In "The Question of Palestine", Edward Said wrote that the Palestinians "have had the extraordinarily bad luck to have a good case in resisting colonial invasion of their homeland combined with, in terms of the international and moral scene, the most morally...
Ver másIn "The Question of Palestine", Edward Said wrote that the Palestinians "have had the extraordinarily bad luck to have a good case in resisting colonial invasion of their homeland combined with, in terms of the international and moral scene, the most morally complex of all opponents, Jews, with a long history of victimization and terror behind them......I do not doubt that every thinking Palestinian, or those like myself whose trials have been cushioned by good fortune and privilege, knows somehow that all the real parallels between Israel and South Africa get badly shaken up in his consciousness when he reflects seriously on the difference between white settlers in Africa and Jews fleeing European anti-Semitism." Said's ability to combine recognition of the terrible injustice committed against the Palestinians with understanding of the "long history of victimization and terror" in the collective memory of Israeli Jews tends to be forgotten nowadays in the Palestinian solidarity movement, where there is a growing and disturbing tendency to view Israeli Jews solely as settler-colonialists. This is why Jo Roberts's book "Contested Land, Contested Memory" is so timely. Roberts picks up the largely neglected legacy of Edward Said by stressing the need for both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs to make the imaginative leap to understand the collective memory and narrative of the Other. All too often, the approach of "let's feel each other's pain" carries the implication of an equal-sided conflict, but, like Said, Roberts makes it completely clear that Israel Jews are the oppressor and Palestinian Arabs the oppressed nation. Nor does she equate the genocide of the Holocaust with the ethnic cleansing of the Nakba - like Said, she points out the connection between the two. Roberts asks the Israeli Jewish New Historian Ilan Pappe, one of her many interviewees among both national groups: "did he think that Zionism could simultaneously be seen as a colonizing settler movement that dispossessed the Palestinians and as a liberating movement in terms of persecuted Jews?". Pappe replies: "Yes, there's something in it" and refers to Edward Said. Of course it is perfectly understandable that, at a time when Israel appears to be consolidating its final victory over the Palestinian people, Palestinians and their supporters should not want to bother with the past sufferings of the Jews. But, as Roberts brings out, this refusal to engage with the memory and narrative of Israeli Jews precludes any possibility of change and reconciliation, because it only confirms Israeli Jews in their own intransigence in relation to the Palestinian collective memory and narrative - a denial of the Other that they see as necessary for survival. Roberts also writes of the genuine historical and religious tie between the Jewish people and their ancestral homeland, while making clear that this connection does not justify establishing a Jewish majority ethnic nation-state by driving out over 700,000 Palestinians. My only criticism of the book comes here, in relation to Roberts's reference to Jewish collective memory of "two thousand years of Diaspora" (page 57). As Shlomo Sand has pointed out in "The Invention of the Jewish People", there was an extensive Jewish Diaspora long before the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, and the Jewish population of Palestine was not exiled after this destruction - the Romans never expelled whole populations. But this qualification does not alter her main point of the significance of the Holy Land in Jewish collective memory. Eoberts's point is echoed by the Israeli Jewish dissident Jeff Halper, in a 2012 interview on the Mondoweiss website. I would like to quote from the interview here because it is so relevant to Roberts's book: [...] "JH: It was colonial. It was a colonial movement, although....this is an important point here, and that is that there was an impulse to Zionism. In other words, it wasn't the story of a British farmer that gets up one day and decides to go to Kenya to get free land. I mean, there was a genuine historic tie between the Jewish people and that country. Even if it's a narrative, even if it's a story, every country has its narratives. You know, this country has a couple. So, y'know, the point is that the Jews living abroad really saw the land of Israel as their territory and so what I'm saying is that it was a genuine national movement coming back to its territory. Then it became - ten minutes later it became - colonial; because it was displacement and it was denial of Palestinian identity and rights and everything else. Why is that important? Because if in fact Zionism was simply a settler-colonial movement, like....the French in Algeria, or the British in Kenya - it's irredeemable, I mean, then when Palestine is liberated the Jews .... go home. And one reason why I think it's not [solely] a colonial movement, was there wasn't a mother country to go home to....the French in Algeria, you could go back to France. Jews have nowhere to go back to. But if in fact you give at least acknowledgement that there was a genuine national kernel, y'know nucleus to this thing, then Zionism can be de-colonized. In other words, then you can envision one state - binational or democratic, y'know however it's worked out - in which the people stay there but only if Zionism is sort of cut that slack, that at the first ten minutes it was a genuine movement. It has to be held accountable for all of the terrible things it did after that, of course, but I think to completely call it a colonial movement misrepresents what Zionism is about." Roberts herself is neither Jewish nor Palestinian - which probably makes it easier for her to empathise with both national groups - but she is not a detached observer. On the contrary, she brings into the mix of historical narratives the painful collective memory of her own Catholic heritage in relation to the many centuries of Christian persecution of Jews that paved the ground for the Holocaust: "Few gentiles know about the centuries of persecution that laid the groundwork for the death camps. This too is part of the occlusion of an unwanted past, at least within Christianity. Yet it is an integral part of the history of both Jews and Christians in Europe. The killing of six million European Jews would not have occurred if the ground had not been prepared by sixteen hundred years of Christian anti-Judaism." In emphasising her own sense of involvement, connection and responsibility, Roberts entirely avoids what the American Jewish theologian Marc Ellis has called "the ecumenical deal" that succeeded the genuine and fruitful "ecumenical dialogue" that was set up in the decades following after the Holocaust. By "ecumenical deal", Ellis means Zionist exploitation of Christian guilt, in order to forestall Christian criticism of unjust Israeli policies. Roberts's conclusion is in many ways a bleak one - "the divide between the two is wide and growing wider "; and this is reflected in the polarisation between the international solidarity movements of both national groups. Yet Roberts also points to the small seedlings of hope - the rise of post-Zionism after Oslo, even though Israelis retreated into nationalism after the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000; the widespread recognition within Israel - as a result of the work of the New Historians - of the driving out of the Palestinians in 1948, even though denial of the Nakba has now been replaced by the idea that it was necessary for survival; the willingness expressed again and again in her interviews by both Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews to live together. Roberts is not dogmatic about solutions, but evidently thinks that Israeli Jews need to abandon the desperate need to maintain a Jewish majority ethnic nation-state at all costs - which is driving Israelis into more and more undemocratic measures - and find a way of living together on equal terms, both individual and collective, with Palestinian Arabs in one state. But this cannot happen, as she makes clear, unless Palestinians and their supporters find a way of addressing Israeli Jewish fears of becoming an oppressed minority within a Palestinian Arab or even Islamic state. To sum up: this is a complex, nuanced book full of compassion, empathy and courage - a book that manages both to stand back from the heat of the conflict and yet to be deeply involved in it. I recommend everyone, but particularly Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs and their international solidarity movements, to read it.
In "The Question of Palestine", Edward Said wrote that the Palestinians "have had the extraordinarily bad luck to have a good case in resisting colonial invasion of their homeland combined with, in terms of the international and moral scene, the most morally complex of all opponents, Jews, with a long history of victimization and terror behind them......I do not doubt that every thinking Palestinian, or those like myself whose trials have been cushioned by good fortune and privilege, knows somehow that all the real parallels between Israel and South Africa get badly shaken up in his consciousness when he reflects seriously on the difference between white settlers in Africa and Jews fleeing European anti-Semitism."
Said's ability to combine recognition of the terrible injustice committed against the Palestinians with understanding of the "long history of victimization and terror" in the collective memory of Israeli Jews tends to be forgotten nowadays in the Palestinian solidarity movement, where there is a growing and disturbing tendency to view Israeli Jews solely as settler-colonialists.
This is why Jo Roberts's book "Contested Land, Contested Memory" is so timely. Roberts picks up the largely neglected legacy of Edward Said by stressing the need for both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs to make the imaginative leap to understand the collective memory and narrative of the Other.
All too often, the approach of "let's feel each other's pain" carries the implication of an equal-sided conflict, but, like Said, Roberts makes it completely clear that Israel Jews are the oppressor and Palestinian Arabs the oppressed nation. Nor does she equate the genocide of the Holocaust with the ethnic cleansing of the Nakba - like Said, she points out the connection between the two.
Roberts asks the Israeli Jewish New Historian Ilan Pappe, one of her many interviewees among both national groups: "did he think that Zionism could simultaneously be seen as a colonizing settler movement that dispossessed the Palestinians and as a liberating movement in terms of persecuted Jews?". Pappe replies: "Yes, there's something in it" and refers to Edward Said.
Of course it is perfectly understandable that, at a time when Israel appears to be consolidating its final victory over the Palestinian people, Palestinians and their supporters should not want to bother with the past sufferings of the Jews. But, as Roberts brings out, this refusal to engage with the memory and narrative of Israeli Jews precludes any possibility of change and reconciliation, because it only confirms Israeli Jews in their own intransigence in relation to the Palestinian collective memory and narrative - a denial of the Other that they see as necessary for survival.
Roberts also writes of the genuine historical and religious tie between the Jewish people and their ancestral homeland, while making clear that this connection does not justify establishing a Jewish majority ethnic nation-state by driving out over 700,000 Palestinians. My only criticism of the book comes here, in relation to Roberts's reference to Jewish collective memory of "two thousand years of Diaspora" (page 57). As Shlomo Sand has pointed out in "The Invention of the Jewish People", there was an extensive Jewish Diaspora long before the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, and the Jewish population of Palestine was not exiled after this destruction - the Romans never expelled whole populations. But this qualification does not alter her main point of the significance of the Holy Land in Jewish collective memory.
Eoberts's point is echoed by the Israeli Jewish dissident Jeff Halper, in a 2012 interview on the Mondoweiss website. I would like to quote from the interview here because it is so relevant to Roberts's book:
[...]
"JH: It was colonial. It was a colonial movement, although....this is an important point here, and that is that there was an impulse to Zionism. In other words, it wasn't the story of a British farmer that gets up one day and decides to go to Kenya to get free land. I mean, there was a genuine historic tie between the Jewish people and that country. Even if it's a narrative, even if it's a story, every country has its narratives. You know, this country has a couple. So, y'know, the point is that the Jews living abroad really saw the land of Israel as their territory and so what I'm saying is that it was a genuine national movement coming back to its territory. Then it became - ten minutes later it became - colonial; because it was displacement and it was denial of Palestinian identity and rights and everything else. Why is that important? Because if in fact Zionism was simply a settler-colonial movement, like....the French in Algeria, or the British in Kenya - it's irredeemable, I mean, then when Palestine is liberated the Jews .... go home. And one reason why I think it's not [solely] a colonial movement, was there wasn't a mother country to go home to....the French in Algeria, you could go back to France. Jews have nowhere to go back to. But if in fact you give at least acknowledgement that there was a genuine national kernel, y'know nucleus to this thing, then Zionism can be de-colonized. In other words, then you can envision one state - binational or democratic, y'know however it's worked out - in which the people stay there but only if Zionism is sort of cut that slack, that at the first ten minutes it was a genuine movement. It has to be held accountable for all of the terrible things it did after that, of course, but I think to completely call it a colonial movement misrepresents what Zionism is about."
Roberts herself is neither Jewish nor Palestinian - which probably makes it easier for her to empathise with both national groups - but she is not a detached observer. On the contrary, she brings into the mix of historical narratives the painful collective memory of her own Catholic heritage in relation to the many centuries of Christian persecution of Jews that paved the ground for the Holocaust: "Few gentiles know about the centuries of persecution that laid the groundwork for the death camps. This too is part of the occlusion of an unwanted past, at least within Christianity. Yet it is an integral part of the history of both Jews and Christians in Europe. The killing of six million European Jews would not have occurred if the ground had not been prepared by sixteen hundred years of Christian anti-Judaism." In emphasising her own sense of involvement, connection and responsibility, Roberts entirely avoids what the American Jewish theologian Marc Ellis has called "the ecumenical deal" that succeeded the genuine and fruitful "ecumenical dialogue" that was set up in the decades following after the Holocaust. By "ecumenical deal", Ellis means Zionist exploitation of Christian guilt, in order to forestall Christian criticism of unjust Israeli policies.
Roberts's conclusion is in many ways a bleak one - "the divide between the two is wide and growing wider "; and this is reflected in the polarisation between the international solidarity movements of both national groups. Yet Roberts also points to the small seedlings of hope - the rise of post-Zionism after Oslo, even though Israelis retreated into nationalism after the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000; the widespread recognition within Israel - as a result of the work of the New Historians - of the driving out of the Palestinians in 1948, even though denial of the Nakba has now been replaced by the idea that it was necessary for survival; the willingness expressed again and again in her interviews by both Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews to live together.
Roberts is not dogmatic about solutions, but evidently thinks that Israeli Jews need to abandon the desperate need to maintain a Jewish majority ethnic nation-state at all costs - which is driving Israelis into more and more undemocratic measures - and find a way of living together on equal terms, both individual and collective, with Palestinian Arabs in one state. But this cannot happen, as she makes clear, unless Palestinians and their supporters find a way of addressing Israeli Jewish fears of becoming an oppressed minority within a Palestinian Arab or even Islamic state.
To sum up: this is a complex, nuanced book full of compassion, empathy and courage - a book that manages both to stand back from the heat of the conflict and yet to be deeply involved in it. I recommend everyone, but particularly Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs and their international solidarity movements, to read it.
