitutional status: The Jewish National Fund, Jewish Agency, and World Zionist Organisation are Jewish organisations whose aim is explicitly to benefit Jews only. Yet they have responsibility for certain governmental functions, particularly land development and housing. They get tax benefits and are involved in a lot of governmental decision-making.

Palestinian Arab citizens are entirely excluded as either participants or beneficiaries.

Examples of Indirect Discrimination

Even wealthy Arab citizens can’t avoid the problem easily by moving to a better area for they are effectively prevented from living in the vast majority of the country.

* Budgets and Resource Allocation is unequal: What budgets and social support a community receives depends to a large extent on the system of zoning. This is the division of the country into different areas (e.g. national development areas) with different statuses and benefits for different towns. It is a practice that is used to exclude the vast majority of Palestinian Arab citizens from large amounts of funding.

In the 1998 classification, only 4 out of 429 localities with Development Area A status and financial privileges were Arab. Even wealthy Arab citizens can’t avoid the problem easily by moving to a better area for they are effectively prevented from living in the vast majority of the country. Palestinian Arab areas receive substantially less funding for local government (usually only half as much), welfare, school facilities or other education programmes. Often this discrepancy has been justified by the government running projects in cooperation with the Jewish Agency, which requires Jewish-only beneficiaries. * Military Service confers wide social and economic privileges: Doing military service is a condition for obtaining many benefits in Israel.

26 Al-Aqsa

Technically compulsory for all citizens, the vast majority (90%) of Palestinian Arabs are not required to serve, whereas the majority of Jews do.

Thus, Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel don’t receive a wide range of benefits, including larger mortgages, partial exemptions from course fees, and preferences for public employment and housing. Jewish Yeshiva students, who don’t do military service, are still given the benefits, Palestinian Arab citizens aren’t.

Until 1997 even the level of state child benefits was based on military service, rather than on need.

In 2003 the Israel Land Administration was offering 90% subsidy to discharged soldiers to lease land in the Galilee or the Negev, something that in the words of ACRI ‘represents in real terms the severe discrimination of the Arab sector that does not serve in the army or the national service program.’ * The law is implemented unevenly (a) The state is supposed to enforce or provide facilities by law, but fails to do so for its Arab citizens e.g. the truant officers and counsellors provided for under the Compulsory Education Law (despite the fact that Arab students form 75% of those who drop out of school). (b) Some laws that apply to all in principle are selectively implemented to the detriment of Palestinian Arabs, such as granting building permits (or demolishing houses built without permission). (c) Arab citizens are often barely represented in decision-making authorities, which facilitates this discrimination in implementation.

The extent of discrimination

• Local government expenditure for Arab citizens was only 58% per head of what it was for Jewish citizens in 1997.

• 5.7% of Jews were living in overcrowded conditions compared with 31.6% of Arabs in 1997 • 16% of Jewish families were below the poverty line in 1996 compared with 28.3% of Arab families • 95% of Jewish schools had psychological ser vices in 1996, compared with only 33% of Arab schools (and Arab classes were about 15% larger than Jewish classes)

Discrimination against Arab citizens in the civil service is particularly blatant. As reported in 2000, they constitute 18.6% of the total population but only the following percentages of employees in various ministries taken at random: Ministry Environment Health Labour Agriculture & rural development Construction & housing Communication & media

Percentages 2.5 6.3 4.8 4.2 1.0 0.0

citizens in Israel in solidarity with the second intifada that had just broken out. Those two weeks saw 13 Israeli citizens shot dead, citizens who happened to be Arab. A commission of enquiry (only the fifth in Israel’s history) was appointed to investigate and three years later finally reported.

Its findings were unequivocal and chilling:

• “The state and its various govern-

•

• State-owned companies play an important role in Israel’s economy and one would expect them to be a symbol of good practice and non-discrimination. Yet in 1998 the National Electric Company had only six Arabs among its 13,000 employees. Not surprisingly, then, the private sector exhibits gross discrimination as well. In 1998 over half the private industrial companies in Israel did not have a single Arab employee.

•

• Racism in Israeli society This situation prevails because of deepseated anti-Arab racism in Israeli society, racism that is not confined to employment. In 1994, one-third of Israeli youth said they were racist or hated Arabs; two-thirds said they are against giving Arab citizens equal rights, and this while the optimism about Oslo was at its peak1.

There is no law against racism and remarks from the highest level, like that of Finance Minster, Binyamin Netanyahu, in December 2003 in which he referred to the Israeli Arab population as a “demographic problem” are not uncommon. They legitimate a racist atmosphere that pervades Israeli society.

It is important to note that some steps have been taken to remedy the situation e.g. to ensure fair Arab representation on the boards of state-owned companies and that organisations like the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) campaign ceaselessly on the legal front. But in the face of a racism that emanates from the heart of government little progress is made.

The massacres of October 2000 In the first half of October 2000 there were numerous demonstration by Arab

ments failed in dealing with ... the problems of a large minority within the Jewish majority”; “The government treatment of the Arab sector was characterized by prejudice and neglect”; “The events were the results of deep-seated factors which created the combustible atmosphere among the Israeli Arabs”; “The state had failed to “budget resources on an equal basis to the (Arab) sector (and) ... did not do enough to promote equality in the Arab sector and did not act to uproot the phenomenon of discrimination.”

“The report found that Israeli police used excessive force: “It is important that it be pointed out in a completely non-ambiguous way that the use of live fire, including live fire by snipers, is not a means of dispersing large crowds by police.”

The Report made strong recommendations for the state authorities to ensure the legitimate right of Arab population to be treated as equal citizens, and for an immediate and fundamental change in the attitude of all sections of the police force towards the Israeli Arab population. It is also the case that the report criticised some Arab leaders for having inflamed the general situation before the clashes but no sanctions were recommended against them.

Attacks on family life In 2003 the Law of Citizenship and Entry into Israel was amended to prevent the naturalization of Palestinian spouses of Israeli citizens. Previously there was an already five-year naturalisation process where both the authenticity of the marriage was confirmed and there was vetting for any potential security danger. But this

In 1998 over half the private industrial companies in Israel did not have a single Arab employee.

There is no law against racism and remarks from the highest level, like that of Finance Minster, Binyamin Netanyahu, in December 2003 in which he referred to the Israeli Arab population as a “demographic problem” are not uncommon.

Al-Aqsa 27

In 1948, the Palestinian Arab community owned and used most of the land within the area that became the state of Israel.

Today it owns less than 3% of these lands.

28 Al-Aqsa

process, however restrictive, applied equally to all foreign-born spouses of Israeli citizens.

Now the law has been made discriminatory.

All applications in the pipeline were frozen.

Hundreds of families will either have to leave Israel or face being broken up. This has no security justification.

In ACRI’s words: ‘This legislation is immoral and racist as it discriminates on the basis of national origin…[It] casts a collective suspicion over an entire sector of Israeli society and prevents them from exercising their basic human rights.’

The case of Land and Expropriation In 1948, the Palestinian Arab community owned and used most of the land within the area that became the state of Israel. Today it owns less than 3% of these lands. Arab lands have been expropriated outright or Arab citizens have been put under extreme pressure to sell in a process that has been described as Judaisation. Some thirty-six different laws and regulations have facilitated this, some from the British mandate period, for example: The mandate Land (Acquisition for Public Pur poses) Ordinance (1943) authorises the government to confiscate land for public purposes with minimal compensation and 40% of the owner’s land can be confiscated without compensation. In practice, ‘public’ purposes have usually been Jewish purposes: e.g. from 1200 dunams confiscated in Nazareth for public purposes, 80 dunams were used for public buildings and the rest for Jewish housing.

The mandate Defence (Emergency) Regulation 125 (1945) allows military commanders to simply declare areas “closed” and to prevent anyone from entering or leaving them without special permission. This regulation has been used to evacuate areas, and on occasion entire villages. No compensation is ever offered.

The Agricultural Settlement (Restrictions on the Use of Agricultural Land and Water) Law (1967) prevents Jewish leaseholders of state lands from subleasing them to Palestinian Arabs.

Most shockingly, under the Absentee Property Law (1950) the state took control of all property, including land, abandoned by people who left their homes in the war. Those Arabs who became citizens of Israel and who attempted to return to their homes after the ceasefire were generally not exempt. Such people are known, in Orwellian fashion, as “present absentees.” In general, there is no appeal.

State lands in Palestinian Arab areas are often forcibly protected to prevent their

former owners continuing to use them by fencing, afforestation (much of it paid for by the JNF) and in particular though a brutal military “environmental” unit, the socalled ‘Green Patrol’, used particularly against the Bedouin. Where Arab citizens have housing, they are often subject to forced evictions by the Catch 22 of the system. Houses built outside the planning framework or without the appropriate permit are subject to demolition. Yet planning laws are enforced unequally and in practice Arab citizens can find it almost impossible to get such planning permission in the first place. Illegal building is often tolerated in Jewish communities but is harshly punished among Arab communities. In 1996 Arab construction accounted for 57% of unlicensed building, but for 90% of all demolitions.

Settling Public Lands The state has long maintained a policy of continually establishing new settlements for Jews only (often to act as wedges among concentrations of Palestinian Arab communities e.g. in the Galilee). This activity is coordinated principally by the Jewish Agency, rather than by the government. The settlements are established for Jews only (even when they are on public land) and Palestinian Arab citizens are not allowed to move there.

Public land is administered by the Israel Land Authority (ILA). As a public body it has a legal obligation not to discriminate against citizens, yet ILA limits the land available for development for the benefit of the Palestinian Arab community in many ways, for example by: a.

Use of the Jewish National Fund Jews in the diaspora, who have traditionally collected funds for the JNF, have little idea as to how it is used to discriminate against Arab Israelis. For instance, land adjacent to Palestinian Arab communities is transferred to JNF ownership and then, by the Fund’s constitution, can only be used by Jews.

In 2000 in the Ka’adan case, for the very first time the Supreme Court ruled that the Zionist state could not discriminate between Palestinians and Jews in the allocation of land within Israel, whether the agency involved was the Israel Lands Administration (ILA) or the Jewish Agency (JA).

Despite this ruling, the Ka’adans have still not been able to build the home they first planned in 1995. Bureaucratic procedures have been used to block its implementation of the court’s decision. As ACRI put it in a press release in 2003: ‘State Agencies openly and intentionally violate Supreme Court ruling’. b.

Limiting jurisdiction by 1. Creating regional councils in Arab areas on which Jews predominate 2. Restricting the size of Arab towns or areas unreasonably

e.g. Nazareth has been limited to 14,200 dunams for 60,000 people, while the nearby Jewish town of Nazerat Illit has 34,000 dunams for 45,000 people - and a significant proportion of that land was originally Nazareth land. c.

Zoning Land zoning, already mentioned as a way of sharing money out unfairly, is also used to prevent Palestinian Arab communities from expanding by limiting the land that can be built on, or even by denying some communities’ right to exist, as in the case of the unrecognised villages (see below). Re-zoning of land for Arab development is virtually unknown. d.

Military Service The price at which state lands may be leased varies according to whether the lessee has performed military service or not – and the vast majority of Arab citizens have not.

The Arab Bedouin – A Peculiarly Harsh Case of Discrimination The Arab Bedouin are the indigenous inhabitants of the Negev. They make up about 12% of the Palestinian Arab minority in Israel.

Half live in the poorest recognised localities in Israel, the other half lives in villages unrecognised by the state.

Unrecognised villages Over 100 Palestinian Arab villages in Israel are not recognised officially and not shown on any map. Over 70,000 Palestinian Arab citizens live in these villages threatened with destruction and prevented from development or even from repairing existing homes or building new ones. They are denied all forms of basic services and infrastructure - such as drinking water and health clinics- and are unable to build or develop their communities in any way.

Despite the fact that most of the “unrecognised villages” existed before the

establishment of Israel, state policy considers their inhabitants as lawbreakers.

It prevents them from repairing existing homes or building new ones; withholds basic rights, such as drinking water and health clinics; and in certain cases even fences off whole villages and makes their traditional lands available for settlement programmes for Jews only.

Sedentarisation The policy pursued toward the Bedouin from the mid 1960s has been one of ‘sedentarisation’, with the aims of:

• concentrating the population; and • creating a cheap source of wage labour for the Jewish economy.

Under the British mandate the Bedouin used 12,600,000 dunams in the Negev.

Today they have less than one-fiftieth of that - and are struggling to avoid eviction from these remaining 240,000 dunams.

It prevents them from repairing existing homes or building new ones; withholds basic rights, such as drinking water and health clinics; and in certain cases even fences off whole villages and makes their traditional lands available for settlement programmes for Jews only.

Legal expropriation The Land Acquisition (Validation of Acts and Compensation) Law (1953) stated that land not in the possession of its owner in April 1952 could be registered as state property. Yet at that time most Bedouin had been rounded up and kept in an enclosure zone.

The Land Rights Settlement Ordinance (1969) classified all mawat (literally dead) lands as state property, unless a formal legal title could be produced. Bedouin generally did not have (and had never needed) such formal title. The courts sometimes accepted that Bedouin had been living in the areas they claimed, but refused to recognise Bedouin tents as constituting settlements in terms of the law.

The Negev Land Acquisition (Peace Treaty with Egypt) Law (1980) facilitated large-scale confiscation orders of Bedouin lands to build military bases and an airport in the wake of the peace treaty with Egypt. No appeal against the confiscation was allowed.

The compensation offered was between 2%-15% of the amounts given to Jewish settlers who relocated from Sinai.

House Demolitions Just over half of the Bedouin living outside the townships live in unrecognised villages. These get no funds whatsoever for Al-Aqsa 29

infrastructure or development and under the Law of Planning and Construction (1965) their houses can be demolished. There are currently around 22,000 unrecognised houses in the Negev.

From 1948 steps have been taken to break the Bedouin’ ties to the land and destroy their traditional lifestyle.

Denial of Traditional Employment Before 1948, ninety per cent of the Bedouin in the Negev earned their living from agriculture and raising livestock. From 1948 steps have been taken to break the Bedouin’ ties to the land and destroy their traditional lifestyle. In particular, access to land and water has been restricted as has the size of Bedouin flocks. More recently the Green Patrol, an ‘environmental’ paramilitary unit, established by Ariel Sharon, has been used to pull down Bedouin tents, seize flocks, and destroy crops planted without the appropriate permit. During its first 3 years, Bedouin flocks were reduced by almost two-thirds, from 220,000 to 80,000.

Denial of Services

– Some examples from the late nineties: – 23% teaching staff in Bedouin schools ere unqualified (1998) – 57% of Bedouin students dropped out of school before 12th grade (1997) – Only 9.6% of Bedouin students passed their Bagrut school matriculation exams (1998) – Three out of ten Bedouin women receive no pre-natal care (1998) Conclusion The struggle of the Bedouin is in a class of its own. It is as though the government has declared war on tribal and nomadic ways of life simply because they are ‘disapproved of ’. The right of indigenous peoples to preservation of their ways of their traditional ways of living is recognised worldwide. Not, it must be said, in Israel.

Notes

– The Bedouin community is given substandard education and health care:

1. (FIDH, 16)

Information on Palestine

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32 Al-Aqsa

Education as a Tool of Expulsion from the Unrecognized Villages Professor Ismael Abu-Saad*

T

he Bedouin community in the Negev is part of the Arab Palestinian minority that remained in Israel after the war of 1948. The Arab Bedouin have lived in the Negev since the fifth century BCE. They have traditionally been a nomadic, or partially nomadic, people, subsisting by grazing their flocks and working in traditional kinds of farming. It is estimated that prior to 1948, 65,000 to 90,000 Arab Bedouin lived in the Negev1. During and following the 1948 war, many Bedouin were expelled from the Negev, and became refugees in neighboring Arab countries. In 1952, only 11,000 Bedouin were living in the Negev2. The State of Israel took control of most of the land in the Negev, and the Arab Bedouin living there lost their freedom to move from place to place with their flocks and to work their land. Israel forced the Arab Bedouin to live on infertile and far off land, so that they would not obstruct the rapid settlement of Jews in the Negev. In effect, the Arab Bedouin population was concentrated in an area that was referred to as the “reservation,” in the northeastern section of the Negev, which constituted only ten percent of the land that the Bedouin had controlled prior to 1948. This article deals with the urbanization of the Arab Bedouin and the use of education as a tool to expel them from the unrecognized villages.

Urbanization of the Arab Bedouin in the Negev In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the government initiated a program to resettle the Arab Bedouin population in the Negev in seven permanent urban settlements – Tel Sheva, Rahat, ‘Arora, Kseiffe, Segev Shalom, Hura, and Lagiya – without giving any consideration to their traditional way of life, and without involving them in choosing the kind of communities being built. This

urbanization process has been problematic. The urbanization process has been forced on the Arab Bedouin. The urbanization plans were ostensibly intended to create the conditions necessary to provide basic services for the Arab Bedouin population. However, the real objective was to concentrate them in urban communities and prevent them from working, settling, and claiming ownership over their land, which Israel had confiscated. That is, the Arab Bedouin were dispossessed of their property and separated from the land that served as their source of livelihood. The policy of Israel’s various governments regarding the Arab Bedouin in the Negev has been based on their mass and systematic transfer to towns and the registration of their lands as state land. This policy is part of a national vision of a Zionist home - the Negev is seen as being empty (a “state without a people”) that has to be revived.

At the same time, Israel portrays Arab Bedouin life as a failed culture about to disappear from the world’s stage3.

The provision of ser vices such as schools, community medical clinics, running-water networks, paved roads, and telephone connections were used to draw the Arab Bedouin into the towns built by the government. Most of the unrecognized towns and villages are denied these services.

As a result of the urbanization plans, and the loss of their traditional livelihood, the Bedouin sought new areas of employment, for which they had neither the know-how nor the expertise to enable them to succeed. They became town employees and increasingly dependent on Israeli jobs to earn a living. Indeed, the dream of the policymakers and decision makers was realized: the Arab Bedouin no longer live off their land, and have become an urban

the Arab Bedouin population was concentrated in an area that was referred to as the “reservation,” in the northeastern section of the Negev, which constituted only ten percent of the land that the Bedouin had controlled prior to 1948.

* PROFESSOR ISMAEL ABU-SAAD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Education at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. This text is a summary of remarks delivered at Adalah’s conference, held on 6 December 2004 in Beer el-Sabe (Beer Sheva).

Al-Aqsa 33

people. The Bedouin “phenomenon” is gradually becoming extinct.

As Moshe Dayan pointed out:

The Bedouin “phenomenon” is gradually becoming extinct

Unlike neighboring communities in which Jewish citizens live, the Bedouin towns have no sources of employment within them and no economic infrastructure or public transportation system

34 Al-Aqsa

“We should transform the Bedouins into an urban proletariat – in industry, services, construction, and agriculture.

88% of the Israeli population are not farmers; let the Bedouins be like them.

Indeed, this will be a radical move which means that the Bedouin would not live on his land with his herds, but would become an urban person who comes home in the afternoon and puts his slippers on. His children would be accustomed to a father who wears trousers, does not carry a Shabaria [the traditional Bedouin knife] and does not search for vermin in public. The children would go to school with their hair properly combed. This would be a revolution, but it may be fixed within two generations. Without coercion but with governmental direction ... this phenomenon of the Bedouins will disappear”.4 The seven urban towns that the government established without involving the Arab Bedouin in the process were bound to fail. High rates of unemployment prevail, services provided to the residents are poor, and government allocations are meager. Unlike neighboring communities in which Jewish citizens live, the Bedouin towns have no sources of employment within them and no economic infrastructure or public transportation system, intra- or inter-city, to facilitate access to work in other cities. Further, these seven towns do not have banks, post offices, sewage systems, public libraries, or places for entertainment or cultural activities (except in the largest town, Rahat, with its 40,000 residents, which has one bank and one post office).

Despite the government’s declared objective “to improve and modernize” the lives of Arab Bedouin in the Negev by resettling them, they nevertheless find themselves at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder in Israel. The following table compares the seven permanent Bedouin communities in the Negev with Beer Sheva and other nearby Jewish communities. The seven Bedouin towns are among the eight lowest-ranked local authorities in Israel. Rahat, the largest town, is ranked second to last. Many of the nearby Jewish communities, on the other hand, such as Omer, Meytar, and Lehavim, are ranked among the highest. Beer

Sheva is ranked in 115th place, slightly above the middle of the list. Dimona, one of the poorest development towns in Israel, is ranked lower than Beer Sheva.

Arad, one of the more “successful” development towns, is ranked slightly higher than Beer Sheva.

Socio-Economic Rankings of Bedouin and Jewish Local Authorities in the Negev Rank Rank Bedouin Local Authorities

Kseiffe Rahat Tel Sheva Segev Shalom ‘Arora Hura Lagiya

1 2 3 4 5 7 8

Jewish Local Authorities

Beer Sheva Dimona Arad Meytar Lehavim Omer

115 82 119 201 205 209

Note: The table ranks 210 local authorities, the lowest ranking being 1. Source: Israel Statistical Yearbook, 2002.

Unrecognized Villages Since the beginning of the government’s plan to urbanize the Bedouin, only some fifty percent of the Bedouin in the Negev – from a total number of 150,000 individuals – have moved into the urban settlements. The remaining half of the Bedouin population (75,000) continues to live in unrecognized villages. Most of them continue to live on their land, and have not been uprooted by the Israeli government because their lands are located within the reservation set aside for the Bedouin in the 1950s.

The government of Israel continues to put heavy pressure on the inhabitants of the unrecognized villages to move to the urban Arab Bedouin towns established in accordance with the government plan. Ben David and Shahar, journalists with Ma’ariv, reported on the policy being formulated by the present government to demolish

buildings belonging to the Arab minority, and the Arab Bedouin in particular: At a meeting of the Ministerial Committee on the Non-Jewish Sector, held in Nov, 04, the Prime Minister [Ariel Sharon] stated that, “We are losing the land on which we are not settling.” Sharon slammed his hand down on the table and demanded that the ministers accelerate the handling of illegal construction in the Arab sector. Following this demand, ministers Olmert and Hanegbi met and decided to establish an administrative body to execute the orders to demolish illegal structures in the Arab sector. The administrative body will be charged with handling three areas in which the illegal construction and building violations are especially common: in Bedouin villages in the Negev, in Arab villages in the Galilee, and [Arab villages] in the Triangle …

Senior officials pointed out that, “every new structure built in the Arab sector will be demolished immediately. Later on, hundreds of other structures that were built illegally on state land will be demolished5.

The unrecognized villages lack public services, such as an educational framework for preschool children, elementary and high schools, paved roads, public transportation, electricity, in many cases running water, garbage collection and disposal, telephone connections and community medical facilities. Also, government agencies refuse to allow Arab Bedouin living in the unrecognized villages to build any permanent structures whatsoever. All residences, except for tents, are illegal. Persons who build are heavily fined and the structures are demolished. From 1992-1998, Israel demolished 1,298 structures and imposed fines totaling NIS 869,850 (approximately US $220,000) for building these “illegal” structures 6. The destruction has increased substantially over the last two years, with more than 200 houses being demolished and some 29,700 dunams of wheat and barley destroyed by chemicals7.

Despite these actions and the pressure placed on them, the Arab Bedouin are determined to stay on their lands to prevent its physical seizure and confiscation through the legal system. Most of them are at least partially dependent on their traditional sources of livelihood – raising animals, working the land, and processing animal products to supplement their income or as their basic source of income – but the government also places restrictions on these activities.

Government inspectors carefully monitor the size of the herds and the grazing areas, and a special police unit regularly patrols the area and seizes sheep and goats.

Temporary Schools – Using Education as a Tool for Expulsion Sixteen elementary schools presently serve 45 unrecognized villages in which some 75,000 Arab Bedouin live. The unrecognized villages still do not have a single high school. High school students from the unrecognized villages go to high schools in the permanent Bedouin towns.

The state considers the schools set up in the unrecognized villages as “temporary” because it has a plan to move their residents into the urban Bedouin towns. Therefore, these “temporary” schools (which, as noted, do not go past the eighth grade) are located in tin, wooden, or cement structures, with insufficient classrooms, laboratories, offices, and accessory rooms.

In general, these structures are not connected to running water or the electricity grid, even though some of them lie near to water pipes and electric power lines.

Extensions are rarely added to the schools, and maintenance is poor. Not being connected to the electricity grid, the schools are poorly equipped, and have no audiovisual equipment, computers, laboratories, or sports equipment.

Schools in the unrecognized villages are under the supervision of the Bedouin Education Authority, which was established by the Ministry of Education and Culture in 1981. The head of the authority is a Jewish individual, who represents the interests of the ministry more than the interests of the population he should be serving. This situation results, in part, from the government’s policy to compel the Arab Bedouin to move to the permanent communities. Although the government is charged, by statute, with providing an education to Arab Bedouin children, it acts in a contrary manner, and exploits the educational system as a means of exerting pressure on the Arab Bedouin in order to concentrate them in the seven permanent towns.

The value of state education for Arab Bedouin in the Negev, as well as its ability to survive, is questionable. Educating children, particularly Arab Bedouin children, is greatly affected by policy considerations that are deemed more important than providing the wide breadth of knowledge and expertise of the kind they need to succeed on socio-economic terms in Israeli society, and in an economy that is becoming increasingly global in

Senior officials pointed out that, “every new structure built in the Arab sector will be demolished immediately.

Sixteen elementary schools presently serve 45 unrecognized villages in which some 75,000 Arab Bedouin live. The unrecognized villages still do not have a single high school.

Al-Aqsa 35

scope. The Israeli educational system treats Arab Bedouin as outsiders. Therefore, the educational services provided are few.

Education can offer Arab Bedouin a chance to advance and acclimatize to modernization, and to integrate into Israeli society. However, the educational system has failed to develop, and Arab Bedouin children in the Negev find themselves at the bottom rung of the educational ladder. They have the highest dropout rate in the country (37%) and the lowest success rate on the Bagrut exams (26%)8.

In summary, since the establishment of the state, governmental policy toward Arab Bedouin in the Negev has been characterized in large part by oppression in all areas of life, and particularly in for mal education.

Government officials have used the education system as a means of control to force Arab Bedouin living in the unrecognized villages to move to the failed permanent towns set up for them. This policy is aimed at gaining control over the Arab Bedouin in the education, social, and political spheres, and thus, creating a submissive minority willing to accept its inferiority in the face of the Jewish majority, and at legitimizing the state’s Zionist ideology.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

Notes 1. Falah, G. (1989), Israel State Policy towards Bedouin Sedentarization in the Negev.

36 Al-Aqsa

Journal of Palestine Studies, 18 (2), pp. 7190; Maddrell, P. (1990), The Beduin of the Negev. Minority Rights Group Report No. 81 Marx, E. (1967), The Bedouin of the Negev.

Manchester: Manchester University Press; Falah, 1989 (ibid); Masalha, N. (1997), A Land without a People: Israel, Transfer and the Palestinians, Faber and Faber: London.

Shamir, R. (1996), Suspended in Space: Bedouins under the Law of Israel. Law and SocietyReview, 30 (2), 231-257.

Moshe Dayan, Ha’aretz, 31 July 1963 Ma’ariv, 29 September 2003 Statistical Yearbook of the Negev Bedouin (1999), The Center for Bedouin Studies and Development and The Negev Center for Regional Development, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva.

Ginsburg, M. (2003, Sep. 8), “A Beduin Powder Keg in the Negev.” The Jerusalem Report, pp. 10-16; Ibrahim, T, (2004). By All Means Possible: Destruction by the State of Crops of BedouinCitizens in the Naqab (Negev) by Aerial Spraying with Chemicals.

Arab Association for Human Rights, Nazareth, Israel.

Ministry of Education and Culture (2004), Matriculation Examination Data for 2003. Ministry of Education and Culture, Jerusalem.

B O O K R EV I EW

We are one? Jewish Identity in the United States and Israel

BY JEROLD S. AUERBACH, New Jersey, Rutgers University Press, 2001, ISBN 0813529174, Pp248

The noted American Jewish historian Jerold S. Auerbach is a professor of history at Wellesley College, Boston, Massachusetts and the author of a number of books in the field of law and Judaic history. He has been a Guggenheim fellow, Fulbright lecturer at Tel Aviv University, Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School as well as having other fellowships to his credit. All these accomplishments do not add up to the haphazard and indeed disregarding way in which the author has treated the ‘other’ side of the Israeli-Palestinian issue, while writing from a Jewish perspective.

While the book’s professed purpose is to analyse Jewish identity in the US and Israel, the Author deviates from the confines of the title to ring a stern indictment on Jewish Israelis, the vast majority of whom the Author feels have deviated from the Zionist precepts of their ‘forefathers’ to travel down the more comfortable ‘secular’ American-model road. With Prof. Auerbach’s praise for the ultra-Zionist settlers of Hebron ringing in the ears, one cannot help but feel that there is a certain amount of hypocrisy on the part of the Author who in spite of such whole-hearted admiration, refuses to himself become part of the mentioned settler group.

It is after all easy to criticise another country and situation from the comfortable and safe confines of ‘America across the oceans’. The Author’s preference for Hebraic and ultra-Zionist terminology is quite evident in this work in which the West Bank is repeatedly referred to as Judea and Samaria. The implications for this book

as well as the Author lie in the fact that we have to deal with a man who, if he had his own untrammelled way, would consign all the millions of Palestinians living in ‘Judea’ and ‘Samaria’ as well as Gaza to eternal exile. In spite of this, the clear and pleasant flow of the Author’s prose as well as the cadence of the Author’s deeply held, if some-what questionable historical convictions must be acknowledged and respected. He is obviously a historical writer of the first water.

In the introduction to this book, the Author takes us on a journey of self- discovery, whereby he tries to discover for himself, his own identity as an American Jew. He relates how as a ‘fully assimilated’ Jew in America, his whole sense of consciousness underwent a change after his first visit to Israel. He became judaised in the full meaning of the term. However Auerbach is worried about the present ‘state’ of the State of Israel as well as of the Zionist endeavour as a whole. He fears the ‘Americanization of Israel’ and feels that Israelis in their quest to be a normal nation, like any other, have gone too far down the path that for centuries was feared by Jews world-wide, namely assimilation. And he ends the chapter with the opinion that it might no longer be possible for the Jewish people, especially Western Jewry including Israelis to undo the compromises of the last two centuries, since Jewish emancipation after the French revolution, and go ‘back to the sources of Jewish historical distinctiveness’ (p.26).

After preparing the way with a rather negative analysis of the prospects of Jewish revivalism in the near future, the Author goes on to make a historical survey of all the opposition to the Herzl inspired secularist Zionist ideology during the last hundred years. Interestingly, he starts the chapter with a study of the Prophet Jeremiah’s analogy on the state of the Jew in exile. Jeremiah asked the Babylonian Jews in exile to be loyal to the new state in which they now found themselves and to adjust to the culture of the land (Jeremiah. 29:5-8, p.28). Auerbach compares the antiZionists who opposed Herzl’s doctrine of Jewish Nationalism and counselled state loyalty, to the Prophet Jeremiah. For Orthodox Jews, the actions of Herzl and his fellow Zionists constituted heresy as there was simply no divine sanction in Jewish scriptures for such a move.

The second chapter is devoted to a study of American Zionism and the issues confronting American Jews in their quest to integrate American values with Zionism.

He devotes a good part of the chapter to a study of the three main individuals that influenced American Zionism: Louis D. Brandeis, Judah L. Magnes and Henrietta Szold.

These three people epitomised three separate attitudes towards the question of American Zionism. For Brandeis, Zionism and Americanism complemented each other. The Author quotes a so-called Brandeisian Al-Aqsa 37

statement, “To be good Americans, we must be better Jews, and to be better Jews, we must become Zionists.”(p. 54). For Magnes on the other hand, Zionism was the alternative to Diaspora assimilation or in this case, Americanization. For him, “Americanization means ...dejudaization.” (p. 58). Interestingly Magnes was one of the few ‘Zionists’ that advocated a bi-national ArabJewish state. Henrietta Szold was to the Zionists of that time, what a radical humanist is for us today. She was the founder of the Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem.

Auerbach in his third chapter tries to analyse the attitudinal development in American Jewry vis-à-vis the new state of Israel. He traces this from the period of Ben-Gurion in 1949 right up to Barak in 1999.

Interspersed between this are descriptions of ‘Marjorie Morningstar’ and ‘Exodus’, two Jewish classic films of the 1950s that revealed the new Jewish self-confidence with life in America as well as the state of Israel. He dwells on the Begin-Shamir era and the tensions that riveted American Jewish society as a result of the policies of these two men and their later fellow ‘liqudian,’ Binyamin Netanyahu. Auerbach concludes that for inter-Jewish relations between America and Israel to be smooth, there should be no tension between the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Israel, and this can be possible only if the Labour party is ruling in Israel.

The Author cannot hide his pleasure with the events post 1967 when Israel ‘was suddenly and euphorically reunited with the biblical homeland of the Jewish people, from Shechem to Hebron, from Jericho to Jerusalem.’(p.

97). It is from this section that the Author persistently uses biblical terminology to describe the ‘Occupied Territories’ revealing his support for the annexation of these territories as a part of ‘Eretz Israel’. Auerbach goes on to talk of the crisis of identity faced by American Jews in the 1970s and 1980s as they had to choose between American Liberalism and ‘Liqud’ Zionism. This in turn led to questions of loyalty (and disloyalty) as the Jonathan Pollard issue as well as the 1991 Loan Guarantee imbroglio strained Jewish relations with the American State. Finally the rise of Rabin and the Oslo peace process plus his assassination followed by the arrival of Barak in his new avatar of ‘finishing’ the so-called ‘peace-process’ started by the Rabin-Peres-Arafat conglomerate, all helped to reassure American Jews that Israel was still on the ‘safe’ path of ‘liberal’ politics which alone would ensure the unqualified support of America for the Jewish State.

Auerbach’s fourth chapter narrates the clash between Orthodox Judaism and Zionist ideals. He describes in some detail the openly racist attitude of the Zionist elite towards the so-called Judaic or Shtetl (Ghetto) Jews of Eastern Europe and the Middle East. For the Author, these attitudes were natural given the clash between the self-reliant culture of the Sabra’s (native-born Israelis), in comparison to the Diaspora Jews. He very controversially states that the Palestinians have actually gained from their contact with the Zionists. Palestinian Nationalism has, to quote the Author, ‘faithfully mimicked the very Zionism that it so fervently despises, with its claim of biblical 38 Al-Aqsa

antecedents to its language of ingathering of the exiles and its obsession with Jerusalem.’ (p.115). Auerbach concludes the chapter with a study of the famous Israeli poet and Zionist critic Amos Oz and his deep yearnings for a humanistic Judaism. The Author is critical of people like Oz as he is critical of Israelis who condemn the socalled ‘new Zionist’ settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, people who he feels are trying to pull modern Zionism away from its alliance with Western secular modernity towards ‘an older, deeper Jewish synthesis of religion and nationalism.’(p. 140). Instead, the Author satirically marks out Israel’s future, sans the religious Zionists and so-called ‘Judean’ settlers, as an emerging American cultural outpost in the Middle East. (p. 115).

Chapter Five is dedicated to the story of the return of the Jewish people to their so-called ancestral homeland in the West bank. In particular, Auerbach has detailed the story of the return to Hebron and to the ‘Tombs of the Patriarchs’ (Machpelah) by a group of fanatical Zionist settlers. The Author cannot hide his whole-hearted support for these people who he views as being actively engaged in translating historic Zionist ideals into practise in a very (in his view) hostile environment. He refers to the full support that the Israeli ruling establishment of that time, which included figures like Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, Rabin, Allon as well as Moshe Dayan, gave to the Hebron settlers. This stands in opposition to his repeatedly stated notion that the Israeli Zionist elite did all it could to stymie the growth of the Hebron Jews.

One cannot fail to notice the intensely biased nature of the Author’s world vision as he describes the dangers faced by the settlers in Hebron just like a sequence from the early American ‘civilised’ pioneer versus barbarian Native American story. His accounts of purported Palestinian atrocities against the Hebron settlers have been heavily blown up as is his description of a ‘helpless’ Israeli Army (IDF) that just stood by watching while the ‘Arabs’ committed their atrocities.(p.162). Auerbach ends the chapter with mention of the ‘revolt of the Maccabees,’ ancient Judaism’s last revolt against the Hellenistic-Roman world and warns that Zionism’s greatest threat is the ‘allure of foreign culture’.

Chapter Six is the definitional chapter in this book where the Author analyses what to him is an issue of abiding exasperation, namely the aversion of secular Zionist Israelis towards religious Jews. He goes on to compare Jerusalem and Tel Aviv as cities in Zionist consciousness and mentions the aversion that the early Zionist leaders had towards Jerusalem. He refers to the so-called ‘Bar Kokhba syndrome’ which the Israeli Left often uses to describe the danger posed by mixing up religious nationalism with Zionist ideology and Israeli politics. Give his own political leanings; the author is understandably critical of the revisionist left with Israeli historiography, men like Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappe.

Chapter Six is the definitional chapter in this book where the Author analyses what to him is an issue of abiding exasperation, namely the aversion of secular Zionist Israelis towards religious Jews. He goes on to

compare Jerusalem and Tel Aviv as cities in Zionist consciousness and mentions the aversion that the early Zionist leaders had towards Jerusalem. He refers to the so-called ‘Bar Kokhba syndrome’ which the Israeli Left often uses to describe the danger posed by mixing up religious nationalism with Zionist ideology and Israeli politics. Give his own political leanings; the author is understandably critical of the revisionist left with Israeli historiography, men like Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappe.

He makes a highly questionable declaration when he states that ‘the policy of transferring Arabs by force was not the explicit goal of any Zionists, except for fringe groups on the radical right. (p. 178). Given the quite open declarations of a whole range of Zionist leaders starting with Theodore Herzl and ending Yitzhak Rabin, one finds it extremely hard to give credence to statements of this sort, especially when not backed by any form of circumstantial evidence. Auerbach then proceeds to take us through the entire period of Rabin and Peres, postIntifada, and then Oslo and again back to Hebron and the infamous Baruch Goldstein massacre of unarmed Palestinians praying at the Ibrahimiya Mosque in 1994. He ‘sadly’ concludes his chapter with the observation that while it took nearly two centuries of ‘emancipation’ to destroy Jewish life in the West, Israel had accomplished the process in the first fifty years after the birth of the state. (p.200).

In his concluding chapter, the Author bemoans the almost total descent of Israelis into Diaspora assimilation.

He is astonished by the hatred evidently visible in Israel (at least, in his eyes) for Orthodox Jews and all things, Zionist or Jewish including off course the West Bank and Gaza settlers. He quotes recent Jewish history starting from Oslo to prove that while Israel has been ready to make every possible surrender for the sake of peace, what he refers to as the ‘ineradicable tribal animosity between Moslem and Jew gave the lie to any delusions of peace’.(p.214). The Author concludes the chapter and his book with a revised return to Herzl’s prophetic book ‘Altneuland’ in which he predicted that the state of Israel would be formed by the middle of the twentieth century. Auerbach sets the scene for Altneuland in 2023 CE when the Holy Land has considerably altered in a fictionalised context. Thus the former state of Israel is now known as Palisdan, a confederation of Palestine, Israel and Jordan. In this hypothetical new state, the Palestinian refugees have been allowed to return and the status of Jerusalem has changed to that of an international peace city. There are very few real Jews left in the state, most have assimilated and become indistinguishable from the gentiles. The Author has raised this analogy to help illustrate his thesis and indeed the main message of the book, that modern secular Zionists seem to be headed down the seemingly irreversible path of assimilation, a situation that Jews seemed to have been better able to protect themselves against in their two thousand years in exile, than in their brief fifty years of existence as a sovereign nation.

University of Exeter

Samuel Jacob Kuruvilla

The Myths of Zionism

BY JOHN ROSE, Pluto Press (2004), ISBN 0745320554, 248pp, £14.99

I

lan Pappe, Professor of Middle East History at the University of Haifa, has quoted that the Myths of Zionism by John Rose is “an impressive work of deconstruction with many crucial insights.” Rose controversially taps into the historical, political and cultural sources of the Zionist narrative to silence the surrogates of Zionism by stating facts opposing the myths that have been used to justify the existence of Zionism, to the misery of the Palestinian people.

In the first chapter he challenges David Ben Gurion’s biblical claims for the mandate to Israel by unravelling recent Israeli archaeological conclusions. Rose demonstrates that Ben Gurion was far from being religious, but he knew that by using biblical records he would be able to convince the people that the once ‘great’ state of Israel can be resurrected. Rose uses sound academic arguments to undermine Ben Gurion and show him as a man who used religion to turn a nationalistic movement into a religious cause. Use of religion as a mistress of secular ideas is aptly demonstrated.

Chapter two challenges the term “exile” and Rose explains that until the advent of Zionism, Jewish thinkers did not wholeheartedly see themselves or their people as being in exile. It was only Zionism which created the myth that the Jewish people were in exile, and Zionism would return them back to their promised land. Rose articulates that the term “exile” is a myth and an insult to the Jewish people.

Chapter three challenges pre-modern Europe and the anti-Semitism that was used against the Jews. Rose acknowledge that the Jewish people faced great antiSemitism throughout Europe, but he uses texts of that era to link anti-Semitism to economic grievances rather than just religious hatred. He uses Jewish characters like Al-Aqsa 39

Shakespeare’s Shylock to highlight the basis of premodern European anti-Semitism. He propounded that jealousy of Jewish bankers, Jewish businessmen and Jewish money lenders was the cause, rather than theological grievances that had been espoused by Zionist thinkers in the early 20th Century.

Chapter four, a brilliant read, for those who want evidence to show that the Arab people were not antiSemitic in the way that they have been portrayed by the Zionist mythmakers. Rose uses the greatest orienatalist of them all, Bernard Lewis who surprisingly comes to the defence of Arab’s by stating that there was a “symbiosis of Arabs and Jews, and there was a high degree of co-operation that is comparatively rare in the history of the Jewish Diaspora.” Rose uses historical stories of Jewish bankers openly working in Arab cities, and Jewish scholars travelling widely for knowledge. This was in a stark contrast with Europe where livelihoods and knowledge were curtailed on the Jewish masses by their European masters. Rose evidences that it was the rise of Zionism which changed the Judeo-Arab relations, not the claim by Zionist mythmakers of centuries of animosities amongst both people.

Chapter five tackles the first half of the famous Zionist myth of “a land without a people”. Rose starts off with excerpts from the 2nd Zionist Congress, in which it was presented that a population of 650,000 Arabs were residing on the most fertile land of Palestine. However, Zionist history repeatedly mentions the rubble and infertile ‘barren land’ which early Jewish settlers irrigated and created plantations upon. Yet even within Zionist literature; hidden away in some Israeli library, a very different picture is painted. Ahad Ha-am, a revisionist Zionist visited Palestine in 1891 and found it difficult to find fields that were not sown by Arab peasants. Rose also uses late 19th Century Arab literature which was recently collated by Beshara Doumani in “Rediscovering Palestine” to destroy the Zionist myth of a “land without a people”.

Chapter six covers the second part of the Zionist myth “the people without a land”. The 19th Century wave of political change in Eastern Europe and in particular the rise of Socialism was advocated by many Jewish thinkers and had a great impact on East European Jews.

Zionism constantly uses the Dreyfuss affair in France and the anxiety amongst European Jewry, but it refuses to acknowledge that Zionism was scorned upon by the vast majority of European Jews as a heretical ideology which stood against the Talmudic beliefs. Rose cites a great deal of literature to show how the Dreyfuss Affair was overused by Herzl, and that Herzl, an atheist himself, used Zionism not to protect the Jewish faith, but to be used more as a nationalistic ideology in an era of European right-wing Nationalism.

Chapter Seven is the first of three chapters where Rose clearly highlights the true ugly face of Zionism.

Rose uses Zionist literature prior to 1914 to show the consensual Zionist ideology that if any Jewish homeland were to be created then support and sustainability of the Jewish homeland can only be in place if the Great Power 40 Al-Aqsa

of the day can offer the patronage. It was widely believed that if Zionism could serve the interests of the Great Power, then they would protect the causes of Zionism.

From 1914 to 1948 Britain had served that interest and after 1948 it was the USA who took over that role.

In 1915 during WWI, Britain had a cabinet of Jew haters and anti-Semites. Yet the same cabinet issued the Balfour Declaration which gave British support to a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Rose uses historical facts to show that Zionism served the interests of naked imperial ambition together with anti-Semitic undercurrents.

Zionism was not the light for all Jews as Ben Gurion proposed, but it was used to satisfy the needs of the Great Power of the time - wartime imperial Britain. Herzl has been taken as the father of Zionism, however, Rose uncovers that Zionists do not refer to his real views. In chapter seven, Rose highlights the quote from Herzl that “Anti Semites will become our loyal friends and that antiSemitic nations will become our allies”. This quote clearly attacks the Zionist myth that Zionism was a light for the world Jewry; demonstrating to any reader that Zionism has been created to serve the Great Power rather than the Jews it professes to protect.

In chapter eight, Rose critically appraises the Zionist response to the Holocaust and how it was used to justify the State of Israel. Zionism was strengthened because of the Holocaust, yet Rose uses many examples to show how the Zionist leadership turned a blind eye to Jewish sufferings under Nazi occupation. In 1938 Ben Gurion was furious at American plans to absorb all Jewish refugees in Western Europe or America. In 1943 he opposed British plans to allow Jewish migration to Britain. Ben Gurion believed that the destiny of Israel was far greater to preserve than Jewish lives during WWII. In this chapter Rose uses academic and military discourse to show how Zionist leaders had used their influence to ensure that how the Holocaust once it became a reality, would serve the interests of a future Israeli State.

Chapter nine strengthens the myth that Israel is a Great Power protégé. Since 1948, Israel has been a watchdog for the USA, and this position was firmly embedded after the USA witnessed Israel’s single handed conduct during the 1967 Six Day war. The USA then embarked on a mission to ensure that Israel would remain the regional superpower in the Middle East, to further US interests. The myth that Israel is supported because of democracy and the rule of law is exposed as a lie, and Rose suggests that the USA has courted the Israeli’s on the premise of serving the interests of Washington.

This places a different light on the US backed peace initiatives, which Rose suggests were aimed simply at strengthening the hand of Israel over her Arab neighbours. Rose uses the work of Israeli thinker Shlaim to conclude that the Israeli-Palestinian peace initiatives created by the USA were intended “to repackage rather than end Israel’s military occupation.” Zionism would not allow a creation of a Palestinian State as it would mean an end of the Zionist project.

Chapter nine exemplifies how the USA has constantly used its influence to protect its interest in the state of Israel, seen with crystal clarity in the present day Bush administration. In 1996 a document titled “A Clean Break” articulated that Israel should disband Oslo and return to land grabbing while democracy should be extended to the Middle East, together with the removal of Saddam Hussain. In 2005, it seems that this document has proven its worth, yet the authors who wrote this were not Israeli academic, but academics based in Washington. Both authors, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, were key players in the first Bush Administration. A clear example used

by Rose to show how a Great Power has used Zionism to ensure that its interests have been served.

Chapter Ten portrays how Zionism and Western Imperialism have divided the Jewish and Arab populations and soured relations leading to the emergence of anti-Semitism and anti-Arabism. Chapter ten is an extension of chapter four, and portrays how Zionists have used the myth of the great Arab hatred of Israel and eschewed it into anti-Semitism. Based on Colonial documents, such as the writings of British Commissioner Sir Neville Henderson, Britain during the 1920’s systematically issued Jewish control on Arab lands. Similarly during the 1950’s the Americans and British were supporting insurgencies in Iraq and Israel was pressuring them both to urge the Iraqi’s into replacing the Palestinians with Iraqi Jews. Yet the Iraqi Jews, who for centuries were living in Baghdad, defiantly refused to be pawns for the Zionist agenda, and ended up being turned on by their fellow Iraqi’s when British “intelligence” suggested that Iraqi Jews themselves were financing the insurgency in Baghdad. Rose clearly shows that Zionism was, and is, being used to serve the interests of the Great Powers, while Israel which claims itself to be a Jewish state, is merely a Western created atheist ideology shrouded in the name of religion John Rose did not intend to rewrite Zionist history with this book but rather intended to demolish the myths spun by Zionists. In his book, Rose adopts the position that if peace and reconciliation are to take place in the land of Palestine, then the intellectual dishonesty that has been created to justify the claim of Zionism has to be addressed. John Rose has engineered much academic debate by destroying Zionist claims to the State of Israel.

He has used literature, historical documents and religious texts to unravel Zionism, and in an era of heightened academic discourse, The Myths of Zionism is a much welcome addition that will defy any pro-Israeli inquisition seeking to silent legitimate criticism. An academic once quoted that “a myth is no less than a truth than history, but it is an additional truth that makes its way slowly as a historical truth”. This book has ensured that the myths of Zionism will always remain myths, and identified the real source of Israeli supremacy in the Middle East - Great Power patronage and false claims on Jewish religion and history.

London

Isaac Hasanovich

Disenchantment: The Guardian and Israel

BY DAPHNA BARAM, Politico’s Publishing, 2004 (hard back), ISBN 1842751190 Pp296, £17.99

“[

A

newspaper] reflects and it influences the life of whole community; it may affect even wider destinies. It is, in its way, an instrument of government. It plays on the minds and consciences of men. It may educate, stimulate, assist, or it may do the opposite.” CP Scott, Editor of the Manchester Guardian, May 5th 1921.

It is a little known fact that the newspaper now known as the Guardian helped set in motion the chain of events that led to the formation of the modern state of Israel.

This may shock most readers of the renowned liberal broadsheet – it even surprised the author when she first came across the information in a meeting with the paper’s current editor, Alan Rusbridger. He apparently “assumed that every Israeli knew that [CP] Scott was the person that Zionists are indebted for the Balfour Declaration”.

Daphna Baram is a journalist from Jerusalem who was previously a human rights lawyer. Since 2002 she has been researching the Guardian’s coverage of her home state of Israel and this has culminated in the publication of Disenchantment which traces and explores the history of the newspaper’s links with the Jewish nation.

At times the book can read like a record of past IsraeliArab conflicts as reported by the Guardian. But the most interesting parts are the accounts of the internal workings of the paper, the efforts exerted by previous staff members to support a Jewish homeland in Palestine and the present problems the newspaper is having with allegations of anti-semitism.

The first chapter, “Making Righteousness Readable”, successfully gives a brief overview of the Guardian from Al-Aqsa 41

its inception in 1821 as a radical Mancunian weekly to its contemporary position with a website boasting approximately 6 million hits a month – many originating in America. It is from the second chapter onwards that we start to understand how the newspaper has had such a profound impact on Middle Eastern affairs.

The author begins with 1872 when at the age of 25, Charles Prestwich Scott became editor of the daily Manchester Guardian. Between 1895 and 1905 he stood as a Liberal MP thus holding “a position that gained him invaluable political influence and connections for years to come”. At a charity party in autumn 1914, CP Scott met a Russian-born Jew undertaking scientific research at Manchester University. The latter was heavily involved in the movement for a Jewish home in Palestine and Scott was “intrigued by his Zionist ideas and the zeal with which he expressed them”. The two men struck up a prolific relationship which would prove to be politically advantageous for the Zionist as it eventually facilitated the establishment of the Israeli state. The name of CP Scott’s new friend was Chaim Weizmann and he went on to become the first President of Israel in 1948.

The story elaborates on how Scott “placed all his impressive political contacts at Weizmann’s disposal” and in December 1914 introduced him to David Lloyd George, the Manchester-born Welsh Liberal who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lloyd George was impressed by Weizmann and suggested that he speak with the former Conservative Prime Minister Arthur Balfour.

Balfour and Weizmann had met once before in Manchester during 1906 when the latter memorably told the former “we had Jerusalem when London was a marsh”.

The ties between Chaim Weizmann and the British political heavyweights of World War I, reinforced by the Manchester Guardian’s backing for Zionism on its news and leader pages, led to the recognition of Zionist ambitions in 1917 when Lloyd George was Prime Minister and Balfour was Foreign Secretary.

The Manchester Guardian continued its strong advocacy for a Jewish state in the first half of the twentieth century. But once Israel was set up in 1948 and expanded, the newspaper’s attitude began to cool especially when considering the suffering inflicted on the Palestinians. Baram devotes a chapter each to the Guardian’s coverage on the Suez War (when it opposed the British Government’s attack on Egypt), the 1967 SixDay War and the 1973 Ramadhan/Yom Kippur War. It is evident in the book that as time passed by and the Israeli government became more aggressive in its policies; disputes arose among Guardian journalists about how Israel should be reported on. In the last pages of the chapter “Watershed: The Guardian in the Strife of 1967”, Baram lucidly outlines the debate within the media about “whether acceptance of the basic Zionist claim to a Jewish state…could be regarded as more objective than the rejection of these claims…[and] whether it is legitimate to express non-Zionist and even anti-Zionist views”.

The final three chapters deal not only with the two intifadas and the failed attempts at conflict resolution 42 Al-Aqsa

but also with the predominantly hostile response the Guardian has received from the worldwide Jewish community. After the outbreak of the second intifada, the risibly titled HonestReporting website group was launched whose role was to “scrutinise the media for examples of anti-Israel bias” and encourage subscribers to complain directly to the relevant news organisations.

HonestReporting initiated the barrage of hate emails sent to Suzanne Goldenberg, the for mer Jerusalem correspondent who covered the first two years of the second Intifada including the Israeli army’s spring 2002 invasion of West Bank areas. Goldenberg, herself Jewish, was subjected to death threats and had to change homes and her contact details. Israeli officials would not like the “tone” of her writing; she explains, “‘tone’ was a code word for their belief that I was writing too much about the Palestinians, and that I wrote about them as human beings”.

But not all Jews disapprove of the Guardian’s criticisms of Israel’s right-wing policies. Baram provides an insight into the debate occurring in the “more politically segregated” UK Jewish community on whether to publicly criticise Israeli policies with some believing that this would only provide ammunition to anti-semites. But this tactic can only prove to be counterproductive as it will eventually invite deeper hatred against Jews. Imagine if British Muslims decided not to speak out against atrocious attacks committed by coreligionists. The result would be greater suspicion towards the Muslim community and more Islamophobia.

Baram completes a brave task in addressing the discourse happening within and between the Jewish communities in the UK and Israel. She does not shirk describing the ploys used by the Israeli government and its supporters to silence criticism of the state. Credits are due to her and past and present Guardian staff for being open about the book’s topic and the relationships between media, politics and the newspaper’s readership.

The main text of Daphna Baram’s work is followed by a section of an academic paper she wrote at Oxford University about the Guardian’s reporting of the second intifada and the battle of Jenin. Like the rest of the book it is a thorough and commendable attempt to comprehend the newspaper’s coverage of possibly the most controversial issue in world politics. The addition of political cartoons from the Guardian pages at the start of each chapter is a nice touch and the only things lacking are maps and diagrams illustrating the conflicts and changing shapes of Israel and the Palestinian territories.

If you are interested in how a chance meeting between two men at a Manchester party in 1914 led to the tragedy of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, then read through the pages of Disenchantment and wonder at the consequences that can result from what Chaim Weizmann must have considered was his being “at the right place at the right time”.

Manchester

Rumeana Jahangir

The Catholic Church and the Question of Palestine

BY LIVIA ROKACH, Saqi Books, 2001, Pp. 250, ISBN 0863561284 (HB)

L

ivia Rokach, daughter of Israel Rokach, Minister of the Interior in the government of Moshe Sharett (second prime minister of Israel) describs herself as a writer of Palestinian origin and worked as a journalist and later went on to write Israels Sacred Terrorism which was based on the diaries of Moshe Sharett. In 1984 she was found dead in Rome and was presumed to have committed suicide.

The Catholic Church and the Question of Palestine reads like a specialist book written for the academic. Perhaps this is why it has never become a well known book or even reached the majority of people who have connections with either the Church or Palestine. Despite the content being difficult to follow at times together with its limited print circulation, it is well worth the read.

Palestine has a Champion that most never knew existed!

The Roman Catholic Church, represented by the Vatican in Rome, has always held a historical religious bond with the Holy Land. Most people know this of course and so it is no wonder that the Vatican has always had an eye on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. However, it is probably what most people do not know which is even more important to the land of Palestine and its people. In the introduction, almost casually, you will find the explosive statement that not only most Palestinians are unaware of but also most Catholics equally would not know, “The Vatican does not recognise the state of Israel.”

This statement alone has been enough to lead to the international condemnation of dozens of nations,

including almost the entire Middle East, much of Northern & Central Africa and various nations across South East Asia, which have all endured the stigma of refusing to recognise Israel as a sovereign nation. As far back as 1897 when the first Zionist Congress met in Basle Switzerland, the Vatican wrote to Theodor Herzl stating that they could not support their movement. The Church said that they could not prevent the Jews from going to Jerusalem, but they would never sanction it. In 1922 this was backed up by a memorandum to the League of Nations: “The Holy See is not opposed to Jews in Palestine having civil rights equal to those possessed by other nationals and creeds. But it cannot agree to Jews being given a privileged and preponderant position vis-a-vis other sections of the population.”

The Vatican also saw the hypocrisy of the huge financial support offered to Israel (mainly from America) when third world nations in Africa or South & Central America were being continually ignored. This attitude has not changed. Not only does the Vatican refuse to recognise Israel itself, but according to this book, it was the Vatican’s veto that prevented Israel from obtaining UN recognition for Jerusalem as its capitol. Because of this, the American embassy remains in Tel Aviv to this day. Most people are unaware of the Vatican’s support of Palestine and how different things may well have been today were it not for that support.

The Vatican has a minimum set of demands in return for any recognition of Israel. Firstly, it wants to see an International status for Jerusalem and secondly, recognition for the rights of the Palestinian people, including the ‘right to return’. The fact that the Vatican enjoys an official relationship & recognition of the PLO does not sit well with Zionist policy.

In 2001 Pope John Paul II visited Yasser Arafat in Bethlehem and described the President as a charismatic leader who struggled to win independence for his people.

In 2003 he welcomed a delegation of PLO Christians to the Vatican and in 2004 the Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei. More recently, on the death of Arafat, the Vatican issued a statement saying: “The Holy See joined the pain of the Palestinian people for the passing of President Yasser Arafat. He was a leader of great charisma who loved his people and tried to guide them towards national independence.”

This book tells the story of the relationship between the Vatican, Israel and Palestine from the origins of modern Zionism to the politics of the mid eighties.

There is certainly no obvious bias towards any of the subjects which makes this not only a neutral read, but a well researched and deliberately impartial one.

London

David A. Gardner

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