Benny Morris on 2 states

Iconoclastic Israeli historian Benny Morris has just published a new book advocating what he calls a two-state solution with the Palestinian territories in a federation with Jordan. What is most controversial about his viewpoint is his contention that even the mainstream Fatah leadership of the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas does not believe in "two states for two peoples." Abbas may advocate for two states, according to Morris, but with the expectation that alongside the Palestinian Arab state, Israel will eventually become a majority Arab state because Abbas still insists upon a Palestinian "right of return" to what is now Israel.

The New York Times included a small article that may be read as substantiating this view. Abbas rebuffed Prime Minister Netanyahu’s demand that he recognize Israel as a "Jewish state." "I do not accept it," Abbas said. "It is not my job to give a description of the state. Name yourself the Hebrew Socialist Republic — it is none of my business."

Abbas allows himself wiggle room here. It would have been better for the sake of negotiations if he had endorsed the concept of Israel as the national home of the Jewish people; on the other hand, he is not denying Israel’s right to see itself as a Jewish state. Unfortunately, Netanyahu will undoubtedly use Abbas’s refusal as an argument against renewing negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.

My problem with Benny Morris’s contention that the Palestinians have never ultimately reconciled with living alongside Israel is his level of certainty. There is evidence to support his argument: The Palestinian political elite rejected a two-state solution when first proposed by the British Peel Commission in 1937; they rejected it when advanced by the United Nations in 1947; and, he claims, they rejected it in 2000 when they launched the intifada after the Camp David II Summit.

Yet the case of Camp David II is much more complicated than Morris allows and is open to a variety of interpretations. I share with many the disappointment that Arafat did not either sign on the dotted line at Camp David or that all the parties (Israel, the Clinton administration and the PLO) didn’t find a way to finesse their differences, acknowledge progress regarding some issues and continue a negotiating process that could have culminated in a more fully accepted agreement – as almost occurred at the January 2001 conference at Taba (which was resolving the refugees issue to exclude an unqualified right of return) and was eventually settled on a theoretical level by the Geneva Accord of Dec. 2003.

Israeli Arabs and Jews ‘Face to Face’

Last week, my local synagogue in Manhattan sponsored a very meaningful program in anticipation of Yom HaAtzma’ut, Israel Independence Day (which begins this evening), entitled "Creating A Shared Society." This is how the event was advertised by Congregation Ansche Chesed:

The rise of Israel’s new foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, raises once again the problematic status of ethnic minorities – particularly Arabs – in the Jewish state. About 1 in 5 Israelis are Arabs, nearly 1.4 million people in all. Israeli Jews – like those who voted for Lieberman, who won 15 Knesset seats on a platform widely seen as hostile to Arab citizens – tend to suspect the loyalty of the Arabs, who in turn view Jews with suspicion of racism and colonialism. The ethnic groups rarely intersect and rarely get to know each other. How will Jewish and Arab citizens learn to get along?

Join us in the week before Yom HaAtzma’ut, Israel Independence Day, to meet two activists who work to improve this situation. Farhat Agbaria, an Israeli Arab, and Shachar Yanai, an Israeli Jew, will be with us at Ansche Chesed to discuss their work with Givat Haviva, an organization seeking greater equality and understanding between the population sectors. Agbaria and Yanai direct "Face-to-Face," a Jewish-Arab teen encounter program, winner of the 2001 UNESCO prize for Peace Education. More than 5,000 11th graders participate in Face-to-Face now, and the program hopes to reach tens of thousands more in coming years, to topple some of the barriers of prejudice and fear in Israeli society.

Mr. Yanai and Mr. Agbaria discussed in moving and respectful terms their joint efforts to bridge the national ethnic divide between Jews and Arabs in Israel. The level of separation between the two groups in most parts of Israel (but not all) is nearly total.

The starting point of the problem is, of course, that Israel is in conflict with Palestinians who are kin to Israel’s Arab population – most of whom identify themselves as Palestinian citizens of Israel. Agbaria has no problem with stating that the Jewish people deserve a country. What he wants for himself and his people is to be treated as an integral part of the same country.

As if this is not complicated enough, Mr. Agbaria observes the irony that Israeli Jews are a majority that does not behave as a majority. By this he means that the Jews continue to see themselves as a vulnerable minority. This complexity is even further exacerbated by the fact that Israel’s Arabs tend not to see themselves as a minority – because in the region as a whole, they are not. If Jews were more secure in their status as a majority, they’d be less defensive and more relaxed in how they interacted with their Arab minority.

Hillel Schenker: Holocaust Memorial Day, and Israel's path between surrender and fight

Using contemporary Jewish response to the Holocaust as a jumping-off point, Hillel Schenker of the Palestine-Israel Journal and the Meretz party in Israel has just published a very sensitive piece that tries to find a third way for Israel to deal with its enemies, which lies between self-abnegation and aggressive self-defense. What follows is Hillel Schenker's introduction to his article, and the article itself.

Yom Hashoa, Holocaust Memorial Day is always a complex and moving day in Israel. This year it was even more multi-dimensional, given the right-wing Israeli government, the fact that it coincided with the Durban 2 Conference and Ahmadinejad's speech, and the showing of a fascinating film in Israel called "Killing Kastner." Below is an article I was moved to write for the Guardian this week. -- Hillel

As the sirens sounded on this year's Holocaust Memorial Day, I stood for two minutes of silence in the offices of the Palestine-Israel Journal in East Jerusalem, in memory of the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust. This year the famous image of the little boy in the Warsaw Ghetto raising his hands in surrender, one of the photos most associated with that terrible period, popped into my mind.

We all have images we carry with us that have shaped our consciousness and outlook.

Click here to read more at the UK Guardian's 'Comment is Free' Weblog site.

Avraham Burg: Israel's gadfly

Avraham Burg – a former contender for leadership of Israel’s Labor Party, ex-speaker of the Knesset and a past chair of the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency – has become an iconoclastic critic of Israel and Zionism. His latest and boldest move to date is in his most recent book, The Holocaust is Over: We Must Rise from its Ashes.

In New York on April 21, he was a guest speaker for the Hashomer Hatzair left-Zionist youth organization and the Givat Haviva Educational Foundation. He’s a friendly individual, with considerable charm and a wicked sense of humor. His basic critique of modern Israeli and Jewish life – an inability to transcend the trauma of the Holocaust and a history of persecution – has a degree of validity, but I find that he takes it too far.

As Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, began on the evening of April 20, I attended a synagogue commemoration. Its highlight was a very good, balanced and nuanced documentary film, Blessed Is The Match, about the life and death of the famous Hagana parachutist and poet, Hannah Senesh. She gave up her young life on a doomed mission to organize resistance and save Jewish lives during the Holocaust. (Haviva Reik – for whom Givat Haviva is named – was one of the other 30-odd Hagana parachutists, about half of whom [including Reik] perished behind enemy lines in a number of European countries.)

The film does not refrain from showing Senesh’s flaws: she was almost inhuman in her capacities as a self-sacrificing idealist. One comrade called her a "statue" and one or two said they admired but disliked her. But she was also a hero who grew out of this coldness, ironically in her final four months as a prisoner, in interactions with her fellow captives (most of whom survived). And the movie brought home the tremendous burden of hatred that we Jews bore in the early to mid 20th century.

Returning to Burg’s critique: It is definitely true that our past as victims blinds many of us to the necessity to be more sensitive to the suffering of others today – especially when wrong-headed Israeli policies cause that suffering. And Burg is correct that since nothing that Israel does really comes close to what the Nazis did, that this very fact is sometimes cited by Israelis to dodge criticism.

Still, I find his one-sided condemnations hard to accept. I am a dove and a long-time critic of the West Bank settlements project and I often find fault with overly aggressive military tactics, but I know that the conflict’s rights and wrongs are approximately 50-50.

Burg closed his talk with a humorous story of visiting the zoo in Berlin and staring at a depressed monkey. Burg asked an attendant about the monkey’s problem and was told that it had a "grip phobia." Unlike the other monkeys, this neurotic one could not climb, because it would not trust to hang on with one hand for an instant while grasping the next highest branch of a tree or the next handhold on a climbing wall. Its fear of letting go became a metaphor for Burg to represent Israel’s lack of trust to let go of the occupied territories.

But I was frustrated at this because Israel has attempted to "let go" several times in recent years and not been rewarded with peace. First of all, the peace process of the 1990s was an exercise in trying to let go. Israel’s degree of letting go was incomplete, but the terrorist attacks of the Oslo years rebounded against the momentum for peace by causing Israel’s electorate to vote for the right several times and to react with excess caution at other times. And when Israel loosened its grip entirely by withdrawing from southern Lebanon and from the Gaza Strip, those quarters became staging areas for attacks on Israel.

One can still criticize these withdrawals as unilateral and not aimed at a peace process, but in both instances, Israel’s Arab enemies undermined Israel’s peace camp. They provided fuel to right-wing arguments that "the Arabs" regarded such withdrawals as "signs of weakness" and that they "only respect force."

Like Senesh, Burg is an idealist. He identifies with Ahad Ha'am’s cultural vision of Zionism rather than Theodor Herzl’s practical political orientation. Burg declares that Herzl won out in the 20th century, but that there is a need for Ahad Haam in the 21st. Maybe he’s right in this, but I wish he wouldn’t be so clownish in how he makes his point. And he does not provide a clear roadmap on how one gets to Ahad Haam. Nor does he give adequate consideration to how such extremism on the other side as the rise of Hamas may block the way.

My Grandparents’ Holocaust story

To my shock, my long deceased maternal grandparents (victims of the Holocaust), suddenly appeared in the pages of a book I was reading. Not only are they named in the non-fiction narrative, The Fields of Ukraine: A 17-Year-Old’s Survival of Nazi Occupation/The Story of Yosef Laufer, the book also relates what led to their violent end (it does not describe their actual murder).

My grandparents hid together from Jew-hunting "actions" for several months in the Stryj ghetto – along with Yosef Laufer, his father, and another young man. This, in part, is how Laufer describes their existence and my grandmother's role in keeping them alive:

At night we would collect scraps of food left by those who had been rounded up. We also collected items of clothing and other useful things which we bartered for wheat or cereal. We would crush the grain by using a special kind of grater and in this way we were able to produce flour and then bake something that was edible.

Mrs. Reiss was a noble but also a very pedantic woman. She prepared food for all of us from the bits we could get hold of. She washed our clothes and tried to keep the house clean. [Maddeningly, Laufer provides no explanation for calling her "pedantic."]

Laufer recounts my grandparents being captured by Ukrainian guards while escaping the Stryj ghetto. Stryj is a town near my ancestral shtetl of Zurawno, an even smaller town in Eastern Galicia – a province of Poland between the World Wars, the southeastern edge of the Austrian Empire before that, incorporated into the Soviet Ukraine in 1939, overrun by the Nazis in 1941, returned to the Soviet Union in 1944 and now part of the independent state of Ukraine.

Yosef Laufer then spent over a year hiding with his father in the forest, begging and pilfering potatoes and whatever else they could scrounge from the fields or from obliging and not-so-obliging Polish neighbors. They survived one winter in a hole in the ground, covered by a roof of forest materials, with stores of potatoes and sugar beets. Most of their Polish neighbors shunned them, while Ukrainians hunted them. Two Poles, and one in particular, showed great kindness over an extended period of time until the Nazis permanently retreated in the summer of ‘44.

Laufer’s story is harrowing and remarkable. It’s a cliche to speak of a "triumph of the human spirit," but that is exactly what it was. He goes into detail on how his father helped sustain them spiritually, reinforcing their will to endure. Sadly, Laufer’s father disappeared in March ‘45, on one of several business excursions in the newly liberated countryside, either succumbing to illness (he apparently suffered a heart attack the year before) or to violence – whether an antisemitic attack or simply criminal, we will never know.

Yosef Laufer went on to make aliya and to fight in the 1948 war, serving under the command of Yitzhak Rabin. He became a baker, had a family, and passed away a couple of months ago, in February. The Fields of Ukraine is the English version of a book written by Haim Tal in Hebrew, originally published in Israel in 1993. Appropriately, Tal wrote the book in Laufer’s narrative voice.

The few survivors of Zurawno whom Laufer names after Liberation, included people I’ve met as landsmen of my parents. Laufer’s story of how my grandparents met their fate jives with information my parents eventually garnered decades later. It is very possible that Yosef Laufer himself was their informant on a trip to Israel.

The emotional kicker for me is that I first noticed the name of my grandfather, Yisrael Reiss (pronounced "rice") – my grandmother’s first name is not given in the text – without realizing it was him. To my shame, but also emphasizing the extent of my loss in never having known our grandparents – I’ve had trouble remembering their first names. But in seeing how this story so resembled what I was told about my grandparents, I stopped wondering if this was some unknown relative and looked up my mother’s death certificate. Sure enough, her father’s name was given as "Israel." I’d discovered my grandparents!

I wish to express my appreciation to Sam Jonas, his brother Ted, his cousin Bob Boehm, my sister Joan Sidney and everyone else involved in making this book come to life in English. Beyond my personal sense of connection, this is a genuine contribution to our understanding of the Holocaust. It can be ordered through Dallci Press.

The Paradox of Force

The paradox of force is simple: Israel will never use the amount of force truly necessary to solve “the Palestinian Problem,” yet the amount of force that Israel is willing to use will never be enough to solve it either. Let me elaborate, the amount of force that would be necessary to “end” the conflict is so devastating and cruel, that it would be morally repugnant to most Israelis, and therefore not a realistic option. On the other hand, the amount of force that Israelis are willing to live with, a force that is still tempered by moral standards and Western ethical constraints will never be enough to end the conflict.

However, because of the asymmetric nature of the conflict, it will spark international condemnation nonetheless. This fact was sadly witnessed with the recent Gaza operation, operation "Cast Lead." In spite of overwhelming force and an almost flawless military strategy, the result was such that Israel was unable to eliminate the Hamas threat, but the civilian casualties were visible and significant enough that it sparked almost universal condemnation of Israel.

Many Israelis insist that the IDF should have “finished the job,” but very few bother to define in detail what that means. Eliminating all or most of the Hamas leadership? That would have required a prolonged occupation, house to house searches and fights that would have probably caused even more civilian deaths, certainly many more Israeli casualties, and overall more suffering, anger and resentment among the civilian population.

To “break the spirit” of the civilian population? Massive arrests, the creation of long-term prisoner camps, checkpoints and other traditional security measures would be immediately condemned by the world, inviting the inevitable comparison to the Holocaust, and just as ineffective in the long term.

The point is that it is time for Israel to realize that there is no military solution that would be acceptable to the Israelis and the world at large. At best, force is a temporary palliative to a slowly deteriorating situation that eventually will be uncontrollable. At worst, it will force the international community to impose a solution on Israel that would not be in the best interest of Israel.

You don’t have to be a supporter of peace, a humanist, or a leftist to see that there is no choice othen than a peace process. And not a process that gives lip service to peace, but a realistic, vigorous process in which both sides have clear goals, and that will entail painful concessions on both sides. There is no choice but peace because the alternative is a solution that eventually will be imposed by an international community that, let’s face it, is not terribly sympathetic to Israel. There is no choice but a peace process because the alternative is chaos.

Mearsheimer but again

"The Lobby Falters," an article in the London Review of Books by John Mearsheimer (of "Israel Lobby" fame/infamy) was brought to my attention by Arieh Lebowitz. Arieh mentioned its "tendentious" quality.

"Tendentious" – meaning to argue a cause or point of view rather than to fairly discuss the facts – is absolutely the right word. And it's interesting that you have to read most of the way down to get to a point where he can say that "the Lobby faltered" (re Jimmy Carter), justifying the title. And he never examines the reasons provided by serious and liberal-minded thinkers like Jeffrey Goldberg and Jonathan Chait for opposing Charles Freeman; he just slurs them as "pro-Israel."

The Lobby Falters by John Mearsheimer:

Many people in Washington were surprised when the Obama administration tapped Charles Freeman to chair the National Intelligence Council, the body that oversees the production of National Intelligence Estimates: Freeman had a distinguished 30-year career as a diplomat and Defense Department official, but he has publicly criticised Israeli policy and America’s special relationship with Israel, saying, for example, in a speech in 2005, that ‘as long as the United States continues unconditionally to provide the subsidies and political protection that make the Israeli occupation and the high-handed and self-defeating policies it engenders possible, there is little, if any, reason to hope that anything resembling the former peace process can be resurrected.’ Words like these are rarely spoken in public in Washington....

Predictably alarmed, the Israel lobby launched a smear campaign against Freeman, hoping that he would either quit or be fired by Obama. You can read the rest at the LRB Web site.

Tel Aviv Celebrates l00th Anniversary

The following is by our Israeli chaver, Hillel Schenker, co-editor of the Palestine-Israel Journal:

The celebrations for the l00th anniversary of Tel Aviv started on Thursday night, April 2nd, with a grand ceremony at Bialik Square in my neighborhood. Only "dignitaries" were invited to the festive recreation of Tel Aviv's history in song, dance and incredible psychodelic images on the walls of the old municipality building and the municipal music library, with Cameri Theater actors hanging from the rafters of the buildings various balconies. When I tried to go up to my roof to watch the festivities with some neighbors, we encountered a menacing uniformed sniper, who refused to allow us onto our own roof - orders are orders.

When I tried using my journalist card to walk the half block up Idelson Street, I was blocked, and told I should try the other way via Bialik Street. Somehow, I made it through the guards, convincing them that I had no threatening technology with me, only a pen. So I got to see most of the show, including President Peres (the reason for the armed guards) saying "Yerushalayim hee moreshet, ach Tel Aviv mitchadeshet." (Jerusalem is tradition, while Tel Aviv is innovation).

When the show was over, the city had arranged for bicycle-drawn carriages (replacing the donkeys from the '30s) to take the guests from Bialik Square to Allenby Street. So when cute little Shiri offered me a ride, I said why not. When she got to Allenby Street, I said how about continuing on to Hess Street, the next block where I live. But she couldn't, only to Allenby. Orders are orders.

The next morning, I ran into a young guy cleaning up the mess left in Bialik Square from the night before, wearing an "I Love NY" t-shirt! "That's sacriligeous" I exclaimed. "Even though I was born in New York, you should be wearing an 'I Love TA' t-shirt!" His response was a smile, and "Well, New York isn't bad either."

On Friday there were singers all over the city at various junctions, and I managed to attend a moving Freedom Seder with African refugees from Darfur, Eritrea and the Congo, organized by Amnesty International, Hashomer Hatzair, the Kibbutz Movement, Physicians for Human Rights, Refugee Hot Line, etc., that was held at Levinsky Park, near the new central bus station, a location for parties and picnics for foreign workers, mainly Philipinos and Africans, every weekend.

On Thursday I also saw an incredible exhibition by Israeli and international students of architecture of futuristic images of Tel Aviv, which was unfortuantely up for only two days.

For those of you who don't know, the unoffical mascot of Tel Aviv is a yellow duck, the signature character of late clever Tel Aviv cartoonist Dudu Geva. Tel Aviv is a fun-loving, relaxed live and let live Mediterranean city, and the yellow duck is the perfect emblem for it. The duck could never make it in Jerusalem. Take a look at it on top of the Tel Aviv municipal building.

On Saturday night, the official public launching of the centennial year took place in Rabin Square. The municipality went out of its way, with the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta seemingly hanging in the air in front of the walls of the municipality building, leading middle and younger generation singers led by Barry Sacharov singing the apparently popular "Zeh Hayom Huledet Sheli" (It's my Birthday), which everyone under 30 seemed to know, Matti Caspi, Shlomo Gronich, Danny Robis and others, stars of the Israeli Opera singing excerpts from major operas, a controversial version of Carmen interfaced with cheers for the reds (Hapoel Tel Aviv soccer club) and the yellows (Maccabi Tel Aviv), some fast-paced folk and modern dancing, incredible multi-media imagery accompanying everything on the wall of the municipality, still shots of days gone by coupled with contemporary avantgarde imagery, Russian born pop singer Alona Daniel (her mother lived in our apartment building) singing her theme song "Al Gagot Tel Aviv" (On the rooftops of Tel Aviv) with spotlights lighting up all the people watching on the surrounding rooftops, and concluding with transgender Yemenite Dana International representing the club scene, who was actually born in my neighborhood as Yaron Cohen, singing and jumping around to a song she wrote dedicated to Tel Aviv.

Maybe it wasn't the Chinese opening ceremony for the Olympics (for good and for bad), but it was a world class ceremony which captured much of Tel Aviv's vitality. As a native born Tel Avivian, Gideon Levy wrote a good piece about the ceremony in Haaretz.

P.S. After the results of the last elections, some of us were considering declaring the "independent state of Tel Aviv." Believe me, if it were up to Tel Avivians, the composition and policies of the Israeli government would be very different.

P.P.S. At the Freedom Seder for Refugees, I ran into veteran activist Gideon Spiro, who introduced me to his daughter Yael who's on the Amnesty Israel board, and was one of the event's organizers. I congratulated her on a very worthy and successful event, but being very conscious of the main theme of the new issue of the Palestine-Israel Journal devoted to The (Palestinian) Refugee Question, wondered why there was no reference to the Palestinian refugees at the seder. She mumbled something about Amnesty's policy of not dealing with your own society, to protect its activists, which seemed like a rather lame explanation. I have a feeling that including the Palestinian refugees in the seder would have touched upon a raw nerve in Israeli society, and it was easier to devote the (warranted) attention to the African refugees.

Chag Sameah -- Happy Passover!

Do not miss reading Ron Skolnik's "The 'Four Sons' of Passover and the Middle East Conflict" on the Meretz USA Web site. It deserves massive circulation.

Survival in Zurawno

A book has just come out about survival in the countryside near my ancestral shtetl of Zurawno (the w is pronounced as if a v, and the z is soft, like zhe – but we don’t really have that sound in English). The book is called The Fields of Ukraine: A 17-Year-Old's Survival of Nazi Occupation/The Story of Yosef Laufer – written by Haim Tal (translated from Hebrew). Please check out the Web site.

Interestingly (or not), we’ve always thought of Zurawno as Polish. My parents, who grew up there before World War II, were Polish speakers. What was once Eastern Galicia under the Austrian Empire, became part of the Polish republic between the world wars, was seized by the USSR in 1939, by Nazi Germany in 1941 and then reincorporated into the Soviet republic of Ukraine. It is now part of the independent state of Ukraine and virtually devoid of Jews.

This is my sister Joan’s blurb on the book: "You won't be able to put down this almost-unbelievable story of how 17-year-old Yosef Laufer and his father, Kalman, survived the Nazi occupation. Haim Tal masterfully fleshed out Yosef's diary, which attests to the strength of the human spirit: 'to carry on as long as there was a breath of life in us was the secret weapon that kept us alive.' At the same time, Tal details the end to the once-thriving Jewish community of Zurawno, documenting one more tragedy of the Holocaust." – Joan Seliger Sidney, Ph.D., Writer-in-Residence, University of Connecticut Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life.

Touching Bottom in Israel: What is Next?

Dr. Zeki Ergas, the Secretary General of International P.E.N.’s Swiss Romand Center, a member of Internat'l. P.E.N.’s Writers for Peace Committee, and an occasional guest blogger for Meretz USA, has shared with us his most recent (as of April 2) and relatively-optimistic observations:

Why this Israeli government cannot and will not last

Firstly, and most importantly, Avigdor Lieberman is simply unacceptable on the international political scene. We live in an era in which the image one projects is terribly important. What kind of image would project for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton being in the same room and shaking hands, smiling, not to mention tapping on the shoulder, kissing on the cheeks, with this certifiably racist demagogue? In other words, Avigdor Lieberman just does not have the minimal qualities that are indispensable to be accepted as a respectable diplomat.

Secondly, that Netanyahu could name Lieberman to that delicate and sensitive post, shows a serious lack of judgement on his part. A lack of judgement that can be compared to that of John McCain when he chose Sarah Palin as running mate. He put political expediency and personal ambition before principle, and that was his undoing. The same thing will happen to Netanyahu.

Thirdly, Ehud Barak betrayed the essence of his party which is supposed to be centre-left. By providing a fig-leaf to this right-wing government, he has shown a degree of cynical opportunism that is contemptible. After its terrible defeat in the polls, any decent political leader would bow to the reality that the party needed to reconstruct itself in the opposition. But the lure of the Defence Ministry was too strong and Ehud Barak prostituted himself politically. His choice may well prove suicidal not only for himself, but also for his party that can split in the future, and disappear in the dustbin of history.

Fourthly, this government will rapidly find itself on a collision course with the Americans...

Read all of Dr. Ergas' column by clicking here.

Further note to ‘Kidnapped’ in Gaza

The Web site of "In These Times" magazine has published my review of BBC reporter Alan Johnston’s account of his ordeal as a prisoner of Islamist terrorists in the Gaza Strip in 2007 (plus his observations of the conflict there and about his earlier postings as a correspondent in Afghanistan and Central Asia). My piece is largely an expansion of a recent post on this blog.

I ended my InTheseTimes.com article on a slightly upbeat note, but this doesn’t really reflect my mood these days. I might just as well have ended my piece with this gloomy observation by Alan Johnston:

"If the Israelis were to withdraw from every inch of occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, along with Gaza, the Palestinians would be left with about 22 per cent of the land [of the old British Mandate of Palestine]. ... I find it hard to envisage Israel ever stepping back and relinquishing sufficient control to allow the proposed tiny, fractured Palestinian state to flourish. And I don’t see Israel being forced to give enough by its mighty ally, the United States...."

My fear is that Johnston is correct in this assessment. Still, Johnston stated this in November, 2007 (when the original publication was being prepared in the UK). A faint hope for rescue lay in Barack Obama’s ascendency to the Presidency and in his declaration the other week that the Israeli-Palestinian "status quo is unsustainable and unacceptable."

You could be my daughter, but you're certainly my sister on the journey of life

Arab Israeli filmmaker Ibtisam Sath Mara’ana grew up in Paradise, (Faradis in Arabic) a small fishing village on the Mediterranean. During the 1960’s, I often drove along the coastal road to Haifa and wondered about that Arab village perched in the hills above the road. It was one of the few Arab communities that remained after the 1948 war. Once, many years ago, we drove into the town. We had coffee in a café not dissimilar from a café in Ibtisam’s film, where only men sat. There were no conversations with anyone, and we soon left. I never met anyone from the village, but after seeing Ibtisam’s film I feel I am in conversation with her.

“We are decades apart in time,” I say to her. “I could be your mother but we have so much in common. My mother too disapproved of the way I dressed, the things I said, how I thought about the world. I was the first person in my family to go to college. It was painful for me to see your mother’s disapproval of you because it reminded me of my mother. But how much more difficult it was for you to break barriers, from your village to film school, to living in Tel Aviv. Your exploration of your identity as a woman and as an Arab growing up in Israel, a Jewish state is the core of your film.

In the film you are obviously obsessed with Suuad, also from your village, who left the village many years before, who we discover was jailed for having contacts with the PLO. Your search for Suuad, your journey to find out what she had done that was so terrible that no one was willing to talk about her. Your search for her made for the tension needed for a successful documentary. But it was not Suuad who I think about but your journey of self-discovery is what I’m left with. Perhaps you identified with her because you experience yourself as a radical—from the village to being a filmmaker-- but the times are different. By the time you came of age there was an acceptance of the dual nature of an Arab-Israeli identify, or, as is politically correct today, the term is Palestinian Israeli. I believe that your search for Suuad and who she was and why she left the village is really your own search for your own identity as a woman, and as a Palestinian Israeli. What a difficult journey you have taken, and it is just beginning. You are thirty-three and have many more films to make, and perhaps many political positions to take.

In the Q & A I asked you about being on the Meretz list in the last election. You were number #12. Imagine, if things had gone differently…if, if, if. If there had been no Gaza excursion, if Meretz had been more successful at the polls, if there had not been so many parties running, if Israel had another political system, imagine, you would have been a member of the Israeli Knesset.

All this is idle speculation; the reality is that I am sure you will continue to make wonderful films. I learned in the Q & A that your partner is an Israeli Jewish man who you love very much. You have chosen a difficult path, one of enormous challenges. I look forward to seeing your next film, and the one after, and after. Wishing you great success.
Lilly Rivlin, filmmaker

Paradise Lost and Ibtisam Mara'ana

As a woman who cares deeply about women’s rights and as a Jew who cares deeply about peace between Israelis and Palestinians, I feel it is easy to feel discouraged and heavy-hearted by the way things are going in the Middle East today.

Most of the time it seems the wheels of change are stuck in the mud, and we, as people hoping for peace and equality, get stuck in the cracks between understanding the issues and effectively causing change.

This was not so on Sunday, during Meretz USA’s film screening of the documentary film “Paradise Lost” and dialogue with its Arab-Israeli director, Ibtisam Mara’ana. If only for a brief moment, I was reminded why I work so hard for peace and equality in Israel and the future Palestine. Her documentary film, Paradise Lost, was her semi-auto-biographical search for understanding her own identity as a woman, her national identity, and her village’s history. Here is the official brief synopsis of the film:

Arab Israeli filmmaker Ibtisam Salh Mara'ana grew up in Paradise (Fureidis in Arabic), a small fishing village overlooking the Mediterranean. One of the few Arab communities remaining after the 1948 war. This thought-provoking and intimate film diary follows the director's attempt to recreate the village's lost history, including the story of her childhood hero Suuad, the legendary local "bad girl" who was imprisoned as a PLO activist in the 1970's and banished from the community. Presenting the rarely heard voice of an Arab Israeli, this important film offers valuable insight into the contradictions and complexities of modern womanhood and national identity in the Middle East.

This description of the film’s content, while accurate, only touches the tip of the iceberg of all of the emotion, discovery, and growth that filmmaker Ibtisam portrays herself going through. As I watched, I quickly realized that I was being confronted by a very strong woman: a Palestinian, a Feminist, and an Artist, who through heart-break and bravery goes against her family’s wishes, her village’s social contract, and her own childhood hero, to become a free person and a free woman.

After the film screening was over, Ibtisam came forward to answer questions, which ranged from “how has this film affected your relationships with the people in the film?”, to a question about her love life, to “what are your feelings about the recent Gaza War?”

Through broken English, swearwords, and tears, she charismatically responded, proving to an audience filled with Jews of all ages that she had a fiery soul and would not be burning out any time soon.

Whether or not she believes that a two-state solution would be her ideal future, she made it clear that, as a Palestinian Citizen of Israel, she could not speak for the people of Gaza and the West Bank. Their situations are unique and while they all identify as Palestinian, their histories and their future are different.

What I found most fascinating about Ibtisam was that she identifies as a Palestinian and yet, is almost seamlessly integrated into life as a Tel Avivian artist and activist. She holds her history and her plight very close to her heart, but has somehow reconciled her past with her present. In her documentary she searches for national pride as a Palestinian in a village that practically forbids it - in fear of the Israeli Government. And by searching for this pride, she also found that she could not live in a place that tried to keep her silent and tried to make her live a certain life as a woman, so in the end she finds herself with a stronger identity, and an ability to live peacefully with Israelis and become active in Israeli Politics.

She now has very close relationships with Jews, and as a secular Muslim, has been able to learn and partake in Jewish culture. And while she protests against Israel when it comes to the Gaza war, she protests alongside Israelis for the sake of Israeli Art and Artists.

Finally, when asked why she gave up her seat on the Meretz party line-up in protest of the Gaza War, she simply said that she was anti-war and anti-violence. To her it didn’t matter who was fighting who, it just doesn’t make sense to kill.

Ibtisam might be ahead of her time, but she has an outlook that is invaluable in these times. Her forward thinking and peaceful ways brightened my eyes and lifted my heart, because I think it is people like Ibtisam that bring hope to the future.

Keep your eyes open for Ibtisam and her films! Hopefully with the help of The Other Israel Film Festival, and The JCC in Manhattan, we will be hearing many more inspiring Palestinian-Israeli voices in the future.

April fools

My understanding is that Prime Minister Netanyahu (ooh, that is painful to write) has something like 30 ministers in his new coalition cabinet (out of 120 Members of Knesset), a record. Ami Isseroff has written a delicious April Fools Day spoof, entitled "Israelis without posts to sue Netanyahu government." Isseroff includes a lengthy riff on Avigdor Lieberman as the new foreign minister, but, unfortunately, that's no joke.

Meeting Israel’s first female UN ambassador

For a devotee of Israel, I had a surprisingly emotional reaction to seeing Ambassador Gabriela Shalev at New York’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, on March 30, literally on the eve of Benjamin Netanyahu’s second ascendence to the office of prime minister. I was overcome by a sense of unease and anger. Amb. Shalev, a retired professor of law at Hebrew University, may be a perfectly fine individual, but I had trouble with the whole scene.

Stephen Wise is a prominent Manhattan Reform temple, and its senior rabbi is Ammiel Hirsch, who had previously been executive director of ARZA, the Association of Reform Zionists of America. I indicated to my companion that this could be a tough venue for Ms. Shalev, certainly tougher than an Orthodox synagogue, for example. But I was wrong.

There were no critical or challenging questions for the new representative of Israel at the UN, who had been appointed under the embarrassingly failed centrist government of Ehud Olmert, now being succeeded by the center-right coalition of Netanyahu. Nothing difficult or probing arising, for example, from the bloody humanitarian disaster of the Gaza Strip offensive of a couple of months ago.

Not only were the questions posed by the audience all soft balls, but Rabbi Hirsch’s remarks were an embarrassment for their overzealous declaration of undying love and devotion for Israel. I mean, I love Israel, but I hate most of what it has done to the possibility of peace that was so much the expectation of ten years ago, when Netanyahu was defeated by Ehud Barak.

The failure of peace is definitely not all Israel’s fault. But a lover of Israel could at least express honest concern that the two-state solution that is so vital for Israel’s future is slipping away. Yet all we got from Rabbi Hirsch and the audience was fawning and cheerleading.

Ms. Shalev made the point that she is "non-partisan," having never been a member of a political party. This may give her the stomach she needs to represent the views of a government that will likely do some reprehensible things. But it doesn’t make me want to cheer her. And all I heard from her address, and the Rabbi’s introduction, were pious recapitulations of conventional and tired notions that Israel always strives for peace and that its non-obtainment is always the other side’s fault.