By Lior Sternfeld

Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran, and his wife, Queen Farah, prepare to depart after a visit to the United States. (photo: WIkicommons)

The relationship between Israel and Iran dates back to the early years of the Jewish state, and constituted the basis of both countries’ geopolitical policies. This political relationship was not, however, merely a matter of the ruling elites. Insofar as Pahlavi’s Iran is concerned, even oppositional circles in the 1960s and 1970s had a complex and sometimes favorable approach to the State of Israel. Moreover, many of these viewed Israel and Iran as essentially exceptional in nature in the contemporary Middle East, a perception that would change definitively for the worse after the 1967 war.

Shortly after the establishment of Israel in 1948, a new love story began in the Middle East. In 1950, Iran granted Israel de facto recognition and opened an embassy in Jerusalem. At that time Iran was (and still is) a homeland to the largest Jewish community in the Middle East, and a safe haven for many Iraqi Jews who had fled persecution in Iraq throughout the 1940s.

Unlike the majority of Jewish communities in Arab countries, many Iranian Jews decided to stay in Iran after the establishment of Israel. While most other Jewish communities in the Muslim world vanished between 1948-1956 and migrated en masse to Israel, the vast majority of Iranian Jews stayed in their homeland and had a complex relationship with the Zionist movement and Israel. This is not to say Iranian Jews were anti-Zionist. However, due to their decision to stay in Iran, Iranian Jewish communities were generally not identified with Zionism. This was, of course, a sharp contrast to most Arab-Jewish communities from Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, and Libya. Many Arab-Jews emigrated to the newly founded State of Israel before 1956, due of increasing tensions (and at times outright persecution) with the local populations on the background of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In the years following Israel’s establishment, non-Jewish intellectual and political elites in Iran generally saw Israel in a positive light. Many were intrigued by early articulations of Labor Zionism, which emphasized the proletarianization of society through dominant trade unions and communal agricultural-based collectives such as the kibbutzim. Left-leaning movements, like the Socialist Union and the communist Tudeh party, were dominant domestic opposition forces in Iranian politics. Once their attitudes towards Israel are examined through a geopolitical lens, their perspectives become significant and understandable. The Soviet Union, which supported the Tudeh Party, also supported the UN Partition Plan of Palestine in 1947 (which divided the land between a future Israeli and Palestinian state) and went on to recognize Israel in May 1948.

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, late Shah of Iran (photo: Wikicommons)

Given the prevalence of the “Aryan Hypothesis” in Iran and the general yearning Westward during the Pahlavi dynasty, an ideological pact with Israel made a great deal of sense. This was especially true after the inception of the White Revolution in 1963, a move that was advertised as an attempt to rapidly modernize Iran along Western lines. The notion that these countries shared a more “Western” attitude even though they were situated in the “East” became an integral part in the foundation of a regional coalition among the non-Arab countries of the Greater Middle East (Turkey, Ethiopia, Iran, and Israel). This coalition came to be known as the “Alliance of the Periphery.”

The Shah, however, was a deeply unpopular and autocratic ruler among the majority of Iranians. Despite Israel’s role in consolidating the Shah’s autocratic rule, the Iranian elite’s fascination with Israel helped to create a surprisingly favorable opinion of Israel in Iran. Due to the close ties between the two governments, Iranians tended to associate Israel with projects like the rebuilding of Qazvin after the earthquake in 1962 rather than with the notoriously brutal Iranian secret police SAVAK, which the Israeli Mossad helped establish and train.

Although many of the political leaders of the Iranian Jewish communities were sympathetic to the Zionist cause, most Iranian Jews remained indifferent to it. In fact, many joined leftist movements in Iran and eventually assumed leadership positions in them, demonstrating that their political allegiances belonged first and foremost to Iran. Naturally, this situation caused major frustration in Israel, a state whose existence was and still is premised on the notion that the destinies of world Jewries and the state of Israel were inexorably intertwined.

The predominant Iranian Jewish interpretation of Zionism was different from the political Zionism espoused by the Israeli establishment at that time. The former did not necessitate the existence of a Jewish state, but rather reflected a religious sentiment and an emotional-cum-spiritual attachment to Zion, the biblical name of Jerusalem. This was not unique to the Iranian Jewry, but rather common among Jews across the Middle East. It, however, remained relevant only to Iranians, as the other communities for the most part ceased to exist post 1948-1956.

While many Iranian Jews had relatives in Israel and had visited Israel before, Israel was not part of their Jewish identity, and they did not see themselves leaving their beloved homeland for any other country–including Israel. Overwhelmingly, they did not share the political interpretation of of Zionism with the Zionist movement and Israel and tied any meaning of the term to the existence of the State of Israel.

To understand the unique place Israel occupied in the Iranian worldview, one should consider that Iranians who wrote about it. Jalal Pahlavi Al-e Ahmad, a foremost Iranian thinker, may have best conveyed the transformation of Israel’s representations in the Iranian public sphere. Al-e Ahmad, a one-time member of the Tudeh leadership, gained leftist-internationalist credentials with the publication of Gharbzadegi (1962), in which he criticized the tendency of broad segments of  Iranian society to blindly mimic the West. Gharbzadegi (“Westoxification”) lamented the inevitable loss of Iranian culture and identity to Western models and paradigms. His publication influenced a later generation of Iranian revolutionaries such as Ali Shariati and the current supreme leader, Sayyed Ali Khamenei.

Given his remarkable place in both the evolution of the Iranian Left and the development of contemporary political ideologies, one would not expect that he should name Israel as a model society. Yet, Al-e Ahmad conjured ideas that were common among intellectual circles in Iran before 1967–ideas which brought home the message that Israel in its essence was a cultural and political ally.

Two years after the publication of Gharbzadegi, Al-e Ahmad and his wife, Simin Daneshvar, visited Israel. Al-e Ahmad’s travelogue, Safar Beh Vilayet-e Ezrael (Journey to the State of Israel) attests to the profound impression the country left on him. The critical thinker wrote about Israel in nothing less than admiring terms. He described in details a visit to Yad Va’Shem, the Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem, and expressed his fascination with the resurrection of the Jewish people after the horrors of the Holocaust. Later, he broadly discussed the Kibbutz in Israel and the state’s socialist ideology in positive terms.

During their visit, Al-e Ahmad and Daneshvar stayed in Kibbutz Ayelet Ha’Shahar in northern Israel. He described the Kibbutz for the Iranian reader as follows: “[…] these people in Israel had already laid the foundation for the socialization of the means of agricultural production in a part of the world which had been inspired by the Russian Social-Democratic movement and not by Stalin.” Thus, Al-e Ahmad associated Israel with the “correct” side of communist ideology, as the contemporary rift in the Tudeh party also created another communist opposition to Stalin’s legacy.

Jalal Al-e Ahmad and Simin Daneshvar’s writing from the Kibbutz Ayelet Ha’Shahar guestbook. (Kibbutz Ayelet Ha’Shahar archive)

There is perhaps another reason for Al-e Ahmad’s great sympathy for Israel. In his travelogue, Al-e Ahmad depicts the Arabs in derogatory terms as ideological and cultural enemies, to say the least. Cultural tensions between Arabs and Iranians surface clearly in the text. As he wrote: “I am a non-Arab citizen of the East who has suffered much at the hands of the Arabs and still do. In spite of all the services that ‘I’ [I as “Iran,” not the person of Jalal Al-e Ahmad] rendered to Islam through the ages and still do, they still refer to me as Ajam,” which, in this context, likely means a “foreigner” and “illiterate” as well. Similar statements can be found throughout the text. Given Al-e Ahmad’s public status, this travelogue certainly had an impact on Iranian perceptions of Israel.

Interestingly, Safar beh Vilayet-e Ezrael was published in a series of newspaper articles which was read and discussed among secular and religious intellectuals. For example, Iran’s current supreme leader, Seyyed Ali Khamenei, later recalled that this travelogue not only puzzled him but also stirred major controversy among the young clerics in Qom, specifically because of the inherent contradiction they saw between this book and Al-e Ahmad’s previous popular writings, first and foremost Gharbzadegi.

1967 was a watershed moment in the relationship between Pahlavi Iran and the State of Israel. The Six Day War, during which Israel invaded its neighboring countries and occupied the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights, transformed Israel into a colonial power in the eyes of Iranian intellectual elites. After the war, many of the Soviet Bloc countries severed their relations with Israel, as did their satellite parties, including the Iranian Tudeh.

Jalal Al-e Ahmad wrote the last chapter of this travelogue in 1968, faithfully reflecting the transformation of Iranian attitudes towards Israel. In this chapter, he describes Israel as a part of a Western capitalist scheme in the region, explaining that the reactionary Arab regimes played into the hands of Israel and the colonial powers. He also criticizes French intellectual elites for their betrayal of the Arabs and supporting, yet again, a new colonial venture. His criticism was aimed directly at Jean-Paul Sartre and Claude Lanzmann for condemning the French colonialism in Algeria and being very critical towards Britain’s ventures, yet miraculously finding a way to ignore the exact same problems when it came to Israel.

Along with the elite’s opinion, Iranian popular perceptions of Israel also changed dramatically after 1967. A clear popular expression of this came about in 1968. That year, the Israeli and Iranian national football teams played against each other in Tehran as part of Asia Cup finals. Habib Elghanayan, a wealthy Jew and a community leader, purchased a large number of tickets for this game for Iranian Jews to attend and cheer for the Israeli team. This game, however, became a site where Iranian fans vehemently showed their discontent with Israel’s policy. The Israeli team and their supporters fell victims to brutal incitement and had to be escorted out of the stadium by the police. This incident reflected a sea change in the Iranians’ attitudes toward Israel. A one-time favorable partner now became an unwanted foreigner, protected only by the grace of the Shah’s iron fist.

Beginning in the 1970s, the Shah attempted to find new alliances in the Middle East and beyond. Iran’s relations with the Soviet Union and some of the Arab countries were revisited. A peace agreement with Iraq and the American election of President Jimmy Carter in 1976, and the subsequent harsh criticisms that Carter voiced against the human rights conditions in Iran, led the Shah to develop a more negative view of the State of Israel. By the late 1970s, the revolution toppled the Shah, and the new regime reflected the Iranian public’s feelings towards the State of Israel with vocal anti-Zionism, kicking the Israeli diplomatic mission out and developing strong ties to the Palestinian resistance. And while the majority of Iranians would come to forget the mixed feelings they initially harbored towards Israel prior to 1967, Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s writings still stand as an almost lonely testament to that time.

Lior Sternfeld is a PhD Candidate in the History Department in the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on Iranian social history and the religious minorities in Iran during the Pahlavi era. This post was first published on the Ajam Media Collective and has been translated to Hebrew in Haokets. Haokets is a non-profit, independent, progressive Israeli web magazine that hosts critical discussion where hundreds of writers publish professional and original pieces on socioeconomic, cultural and philosophical issues, human rights activism, feminism, and Mizrahi politics. Visit their English-language blog.

By Daniel Bar-Tal

A right-wing protester holds up Israeli flags while thousands march in the annual human rights march in Tel Aviv. (photo by Activestills)

Israel is a prosperous and well developed state with remarkable achievements in technological, educational, cultural, scientific and agricultural spheres by every account. These achievements are a source of pride to Israelis as well as to Jews around the world. But beside these undeniable successes, a considerable segment of the Jews in Israel, who love their country and care about its future, also see a glass half empty.

They see that the growing dominance of nationalistic, expansionist, and anti-democratic ideologies – goals and policies which have already crossed democratic and moral red lines. The ongoing occupation of the West Bank and the expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories violate the basic human and collective rights of the Palestinians and tear apart the democratic and moral fabric of Israeli society, as does past governments’ refusal to engage in meaningful negotiations with the Palestinians whilst ignoring the Arab Peace Initiative. In carrying out these policies, the government has not only violated international law, but at times also broken Israeli laws, thus seriously undermining the very foundation of Israeli democracy. We’ve witnessed systematic and often successful attempts to pass laws that contradict the fundamental democratic principle of equal treatment of minorities, along with institutionalized discrimination against the minority. In addition, we’ve seen organized attempts to silence criticism of Israeli policies and delegitimize dissenting voices in academia, the media, and NGOs.

This deterioration, which has very serious practical implications, is taking place in the spheres of values, moral codes, norms and laws, so often people do not pay attention to them. They can live comfortably without exercising their right to freedom, without defending the rights of others or without observing discrimination, oppression or exploitation carried by their own society. This has happened in many places in the world, often directly affecting the fate of the Jewish people.

This is what is presently happening in Israel. But this time it is Jews who ignore, repress, or rationalize the deviations from the moral and democratic compass. This process is not surprising if one looks at the way in which a person grows up in Israel. In addition to the continuous external threats which provide the context, Israeli Jews pass through a uni-dimensional tunnel of formal socialization which limits them to different perspectives, and closes them off to alternative ideas to their formal narrative. It begins in the schooling process from kindergarten and continues throughout mandatory military service. Much of Israel’s mass media, although being relatively free, exercises self-mobilization on “security issues” and practices self-censorship in order to maintain a positive image of the state (Freedom House ranked Israel 65th out of 197 states in terms of freedom of the press).

Although there are also clear voices in the media, civil society, academia, art and the political arena that challenge the hegemonic political culture, most Israeli Jews do not subscribe to moral and democratic values of human rights, justice, freedom and equality, particularly when it comes to Palestinians (regardless of whether they are Israeli citizens or they live in the occupied territories). At best the minority that does care about these values is viewed with disdain. At worst they are seen as traitors who harm state interests. There is a growing monopolization of patriotism and Zionism, which recognizes only one ideology, one goal, and one policy as legitimate and patriotic. All other views are branded as harmful to the State of Israel and the Jewish people. Valid criticism is depicted as “anti-Semitic,” “anti-Israel,” or even as expressing “self-hatred.” This approach aims to silence critical voices by arousing fear, and constitutes a powerful tool that has been used over and over again by antidemocratic forces in different societies.

In light of this situation it is imperative that Jews around the world who cherish humanistic values of Jewish heritage publicly express their concern about the current, critical situation in Israel, and call loudly and clearly for Israel to return to peaceful, moral, democratic, and humanistic values. This is a vital manifestation of concern and love for Israel. It is shared responsibility towards future generations who will pay a heavy price for our silence and passivity. The cost of silence far exceeds the cost of involvement. What is at stake is no less than the future of the State of Israel, Israeli society, and the Jewish people. It is an obligation to speak out and take action, as an ultimate expression of our identity and conscience. Ultimately, history will judge us by our actions.

Daniel Bar-Tal is a professor of political psychology at Tel Aviv University. He recently launched a project to encourage involvement of liberal Jews around the world to create a critical watch group to monitor Israeli legislation, policies and actions.

Related:
Press freedom in Israel: Democracy in the age of self-censorship

A new joint identity? End sectarianism (Haggai Matar)

Israeli and Palestinian flags are frequently seen flying in Northern Ireland, often in Loyalist and Republican areas respectively. This is symbolic of how even in a place that has seen 15 years of a peace process, divides still exist to the extent that some communities take sides in a different conflict as a continuation of their own.

Be wary when comparing “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland to the situation in Israel/Palestine, especially when it gives opportunity to public figures such as Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Ron Prosor to disingenuously proclaim a desire to export lessons from the Northern Irish peace process (his loud exclamations that “We [Israel] can learn from Ulster” are just another form of propaganda to sooth the international community).

Building peace allows communities to reconcile differences and hold on to one’s own identities whilst respecting the “others’” opposing identity and ideas for the future.

Having defined structures for delivering equal justice is key, which is why a continuous discussion is necessary when it comes to finding a civil pathway to peace (as Haggai Matar noted in his recent piece on Northern Ireland).

Two important points stand out in Haggai’s piece: the first is the acceptance that “no two conflicts are alike,” and the second is the emphasis on realizing that “a solution that fits one conflict could never be copied successfully to anywhere else.”

True peace and reconciliation comes from being valued, respected and dignified. If there is no genuine relationship or respect among the parties involved, then the situation isn’t going to get anywhere and achieving peace remains little more than a fantasy.

Thus, in order to reach genuine peace, a set of basic rules and stages is required. A recent article from Quintin Oliver, a man who helped run a non-party ‘YES’ Campaign in the 1998 Referendum on the Good Friday Agreement, illustrates this in his fifteen laws of peace processes.

Whilst Oliver’s laws discuss Northern Ireland, I find some points give an inkling as to what may be lacking in Israel today:

1. Citizenship should be clarified and open to all. Those under Israel’s direct control are not afforded the right to citizenship, and therefore to democratic participation and other benefits that come with it. Palestinians and Israelis must be free to make and exercise their own choices with relation to citizenship and national self-determination within either Palestine, Israel or both.

2. Security must be guaranteed for all, without fear or partiality. Achieving a stable situation is desired in order to bring about an end to violence. Confidence among communities can only increase when Israel and Palestine reach a consensus on the primacy of evenhanded application of security, where both parties can be trusted with ensuring a commitment to one another’s safety and rights.

3. Interpretation and implementation of the law must be assured through an independent judiciary. There cannot be room for a politicized application of the law, as this will only deepen the sense of injustice towards those who are being or perceive themselves to be oppressed by structural discrimination.

4. Truth will always vie with justice as we try to understand what happened to us. A robust process of managing and dealing with the past is essential.

5. Armed groups must be subject to full disarmament, disbandment and reintegration. All armed groups must agree to an internationally observed decommissioning, an agreement to lift the siege on Gaza and an Israeli military withdrawal from the West Bank must follow.

6. International and external forces must be eased out of the day-to-day decision-making. Though important in order to kick start the first stages of a peace process, there must be space for standalone interaction as over-dependence on international actors providing dishonest brokerage has given Israel ample opportunity to continue its occupation 20 years after the Oslo Accords were signed.

7. All legal voices must be included, so as to absorb their political views appropriately. A solution cannot simply involve the Palestinian Authority alone. There needs to be inclusivity, and the question one must always ask is whether the voiceless are being heard.

8. Societal infrastructure must be based on equality and sharing, or risk intensifying division. If the Israeli government and some Palestinian groups continue to institutionalize discrimination using the education system, public transport, housing, teacher training, arts and sports then division will remain in both societies.

9. A free press which would hold the powerful to account without interference is self-evident. The need for a critical and proactive approach within Israel to push creative policy development is obvious. Israeli society seems dominated by nationalist discourse propagated by the government. Furthermore, there is a need for freedom to criticize the Palestinian Authority and Hamas on legitimate issues affecting the areas under their control.

10. Each party to the conflict must be afforded the right to argue for its own vision of the future with impunity. There are still political groups that advocate the destruction of Northern Ireland as an entity, and yet there has been an end to violence, discrimination, checkpoints etc. A strong desire to end conflict on all levels must be expressed by all sides. Israel requires a fundamental societal shift to achieve circumstances in which other visions are given space for peaceful expression. Of course, the advocation of hatred, murder and other crimes must not be ignored.

If civil society demands a peace process that adheres to the above groundrules, we can remain optimistic about achieving peace between Israel and Palestine.

Gary Spedding is a student at Queen’s University in Belfast and a member of his university’s Palestine Solidarity Society and QUB’s students’ union. Follow him on Twitter.

Related:
Maintaining conflict, stopping bloodshed: Lessons from 15 years of peace in Northern Ireland

By Sahar Vardi

Israeli police arrest a Palestinian man during protests commemorating Nakba Day at Damascus Gate, East Jerusalem, May 15, 2013. (Photo by: Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org)

Scene 1:

A few dozen Palestinians march down Bab A-Zahara Street with a police van behind them, they head toward Damascus Gate for the Annual commemoration of the Nakba. Police cavalry pass the marchers, turn around, block the sidewalk on which the protesters are marching and start galloping towards them. Another line of border policeman prevents those who managed to pass from walking toward Damascus Gate, but they’re too late, half the protest is already at Damascus Gate.

Scene 2:

About 200 hundred Palestinians are chanting on the stairs in front of Damascus Gate when we hear yelling from the road. Half-a-dozen policemen gather around a Palestinian man standing on an elevated part of the sidewalk who is refusing to move. A policeman holds his hand and tells him he’s arrested. The man doesn’t resist, but doesn’t move either. Four or five border policemen surround him from all sides, grab him, punch him – and punch him. A border policewoman reaches over a low fence and punches him again and again, just because she can. The man is brought down to the ground; a policeman sits on his head and yells, “turn around onto your stomach!” The policeman next to me laughs and says, “why do they need so many policeman for one man?” The police push away everyone gathered around him, including photographers, using the police horses. I find myself squashed between a horse and the low fence. When the horse moves and I hold my aching back, a policeman comes to me and says, “you should really be more careful.”

An Israeli policeman kicks a fleeing Palestinian woman as riot forces charge into crowds during Nakba Day protests at Damascus Gate, East Jerusalem, May 15, 2013. The Nakba, literally, the “catastrophe”, names the massive deportation of more then 700,000 Palestinian, made refugees and driven out of what became the State of Israel in 1948. (Photo by: Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org)

Scene 3:

The protest tries to enter the Old City, but a line of riot policeman stand there blocking the way. The protest turns to march back up on the wide sidewalk of Bab A-Zahara along the walls of the Old City but police block this path as well. A young Palestinian is trying to walk down the stairs, slips and falls. The people around him try to catch him on the way down, including myself. Medics come running, I move aside, look at my hand and see his blood. Second injury of the day.

Scene 4:

The policemen try to push us back from all directions to in no direction. They run into the crowd swinging their batons at people’s legs, their fists at people’s faces, pulling and pushing. A young Palestinian man selling something tries to quickly pack everything up as the policeman yells at him to move, and pushes him. A young Palestinian woman is being pushed and pulled next to me. I try to stand between her and the policeman but there are so many of them. I feel my hair pulled back, a hand on me, and I’m on my back, on the ground. I get back up and run up the stairs again; a young Palestinian is with his back against the wall, he is being handcuffed and they are still kicking him. A spraying sound and we all start coughing, including the policemen. Pepper spray. I can see the medics running in to where the Palestinian girl from before is now, still surrounded by policeman. They manage to lift her and take her away to safety.

A mounted Israeli policeman charges Palestinian crowds during protests commemorating Nakba Day at Damascus Gate, East Jerusalem, May 15, 2013. (Photo by guest photographer: Tali Mayer/Activestills.org)

Scene 5:

Water cannons arrive. Everything is wet. A soaking-wet cameraman tries to protect his camera, as his friends lead him away from the ‘line of water.

Members of the media take cover behind a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance targeted by Israeli water canons during Nakba Day protests near Damascus Gate, East Jerusalem, May 15, 2013. (Photo by: Anne Paq/Activestills.org)

Scene 6:

People running; six or seven border policemen run after them with their guns pointed straight at us. A young Palestinian woman finds herself alone next to them. One of them is pointing his gun right at her from three meters away.

Scene 7:

Up the road next to one of the Palestinian central bus stations, the police horse riders play a game – they gallop into the station that is laid out around a building, circling it from both directions. Stones are thrown at them, they call in the infantry, border policemen run in shooting sound bombs, tear gas, sponge bullets and grab people to arrest them. The horses stand by the fence on the side by pushing into smaller and smaller enclaves against the walls.

Scene 8:

Damascus Gate is mostly empty, and soaking wet. The two water cannons, one on each side of the road, turn to the already wet and mostly empty beginning of Damascus Road. A falafel stand is still open; they spray it completely. One table of Ca’ack bread is still visible, they spray it as the owner screams at them, “Why?!”. A number 74 Palestinian bus comes by, and it’s windows are completely sprayed.

Scene 9:

Dozens of policemen come running in suddenly. Next to the falafel stand, they grab some people. Some were running from them, some were just standing there in between the stands, seeking shelter from the water cannons. I try to get closer but there’s a barrel of a gun pointed straight to my face and behind it a border policeman with a dark look in his eyes. I walk back and then find my way through. There’s a shoe on the floor, I pick it up and try to get through to the Palestinian on the floor beside me, surrounded by policemen beating him up. He has both his shoes on, so I move to the next one. Yes! He’s missing a shoe. The border policeman next to me pushes me back so I tell him I just want to give the man his shoe, and he’s so confused he does nothing. I get close to him, and put his shoe back on while two policemen hold him because he can’t really stand steadily at this point. I see a stream, not drops, but a stream of blood running down from his nose, blending with water on the soaked floor. I get pushed back. I yell at them, “It’s his shoe! It’s the market. You’re in their city!” I feel a hand on my throat, can’t talk and find myself outside of the crowd of policeman. I walk away and feel that my hands are wet; I look down and they’re full of blood, as are my trousers. It’s not mine.

Israeli border policemen arrest a Palestinian man during protests commemorating Nakba Day at Damascus Gate, East Jerusalem, May 15, 2013. (Photo by: Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org)

Scene 10:

An American tourist stands next to me and picks something up from the ground. “It’s a sound bomb,” I tell him. “How often do they throw these here?”, he asks, and I stop to explain to him what happened today. He lifts his video camera. “That’s what occupation looks like,” I tell him as I run to the other side of the road where the water cannons start shooting again.

Scene 11:

A parked police car gets stoned: once, twice. A policeman jumps into it, makes a U-turn to where the stones came from, jumps out of the car and starts running like crazy with a tazer gun pointed ahead.

Scene 12:

I’m sitting in a bus. The adrenalin fades. I can start feeling my blood boiling hot, pumping to all the bruises. From the window I can see another chase in the bus station, I don’t know if they caught who they were chasing in the end, or someone else, or anyone at all. At the end of this, I can go home. But the dozens of people arrested can’t, some who were probably hospitalized can. But much more importantly, this is happening in the biggest market in the biggest Palestinian city. For Palestinians this is reality, not something you can choose to leave and go back home. I take my privilege and go home.

Sahar Vardi is a Jerusalem activist, mostly active in struggles against the judaization of East Jerusalem and militarization of Israeli society.

By Noa Yachot and Adi Lerner

The last year hasn’t been a good one for refugees and asylum seekers in Israel – or for those advocating on their behalf. Since an amendment to the Prevention of Infiltration Law was passed in January 2012, almost all change in the field of refugee rights has been for the worse, with the nascent asylum system in Israel making way for an unyielding detention regime. All asylum seekers arriving in Israel can now be detained for an unknown period, despite the fact that a vast majority of them cannot be deported. The law allows for a vague “humanitarian” exception – but despite the tireless work of refugee rights advocates, the state has adamantly refused to recognize the humanitarian grounds of even the most vulnerable of cases. When it comes to African refugees, the detention regime does not discriminate; as a result, small children are imprisoned, as are scores of survivors of unimaginably brutal torture at the hands of human smugglers in the Sinai Peninsula.

A view of the new section in Saharonim prison destined for imprisonment without trial of asylum seekers and refugees, August 31, 2012. (photo: Activestills)

The Supreme Court will hear a challenge to the law next month. But in the meanwhile, advocates have scored some important victories in lower courts in recent weeks. And while up to 2,000 bona fide refugees remain imprisoned, leaving much work to be done, these victories are worth both reporting and celebrating.

Release of imprisoned children

One particularly exciting win came in the case of a mother and her two daughters, 8 and 11, from Eritrea. The three had been imprisoned in the Saharonim detention center for about 10 months. In their case, brought by the Hotline for Migrant Workers, the Be’er Sheva District Court held that the children, by virtue of being minors, have “special humanitarian grounds” justifying their release. Since the passage of the amended Prevention of Infiltration Law, the state had allowed only for the release of unaccompanied minors, while children who arrived with a parent remained in the vast desert prison.

Judge Yosef Alon rejected this position, and stated that the release of all minors on humanitarian grounds should be subject to judicial discretion. In this particular case, he determined that the girls’ young age – in addition to the length of their imprisonment and the fact that they cannot be deported to Eritrea – constitute humanitarian grounds. (It is hard for us to imagine a child remaining in indefinite detention without triggering a humanitarian ground, so we’re thrilled that the judge seemed to agree.)

In light of the new precedent, the Hotline requested the reexamination of other cases of parents detained with their children, and last week, nine more woman and 10 children, all Eritrean, were released.

An Eritrean refugee hugs his wife and children, as they arrive to the central bus station in Tel Aviv on May 6, 2013, after they were released earlier today from the “Saharonim” Israeli prison. (photo: Activestills)

Torture as a humanitarian ground

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of another appeal submitted by the Hotline, regarding victims of torture. (We won’t go into detail here about the extensive network of torture camps to which refugees are subjected on route to Israel; for more on the issue check out this report.) Earlier this year, the Be’er Sheva District Court judge ruled that torture and abuse suffered by asylum seekers en route to Israel cannot constitute “special humanitarian grounds.” Thankfully, on April 18, the Supreme Court rejected this disgraceful position.

An asylum seeker shows the scars he acquired as a result of torture en route to Israel. (photo: Sigal Rozen)

The Supreme Court decision also grants discretion to the Detention Review Tribunal, a quasi-judicial body that carries out monthly reviews of the cases of all detained asylum seekers, to release rape and torture survivors, even if they are not considered victims of trafficking and slavery (a legal category that enjoys some protections in Israel).  Until that decision, the tribunal did not believe it had the authority to do so. The Hotline is now working to secure psychological evaluations for all the torture victims known to the organization.

Applying for asylum from jail

Israel is a signatory to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, but the state makes it notoriously difficult for people to access the asylum procedure – that difficultly is particularly pronounced for imprisoned asylum seekers, even more so since the implementation of the amended anti-infiltration law. The Hotline works to locate asylum seekers and convey their requests to the state – but the organization is not allowed access to all the prisoners, and without intervention, they can easily languish for months without being given the opportunity to state their refugee claim before a government authority. But a recent decision by the Be’er Sheva District Court might make things a bit easier on that front as well.

According to the law, if the Interior Ministry does not process asylum requests within three months of their submission, the asylum seeker may be released from detention. Until now, however, the Interior Ministry did not begin counting when it received requests from the Hotline on behalf of those in prison. The recent ruling determined that the Interior Ministry must indeed start counting as soon as it is notified that a given asylum seeker claims refugee status. This is especially significant considering the detainees do not have any access to actual asylum application forms (which is clearly a grave problem in its own right).

Unfortunately, despite this principled success, the Hotline has not managed to help fulfill the monetary conditions set for the release of this particular asylum seeker, and he remains in prison, despite having applied for refugee status six months ago.

Tribunal authority regarding asylum seekers involved in criminal proceedings

As +972 has reported in the past, a government regulation instated last year empowers the state to strip the residence permits of asylum seekers who have been suspected of criminal involvement, and to indefinitely detain them under the Prevention of Infiltration Law – even if they were never actually convicted or even charged. While the Hotline requested the release of those asylum seekers on the grounds of the illegality of the regulation, tribunal judges have thus far rejected those requests, claiming they do not have the authority to rule on its legality. But a Be’er Sheva judge, in a case brought by the Hotline, ruled on May 5 that the tribunal can do just that, and also exercise discretion in considering a range of other circumstances justifying release. This means that all of those asylum seekers, many of whom had hired private attorneys in order to appeal to the district court, can now turn to the tribunal through the Hotline, in a simpler (and free) process.

Next step: Strike down the law

A mobile home unit is transported into the new prison facility under construction near the current Saharonim Prison in the Negev Desert, near Kadesh Barnea, October 10, 2012. Israel is building a new facility that could hold thousands of additional asylum seekers. (photo: Oren Ziv/ Activestills.org)

The State of Israel is actively pursuing a detention regime meant to snare as many asylum seekers as possible. Considering the nearly 2,000 who remain imprisoned, these victories might seem minor. But they provide some critical rays of light in what has been an increasingly dark reality for asylum seekers and refugees in Israel. And they could herald a much bigger victory: the Supreme Court, which is set to rule on a challenge to the amended law, has already indicated that the state has some explaining to do (the state, in response, continued to insist that the law is constitutional). The court should go much further, by striking the law and undoing the detention regime. Protecting refugees is not optional – not for Israel or any other country.

Adi Lerner is the Crisis Intervention Center Coordinator at the Hotline for Migrant Workers, whose activists visit detention centers regularly to provide paralegal aid to asylum seekers and other detainees. Noa Yachot is an editor at +972 Magazine. 

By Roi Bachmutsky

Graffiti on the Israeli separation barrier dividing East Jerusalem neighborhoods reads, “Boycott Israel”, March 26, 2012. (photo: Ryan Rodrick Belier/Activestills.org)

Uproar recently broke out regarding world-renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking’s recent decision to cancel his headline appearance at the fifth annual Facing Tomorrow Presidential Conference hosted by Israeli President Shimon Peres. Gil Troy penned an opinion piece in response, in which he argued that by boycotting the conference, “[Hawking] suggested that the dynamics of the conflict are mutually exclusive… to prove he is pro-Palestinian he had to act anti-Israeli.” My Facebook newsfeed is often filled with the reverse: friends who denounce Palestinians in order to prove their worth as sufficiently pro-Israel. Either way, Jewish organizations generally provide members with just two antithetical “sides” to choose between – for or against divestment, pro or anti-Israel. My research on Israel and American Jewish identity might help reveal the origin of this dichotomy, its role in the divestment debate, and its influence on the Jewish community.

As a recent UC Berkeley graduate, I am familiar with the wars over divestment, having been a freshman during the bill demanding UC Berkeley’s Associated Students of the University of California divest from certain companies’ “military support of the [Israeli] occupation of the Palestinian territories” in 2009. In the bill’s aftermath, I began interviewing Jewish students on campus and was shocked with what I found.

Overwhelmingly, Jewish youth described having knee-jerk reactions to divestment, often without room for reflection and contemplation. One student relayed to me that she had shown up to argue against divestment without having read the bill. “I walked in,” she recalled, “and I basically got a text just saying, ‘they’re being anti-Israel, just like, refute it,’ and I was like ‘OK, whatever.’” The call to action was unequivocal, as another student explained: “My relationship with Israel in that moment [was] very clear and one-dimensional: ‘I am going to defend [Israel] no matter what.’”

By creating a paradigm with two diametrically opposed camps, Jewish young adults felt tremendous pressure to align with the organized Jewish community, opposite the other side. “A lot of people associate [being] pro-Israel with being anti-Palestinian,” the first student began, “but I don’t see that.” On the other hand, she told me, “if somebody were to put me in a room and be like, ‘you have to go to one side that is [either] pro-Israel or anti-Israel,’ I would go to the pro-Israel side. Does that make sense?” I asked her if she ever felt forced to choose. “Yeah, absolutely,” she replied without hesitation, “…I guess that happens all the time.”

How can a community which so highly regards deliberation and dissent (two Jews, three opinions after all) demand such unwavering unity on what is, perhaps, American Jewry’s most controversial issue? The key to the mystery lies in a 1979 New York Times Article reporting on American Jewish divisions with respect to Israeli settlement policy of the West Bank. It is no coincidence that this article was published just two years after the rise of Israeli Right with the ascendance of Menachem Begin and Likud, a time in which public criticism of Israel by the predominantly liberal mainstream Jewish leaders began to surface.

The article quotes Seymour Siegel, a famous Conservative Rabbi of the time and advisor to three presidential administrations, delineating American Jewish divisions into three: (1) Those in favor of the Israeli government (2) Those opposed to the Israeli government and (3) Those who feel hesitant to publicly criticize the Israeli government yet could be swayed either way depending on the policy. The public divisions must have been troubling enough to impel Siegel to emphasize a more fundamental Jewish unity by asserting that all three groups were joined “under a tent of intense pro-Israel sentiment.”

Therein lies the idea holding together a warring Jewish community in faux public unity. The pro-Israel tent – or “broad”/”open” tent as it has been called – has since come to be widely recognized as symbolic of the boundary of acceptable thought and discourse about Israel. The realm of pro-Israel lies within, while anti-Israel is without – each cleanly severed from one another – with divestment clearly beyond the pale.

The tent has by now trickled down to a healthy majority of Jewish institutions. In large part, it has been cemented by Jewish Federations, which have instituted Israel policies prohibiting grantees from enabling programs undermining the legitimacy of the State of Israel (including condoning boycott, divestment, or sanctions, as is done by most Palestinian groups). To engage with divestment, the community proclaims, is to be against the American Jewish people.

Notably, a grassroots student movement by the name of Open Hillel has recently sprouted out of Harvard University in opposition to the momentum of Federation policies. The campaign particularly targets Hillel International’s Standards for Partnership, which “exclude certain groups from Hillel based on their political views on Israel.” What if Harvard students, for example, wanted to host Stephen Hawking to discuss why he chose to respect the academic boycott of the Israeli Presidential Conference? Whether Open Hillel succeeds in challenging the status quo or not, it is undeniable that the Jewish community is anything but united under one tent. It fiercely remains a house divided.

Roi Bachmutsky is a recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. You can follow him on his blog and on Twitter (@roibachmutsky).

A new Adalah report documents the parallels between two Palestinian villages, Al-Araqib in Israel and Susiya in the West Bank, which share a single story of struggle against home demolitions and forced displacement. The report sets out the methods of displacement used by Israel to expel Palestinian communities from their land on both sides of the Green Line, and examines the legal context in which it takes place.

Read more:
PHOTOS: Palestinians commemorate Nakba Day with rallies and protests
Remembering the Nakba, understanding this is a shared land
The Nakba: Addressing Israeli arrogance
The Palestinian Nakba: Are Israelis starting to get it?
Despite efforts to erase it, the Nakba’s memory is more present than ever in Israel

Nakba Day protest May 15, 2012 (Activestills)

In 2008, a fascinating, little-known study asked 500 Israeli Jews about Israel’s behavior throughout the history of the conflict.  The study was conducted by Rafi Nets-Zehngut, at the Teachers College of Columbia University and Daniel Bar-Tal of Tel Aviv University’s School of Education. Bar-Tal is an internationally regarded expert in political psychology. Some of the findings were striking:

• More than six-in-ten said that prior to the arrival of the “Jewish pioneers” in the late 19th century, Palestinians were a majority in the region (“majority,” “vast majority,” or “exclusive inhabitants”).

• A majority, albeit very slim (50.2 percent), said that Jews and Arabs share the blame equally (46 percent) or primarily Jews (4.2 percent) are to blame for the outbreak and continuation of the Israeli-Arab conflict, while 43 percent blamed primarily Palestinians and Arabs.

• Most important for Nakba Day, when asked who was responsible for the “departure” of Palestinian refugees during the 1948 War of Independence, 41 percent chose the traditional Zionist narrative that they left due to fear and exhortations of Arab leaders; but 39 percent chose a response that cited fear and calls of Arab leaders, but also due to expulsion by Jews. Another eight percent cited only expulsion by Jews. That means that nearly half – a 47 percent plurality – accepted the Jewish role in creating Palestinian refugees.

Further, by using the terms “Palestinian” to refer to the pre-state days through 1948, the questions themselves implicitly tested people’s acceptance of the terms of the debate. The fairly standard rate of “don’t knows” indicates that people had little problem with the assumptions in the text of the questions. Also, fewer than one-fifth of Jewish Israelis describe themselves as left wing these days, so a significant portion of those respondents are either center or right wing.

The findings imply a potentially significant shift in Israeli attitudes compared to the past, when the Palestinian refugees were the greatest obstacle of all. During the Camp David negotiations of 2000, when I was working with American pollster Stanley Greenberg supplying public opinion data to then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak almost nightly, the refugee issue tended to be the toughest problem, even as the Jewish public advanced significantly toward unprecedented compromises on Jerusalem (documented in Greenberg’s 2009 book). Just after the talks collapsed, a Hebrew University survey in late July, 2000 asked Israelis (and Palestinians) whether they thought their respective leader’s compromises on each item had been appropriate, too much or too little. Among Israelis, the perception of Barak’s proposed compromises on Palestinian refugees gathered the highest “too much of a compromise” response of all (64 percent gave this answer, compared to 57 percent for Jerusalem).

Twelve years later, in a December, 2012 survey by the same authors (Jacob Shamir and Khalil Shikaki), the Palestinian refugee question no longer holds the most-rejected-clause spot. That distinction now goes to the proposals on Jerusalem, based on the old Clinton framework (59 percent rejected them, 38 percent supported them). Respondents were asked about a refugee compromise which reflects the Clinton, Geneva Plan and Arab Peace Initiative approach:

Both sides agree that the solution will be based on UN resolutions 194 and 242. The refugees would be given five choices for permanent residency. These are: the Palestinian state and the Israeli areas transferred to the Palestinian state in the territorial exchange mentioned above; no restrictions would be imposed on refugee return to these two areas. Residency in the other three areas (in host countries, third countries, and Israel) would be subject to the decision of these states. As a base for its decision Israel will consider the average number of refugees admitted to third countries like Australia, Canada, Europe, and others. All refugees would be entitled to compensation for their “refugeehood” and loss of property.

Among the 600-person sample, which included Arabs, 42 percent accepted this and 49 percent rejected it – a significant decline from nearly two-thirds who felt it was “too much of a compromise” in 2000.

Behind the numbers lies a potential drama. First, they confirm what Noam Sheizaf elegantly argued, that the anti-Nakba onslaught under the previous government has failed to erase the Nakba from the public sphere, while general usage and awareness of the term has only increased. Bar-Tal also noted in a more recent study that the Israeli education system is increasingly open about exploring critical versions of history – findings that were met with a wall of resistance by the Israeli government, for the crime of comparing Israel and the Palestinians’ education system.

But the data shown here hints at something both deeper and more pragmatic. They suggest a growing realization among the Israeli people that the Nakba is not only a feature of history but alive in the present-lived reality of Palestinians and that it must be addressed in the negotiations.

Indeed, for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, the Nakba lives on in the form of daily occupation. Symbolically, Israel’s denial and until recently the world’s general dismissal of their historical and present symbolic narrative is a fresh death each day for the Palestinian collective psyche.

Despite the positive shifts, half of Israelis still reject the refugee compromise in the December 2012 poll; tempers rage around public debate on the topic, and a 2009 survey for the peace movement One Voice found that 60 percent of Israeli Jews totally rejected a compromise that included “recognition of the suffering” of Palestinian refugees.

Yet I cannot agree with a guest post here today that the rejection is due to “arrogance.”

In a phone interview with Daniel Bar-Tal for this article, he explained that the ongoing Jewish resistance to dealing with the Nakba is simply a reflection of the fact that the Jewish people as a nation are no more or less immune to the human characteristics of collective identity than any other people:

On the most universal level: why is it hard for any nation [to acknowledge the damage it has caused in the past]? It’s very, very universal [to resist this]. All nations do it.

He cited the very recent British acknowledgment of responsibility for its actions in Kenya, and former French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s difficulty acknowledging France’s behavior in Algiers. “Nations have a hard time opening their Pandora’s box,” he said. “We’re no different.”

Bar-Tal believes that the story of the Nakba, a symbolic narrative of the Palestinian nation, clashes with the Zionist national narrative.

This reason is more psychological, but critical: identity. The Nakba … is viewed as the identity of the whole nation in the eyes of its people. And accepting the narrative of the other cancels my identity. If you have to accept that 1.3 million Palestinians were here, all the Zionist rationale begins to be thrown into doubt.

Bar-Tal then explained that when Netanyahu introduced the demand that Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish State, the negotiations were now about symbolic and identity dimensions, rather than, by implication, just technical and pragmatic solutions.

He brought that into the conflict – up to then we could have solved the problem without narratives. The moment you ask them to recognize that this land is and belongs to Jews, they can’t accept that.

Perhaps it was at this point that the Nakba was increasingly embraced among Palestinian activists. And by contrast to Bar-Tal’s implication, I believe that the symbolic, narrative element of conflict would inevitably enter resolution efforts regardless of Netanyahu’s particular condition.

In other words, when Israelis or any people are asked to acknowledge historical facts and their own role in creating traumas, they are less defensive. But when dry history doubles as the mythical story of the founding of a rival nation, acknowledging those facts means legitimizing the other side’s fundamental beliefs. Since the Israeli image of the Palestinian national vision includes the certainty that Palestinians seek destruction of the Jews, the national narratives – like in most conflicts – are mutually exclusive. Accepting this keystone of Palestinian symbolic national history is tantamount to self-destruction.

Surely, similar conflict psychology can be seen on the Palestinian side too. Even when a conflict is asymmetrical, psychological dynamics overlap. But that would be a separate article.

Both sides will need to exorcise their demons regarding the other, not to gloss over the present but in order to unlock the door to the future. Here are the fundamental questions for the Israel side: first, can the Right’s frenzied efforts to stifle consciousness of the Nakba succeed? The results seem to say no. Activism recalling the Nakba has only heightened and the data here implies that the Israeli public is ahead of its leaders in acknowledging not only history, but the implications of history on conflict resolution.

Secondly, how can the large swath of the Israeli public that is prepared to reconcile with its past in the present be expanded and leveraged? How can this political maturity be brought to bear on future negotiation efforts or any other effort to resolve the situation? Surely, beating a guilt-fatigued population with more historic guilt will backfire (if it hasn’t already). Is there a less threatening way to address and redress history that does not undercut Jewish identity in this land? This is one of the vital challenges of the day, that the Nakba (and perhaps the “Jewish state” definition, for Palestinians) symbolizes for all parties in the conflict: can each side acknowledge the most sensitive and frightening aspects of the other party’s identity without losing its own, and then lashing out violently to protect it?

Read more:
PHOTOS: Palestinians commemorate Nakba Day with rallies and protests
The Nakba: Addressing Israeli arrogance
Despite efforts to erase it, the Nakba’s memory is more present than ever in Israel
Report: Forced displacement on both sides of the Green Line
Remembering the Nakba, understanding this is a shared land

By Tom Pessah

Palmach troops overseeing the displacement of Palestinians from the central city of Ramlah in July, 1948. (Photo: Palmach Archive)

About a decade ago, when I was studying for my first degree at Tel Aviv University, I went to a weekend retreat organized by Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam to meet Palestinian students from the West Bank. The retreat took place at a location near Bethlehem that was relatively accessible for the Palestinians, but they still had to pass through checkpoints, some getting beaten or humiliated in order to meet us.

Neve-Shalom/Wahat al-Salam’s workshops are structured very formally. During the inter-Jewish meetings I was the perfect leftist, constantly scolding other participants for views that weren’t progressive enough. And when we met the Palestinians, I tried hard to be accommodating and supportive, hanging out with them after the meetings and using my primitive spoken Arabic to listen to their experiences and questions about Israelis.

Near the end of the workshop we split into groups to “solve” different aspects of the conflict together: Jerusalem, borders, one state or two? As the progressive I thought I was, I confidently chose the group on possibly the most explosive topic – the Right of Return. We Israeli Jews convened first, and came up with a generous proposal: we would allow 100,000 Palestinians into our own country! This would be difficult for us to “sell” to our public, it was much to the left of the Israeli consensus at the time, but we were still willing to take what seemed like a brave and generous step.

When we offered the limited entry into our country to the Palestinian students, they weren’t as grateful as we had anticipated. In fact, they were profoundly insulted, deeply disappointed. In the closing meeting of the workshop, they spoke of how disillusioned they had become, how they felt that in the end, Zionist upbringing influences all of us Israelis, even the ones that initially seem reasonable and open-minded. I tried to argue with them, explain to them, but it was too late. I remember watching them leave, climbing over the fences of the compound to circumvent the Israeli soldiers in the area, in order to try and avoid being arrested. I was sobbing. I felt I had disappointed them and disappointed myself, despite my best intentions.

We don’t talk enough about Israeli arrogance as a huge barrier to any form of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation, even co-resisting the occupation. So we keep assuming that the land is simply ours, even if Palestinians were born there, even if their families lived there for generations. We’re sure our violence is better because we only hit civilians by accident. We try to teach them to be reasonable and to accommodate themselves to our higher moral standards if they want us to listen to them. Intended or not, the arrogance is there, and not just among right-wing extremists.

Where does this arrogance come from? Consider a quintessential example, Golda Meir’s notorious statement to the Sunday Times in 1969:

There were no such thing as Palestinians. When was there an independent Palestinian people with a Palestinian state? It was either southern Syria before the First World War, and then it was a Palestine including Jordan. It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.

“It is not as though… we came and threw them out and took their country away from them.” Meir felt confident proclaiming this in 1969, 20 years after over 750,000 people, about 80 percent of the Palestinian population of the area that became Israel, were either driven out by force or violently prevented from returning. Twenty years of impunity, when generals like Yigal Alon, who had systematically cleansed the areas they conquered of every single Palestinian village and town, served as government ministers alongside Meir.

But few of those who have heard of this statement know of Meir’s history during 1948 itself. Yaakov Lublini, the Israeli military ruler of Haifa, recalls an incident in April, when the city was conquered and most of its Palestinians left or were expelled:

We walked up some stairs. The apartments on the first two floors were abandoned. When we reached the third floor, an old Arab woman approached us, carrying some bundles. When she saw Golda she stopped and burst into tears. Golda stopped, looked at her, and tears streamed down her face. The two women stood there and cried.

Weeks later, Meir described her own experiences:

It’s a shocking thing to see the city dead […] near the port I found children, women and old men waiting to a way out. I went into the houses, there were houses where the coffee and the pita-bread were left on the table. I couldn’t but see with my eyes that this must have been the picture in many [East European] Jewish towns [ayarot yehudiyot]

I do not wish to idealize the Meir of 1948. Despite her tears, she never seriously challenged the massive expulsion and prevention of return orchestrated by her colleagues in the ruling Mapai party, led of course by Ben-Gurion. But these moments of humanity and identification across ethnic boundaries are a reminder of what could have been, before years of arrogance and denial hardened her heart.

Israelis born after the Nakba rarely cry about it. We rely on our formulas: “these things happen in wars”; “this wouldn’t have happened if they accepted the UN partition resolution”; “you cannot set the clock back.” All this in a country that grants Jewish immigrants significant financial benefits under the Law of Return – a law that aims to correct injustices caused 2,000 years ago by the Roman Empire. Persecution of Jews in Europe, and the Holocaust in particular, are an unavoidable part of every discussion of the occupation, or of Israel’s policy towards Iran. The destruction of over 400 villages and towns six decades ago is within living memory, but Israeli Jews treat it as an obscure historical detail that Palestinians just need to get over already.

History forms people’s identities, and Palestinians are no more likely to shed their history than Israelis. Both peoples are destined to live together and the only true alternative to remaining separate and unequal is a common struggle. For Israelis wishing to participate in such a struggle, relieving ourselves of our ignorance and arrogance should be the top priority. Not for the sake of Palestinians – for our own sake, to restore our own humanity.

Go and learn: if you want to educate yourself about this hidden history, watch Palestinian and Israeli testimonies here and here. Learn here about life in the largest pre-1948 Palestinian town. Go on a tour of former Palestinian villages guided by refugees. Attend ceremonies organized around the country on May 15^th. Learning the details can be hard, it can be distressing, but the reward is sweet – liberating ourselves from our racism.

Read more:
PHOTOS: Palestinians commemorate Nakba Day with rallies and protests
Despite efforts to erase it, the Nakba’s memory is more present than ever in Israel
Report: Forced displacement on both sides of the Green Line
Remembering the Nakba, understanding this is a shared land
The Palestinian Nakba: Are Israelis starting to get it?

Tom Pessah is an Israeli graduate sociology student at the University of California, Berkeley.

A Palestinian photographer stands during a minute of silence commemorating the Nakba at a ceremony held by Palestinian and Israeli students at the entrance to Tel Aviv University. Right-wing activists protesting the ceremony and policemen are seen in the background. May 13, 2013 (photo: Yotam Ronen / Activestills)

Yedioth Hakibbutz is the weekly magazine of the United Kibbutz Movement. It is delivered every week to hundreds of Kibbutzim as part of the weekend edition of Yedioth Ahronoth, the best selling paper in Israel. Even at a time of diminishing political influence – there is not a single representative of the United Kibbutz Movement in the current Knesset – the Kibbutzim remain both a symbol and a stronghold of conservative Zionism, and the mainstream tone of Yedioth suits them well.

Three months ago, there was an unusual story on the cover of Yedioth Hakibbutz. The front page read: “We expelled, blew up and killed.” Inside the magazine was a three-page interview with Kibbutz Degania member Yerachmiel Kahanovich, a former fighter in the Palmach (the Jewish underground that preceded the IDF), in which Kahanovic confessed to his part in the expulsion and murder of Palestinians during the war of 1948.

Several months earlier, Kahanovich was interviewed as part of a project by Zochrot (“remembering”), a non-profit that deals with the Nakba from an Israeli perspective (an English translation of his testimony can be found here), and his testimony drew the attention of Yedioth reporters. Zochrot exists mostly in the margins of the Israeli discourse. Getting such a follow-up in the Kibbutz magazine was unique but not unheard of: in October 2012 the same paper ran a story on a Nakba tour book published by Zochrot.

Kahanovich’s testimony touched on one of the most awful events of 1948 – the intentional murder of Palestinian civilians who sought refuge from the fighting inside the Dahamsh Mosque in Lod. He also confessed that he had been ordered to shoot each Palestinian who tried to escape the procession of refugees marching out of the region. At time he sounded regretful – but he also felt that, “we had no choice.”

Q: Did you let the [Palestinians] residents get away?

YK: At first, yes. The intention was to expel them, these were the orders of the bosses, Yigal Alon and Yitzhak Sadeh. Sometimes we had to shot one or two, and then the rest got the message and left on their own. You need to understand: if you didn’t destroy the Arab’s home, he will always want to come back. When there is no home, no village, there is nowhere to return.

Q: Do you remember the battle for Lod and Ramleh?

YK: I don’t like to remember this so much… we shot shells into a mosque where many people were hiding. There was no choice.

Q: We shot?

YK: I shot with the PIAT [anti-tank weapon]. It has an enormous shock wave.

Q: And what were the results?

YK: Not pretty. They were all scattered on the walls.

Q: How many?

YK: I don’t know. Many. I didn’t count. I opened the door, saw what I saw, and closed [it].

Q: What did you feel?

YK: What can you feel after a thing like that? But if we didn’t do it, we might have been fighting to this very day. Then I stood with the Browning [machine gun] over the creek through which the remaining residents escaped. Anyone who strayed off track, got a shot.

Q: From you as well?

YK: From me too. I felt really bad but I was a good marksman, and there were times when they only asked me to fire a single bullet. At the village next to Ramleh, two shots were enough. In 45 minutes the village was empty. They got the message.

The Lod-Ramleh region was one of places where a massive, intentional expulsion of the Palestinian population took place. Controversies surround the departure of Palestinians from other areas; whether they were forced to leave or whether they escaped on their own. It’s not that important. The Israeli decision not to allow refugees to return to their homes – sometimes as early as two weeks after they fled or were forced to leave – is what made them refugees. Later came the confiscation of the entirety of “unclaimed” Palestinian property, which leaves no doubt about what happened in 1948. Intentional or not, this was ethnic cleansing.

***

Cover of Yedioth Hakibbutz featuring a story with a former Palmach fighter who confessed to his part in killing Palestinians during the 1948 war

Another Kibbutz story: a few years ago, some “internal refugees” (Palestinians who were displaced during the war but ended up within Israeli borders; they weren’t allowed to go back to their homes, but they did become Israeli citizens) planned a weekend trip to the hill where their village once stood. The news somehow reached members of a nearby Kibbutz – one of the pillars of the Kibbutzim movement and a Meretz stronghold – who were immediately alarmed. The Kibbutz email list came to life, with members suggesting that they form a counter-delegation and capture the hill before the Palestinians arrive. Others demonstrated a more hospitable approach. I don’t know how the story ended. I heard it from one of the Kibbutz’s members, a guy my age who has since left the country.

The tiniest symbolic action or gesture relating to the Nakba can unleash disproportionate panic among Jews, since the Nakba is not just the ghost of the Zionist project – it’s a very real and political problem. Both Israelis and Palestinians understand this. An Israeli-Palestinian leader once told me that he would not support building Nakba museums. “You put monuments when the story is over,” he said. “We are not there.”

In recent years, a trend of Nakba-denial has emerged in Jewish-Israeli political circles, a sort of conservative counter attack to the post-Zionism of the 1990s. Im Tirzu, a conservative group whose claim to fame was a campaign against the New Israel Fund, which included anti-semitic images, a couple of years ago published a propaganda booklet titled “Nakba-Bullshit” (it rhymes in Hebrew) which repeats many of the Israeli talking points on the refugee issue: from “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people” to “they fled of their own will” to “Jews from Arab countries also became refugees.” Activists from Im Tirzu urged students to avoid classes that mention the Nakba, distributed the booklet at university gates and staged counter-protests against memorial ceremonies on Nakba Day.

At the same time, the Israeli government initiated the Nakba law, authorizing the finance minister to withdraw funds from organizations commemorating the Nakba. One in every five Israelis is a Palestinian, and the law basically means that their public institutions are not allowed to deal with their own history. A petition against the law was rejected by the Supreme Court, demonstrating how threatened Israelis feel – that even the institution which is considered, and certainly considers itself the guardian of civil liberties, was ready to put such a limit on free speech. Since 2009 Palestinian schools have not been allowed to discuss or even use the term Nakba as part of their curriculum.

***

All these acts had a strange effect: while dealing with the ethnic cleansing of 1948 is still considered a “confrontational” and even “subversive” act, the term Nakba itself has become part of the mainstream discourse. The Arabic word “Nakba” (“disaster”) has been used to describe the Palestinian catastrophe as early as 1948, but I never heard the word until the nineties. Now I seem to hear it every other day.

Naturally, it’s not just in Israel. Google has a cute tool which allows you to see the number of times a term is used in the books in its databases. I searched the four common ways the word Nakba is spelled, “Nakba,” “Naqba,” “naqba” and “nakba” (the tool is case sensitive) and the same pattern emerged each time: a tiny surge in the mid-seventies and a skyrocketing rise at the end of the nineties.

Compare this, for example , to the word “Israel,” which is mentioned more frequently but its peak seems to have been in the eighties (the correlation of all those graphs with historical events is an interesting story in its own).

The Microsoft Word 2010 spellcheck software I use has yet to recognize the Nakba.

***

Last year, cops besieged activists who tried to distribute leaflets about the Nakba on Independence Day. This year’s events seem less tense. As I write this text, an outraged report on Israeli public radio opens the evening news broadcast with:

It happened today: at the entrance to Tel Aviv University some people marked the Nakba day and nobody did anything about it.

In fact, there was a small Im Tirzu vigil against the Nakba Day ceremony at Tel Aviv University, but except for some insults shouted into the air, the ceremony went on without interruption. Here is a video of the event:

The editor of Yedioth Hakibbutz told me that the interview with Yerachmiel Kahanovich went viral on Facebook but that at the same time, it hardly generated any hostile responses from kibbutz members. She sounded slightly disappointed.

A strange, bitter recognition of the Nakba seems to have settled in to the mainstream, incomplete yet undeniable. Israelis are beginning to acknowledge the past, although we are far from addressing its present consequences or its possible political implementation. However, one thing is clear: the war against history has failed. The Nakba will not be forgotten – not by Palestinians, nor by us.

Palestinian refugees in 1948 (photo: wikimedia, Israeli copyrights expired)

Related:
Why Jews need to talk about the Nakba: A personal journey
Pretending away the Nakba only perpetuates the conflict
PHOTOS: Palestinians commemorate Nakba Day with rallies and protests
Report: Forced displacement on both sides of the Green Line
Remembering the Nakba, understanding this is a shared land
The Palestinian Nakba: Are Israelis starting to get it?