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Israels man of conscience

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Israel’s Man of Conscience

By Ezra Nawi
Source: The Nation

[The author is going to prison–for peacefully resisting settler and army violence against West Bank Palestinians and the illegal expropriation of their land.]

My name is Ezra Nawi. I am a Jewish citizen of Israel.

I will be sentenced on the first of July after being found guilty of assaulting two police officers in 2007 while struggling against the demolition of a Palestinian house in Um El Hir, located in the southern part of the West Bank.

Of course the policemen who accused me of assaulting them are lying. Indeed, lying has become common within the Israeli police force, military and among the Jewish settlers.

After close to 140,000 letters were sent to Israeli officials in support of my activities in the occupied West Bank, the Ministry of Justice responded that I "provoke local residents."

This response reflects the culture of deceit that has taken over all official discourse relating to the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

After all, was I the one who poisoned and destroyed Palestinian water wells?

Was I the one who beat young Palestinian children?

Did I hit the elderly?

Did I poison the Palestinian residents’ sheep?

Did I demolish homes and destroy tractors?

Did I block roads and restrict movement?

Was I the one who prevented people from connecting their homes to running water and electricity?

Did I forbid Palestinians from building homes?

 

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Embers and ashes an intellectuals exile struggle and success

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"Embers and Ashes:" An intellectual’s exile, struggle and success

 Atef Alshaer, The Electronic Intifada, 30 June 2009

"My homeland, you have spurned me … I shall never return to you … I shall never ever return to you …"

So ends Hisham Sharabi’s compelling autobiography, Embers and Ashes: Memoirs of an Arab Intellectual. Sharabi, a leading Palestinian intellectual who died in 2005, uttered these words to himself on board a plane from Amman, Jordan to the United States in 1949. He studied and taught in the US for the rest of his life, retiring as a professor of history at Georgetown University in 1998. Ably translated from Arabic by Issa J. Boullata, Embers and Ashes is a poignant story of an intellectual’s exile and struggle.

Sharabi transports the reader seamlessly from his early life in Palestine, where he was born in 1927, to his studies at the American University of Beirut, and finally his own American experience and life as a university professor at Georgetown. While it occasionally lacks cohesion, the book is unmistakably personal and insightful.

Sharabi’s departure from Amman was preceded by tumultuous36in Lebanon where he was a prominent activist in the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP), led by Antun Saadeh. Perhaps more than anyone else, it was Saadeh who influenced Sharabi’s intellectual trajectory. Saadeh’s political line and that of the SSNP was premised on unity between Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine. Sharabi depicts Saadeh sympathetically as a man of deep human values: courageous, inspirational and subtly intellectual. But he also shows other aspects of Saadeh’s personality:

"He used to speak of the party as if it were an actual government on the verge of taking power. In his personal behavior and public stance, he acted like a man of state. The party in his view was the only political force that stood up to colonialism and could achieve independence. It was the only force that could liberate Palestine. I think that Saadeh underestimated the depth of sectarian, tribal, and feudal feelings in [Lebanon]" (150-151).

There are two issues regarding Saadeh’s approach to which Sharabi submitted uncritically, and on which he later seems to renege. Firstly, he did not oppose Saadah’s grandiose vision of the Syrian homeland, which shifted from being confined to Lebanon, Syria, Palestine and Transjordan, to include Iraq, Kuwait and Cyprus. Secondly, Sharabi embraced Saadah’s view that "the individual was a mere means that society used to achieve its aims; and that society represented a firm and abiding ‘truth,’ whereas individuals fell away like autumn leaves," thereby "ascribing a universality to society and considering society an ultimate ideal in itself" (59-60). However, Sharabi developed a more nuanced and critical view of these matters, particularly in his attribution of a more central and visible role to the individual in society.

Sharabi was also influenced by German philosopher Nicolai Hartmaan, who "considered moral values as justice, courage, love, and friendship to be objective and timeless. For him, those values enjoyed an eternal existence, like Plato’s ideals" (129).

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The nakbah “ the palestinian catastrophe

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THE NAKBAH – THE PALESTINIAN CATASTROPHE

The Arab rebellion (1936 – 1939) quelled, disarmed and impoverished, the Palestinian was left with only his conviction intact – that he would defend his rights.

The hitherto underground British trained army, the Haganah, trained explicitly to put down the Arabs, along with massive supplies, emerged in collusion with their masters, as a formidable force. In addition, the notorious British trained night squads (with Moshe Dayan on its first mission), given a free hand by the authorities, played its role with zeal. Indeed, it was British military doctrines that the Israeli Defense Force adopted on the inception of the Jewish state.

The Arab rebellion had spelt out the Palestinian position: the policy of infiltration had been the core cause of the uprising; the Palestinian would only relinquish his land by force, thus giving clarity to the strategic needs of the settler:

To allow for a Jewish settlement in a small country such as Palestine, it would necessitate the transfer of the Palestinians, one and all, to neighbouring countries.

To this end, The Jewish National Fund, with ingenuity, sought to create districts, with a Jewish majority, as opposed to villages. Thus when the Jewish state was proclaimed, the outline of the districts were automatically included within the boundaries of the Jewish state!

Subsequent to the Arab rebellion, the British decided to revoke its policy, which had proved to be unfeasible. The unrest between Jews and Arabs since 1920, was indeed the result of an incoherent policy. It declared that the Jewish national home had now been established; within five years Jewish immigration and land purchase, with restrictions imposed, would terminate; thereafter independent self-governing institutions would be set up in Palestine.

Loyal to the creed of their bizarre logic, the Zionist turned their fury, with eloquent threats, on the British.

The interlude of World War II (1939 – 1945) brought about a lull in Palestine, at least, in the military arena. Having taken note of the power shift, with meticulous foresight, the Zionists sought to involve the hitherto indifferent, powerful American Jewry to exercise its influence on the White House.

The tacit understanding between Western powers and the Zionists, that in return for Western support for the Zionist cause, a negligible quota of refugees would be admitted by the West, the rest, siphoned off to Palestine, would remain intact, the Zionists assured. It sought only American commitment to Zionist aspirations.

This commitment they found in Harry Truman, the American President. And, by 1945 the American Jewry had secured in excess of $46 million for the Zionist cause.

Moreover, this unshakeable alliance persuaded the ‘civilised world’ to see, for those wretched survivors of the Holocaust, Palestine as their natural saviour.

The war over, the Zionist turned their guns on their masters, calculated to drive them out; the American Jewry applauding all the way; Washington, insidiously approving.

Meanwhile, the wavering UN members succumbed to President Truman’s duress and in addition to the 7% of the country already acquired by way of purchase, the UN instantaneously handed over to the Zionist a staggering 47%; although less than what had been proposed by the settlers, the Zionists were confident in the belief that this division was by no means the final.

Outraged at the dismemberment of their land, the Palestinians refused to recognise the validity of the UN decision and along with volunteers from Arab countries, against overwhelming odds opposed it by force. The outcome was never in doubt.

The gruesome butcher at Deir Yasin on 10 April 1948, (a prelude to other massacres), of 250 children, women and men, led by Menachem Begin, (incidentally a Nobel Peace Prize winner), was part of a calculated strategy, designed to create panic. Indeed, the horrors of Deir Yasin were later to be ruthlessly played on; the fear the massacre had generated, resulted effectively in the mass exodus of almost a million Palestinians to other lands.

The Arabs driven out, the Zionist with ease moved in to occupy their land. On 14 May 1948, the state of Israel was proclaimed.

Having found itself in an untenable position, Great Britain surrendered the mandate to the UN (14 May), making its ignominious exit, followed by a combined Arab force entering Palestine on 15 May 1948. Uncoordinated, ill-equipped, and in intense rivalry (each party eager to secure a negotiated settlement of Palestine), it failed to impress itself on Israel’s secured positions, and, to the chagrin of their Palestinian brothers, the Arab armies were soon on the retreat.

Their fate was sealed, or so it would seem?

Amena Hayat
Cape Town

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The balfour declaration the role of the british

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THE BALFOUR DECLARATION &The Role of the British

Zionism originated in Eastern and Central Europe in the late 19th century under the impact of nationalism which engendered Western Christendom’s savagery towards its Jew, culminating in the Holocaust. This aversion is well manifested in Adolf Hitler’s perception of a Jew – the evil incarnate into whom he projected all that he hated and feared.

Hounded everywhere, political Zionism under Theodor Herzl (1860 – 1904) emerged to rescue a downtrodden people. He concluded that assimilation would be impossible and therefore at the World Congress of Zionist in Basel, Switzerland (1897), he committed himself to establishing a ‘national home’ for the Jewish people that called for a mass Jewish settlement in Palestine or the Sinai Peninsula. When Herzl’s initiatives with the Ottomans failed, he was willing to accept Britain’s offer of Uganda but for violent opposition within the Zionist Congress of 1903.

In the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire new developments were unfolding. Arab nationalism was on the rise. The British, ever so vigilant, sought to exploit the situation – keenly aware that devoid of the Hejaz, the Ottoman Empire would be deprived of its legitimacy and hence its survival; to this end, with characteristic cunning, aligned Arab against Turk – Arab dissent, subversion followed.

Largely inspired by the British, Sharif Husayn of Mecca, on the strength of a British pledge, came out in revolt against the Ottomans in 1916.

British diplomacy has never been guileless. The solemn declaration to recognise the independence of Arab regions (including Palestine) as demanded by the sharif of Mecca, was not meant to be honoured, the secret Sykes – Picot Agreement (09 May, 1916) would ensure that, whereby, in an Allied victory, the Arab territories would be divided into French and British spheres of influence, Palestine would be placed under international administration.

Meanwhile, unbeknown to the Arabs that the British had reneged on their pledge, their nationalist aspirations continued to mount.

Moreover, for the Palestinian Arabs, the threat of Zionism had emerged – The Balfour Declaration (Nov. 2, 1917). In a letter to Baron Rothschild, a leader of British Jewry; Arthur Balfour, the British foreign secretary, stated that the British ‘supported the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people’ and ‘nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religions rights of existing non Jewish communities in Palestine’.

Embedded in the declaration’s ambiguities was the hand-over of Palestine to the Jews – the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine; indeed its architects themselves were soon to expound on its obscurities.

British policy does not conform to ethics. With the stroke of a colonial pen the woes of the Palestinian people had begun, and indeed those of the Middle East.

At the end of World War I (1918), with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the British occupied Palestine; in 1922 the mandate for Palestine, by the newly founded League of Nations, was granted to Great Britain.

Confronted by Zionism’s aggressively exclusive attitude; waves of immigrants; fruitless deputations to London, it needed no astute mind to discern the situation.

Moreover, the Palestinians contended that the objectives of the mandate were to gradually enable the people of Palestine to self-determination. Indeed, but for British intrigue, which allowed for the incorporation of the Balfour Declaration; thus sanctioned the future of Zionism in Palestine. (Was it not Balfour himself who proclaimed: ‘…for Palestinians we deliberately and rightly decline to accept the principles of self determination.’)

With all his nationalist yearnings, his own harsh realities, the Palestinian peasant surfaced, armed with nothing more than old weaponry and his conviction, to defend his rights. (By and large it had been the rebellion of the peasants, which had taken the British three years to quell (1936 – 1939)).

British fury had no reservations: of a population of a million Palestinians, 5000 killed, 14 000 wounded; its leadership in exile; the bold, imprisoned; terror campaigns on their villages; above all, left with no weaponry to fight, from this the Palestinian emerged only with his conviction intact.

With Shaikh Qassam’s dying call for liberation still echoing, the struggle had but only begun… .

Amena Hayat,
Cape Town

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