Comments on: Beyond statehood: Resolving the Nakba, avoiding segregation

By: Afulan magavnikkit

Afulan magavnikkit — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 14:56:18 +0000

the Nakba wasn’t in 1948; it was in 1881 when the Arabic speakers failed to prevent the re-colloquialization of Hebrew. Everything which has happened since then, is only an inevitable CONSEQUENCE of that. The Holocaust only speeded things up a bit. Let us not forget, Orde Wingate was teaching militia classes at Ein Harod about how to ambush Arabic-speaking thieves, YEARS BEFORE WWII started.

The language train has already left the station. The Arabic-speakers need to concentrate on passing matriculation exams in Egypt or in the Hashemite regime which illegally occupies East Judea. Doing otherwise will only push themselves further down the rabbit hole. Which, until now, they’ve been experts at.

Or they join Tzahal and go to ulpan at Michve Alon.. Then they could enjoy Hebrew disco life in TelAviv like all those sabra Filipinit kids. Those kids take the Roman Catholic Mass in Hebrew and no Israeli really bothers themself about it. Thus, the Hebraicized Muslims can go to Hebrew speaking mosques. Kinda like all those English-speaking Muslim kids in Michigan.

Don’t worry, we’ll kick all those Yiddish-speaking Americans out of the Hareidi neighborhoods – send them to Gaza! You can grab their houses. Just fill out your papers in Ivrit. Please work on getting a proper TelAviv accent.

Peace in our time!!!

By: AYLA

AYLA — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 06:55:57 +0000

@Henry–Which is why we need to fight for the land Muhammad Jabali is speaking for. For now, I’m in the Negev, which is, to me, as close as one can get.

By: Henry Weinstein

Henry Weinstein — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 01:02:20 +0000

Ayla,
.
Just a few words, an improvisation
.
The problem with intellectual comments is that there is not enough REAL LIFE in them
.
Most commenters & contributors on 972 are driven by IDEAS, what they miss is OTHER PEOPLE’S LIFE
.
For them, Israel is just a concept, not a country
.
& For them, Palestinians are not a people, they are a fiction
.
They have not the same IDEAS, but they share the same HATRED
.
Intellectual Games

By: AYLA

AYLA — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:35:09 +0000

@Mike–we mostly agree; we just express it differently. I also don’t believe we can have a Jewish State that’s a democracy, though Israel can have a constitution that includes certain Jewish interests. I want to see one state for all her people rather than two states, again (see my comment above), for my own sake; I don’t want to live with all jews on one side and all muslim and christian arabs on the other on some kind of a pick-axed body of land (pretty much as I do now). Thank God I’m not making a life of policy work, but the basic tenets of your post, I agree with. I just didn’t like how you were talking to Henry, and I didn’t think, based on his post, that he deserved it. I think the term “zionism” was a hot button for you both and that you were arguing different points. Anyway: Let’s fight for something, together, rather than fighting one side against another, because we share a nearly common vision.

By: Mikesailor

Mikesailor — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:23:56 +0000

Ayla: I understand your reluctance to use the term: ‘Zionism’. You feel that it means different things to different people. I would contend however that the basis of Zionism is all too glaring: It was the idea that a certain group of people, Zionist Jews, had the right to move to an already inhabited part of this planet, Palestine, to create an ethnically pure ‘Jewish’ state wherein Jews could exercise their right to ‘self-determination’ without regard to the indigenous inhabitants.
You have a situation analogous to that of Northern Ireland. After conquering Ireland, the British exported a population of mainly Scottish and English citizens (Protestants in a majority Catholic country) to create their own version of ‘facts on the ground’. They also gave these new ‘settlers’ a privileged existence over the Irish indigenous citizenry. Over the centuries, the Irish hostility grew toward these interlopers with ensuing violence. Only recently have the Irish ended the violence. Why? Because the UK ended its policy of using force to defend the enclave and sought a political solution. They had to give up on the idea, and so did the Northern Protestants, that their priveleged domination over their neighbors was excusable or even disirable. You can’t expect the Protestants to all move from the area, they have grown up there and have nowhere else to go. And the Catholic minority didn’t request that solution, merely the idea of equal rights under the law and an end to discrimination against them.
Israel has now reached that same crossroads, but most Israeli Jews refuse to recognize it. They feel the status quo is necessary to maintain a ‘Jewish’ state. What I argue is that the idea of a ‘Jewish’ state, a state presupposed on the xenophobic idea that Jewish dominance must be maintained at all costs, and the minorities within Israel, and in the West Bank, Gaza or the area, must be rendered powerless to change this myth, is self-destrructive to say the least and, in its present form, unconscionable. Rightist settlers abuse and humiliate Palestinians with impunity. The political classes cannot confront the lawlessness without risking their positions. The IDF and Border Police actively ignore any violence if promulgated by these groups,and sometimes even assist them, as long as the victims of their depredations are ‘Arabs’, ‘leftists’or any other group which is not dominant. And the arguments I have seen from those I have labeled the ‘hasbaristas’ are all too familiar as I have stated in my previous post. It is only fear that continues this mess: the fear of giving up their present priveleged position and facing the future with the ideal that ‘all men are created equal’. And that the rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” must become the prevailing ethos rather than ‘Juden uber alles’.

By: AYLA

AYLA — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:11:50 +0000

I would add that if I had to name the most offensive bit of injustice on this land–and that is hard to do–I would have to say it’s that Palestinians who fled the Nabka cannot even visit. Also, that so many other neighboring Muslims can’t come visit their Holy Land. How we can live with this, I don’t know. I can’t.

By: AYLA

AYLA — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:08:20 +0000

Muhammad Jabali–I just re-read your piece more slowly, with more time. It’s one of the most beautiful, thoughtful reflections I’ve read or heard about Palestinian Right Of Return, and about what it means to be true to the character of this land, this state, for all her people. I’m often so offended by the idea that it’s considered “liberal” for Jews to care about preserving culture and life here such as, say, the arabic language in schools, Lifta, etc. As a Jew on this land, as a human on this earth, I am deeply offended by the white-washing (okay, Judaizing–I hate that term, however apt) on this land. We do it also to Ethiopian Jews, Arab Jews; we do it to everyone, and mostly, we do it to ourselves. I live in the Negev because when I first moved here and lived in a tent without electricity outside of Mitzpe Ramon, it felt to me like it may have felt thousands of years ago, mostly because of Bedouin, and the land itself.
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As for the religious population who think we were given this land in some exclusive way, they are not reading very carefully, or are so consumed with Talmud, they can no longer see the Torah: We ARE the same people. This goes way beyond the whole we are brothers business. Ishmael is emphasized, with love, in nearly every parashah in which he is still living (one parashah ends with him being circumcized with Avraham; the very first well in the torah comes to Hagar when she weeps for Ishmael; when God tells Abraham that Sarah will bear a child (Isaac), his direct response to that news is to say, “Oh, that Ishmael may live before you.” And there’s tons of intermarriage, including Esau to one of Ishmael’s daughters. Moses himself married a Cushite woman.
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And you don’t have to care at all about religious text to find our common blood, cultural connections… The biggest reason I don’t want there to be an Israeli State that erases Arab history and culture (including Jewish Arab history and culture) is not out of some kind of liberal, bleeding-heart sense of morality (not that there’s anything wrong with that); it’s because we are destroying this place i want to love.

By: AYLA

AYLA — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 15:03:01 +0000

Anyone still here? I think Henry’s right, and the opposite of immature, to say that we place labels on each other and deem this and that Wrong in order to feel better about ourselves and in order to make what is extremely complex seem simple. I’ve said it before, but I won’t use the word “zionism” anymore, so I’m not here to defend it (the word, or the movement); it means a vastly wide range of things to different people. But we’d all be better off taking a hard look at ourselves. @MIKESAILOR–since I live in Israel, with citizenship, you’ll be happy to know that that’s a big piece of the mirror in which I am required to look. Where to go from here, indeed.

By: Mikesalor

Mikesalor — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 04:26:34 +0000

Henry:
Grow up. Zionism was, and is, an idea which should rightly be consigned to the ‘dustbin of history’. It is far too late to separate the parties, and with the continual construction of more settlements and ‘facts on the ground’, segregation is more nad more impossible. TheIsraelis cannot and will not stop the occupation. They can’t without risking civil war. So where do you go from here?

By: Henry Weinstein

Henry Weinstein — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 00:35:42 +0000

MikeSailor,
You might blame “Zionism” and “the Zionists” for everything turning wrong in your life since your birth, but it’s just Hatred, the compulsive need to identify Impurity & Wrong outside our weak psyche.
And neither Israelis nor Palestinians can cure this sickness, it’s up to you to realize that the Beast & the Enemy, is not outside, but inside your intellect.
We have all the same enemy, our fake self-centered self.
We have all to fight Evil, and trust The Only One.