Alexander Yakobson: What's in a name?

Alexander Yakobson: "Masalha complains that in the Israeli reality, the expression "Jewish, democratic state" sometimes serves as a rationalization for discrimination and the exclusion of the Arab minority. Of course it does....", writes in Haaretz in response to "A Jewish and democratic restaurant"...

Alexander Yakobson

What's in a name?

At this advanced stage of the never-ending argument about "the Jewish, democratic state," there's no reason to expect major innovations. How can a state be both Jewish and democratic, someone (for instance, Salman Masalha in Haaretz, August 9 ) will predictably ask. How can a democrat deny the right of the Jewish people to a state, someone else will predictably reply.

Is the problem, perhaps, not the right to a state, but rather the term "Jewish state," which invites anti-democratic interpretations? Perhaps it would be better to find a new term that expresses the same principle? But more than any other formula, the "Jewish state" is a legitimate, internationally recognized term: The UN partition resolution stipulated in 1947 that the land should be divided into a "Jewish state" and an "Arab state" in order to confer independence on the two peoples living in it.

The resolution also required both states, Jewish and Arab, to establish democratic systems and guarantee minority rights. How, then, can one claim that the Jewish state, "by definition," cannot be democratic?

Masalha complains that in the Israeli reality, the expression "Jewish, democratic state" sometimes serves as a rationalization for discrimination and the exclusion of the Arab minority. Of course it does. The question is whether relinquishing the expression would do anything to impede discrimination. This is a total illusion.

Let's assume we were to erase the term "Jewish state." How would that affect the restaurant proprietor whom Masalha suspects of being on the verge of declaring his establishment to be "Jewish and democratic" (so as to justify the exclusion of Arab customers )? In that case, the restaurant owner would have no problem declaring his establishment to be "Israeli" and designed for real Israelis - those who belong to the people of Israel. What would stop him from interpreting the term "Israeli" in such a fashion?

Today, when the "Jewish state" is anchored in the official lexicon, proponents of ethnic discrimination and religious coercion are, of course, happy to make use of the term for their own purposes. But they would have no problem making the same exact use of terms such as "Israel," "Israeli" and even "the Israeli nation." The name "Israel" can easily convey the same legitimate meanings as the term "Jewish state," as well as the same illegitimate interpretations.

Perhaps, then, the root of the problem is the name "Israel" itself? Perhaps we should find a neutral name for the state, such as Switzerland on the Yarkon? Maybe. Meantime, it's worth having a look at what's happening in the original Switzerland.

The flag of that state bears the symbol of the cross, but that does not suffice for its citizens. They recently lined up at the ballot box, in their customary orderly fashion, and voted by a decisive majority for a law banning the construction of minarets in their beautiful country. That's how they preserve the Swiss character of their state. It turns out the name "Swiss Confederation" can indeed be interpreted in such an exclusionary fashion.

Whoever thinks this vote represents only a passing Swiss mood is mistaken: According to a series of surveys, the reason similar laws have not been approved in other West European countries is that in those countries, it is harder to initiate referenda. According to these surveys, large numbers of Europeans want to ban the construction of mosques - and not just minarets.

We are far from being Switzerland, that long-standing, well-established, placid and prosperous democracy in the heart of Europe. Of course, there are more than a few prejudiced people and outright racists here (be they restaurant owners or not ). But if we compare the situation facing Switzerland to that facing the State of Israel, we will find that we have no reason to be ashamed of the typical Israeli restaurant owner.
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Published: Opinion - Haaretz, August 19, 2010
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For Hebrew, press here

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See:
Salman Masalha, "A Jewish and democratic restaurant"
Shlomo Avineri, "A Palestinian people, yes, a Jewish people, no?"

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Shlomo Avineri: A Palestinian people, yes, a Jewish people, no?

In response to "A Jewish and Democratic Restaurant,"
Shlomo Avineri Writes in Haaretz:

Just as Jews are not the ones who will determine whether the Palestinians are a people or not, Salman Masalha cannot determine whether the Jews are a people or not. It is a question of self-determination.

Shlomo Avineri

A Palestinian people, yes, a Jewish people, no?

Like many readers, I enjoyed the delicate irony, sharp wit and clever Arab tales featured in Salman Masalha's op-ed ("A Jewish and Democratic Restaurant," August 9 ). But these virtues cannot compensate for the fundamental misunderstanding that underlies his concluding declaration: "There is no such thing as a Jewish democratic state, just as there is no Muslim democratic state." That is where the dog is buried, to continue the animal metaphors.
A boy peering from under an Israeli flag

A boy peering out from under an Israeli flag in April, 2010.
Photo by: Reuters

At the root of this sentence lies a deep, tragic misunderstanding that characterizes many Arab positions on Israel's identity. In the standard Arab view, "Jews" are comparable to "Christians" or "Muslims." In other words, they are a religious group, not a nation. And it is not only Arabs who think this way: There is no doubt that for hundreds of years, Jewish identity was perceived by Jews and non-Jews alike primarily as a religious identity, and some still think so.

But the essence of the Zionist revolution is the view that the Jews are a nation, and as such, they have the right to national self-determination in a political framework. This principle was accepted by the United Nations on November 29, 1947, in its decision to partition British Mandatory Palestine into two states - Jewish and Arab (not Jewish and Muslim-Christian ).

Israel views itself as a Jewish nation-state, exactly as Poland views itself as a Polish nation-state and Greece as a Greek nation-state, or as the Palestinian state, when it arises, will view itself as a Palestinian nation-state.

To be sure, Jewish identity has a religious component, both historically and in our contemporary reality - just as there is a religious dimension to Polish national identity and a Muslim dimension to Arab national identity (Mohammed is not perceived exclusively as the prophet of Islam; Christian Arabs too view him as a hero of the Arab nation ).

One of the problems that complicates attempts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is this very issue - the fact that the Arab side has difficulty recognizing that Jews in the state of Israel view themselves as a nation. Identity is a matter of self-definition, not external definition. Just as Jews are not the ones who will determine whether the Palestinians are a people or not (there are more than a few of us who have yet to be reconciled with the existence of the Palestinian people ), Salman Masalha cannot determine whether the Jews are a people or not. It is a question of self-determination.

Anyone who rejects the Jews' right to define themselves as a nation denies them a fundamental human right, to which Jews, just like the Palestinians, are entitled. Arab refusal to accept Israel as a Jewish state attests to something very deep and troubling: unwillingness to accept the Jewish people's right to self-determination.

Because what is at issue is national identity, not religious identity, there can indeed be a Jewish democratic state, just as there can be an Arab democratic state. That, incidentally, is what is written in the constitution of Lebanon, an Arab state that, for all its problems, maintains a political system based on elections and democratic principles.

Clause B of the Preamble to the Lebanese Constitution declares: "Lebanon is Arab in its identity and in its associations." Clause D stipulates: "The people are the source of authority and sovereignty." In other words, Lebanon views itself as an Arab, democratic state.

The constitutions of Syria and Egypt also define their countries' identities as Arab and their systems of government as democratic. While there are, to say the least, problems with the democratic aspect of these countries' regimes, it is nonetheless clear that the drafters of the Syrian and Egyptian constitutions believed that, in principle, there is no contradiction in a state being both Arab and democratic.

And so Arab and democratic is fine, but Jewish and democratic is not? In my dictionary, there is a whiff of racism in this distinction.
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Published: Op-Ed, Haaretz, 13 August 2010

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For Hebrew, press here.


See: Salman Masalha, "A Jewish and Democratic Restaurant".

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A Jewish and democratic restaurant

Salman Masalha

A Jewish and democratic restaurant

Compared to other countries, Israel has been blessed with many scientific inventions. If that were all there were to it, we could stop at this point and simply give thanks.

The problem is that in recent decades we have witnessed Israeli ingenuity in the invention of political concepts. It begins and ends with the slogan "Jewish state and democracy." This is an invention that can be compared to Ya'akov Meridor's famous lightbulb of the 1980s, which was supposed to light up all of Ramat Gan. Just as nobody bought this magic lamp, no clear-minded person could possibly buy this unfounded political turn of phrase. Only in Israel, it appears, do the chivalrous proponents of "Jewish and democratic" try to hitch the ox of "Jewishness" to the ass of "democracy."

Just recently we witnessed the collision between the ox and the ass in the controversy surrounding the "Jewish and democratic" school at the West Bank settlement of Immanuel. If that's the way things are at a Jewish school, it's not hard to imagine what would happen if we examined the state of affairs between Jews and Arabs.

This invented political turn of phrase was not so visible and prevalent in Israeli public discourse before the Six-Day War. It reached monstrous proportions due to the long occupation, which put Israel in a niche where it came to resemble the fox that swallowed a sickle, in the popular Arab tale. Not only did the fox swallow the sickle, it swallowed the screwdriver of the Gaza Strip. The fox could neither digest nor get rid of what had gotten inside it.

Since the occupation did not end and demographic facts continued apace, someone decided to get rid of the Palestinian screwdriver that had gotten stuck in Israel's knee. This removal was called the "Gaza withdrawal." But the demographic sickle remains stuck in the soft underbelly of the Israeli fox.

What is called in the Israeli dialect "the left" fell consciously into a trap set by the right and adopted the mendacious slogan "Jewish and democratic" to win some middle-of-the-road votes and attain Jewish tribal legitimacy. At a critical juncture, a Jewish tribal transformation swept up the state, cresting in the assassination of a prime minister.

There is great significance in the sequence of the words "Jewish and democratic," a phrase that has turned into a mantra uttered in every public discussion. The right relates only to the first part of the slogan, and compels "the left" to discuss the definition of "Jewish." The right would prefer to defer discussion about the essence of the word "democratic" to a later stage of debate about "final-status agreements." Until such time, the right will persist with attempts to cripple steps by the Supreme Court and other branches of government beholden to democracy. It will do its utmost to remove all substance from the term.

Interviewed by the daily Maariv on July 2, Nazareth Illit Mayor Shimon Gafsou expressed consternation about the increasing number of Arab residents in his town. "It would be wrong to forget that Nazareth Illit is a microcosm of the State of Israel," Gafsou said. "It's a Jewish and democratic city, but most of all Jewish."

It seems the phrase is constantly bandied about because it has no weight. With all the rhetoric about "Jewish and democratic," it's hard to see anything Jewish or democratic in the country. The day is not far off when we hear about the establishment of a "Jewish and democratic restaurant," as well as "Jewish and democratic fashion."

What then should the confused, sickle-ridden Israel fox do? He should internalize what is written in the book of Deuteronomy: "Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass together."

There is no such thing as a Jewish democratic state, just as there is no Muslim democratic state. Religion and democracy can never dwell under one roof.
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Published: Opinion, Haaretz, 9 August 2010

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See:
Shlomo Avineri, "A Palestinian people, yes, a Jewish people, no?"
Alexander Yakobson, "What's in the name?"
Uri Avnery, "Poisonous Mushrooms"
Lev Grinberg, "You can't be a Jewish Muslim"

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The Palestinians' chance to win a moral victory

Salman Masalha

The Palestinians' chance
to win a moral victory

In an era of political correctness, there are those who think it appropriate to adjust the message to the audience to which it is directed. I don't agree. In my view, political correctness is a defilement - sweet talk that obscures blatant racism. There is a universal morality that transcends religions, peoples and nations, and is binding on anyone who belongs to the community of humankind.

So when I speak about Gilad Shalit, for example, I call him "the captive Israeli soldier." That's right. Captive and not abducted, which is the term they try to feed the public here. In Israel, they prefer to forget, or deliberately try to make others forget, that Shalit was not abducted. He was taken captive as a soldier in a military operation carried out against an army, in the context of the Palestinian national struggle against the decades-long Israeli occupation. That basic fact turns the act into a legitimate one, carried out by a people fighting for its national liberation.

So far so good, but from this point forward there are other things that have to be said. I have already published them in Arabic for an Arab audience, because it's important for the Palestinians to hear that the Shalit case belongs to them too. It is appropriate that these things be heard in Hebrew as well, and read by all manner of brainwashed Hebrew speakers. The remarks also have to do with the Israeli Palestinians (yes, there are such creatures, who also read and speak Hebrew ).

There is no doubt - this I believe, this I want to believe - that Israeli captive Gilad Shalit is being treated humanely by his captors in Gaza. All of us hope a prisoner exchange deal is carried out quickly, and that the Israeli captive returns to his family and the Palestinian prisoners return to theirs.

Nonetheless, the silence by Palestinian intellectuals over the case is troubling. Hamas is demanding a large number of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Shalit's release.

No one has asked himself what this means from a moral standpoint, in terms of the way the Arabs view the value of each individual Arab. How much is an Israeli prisoner worth compared to Arab or Palestinian prisoners?

The silence of Arab Knesset members is also conspicuous. They cry out, and rightly so, about the injustices of the Israeli occupation and the suffering it causes the Palestinian people, but not a word is heard from them taking a clear moral stand on Shalit. That is their duty. They must rise and wholeheartedly tell the Hamas government in Gaza and Khaled Meshal, who pulls the strings in Damascus, that there are things that are simply unacceptable. They can and must say that refusing to allow the Red Cross to visit the Israeli prisoner is a moral stain on the Palestinian struggle as a whole. If Shalit is a prisoner of war, and he is, then he is certainly entitled to all the rights accorded prisoners of war under international law.

The Palestinian side, which has suffered for decades from the Israeli occupation, can demonstrate moral superiority over the occupier by allowing Shalit's family to visit him, or at least by allowing Red Cross representatives to visit him, just as they visit Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

I have never understood why the Arab side is forsaking the moral arena, leaving it for others. It is acting as though matters of morality are none of its concern. Those who choose to abandon the moral arena should not be indignant over their poor image in the eyes of the world.

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Published: Opinion - Haaretz, July 12, 2010

For Hebrew, press here

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For Greek, press here

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Arabic article about the issue, press here

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Hypocrisy begins at home

Salman Masalha

Hypocrisy begins at home

It may be that the whole world is dazzlingly two-faced, but we should nevertheless focus on the hypocrites in our own region, since after all, hypocrisy begins at home.

Some six months ago, while it was still licking the wounds caused by the barbs hurled at it from all sides because of the lead it cast in Gaza, Israel was given a chance to improve its image. It seized the opportunity presented by the horrendous earthquake that devastated Haiti and rapidly dispatched a relief delegation. Thus, while denying the children of Gaza pencils and notebooks, Israel poured aid into a country thousands of kilometers away.

Perhaps now, in the wake of the Turkish flotilla affair, there are specimens of the local breed of hypocrites who are silently praying for some natural disaster to strike somewhere in the world that will enable Israel to unsheathe this rusty propaganda weapon once again.

But hypocrisy is not confined to Israelis. It seems that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has learned a lesson from Israel: The Turkish flotilla to Gaza was in fact one big public relations exercise. Erdogan noticed that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was raking in the whole popular Arab jackpot called Palestine, and he also wanted to grab some of it. The Palestinian-Israeli jackpot is a photogenic one, and every home with a satellite dish on its roof watches what happens to it.

And now there's talk of another "humanitarian" flotilla in aid of Gaza. Another convoy of hypocrisy, well-covered by the media, is setting sail, this time from Lebanon, of all places. Now that the Lebanese have boosted their national pride by registering the world's biggest dish of hummus in the Guinness Book of Records, they are bidding for the record in hypocrisy, soon to be seen on television screens everywhere. For it is not humanitarian motives or concern for the Palestinians that are making all these hypocrites restless. All they want is spectacle, footage and headlines. Because as we have already said, the Israeli-Palestinian arena is the most photogenic arena in the world.

If they had any genuine humanitarian concern, the Lebanese would stage protests against the harsh blockade that has been imposed on the Palestinian refugee camps in their country for decades. You have to read Amnesty International's reports on the situation of the Palestinians in Lebanon to comprehend the humanitarian disaster there. This hypocrisy was best described by a European volunteer in those camps, who told the organizers of the new flotilla: "You love the Palestinians in Gaza and hate your own Palestinians."

Since 1948, the Palestinians have been a pawn in the hands of the Arab and Muslim regimes. The problem was exacerbated because the Palestinians themselves willingly accepted that role. And so we are witnessing a situation in which the Palestinian nation, even before it has taken on a coherent shape, has split into two: Gaza, backed by Iran and Syria, and the West Bank, backed by Egypt and Saudi Arabia. And then there are the "opsimists" (to use the oxymoron coined by the late Palestinian author Emil Habibi ) - the Israeli Palestinians sitting on the fence and trying to please everyone.

One reason for all this is the absence of a Palestinian leadership - political, social or cultural - worthy of the name. Six decades after the Nakba, the Palestinians have not even managed to turn themselves into a nation with a clear national agenda.

It looks as if this place, the cradle of monotheism, will continue to be a pawn in the hands of regional and international powers, a region so well covered by the media that all of the world's hypocrites rush over here to try to wipe away the moral stains that have tarnished them.
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Published: Op-Ed, Haaretz, June 24, 2010

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All in the Same Boat

Salman Masalha

All in The Same Boat

The analytic mind who holds the political security portfolio in the “didn’t know, didn’t hear, didn’t see” government of Israel has finally found the light at the end of the open sewer.

“The hasbara (public relations, propaganda) in the operation was flawed,” said Defense Minister Ehud Barak in the Labor Party cabinet ministers’ forum.

Flawed?

Now the very energetic and very catalytic spokesman for the pirate army is bombarding the media with immaculately edited films and cheap, colorful propaganda pictures. However, the more films and pictures the spokesman distributes, the more he sinks himself and those who send him, both the state and the government, in the pool of quicksand into which they have jumped.

The energetic spokesman has distributed a film in which supposedly a stun grenade explodes on the rubber dinghy of the naval commando soldiers who closed in on the Marmara. However, no edited film can launder the piratical crime committed by the Israel Defense Forces out in the Mediterranean Sea. The spokesman only forgot to mention one very simple fact: This grenade is an IDF grenade the soldiers lobbed in their attempt to get control of the huge uproar taking place on the deck. It can’t be helped that this is the stun grenade that fell on the rubber dinghy circling the Marmara to cut it off.

The more one watches the films and examines the pictures distributed by the hasbara captains, the clearer the pictures become and expose their wretchedness. Here is another photo distributed by the IDF spokesman. So, what do we see in this “incriminating” picture?

The analytical minds that sobered up looked for more and more incriminating findings and gathered together the objects in the previous picture. Thus in the new picture we see some more simple kitchen knives as well as the same knife with a curved blade from the previous picture.

After an exacting search two more “very incriminating” items were found in the ship’s toolbox. The analytic mind’s catalytic spokesman carefully added them and arranged them clearly in the foreground of the new color picture. It is easy to discern that there are two rusty saws, which had apparently been lying around in some crate without anyone having touched them or used them for a very long time.

I show this picture to a friend and explain my findings from the picture. Sarcastically, she replies: “Very evil people, those Turks. It was all planned. They knew that rusty tools can cause tetanus and other horrible diseases.”

In the caption under the pictures published on the Ynet site the IDF Spokesman says: “The activists on the deck were armed with knives,” and “No one is really talking about the knives that were found on the ship.”

About this we shall say: You are right. So here we are, talking about them.

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See also: "A Picture Worth 190 Words"

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published also in: Middle East Transparent

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A Picture Worth 190 Words

Salman Masalha

A Picture Worth 190 Words

The IDF, Israel’s pirate army, which has taken nine lives and wounded scores of other civilians who sailed in the humanitarian aid flotilla to the Gaza Strip needs a propagandist to distribute “suspicious” findings and launder the crime.

There is no need to say much about the picture distributed by the IDF spokesman. Just a brief glance at the picture suffices to teach us about the “analytic minds” in the heads of its leaders. The picture has been distributed, of course, to serve Israeli propaganda after the dimensions of the crime it committed at sea were revealed to the world.

What is seen in the picture?
Here is the list:
13 ordinary kitchen knives
4 ordinary pocketknives
1 knife with a curved blade
2 ordinary screwdrivers
1 voltage-testing screwdriver

So, what can be said about the picture?
Considering the hundreds of people who set sail on the decks of the Turkish ship Marmara, apparently its kitchen for serving the hundreds of passengers is quite wretched. Never mind the ship’s toolbox.

The “wretched propaganda” picture reveals a wretched army as well as a government wretched from head to toe.

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See also: All in the Same Boat

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Martin Niemoller - First They Came

Martin Niemöller

First They Came

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the Socialist
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.

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For Arabic translation, press here.

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Go to Arabic, Thou Sluggard

Salman Masalha

Go to Arabic, Thou Sluggard

We often hear about the bleak situation of the Hebrew spoken by students in the schools. In a document published after the latest matriculation exams, senior Education Ministry inspectors once again sounded the alarm. The report also included recommendations to teachers for improving the situation by focusing on thinking and analysis, in order to give students tools for dealing with tasks through deep understanding of the material.

Reports and recommendations of this sort are published from time to time and we often encounter statements to the effect that students have difficulty with questions requiring analysis and understanding or fail to accomplish tasks because they do not understand words and concepts and the like. However, despite all the reports, papers and recommendations submitted in recent years, there has been no improvement. These documents have not succeeded in causing a turnaround because they are off the mark.

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue,” according to Proverbs 18:21. It could be said that all human creativity, in all areas of culture including the exact sciences, is dependent on language. Language is the tool for thinking and the richer a person’s language is, the richer his thinking will be, and vice versa. Moreover, it is not enough that language be the province of the few. Richness of language, including grammar and syntax, must be the province of every student in the schools.

To what is this comparable? To a society in which the wealth is in the hands of the few while the majority of the citizenry is living in poverty. Such a society will be considered poor because the wealth is not spread through the entire society. The same is true of richness of language. Without instilling richness of language into the society as a whole, there is no meaning to the dictionary wealth standing on the shelf or in the hands of a few.

The deterioration of the level of young people’s language in recent years is in part caused by the media, in which companies and individuals with commercial interests and their chase after ratings dictate the content. The captains of the broadcasting networks put the emphasis on various sorts of voyeuristic programming. When instead of bringing on the air intelligent, knowledgeable individuals and scientists whose language is rich and whose minds are acute, they highlight feeble-minded and inarticulate celebrities – so it is no wonder the level of the language of young people who flock to the follies of celebrity is so low.

The growing gap between spoken Hebrew and standard Hebrew is pushing the language into the corner Arabic has been inhabiting for generations now. The duality in the Arabic language plays an important role in delaying the development of Arab societies – as noted, complex thinking and creativity are not possible without rich, precise language.

The Hebrew language is undergoing a process of desertification similar to the desertification that has been experienced by the Arabic language. This processes is causing the achievements in the schools to deteriorate. As the gap between the spoken and the standard language grows wider, and as long as richness of language is not instilled in everyone in the society from an early age, scholastic achievements will continue to deteriorate.

To reverse this process, the language wilderness must be made to bloom and richness of language must be instilled in all the students and teachers in Israel, both Jews and Arabs. The spoken language, be it Hebrew or Arabic, is not only distancing and alienating the population from the rich, precise language of creativity – it is also leading to shallowness of thought regardless of age.
To those who are seeking the root of the problem it can therefore be said: Go to Arabic, thou sluggard, consider its ways and be wise.

Published in Haaretz Online, Opinion, May 16, 2010
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CAT’S REVENGE

Salman Masalha

CAT’S REVENGE

When cats decide to sleep
nothing disturbs their night.
It's we who make the noise
going from fight to fight.

When cats decide to dream
nothing can change their minds.
It's we who spoil their night
with snores of many kinds.

One snores as if he speaks.
Sometimes it sounds like French,
but you who sleep so deep
on a bed made of a bench.

-- no way for me to try
to show you my cat's revenge.

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