On Palestine (15 page)

It is a long journey and once you take it, you are facing your own society, you are even facing your own family and it is not a nice position to be in. People who know Israel know that it is an intimate and vibrant society so if you are against it, you feel it in every aspect of your life. I think this is one of the reasons why it takes a bit longer for the people like me to come to the point where you say there is no return: you have to subscribe to these views whatever the repercussions are.

FB: I find what you are saying about Israel very interesting. Most
nation-states are very good propagandists, but Israel has taken this to another level. I know someone, whom you also know, Nurit Peled-Elhanan, who has written a book about the way Arabs are portrayed in Israeli schoolbooks to show the world the amount of brainwashing and propaganda in Israel that starts from a very early age. Can you tell us more about this society as you've experienced this yourself as well?

IP:
Indeed. It is a very indoctrinated society, probably more than most Western societies and more than the non-Western societies. It is not because of coercion that people are indoctrinated; it is a powerful indoctrination from the moment you are born to the moment you die. The people in power don't expect you to get out of it because you seem to be swimming in this fluid. What Nurit Peled-Elhanan says in her books is that you could compare becoming an anti-Zionist to a religious person becoming an atheist and still believing that maybe God is there and maybe he will punish him and punish you for being sacrilegious and so on. One should think about the way you are brought up to believe that there are some truisms of life that if you challenge them, you need to clean yourself up to the bottom to be sure that you are able to move on because otherwise you have all these doubts all the time. It was so powerful. But I think there is a difference between my generation and the present generation of Nurit's sons and my own sons: they know more than we did because of the Internet and what goes on. I think it is more difficult for the Israelis now to rely just on indoctrination although they are doing a good job. There are a very few among the young people of Israel who challenge Zionism. I hope that the world has become more opened with what happened in the Arab world as well. You thought that these were closed societies who would not know what is going on, so I hope this is going to change, but for us, we were like in a bubble, we did not know that there was a different existence; it was very difficult to get out of it.

FB: I guess the older generation, your generation and Nurit's, the amount of cognitive dissonance as well when you've believed in something so strongly all your life, even though the facts show after a while that you are wrong, it is so hard to accept that you were wrong for, let's say, thirty or forty years of your life. You see that all the time, at events when you always see the same people coming to every single Palestinian event, I always think, they know as much as I do about Palestine and they know the facts. How come they are still defending Israel so strongly? I think because this is such a personal and emotional journey, it is very hard for them to come to the realization that they were wrong and all their lives have been in a way, a myth.

IP:
Yes and I think we should also point out that like in any colonialist situation where you have an anticolonialist struggle, there is a lot of violence in the air. When you are brought up in a certain way and the policies and actions of your own government push the other side to take some violent actions as well, then you think that objectively your point of view is correct because you see that there are suicide bombers, violence, missiles sent from Gaza. We also have to understand that this need to get out has been debated and examined within the context of permanent violence. It is very difficult for Israelis to separate between the violence and the experience and the reasons for that violence. One of the most difficult things is to explain to the Israelis what is the cause and what is the effect. What brings that violence about and not to regard this violence as just coming out of the blue and therefore they have no other choice than being where they are.

FB: That is the problem of knowledge and education. I think it also comes from the fact that mainstream media or the education system, in Israel even more, is not doing its job. When you hear people here saying: “What do you want Israel to do? Hamas has been sending one hundred and fifty rockets a day to Sderot, they have to react.” I think in a time when history is very short term, we are not talking about six months, we are talking about last week, the circle of violence will never stop because the job is not done, the education part is not done.

IP:
That's true and I think one of the major challenges is to find space for Israelis and Western people to be able to understand how it all began. Even the first Zionist settlers when they came and realized that what they thought was an empty land, or at least their own land, was full of Arab people, they regarded these people as aliens, as violent aliens who took over their land. It is this infrastructure they have built about the other side that feeds all the Israelis' perception and visions. It is a dehumanization of the Palestinians that begins in the late nineteenth century. How to explain to people that they are actually a product of this alienation? It is one of the biggest tasks for anyone who engages in alternative education or is trying to convey a different message to the Israeli Jews' society.

FB: I'd like you to talk about what historically was the first Palestinian Intifada of the late thirties, and the revolt against UK imperialism.

IP:
I think it is important to go back to even earlier than 1936 in order to understand it. You have to go back to the late nineteenth century when Zionism appeared as a movement. It had two noble objectives: one was to find a safe place for Jews who felt insecure in a growing atmosphere of anti-Semitism, and the other was that some Jews wanted to redefine themselves in a national group, not just as a religion. The problem started when they chose Palestine as a territory in which to implement these two impulses. It was clear because the land was inhabited that you would have to do it by force and you had to contemplate the depopulation of the inhabitants of the indigenous people. It took time for the Palestinian community to realize that this was the plan. Even the Balfour declaration did not awaken the people when it was adopted in November 1917; it did not bring the Palestinians to revolt against the British policy or the Zionist strategy. By 1936, you could already see the beginning of the real result of this strategy: Palestinians were evicted from land purchased by the Zionist movement; Palestinians lost their jobs because of Zionist strategy to take over the labor market. It was very clear that the European Jewish problem was going to be solved in Palestine. All these factors pushed Palestinians for the first time to say, “We are going to do something about it,” and they tried to revolt. You needed the might of the British Empire to crush that revolt. It took them three years; they used the repertoire of actions against the Palestinians that were as bad as those that would be used later on by the Israelis to quell the Palestinian Intifadas of 1987 and 2000.

FB: This revolt of
'36 was a very popular revolt; it was the “Falah,” the peasants, that took arms. Also, in reading your books, I've realized that this revolt, being so violently squashed, did help the Haganah in '47
/
'48. The Palestinians were really weak at that time because all the leaders, all the potential fighting elements, had been killed or had to go into exile in 1936.

IP:
Absolutely. The Palestinian political elite lived in cities of Palestine, but the main victims of Zionism up to the 1930s were in the countryside. That's why the revolt started there, but there were sections of the urban elite that joined them. Like you said, I pointed out in one of my books that the British killed or imprisoned most of those who belong to the Palestinian political elite and military or potentially military elite. They created a Palestinian society that was quite defenseless in 1947 when the first Zionist actions, with the knowledge that the British mandate came to an end, had commenced. I think it had an impact on the inability of the Palestinians to resist a year later in 1948 the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

FB: Your work as a historian has helped to dismantle most of the myths about Israel. One of the myths is that Israel was created because the Bible gave it to the Jewish people. Could you to tell us a bit about Theodor Herzl, who is known as one of the founders of Zionism, was not religious at all, and did not speak even speak Yiddish?

IP:
That's right. Zionism had one element that is usually forgotten by historians. This was a wish to secularize Jewish life. If you secularize the Jewish religion, you cannot later use the Bible as a justification for occupying Palestine. It was a bizarre mixture, which I like to call “a movement made by people who do not believe in God but God nonetheless promised them Palestine.” I think this is something that is at the heart of the internal problems of Israeli Jewish society today. It is also important to understand that even before Herzl, there were people who thought about themselves as Zionists but were aware of the existence of Palestinians in Palestine. They were thinking of different kinds of connections to Palestine and solutions for the insecurity of Jews in Europe like Ahad Ha'Am (real name Asher Ginzburg), who said that maybe Palestine would just be a spiritual center and Jews, if they feel insecure in Europe, should settle elsewhere outside Europe or settle in more secure European societies. One important group of people that did not allow them to do this were Christian Zionists that already existed in those days who believed that the return of the Jews to Palestine was part of a divine scheme. They wanted the Jews to return to Palestine because they could precipitate the second coming of the Messiah; they were also anti-Semites. A “two for one” deal as they could also get rid of the Jews in Europe at the same time. I think it is an important period to go back to to understand how British imperialism, Christian Zionism, and of course Jewish nationalism played together as a formidable force that left very few chances for the Palestinians when it all came together in the late nineteenth century.

FB: Like you said, you have to add anti-Semitism as well. When you hear Lord Balfour and the politicians at the time, they wanted the Jews to live in Palestine because they did not want the Jews in England or anywhere else in Europe.

History is crucial. We talked a few hours ago about knowledge and the way it is transmitted. Can you tell us about how history and knowledge, if it is properly taught, can enlighten people and can maybe better the struggle?

IP:
I think we've already pointed it out. If you don't have a historical perspective, understanding, and if you don't know the facts, you accept the kind of negative depictions that the world and the Israelis have of Palestinians. I'll give you one example of what is so-called Palestinian terrorism that in the Israeli perspective and in some Western perspectives comes out of the blue: “We don't know why these people are violent, maybe it is because they are Muslims, maybe it is their political culture.” It is only when you have a historical understanding that you can say, “Wait a minute, I understand where this violence comes from, I understand the source of the violence. Actually settling [in] my house by force is an act of violence. Maybe they were wrong, maybe they were right to try to resist by violence, but it begins by the very invasion of my space, the place where I live. This invasion is accompanied by a wish to get rid of me . . . what else can I do?” I think the historical dimension is important first for a better understanding of why the conflict continues. The second reason is that we will never succeed in changing political views about the Palestinian issue if we don't explain to people how knowledge was manipulated. It is very important because you need to understand how certain phrases are being used like
peace process
, how certain ideas are being broadcasted like
the only democracy in the Middle East
, like
Palestinian primitivism
, and so on. You need to understand how these languages are means of manipulating the knowledge that is there so as to form a certain point of view and prevent another point of view for coming into the space.

It's a twofold issue. You need to understand the history of the place but also the way the narratives have been constructed and how they are being manipulated and used. A crucial aspect is to understand how to challenge this. The main narrative that the Israelis are still successful in portraying is this idea of a land that even if it was not empty, was full of people who had no real connections to the place and are illegitimate. They lose legitimacy because they are not there, then they lose legitimacy because they are a bit of Bedouins and nomads so they don't really care, then they lose legitimacy by being violent or being Muslims after 9/11. There is all the time this laundry list of words and ideas that try to convince you that whatever the Israelis are doing, if you are unhappy with this, it doesn't matter because there is no one on the other side that has anything legitimate to offer—it all depends on the Israelis' kindness. If you check very carefully the language of peace since Oslo, even before—but it has been more accentuated since Oslo—it is all about Israeli concessions. The language is
concession
, Israelis will make concessions to Palestinians and then, there is a chance for peace. If this is the departure point, there will never be any reconciliation. “I invaded your house, but I am generous enough to let you come back and take the sofa with you to the new place.” That is hardly a dialogue that wants to settle a conflict; it is almost more humiliating than the act of invasion itself.