My Journey

In September, 2009, this Canadian boy started a masters program the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, learning about ecology and health, middle-eastern politics and the environment, and how a dire problem may facilitate a region's coming together for the better. This Blog is a record of my head-first dive into this immense world.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Drops from the cup - the Machon approaches Israeli Independence Day

During the passover seder, Jews around the world do something very special, something that lays the foundation for a modern ethic of reconciliation and empathy: as we recount the visiting of the ten plagues upon Egypt, the acts of God that led to our being able to pass from Mitzrayim (Egypt, literally a narrow, confined place) to the promised land of Israel, we spill a little bit of wine from our cups on the pronunciation of each plague.  Wine symbolizes our rejoicing in freedom, but when we remember that our freedom came at the price of so much suffering for ordinary Egyptians we spill a little joy from our cups.  Now, the origins of this ritual probably have very little to do with our modern humanistic interpretation - since the plagues visited the Egyptians but not the Jews, we remove them from our cups - but the contemporary interpretation speaks volumes about the central values of modern Judaism as I know it.

This Tuesday Israel will celebrate Yom Ha'atzmaut, or Independence Day, commemorating the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 following the end of the British mandate of Palestine and the UN Partition plan of 1947.  It is a day of unabashed joy in Israel, full of barbecues and fireworks, strategically placed the day after Yom HaZikaron, Israeli remembrance day.  But while Israelis term the war of 1947-48 the war of independence, Palestinians have a different name for it: the Nakba, or "catastrophe".  Just as the mythical displays of divine power that led to Jewish liberty 3,000 years ago also created much suffering amongst the Egyptian people, so Israeli independence was also won at a price:

    "Jewish Villages were built on the remains of Arab villages.  You don't even know the names of these Arab villages and I don't blame you because the geography books no longer exist.  It is not only geography books that no longer exist, but also the Arab villages themselves disappeared.  For Nahalal was established on the site of Ma'loul, Kibbutz G'vat on the site of Jebbata, Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Khneifes, and Kfar Yehoshua on the site of Tel Shoman.  There is not one place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population."

-Moshe Dayan, from a speech at the Technion, 1969

The old myth that it was the Arab leaders who commanded over 700,000 Palestinians to leave their homes during the war is long dead, and I won't beat it further into the ground.  While there was no official plan to displace the Arab population from Jewish areas (i.e. ethnic cleansing), the concept of minimizing the Arab population of a future Jewish state was explicitly discussed, and commanders in the field were given pretty free reign to do as they wished.  In the early months of the civil war, before the Arab armies entered, the massacre of Arabs at Deir Yassin sent a strong message, and the words Deir Yassin were used as a battle cry later in the war by Jewish forces.  The Palestinians left out of a mix of terror and force, the wealthy ones first - ensuring that leadership on the ground was scarce.

This is not meant to minimize the existential threat posed to the fledgling state of Israel by the situation, and the Arab leadership also openly discussed ethnic cleansing - the roiling conflict between Jewish and Arab national aspirations that was kept in check by British rule burst its seams in this conflict.  But saying things like "Well, Israel accepted the partition plan while the Arabs didn't - they just wanted to drive us into the sea" as a justification for Jewish acts and a demonstration of Jewish moral superiority is inappropriately reading back into the situation that while the Arabs were bloodthirsty ethnic cleansers, the Jews were simply happy to live in their little state with an almost equal Arab population - if Israel had felt it was the stronger force at that point, whether it would have attempted to claim as much land as possible and displace as many Arabs as possible is an open question.   If we approach the situation with such a sense of moral superiority, we have already dehumanized the other player, and when this happens the possibility of peace and justice flies from our grasp.

We now come to Independence Day.  It is all well and good to spill wine from our cups to remember the ancient Egyptians 3,000 years ago.  Can you ask Israeli society today, with all of its existential anxieties, security fears, and pain and suffering at the hands of Palestinian terrorism, to spill a little joy from Yom Ha'atzmaut to remember the human cost of its Independence?  Many peace groups think that not only is this a good idea, but it is vital for the future reconciliation of the two peoples and thus Israel's very existence.  Therefore, many groups have put on joint Yom Ha'atzmaut - Nakba day observances, and many have incorporated the Nakba narrative into the celebrations of Yom Ha'atzmaut.  An example is a group called Zochorot, who state:

    "Zochrot seeks to engage the Jewish public in Israel in remembering and talking about the Nakba, the Palestinian tragedy of 1948. The memory of the Nakba is a counter memory that challenges the Zionist version of events that most Jewish Israelis are taught from a young age and come to take for granted as “true.” The Nakba is in one sense the story of the Palestinian tragedy -- the destruction of the villages, the expulsions and the killing -- but it is also a fundamental part of the story of Jews who live here, of the victors of the 1948 war."

Here at the Machon we have made a decision: on Yom Ha'atzmaut, we will fly both the Israeli flag and the Palestinian flag, as a recognition that both peoples had and still have aspirations for independence, self-governance, and a life of dignity in this land, and until both peoples can acknowledge the right of the other to this dignity, the legacy of pain and suffering will be bequeathed to generations to come.  So, this Yom Ha'atzmaut, I encourage everyone to do something symbolic to take a drop out of their cup of joy - only a drop - to begin to build towards reconciliation.

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