Salon.com
The two catastrophes
Israelis and Palestinians have both been marked by
inconceivable tragedy. For both sides, understanding
the other's memories is the first step toward moving
beyond the past.
By Baruch Kimmerling
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/12/06/catastrophes/print.html
Dec. 6, 2004 | JERUSALEM -- In the post-Arafat era,
Israelis and Palestinians are struggling once again to
find a way to peace. But until each side honestly
tries to understand and empathize with the other's
catastrophe, it is likely to be a dialogue of the
deaf.
One of the most courageous statements ever to come
from the pen of a Jewish-Israeli intellectual was made
by philosopher and historian Yehuda Elkana more than a
decade ago. In an article titled "In Praise of
Forgetting," Elkana called upon Israel's political,
cultural and educational elite to "forget the
Holocaust." "I do not envision today," wrote Elkana,
"a more important political and educational task for
the leaders of this nation than to mobilize on behalf
of life, to devote themselves to building our future
and not to occupy themselves from sunrise to sunset
with the symbols, the ceremonies, and the 'lessons' of
the Holocaust. It is incumbent upon them to uproot the
domination of historical 'remembrance' on our lives."
Elkana's declaration received extremely vehement
emotional responses. Not only was his recommendation
vigorously rejected, but since it was made Israeli
society has sunk even deeper into Holocaust rituals.
To be sure, it is questionable whether it is even
possible to suppress or forget such a memory. It is
also questionable whether it is morally acceptable for
Israelis, not only as Jews but also as human beings,
to forget, let alone actively erase, the memory of
this terrible catastrophe, one of the greatest crimes
ever perpetrated. And it can be further asked if it is
possible to reconstruct a "Holocaust-free" memory, or
at least one where the Holocaust is peripheral.
I do not have the answers to these questions. But
Elkana was not demanding that the Holocaust vanish
from individual or collective memory. His anger was
directed against the manipulative use of the Holocaust
by almost all those occupied with it, and the
over-orientation of Israeli and diaspora Jews toward
the past at the expense of the present and the future.
Jews in general and Israeli Jews in particular draw
two contradictory lessons from the Holocaust. One
lesson is ethnocentric: Not only is it "incumbent upon
us to be strong so as not to be led like sheep to the
slaughter," but after what the Gentiles did to us, we
also have moral sanction to do almost anything to the
Gentiles. This is the attitude that seems to have
infuriated Elkana. The other, contradictory lesson is
universalist: A people that survived the Holocaust not
only has a firm obligation to be ultra-sensitive to
all suffering and injustice, but also must itself
behave in a humane fashion towards all Others, even at
the cost of certain material or political damage.
I lived for many years in a Jerusalem suburb called
Mevasseret Zion. This is a new and developing,
primarily upper-middle-class Ashkenazi neighborhood.
In its previous incarnation it was a failing
settlement erected in 1956 and inhabited by
"Moroccans" (Jews who emigrated from Morocco to
Israel) until developers and contractors came and
transformed it into Mevasseret. Within this
settlement, a new-immigrants absorption center was
established that today serves mainly "Ethiopians."
This absorption center arouses fear in some of the new
residents of Mevasseret and the envy of young couples
descended from the veteran residents.
One of the significant considerations in my choosing
Mevasseret Zion was ideological: I did not want to
live across the Green Line, Israel's internationally
recognized pre-1967 border. I did not want to be a
"settler." However, the truth is that I was a settler
nonetheless.
Soon after our arrival Palestinian laborers from the
villages and the refugee camps in the area came to
work in our house and in the surroundings. They did
not call the place Mevasseret. For them, even today,
the place has remained Qalunya -- its original Arab
name. This was not the first time that I had
encountered Palestinians from all social classes --
from simple day workers to colleagues, professors in
universities -- who sat with me to tell their family's
stories, from where and to where they were expelled or
fled in 1948 and what happened to each family member
in great, often obsessive, detail.
I will confess, more than once I was tempted to pull
out a counter-narrative -- to tell my tale and that of
my family, of what happened to us in "our" Holocaust.
My reasons were mixed. On one hand, I wanted to
demonstrate empathy, to say to my partner how much I
understood him or her since I too was not a stranger
to catastrophe and to being a refugee. On the other
hand, my instinct was to present narrative versus
opposite narrative, catastrophe versus opposite
catastrophe, in order to "balance" the situation and
to reach a certain "equilibrium of catastrophes." In
the case of Qalunya there might have been even more
than that: a certain justification of my personal
presence in the place. But in most cases I overcame
the impulse and refrained from telling my story.
I refrained from telling a counter-narrative because I
felt that al-Naqba, the Palestinian catastrophe of
1948, is incommensurable with the Holocaust, except at
one point. Both events left collective and personal
traumas on the two nations, and they are living in the
shadow of these traumas until today. It is impossible
to understand either culture and its behavior without
understanding the centrality of these events in their
identity and their memory. Thus, I was very happy to
read a few years ago an article in this spirit by
Edward Said on the Holocaust, an article that was
written with Said's characteristic intellectual
courage.
In 1948, the Jews carried out ethnic cleansing. Most
of the Arab inhabitants of the territory upon which
the Israeli state was constituted were brutally
uprooted from their homes, often accompanied by
incidents of massacre, rape and looting. As a result
of this, the Palestinian collectivity collapsed as a
social and political entity and became largely a
refugee-camp people and a people of exiles.
Nevertheless, even a brutal ethnic cleansing and
expulsion cannot be compared with the systematic
genocide of the Holocaust. It was a crime
unprecedented in scope, a crime against all humanity,
and was intended to create in the end a world order in
which a group that was constructed as one "race" would
rule over all the other "races."
From a third perspective, the introduction of the
Holocaust into the discourse and the conflict between
us and the Palestinians is insufferable because the
Palestinians are not an "involved party" to the
Holocaust, except in the way that all humanity is
involved in it. Not so the Naqba, which was directly
caused as part of the founding story of the Jewish
nation-state.
However, the story is even more complex. The place
where I live is apparently identified with the
biblical city Motza, and it is in fact located next to
present-day Motza, another middle-class suburb of
Jewish Jerusalem. The emperor Vespasian turned it into
a Roman soldier colony named Colonia Amosa, which
became a Byzantine settlement called Koloneia, a name
that the Arab conquerors adopted almost unchanged when
they conquered the land in the 7th century.
I found all of this information on the place I live in
a volume written by the veteran Palestinian historian
Walid Khalidi. This volume serves as a sort of
memorial to the Arab settlements and neighborhoods
that were and are no more, following the 1948 war and
the colonization of the land by the Jews.
From this book I also learned that before 1948 about
900 Arabs lived in Qalunya, in 156 houses. Tourists
and pilgrims described it as a rich village with
relatively fancy homes compared to other Arab
villages. It had citrus groves and a travelers' inn,
the last resting-place before Jerusalem. The village
was attacked and conquered by Haganah forces as part
of Operation Nachshon, on April 11, 1948. The Israeli
historian Benny Morris writes that the Jewish forces
remained there for two days to ensure the total
destruction of the village, most of whose residents
had apparently fled on April 9, following reports of
the massacre at the nearby village of Deir Yassin.
Some Jews point to their biblical roots in the Holy
Land as giving them a greater right to live there than
the Palestinians. But to make that argument one has to
go back 2,000 years in time. And in that case why
should not the Palestinians go back a mere 57 years?
The Zionist demand to restore the situation that
allegedly existed 2,000 years ago supports the
Palestinian demand that the situation be restored to
what it was only a generation ago. This whole strange
game of "who preceded whom" is an absurdity.
Actually, the story of the place I live is an allegory
of what happened in this entire land before I
emigrated to it. Between 700,000 and 800,000 Arabs
were uprooted from close to 400 Arab settlements. Most
of these settlements were wiped off the face of the
earth. A few were resettled by Jewish immigrants and
their names Hebraicized. A small number of their
inhabitants were killed in battle, or died of
starvation and illness. The lion's share of them
became refugees and were dispersed throughout the
entire region and the world. Some became "internal
refugees," meaning those who fled or were driven out
of their permanent homes; despite remaining within the
boundaries of the state of Israel, they were not
permitted to return to their homes. Their property as
"present absentees" was confiscated and nationalized.
This ethnic cleansing that was carried out in 1948
should be seen in its historical context, which means
that the Jewish perspective must be taken into
account. It is inarguable that the results of the war
were a great catastrophe for Palestinian society and
caused indescribable human suffering for generations,
suffering that continues today. But it is necessary to
recognize that these results were not predestined.
There was a reasonable possibility at that point in
time that the Jewish immigrant-settler society would
collapse and be destroyed. Both sides regarded the
situation as a zero-sum war following which only one
of the two communities would survive politically. That
at least was the subjective and honest feeling among
the Jews, who had just begun to absorb the results of
the Holocaust and its meaning. The possibility of
another Holocaust in Palestine terrified the Jews, and
their military doctrine and activities stood in the
shadow of this trauma.
The connection between the Jewish Holocaust and the
Arab catastrophe exists also in Palestinian
historiography, but the context and its meaning is
different. The Palestinian complaint on this is
familiar and clear. Not Muslims or Arabs but the
Christian West, Europeans and Americans, perpetrated a
terrible crime against the Jewish people. Some carried
out the extermination; others closed their eyes and
did nothing to prevent it. After they committed their
crimes against the Jews, they washed their hands of
responsibility and made the Arab-Oriental people pay
the price by helping to dispossess them of their land,
thus compounding one crime with another. It is no
wonder, therefore, that many Palestinians and other
Arabs feel deep resentment towards the West -- a
resentment perhaps especially strong among the most
"Westernized" of the Arabs.
The trauma of the expulsion and the dispersion, a
tragedy perceived as both personal and national, has
shaped the Palestinian experience more than any other
event. As with the Holocaust, the harnessing of the
Naqba foThe connection between the Jewish Holocaust
and the Arab catastrophe exists also in Palestinian
historiography, but the context -- and its meaning --
is different. The Palestinian complaint on this is
familiar and clear. Not Muslims or Arabs but the
Christian West, Europeans and Americans, perpetrated a
terrible crime against the Jewish people. Some carried
out the extermination; others closed their eyes and
did nothing to prevent it. After they committed their
crimes against the Jews, they washed their hands of
responsibility and made the Arab-Oriental people pay
the price by helping to dispossess them of their land,
thus compounding one crime with another. It is no
wonder, therefore, that many Palestinians and other
Arabs feel deep resentment toward the West -- a
resentment perhaps especially strong among the most
"Westernized" of the Arabs.
The trauma of the expulsion and the dispersion, a
tragedy perceived as both personal and national, has
shaped the Palestinian experience more than any other
event. As with the Holocaust, the harnessing of the
Naqba for the purpose of building a collective
Palestinian identity involved constructive and
creative principles alongside destructive and
obsessive ones -- such as the cult of individual
martyrdom that surrounds suicide bombers. Palestinian
literature and poetry also reflect this obsession with
memory and a founding loss. The poet Fadwa Tuqan
wrote, "In 1948 my father died and Palestine was lost
... these events gave me the ability to write the
nationalist poetry that my father always wanted me to
write." A collection of the poet Mahmoud Darwish's
poems is titled "Unfortunately, It Was Paradise." A
popular culture expressed in songs and ballads, poetry
and prose, revolves around three central topics: the
memory of the Lost Garden from which the Palestinians
were expelled; the bitter lamentation over the
present, the desire for revenge and restoration; and
the description of the future victorious return to the
field, the vineyard, the house, the settlement and the
homeland.
The further the Palestinians were from Palestine
geographically and politically, and the less contact
they had with Jews and with Israel, the more intense
these mythic principles grew in their consciousness,
together with hatred and the aspiration for revenge.
Those who were in close, often intimate -- sometimes
too intimate -- contact with the concrete "Zionist
entity" (mainly the Arabs citizens of the Jewish
state) learned to recognize us well, our language, our
mores, and the variety and multivocality within us and
our culture. The same is true of the relations between
Israelis and the laborers and prisoners from the
occupied territories following the 1967 war.
Thus, on the one hand, Palestinians have resented
Israel and the injustice and hardship that were and
are their lot. On the other hand, the Jewish state has
inspired among some Palestinians a mixture of
appreciation and jealousy of its material and even
spiritual culture, and its military power. These
Palestinians recognize both the ugly and the
attractive faces of Israel. Certainly they recognize
Israelis far better than we recognize and value them.
Over time, it has penetrated the Palestinian
consciousness that Israel is an inalterable fact of
life. Therefore it is preferable to find some modus
vivendi with it, even to come to terms with its
existence and to arrive at a tolerable arrangement
with it. The recognition that an arrangement like this
is preferable to the perpetuation of the Palestinian
suffering and its bequeathal from generation to
generation has been a real revolution in Palestinian
political thinking. Thus recently, some of their
intellectuals, like our intellectuals of the 1930s,
have even begun to dream of a bi-national state.
Despite the last four violent years of the Al-Aqsa
intifada, a growing portion of the Palestinians,
particularly those who live in the territories
conquered by Israel in 1967, are prepared, for lack of
choice, to relinquish the dream of Greater Palestine.
Despite the injustice in this concession, they are
willing to relinquish their family property and part
of their national assets, on condition that they get a
state and that their own and their people's lives
improve.
In exchange, the Palestinians ask simply that even if
we do not return the lands and homes that were usurped
in 1948, at least we will recognize their catastrophe
and their suffering, and that our society and state
were founded and built upon the ruins of the Arab
society and culture.
The Palestinians do not even expect that we ask for
their forgiveness -- just that we recognize the
historical facts. In the political and practical
realm, they are entitled to expect that we will take
direct responsibility as a society and as a state for
the rehabilitation of the Palestinian refugee society
that we have created. Also, they have every right to
demand that we will not force upon them a
"subcontractor" regime, like Arafat's Palestinian
Authority, that violates all their human and civil
rights.
Simply recognizing the Palestinian narrative, their
collective memory, and their suffering -- a narrative
Israel is part of, just as the Palestinians are part
of the Israeli story -- is necessary for the
maturation of Israeli society itself. Strength is not
only military. Our true strength will emerge when we
are able to look self-critically in the mirror -- and
when we understand that the more that Palestinian
society and people are rehabilitated, the better it
will be for us as well, as Jews and as human beings.
If the past, with all its burdens, cannot be forgotten
either by us or by the Palestinians, at least we must
strive to create a common and empathetic narrative of
the past, where each of us recognizes the suffering of
the other. That open path of memory, trod by both
peoples, would bring greater security to Israel, in
the long run, than any wall.
This piece was adapted from a keynote speech given at
the annual conference of the Israeli Anthropological
Association in 1999. It is dedicated to the memory of
Edward Said, the bravest intellectual I have ever
known. r the purpose of building a collective
Palestinian identity involved constructive and
creative principles alongside destructive and
obsessive ones -- such as the cult of individual
martyrdom that surrounds suicide bombers. Palestinian
literature and poetry also reflect this obsession with
memory and a founding loss. The poet Fadwa Tuqan
wrote, "In 1948 my father died and Palestine was
lost...these events gave me the ability to write the
nationalist poetry that my father always wanted me to
write." A collection of the poet Mahmoud Darwish's
poems is titled "Unfortunately, it was Paradise." A
popular culture expressed in songs and ballads, poetry
and prose, revolves around three central topics: the
memory of the Lost Garden from which the Palestinians
were expelled; the bitter lamentation over the
present, the desire for revenge and restoration; and
the description of the future victorious return to the
field, the vineyard, the house, the settlement and the
homeland.
The further the Palestinians were from Palestine
geographically and politically, and the less contact
they had with Jews and with Israel, the more intense
these mythic principles grew in their consciousness,
together with hatred and the aspiration for revenge.
Those who were in close, often intimate -- sometimes
too intimate -- contact with the concrete "Zionist
entity" (mainly the Arabs citizens of the Jewish
state) learned to recognize us well, our language, our
mores, and the variety and multivocality within us and
our culture. The same is true of the relations between
Israelis and the laborers and prisoners from the
occupied territories following the 1967 war.
Thus, on the one hand, Palestinians have resented
Israel and the injustice and hardship that was and is
their lot. On the other hand, the Jewish state has
inspired among some Palestinians a mixture of
appreciation and jealousy of its material and even
spiritual culture, and its military power. These
Palestinians recognize both the ugly and the
attractive faces of Israel. Certainly they recognize
Israelis far better than we recognize and value them.
Over time, it has penetrated the Palestinian
consciousness that Israel is an inalterable fact of
life. Therefore it is preferable to find some modus
vivendi with it, even to come to terms with its
existence and to arrive at a tolerable arrangement
with it. The recognition that an arrangement like this
is preferable to the perpetuation of the Palestinian
suffering and its bequeathal from generation to
generation has been a real revolution in Palestinian
political thinking. Thus recently, some of their
intellectuals, like our intellectuals of the 1930s,
have even begun to dream of a bi-national state.
Despite the last four violent years of the Al-Aqsa
Intifada, a growing portion of the Palestinians,
particularly those who live in the territories
conquered by Israel in 1967, are prepared, for lack of
choice, to relinquish the dream of "Greater
Palestine." Despite the injustice in this concession,
they are willing to relinquish their family property
and part of their national assets, on condition that
they get a state and that their own and their people's
lives improve.
In exchange, the Palestinians ask simply that even if
we do not return the lands and homes that were usurped
in 1948, at least we will recognize their catastrophe
and their suffering, and that our society and state
were founded and built upon the ruins of the Arab
society and culture.
The Palestinians do not even expect us to ask for
their forgiveness -- just that we recognize the
historical facts. In the political and practical
realm, they are entitled to expect that we will take
direct responsibility as a society and as a state for
the rehabilitation of the Palestinian refugee society
that we have created. Also, they have every right to
demand that we will not force upon them a
"subcontractor" regime, like Arafat's Palestinian
Authority, that violates all their human and civil
rights.
Simply recognizing the Palestinian narrative, their
collective memory, and their suffering -- a narrative
Israel is part of, just as the Palestinians are part
of the Israeli story -- is necessary for the
maturation of Israeli society itself. Strength is not
only military. Our true strength will emerge when we
are able to look self-critically in the mirror -- and
when we understand that the more that Palestinian
society and people is rehabilitated, the better it
will be for us as well, as Jews and as human beings.
If the past, with all its burdens, cannot be forgotten
either by us or by the Palestinians, at least we must
strive to create a common and empathetic narrative of
the past, where each of us recognizes the suffering of
the other. That open path of memory, trod by both
peoples, would bring greater security to Israel, in
the long run, than any wall.
This piece was adapted from a keynote speech given at
the annual conference of the Israeli Anthropological
Association in 1999. It is dedicated to the memory of
Edward Said, the bravest intellectual I have ever
known.
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - -
>
> About the writer
> Baruch Kimmerling is George S. Wise Professor of
> Sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and
> the author of "Politicide: Ariel Sharon's War against
> the Palestinians" and co-author of "The Palestinian
> People: A History."
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