Segregation in the Promised Land

Today, as I was leaving, I wished the pharmacist Shabbat shalom. She looked at me funnily. I wasn’t sure why, but she might have meant, “I’m Arab, that’s not my holiday.” I am indiscriminate in my Shabbat Shalom wishes. I knew perfectly well that she was Arab, but I also knew she would not be working tomorrow like everyone else. It was only after I had left the building that I remembered that today is Ramadan, and it would have been nicer and more appropriate to wish her a Ramadan Kareem.

One of the aspects I’ve often liked in Israel is the ubiquity of well-wishes on holidays. It’s good and pleasant to hear hag sameach, happy holiday, out of the mouths of store keepers and customers as holidays approach, or a simple Shabbat shalom on leaving work on Thursdays. It’s damn comfy – as if everyone around you belongs to an extended family.

I teach soldiers now and, because we are all Jewish, there is easy banter about keeping kosher or discussions of aliyah – there is a common assumption that despite our political or ethnic differences, we are all citizens in the same place – our feet are, as it were, rooted in the same soil. We belong together.

I also teach English to three Hasidim who live in the Wischnitz (pronounded Vishnitz) neighborhood in Bnei Brak. They are a father and his two sons, and they own a hotel in that crowded, religious city. One day after talking with the older son, I realized from the tone in his voice how reassuring it was to live in a closed community that ran its affairs exactly as you did. It was as if there was a happy concordance between his pulse and the pulses of those around him. Moreover, he could regard the hotel as a form of service to the community.

It was only on leaving my local clinic today that I fully realized that I, too, live in a similarly segregated society or, to be more exact, that I, too, live in a sequestered community.

It’s important to make clear that Israel is not segregated in the manner of the American South. There are no separate drinking places, public bathrooms, or bus seats. In public places, Jews and Arabs mingle; and, as an article in Haaretz this week pointed out, Israeli Arabs are one of the significant successes of the country. They are educated: they are doctors, lawyers, judges, parliamentarians, and even ministers. But still, a specific type of segregation characterizes Israeli daily life. Jews and Arabs live in separate communities, go to separate schools (until university), read separate newspapers, and ever since cable TV, watch different stations. There are several Arabic Jewish schools under the same auspices but these are private, and the Israeli government has refused to subsidize them.

The proof of the pudding, as it were, can be found in one of Sayed Kashua’s recent columns in Haaretz, for it is only the minority that feels the oppression of segregation. He writes:

Being a Palestinian Arab in Jerusalem was an inseparable part of my consciousness. I had to be aware that I was an Arab when I drove my children to school, when I drove to work, when I chose my words in writing, and every time I walked in the street. The politics in Israel determined the degree of caution to take in certain circumstances, the place of residence, the children’s educational system, the safe places for going out, the use of the language, and the careful way in which you greeted your neighbors. (“Musaf Haaretz,” 10 March 2017)

What I especially felt that morning was not the segregation in Israeli society or my lack of consideration toward the Arab pharmacist, whose holiday I had ignored, but my similarity with Southerners who had been raised in the balmy haven of segregation. I felt I could understand their fright at Obama’s vision of America. It was not just Obama’s color that was so outrageous but his constant emphasis on the marvelous diversity of the new America. What he thought as a golden promise, which he physically represented, was also a threat to the feeling of security of many. That their sense of invulnerability had rested on the false premises of bigotry, prejudice, and an unacknowledged violence was what I had, in my liberal mind, always understood – what I realized now was how comforting, how damned “nice” it was to live in a sheltered cove – how it gave someone a feeling of belonging to a greater whole, even if that sense of security was based on a falsehood and, often, on an out-and-out lie.

Nationalism and Colonialism

Often when I read about Israel, I feel as if I have fallen between two rather loud demonstrators shouting at each other and neither actually hearing the other; or if they do listen, it is with utter lack of comprehension. On one side are those who accuse Israel of being a colonization denying natives their right of self-determination and on the other those who often complain about tolerance toward Palestinian violence and hatred. One can tell the story of Israel as that of a colonizer, and one can narrate it as the realization of a people’s right to nationhood, and often the two narrations only meet in battle and then they separate as if two different countries are being discussed. Israel has the peculiar and perhaps unique position of being both a colonizer and a fulfillment of nationalist aspirations.

It is, as it were, a double-edged or triple-edged sword, for in two or three aspects, the Jewish settlers were always colonizers – the very word “settlers” hints as such – but in one important aspect and in the way in which they perceived themselves, they were not and could not be regarded as colonizers. It’s important to understand this contradiction in terms.

Although from the middle of the 19th century, numbers of Jews settled in Palestine for religious reasons, historically, Zionism officially began in 1897 as a political movement to achieve a national homeland for the Jews. The Jews are not only members of a religion but a people. In the West, especially in the United States, this is often forgotten because it contradicts both national assumptions of assimilation and Christian perspectives on the Jews. The Jews regarded their right to a nation-state like that of any other people who had been banished from their homeland. The right was further based on a hope that a nation-state would end their 2000 years of persecution. So, in its raison d’être, Zionism can be regarded as not having been and never aspiring to colonialism.

It is often claimed that Israel is a creation of the West; that is, without the Balfour Declaration and the West’s support in the UN, the state of Israel would not have been created. Again, although this seems to be a truism since Israel was the first nation established by the UN, it is not. The Balfour declaration legitimized what had already begun, and the UN vote legitimized what was already a fait accompli. Rather, if the state of Palestine had been created in 1948, it could truly have been said to have been created by the West. The Palestinians had neither a government infrastructure nor any national identification other than that among intellectuals – and certain politicians. The Jews, on the other hand, had both a nascent government and a strong national identity. If they hadn’t won the state in 1948, they might well have won it afterward.

But, of course, to the natives, the settlers were colonizers. There was no way they could not be. They came from abroad, they proudly regarded themselves as a Western Hebrew avant-garde, and very few spoke Arabic. Those who did generally belonged to the most nationalistic working class. Furthermore, throughout most of the years of the British mandate, the Jewish enclave was favored, since it was, in many respects, self-governing. For many years, it had a close relationship with the government  in London.

The state of Israel was founded primarily by socialists, and even though they had the biases of all colonialists before them, they also regarded their right to eretz Yisrael as built through hard, physical labor. The Jew, returning to his homeland would be renewed, reborn, and remade as a tiller of soil, not exploiting any of the natives. The leader of the Revisionist party, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, however, was an avowed colonialist and firm admirer of the British Empire. It is no wonder that his party did not build any agricultural settlements nor that the Likud party currently ruling Israel follows in his footsteps in its expansionist plans in the West Bank.

Today, however, Israel is also regarded as colonialist because, like a Western beacon in a sea of Arab culture or like a sore on the Arab body depending on one’s view, it is an integral partner of the West. From its beginning, for both strategic and economic reasons,  Israel always aspired toward this status. It is utterly wrong and an historical falsehood to claim as some have done that Israel was founded by the West for this reason; that is, for both military and real-politik reasons, the West wished to plunk its bastard child in the Middle East. The truth is otherwise. When Israel was founded, the American State Department was against and like the British, it vainly sought to woo the Arabs, and for many years, Israel’s existence was quite perilous. Today, every time Israel’s Prime Minister arrogantly proclaims in his excellent English that we are the only democracy in the Middle East, he fuels that lie. But again, he is a child of a colonialist anti-Arab creed. And I am not — yet — describing Israel as it is today.

Yom Hashoah, Yom Hazicharon, and Yom Haatzmaut

As I commented years ago, Israel has an extraordinary week of secular ritual that begins with Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Day), continues a week later with Yom HaZicharon (Memorial Day) and concludes a day later with Yom HaAtzmaut (Independence Day).  I would imagine that this week resembles Easter for Catholics.  You begin with unimaginable horror of a sacrifice of a people, you move to the sacrifice of young men to build a nation, and the following day, everything joyously bursts open (for which fireworks are an appropriate expression) in the happy redemption of a people renewed – Independence Day.

It’s unbearably sad on Yom Hashoah and unbearably sad on Yom HaZicharon.  I would say the sadness differs, although that might seem odd. Every year, on Holocaust Day, the stories of atrocities surprise me and move me to tears once again, as if I am learning about the Holocaust for the first time and not someone who at age 11 first read Night by Elie Wiesel. In Israel the radio program is filled with Holocaust narratives, and the evening of Holocaust Day, there are numerous documentary films. This year I watched the return of two brothers in their 70s to Krakow.  Little children, protected by an aunt, they had wandered through several countries. One wasn’t sure of his name, and one of the moving scenes was when he sat in the registry of names in Krakow and discovered his original name and that of his parents and grandparents.  They came alive again, and the man, who had escaped his childhood, burst into tears at his unbearable loss of identity and discovery..

Today is Memorial Day. To some extent, I am more deeply moved on this day, perhaps because all my four children served in the Israeli army, perhaps, because my youngest just finished, perhaps because I know that this is a story of the loss of children and the unrelieved pain of parents, and it is a story that might be that of every Israeli. This is the morning when cemeteries are crowded with the living who pay homage to the dead.

It may be true that you cannot escape the memory of the dead in Israel.  My former wife’s uncle was killed in the War of Independence.  For a decade, his parents mourned, and once, every year, my mother-in-law would visit the grave of her older brother in Moshav Rishpon.  When I lived on Kibbutz Kfar Hahoresh, the secretary was killed in the first War in Lebanon; and my son-in-law’s first cousin was killed years ago. I have been lucky I know; I know so few who have been killed.

And tomorrow? Tomorrow, all of Israel celebrates with barbecues; and the skies are filled with smoke and the smell of burning meat.  And this, too, is an ancient custom, as if we have offered sacrifice to the Temple, and with the meat we have, as in days of old, we gather with our families and friends, and luxuriate in the goodness of life.

Gaza, War and Morality

The other day, while chatting with a friend who serves in Intelligence in the Israeli army, we discussed the attack in Gaza by Israeli forces that killed two followers of the Islamic Jihad who planned a terrorist attack. I claimed that maybe they shouldn’t have been killed: look at all the destruction that followed.

He responded that although he was sorry for the suffering of the residents of Israel in the south, the army had to periodically strike Gaza. The army had to hit Gaza to stop terrorist activity and also to weaken the Hamas, which is losing support because it cannot guarantee the safety of its people.

I was left unconvinced. The attack on two men brought about the deaths of children and adults in Gaza. For many days, hundreds  of thousands of Israelis lived under the constant threat of over a thousand missiles. And now, it seems, three (or more) additional Jewish children were killed as revenge for those killed in Gaza. Of course, when contemplating the attack in Gaza, no one considered that not only neighboring Israelis might find themselves under attack but Jews in Toulouse, France. Israel’s president Shimon Peres, called the murder of children, “heinous.” He was not referring to the killing of the children in Gaza, of course. That, in military speak, was an “unfortunate accident,” as if the parents of the children can find consolation for their grief  in the recognition that it was caused, after all, by a mistake either ours or theirs – the terrorists had no business playing so close to children.

In addition, according to the analysis in the evening news, following the Jihad’s lack of success this time, in the next barrage (and, according to my friend, there must be a next time), it is likely that missiles with a longer range, with capability to strike the belly of Israel, will be launched. We have been here before. One attack leads to another. The enemy revamps; the next attack results in a more sophisticated counter-attack, and eventually the minor military caper escalates to an invasion or a war.

Once upon a time, which seems very long ago, Israel realized that there was no military solution for the conflict – but I am wording this incorrectly – Israel realized that because there was no military solution for the Israeli Palestinian conflict, another sort of solution ought to be sought. The Israeli Right is more absolute in its conviction: there is no possibility of a solution, and, therefore, war is perpetual until the Palestinians (or, for them, the Arabs – they often do not bother with distinctions) are worn out, or, God willing, the redemption occurs. I do not think I am simplifying. There is a bunker mentality or – what is more apt – a ghetto mentality. Israel is a very large ghetto. The Labor Movement and the Israeli Left often viewed Israel’s integration within the region as an important condition toward the resolution of the Middle East conflict. The Right, however, has no interest in integration. In the West Bank and elsewhere, they are colonialists; in the ultra-Orthodox ghetto, Arabs are the current avatar of Edom, the Romans, Christians, the anti-Semitic goy. Netanyahu offers no hope and no moral vision. He offers endless conflict, Holocaust, stoic resolution against an enemy and, perhaps one of the reasons for his success, tremendous faith in the Jewish people, in Am Yisrael. We no longer talk about Israel where Arab and Jew might be equal, but about Am Yisrael, the people of Israel, where Arabs cannot have a part and where for 2000 years we have been under attack.

Morality is on our side. The proof is our prosperity. Bibi is cheered on by AIPAC and devoted Republicans. As the French say, ” Dans les royaumes des aveugles, les bornes sont les rois,” in the kingdoms of the blind, the one-eyed are kings.