The Idea of Israel

by Ilan Pappe

  From the deconstructionist perspective, Zionism figures as a powerful story, and one’s place in it determines in real life one’s fate under the Jewish state. If you are a Palestinian, you are the villain in the story; if you are the Mizrachi Jew, you are the primitive relative. Comparing these depictions as they appeared in everything from scholarship to cinema was the first step in implementing this methodology. The second was an attempt to correlate actual policies and strategies from above with the images in both the popular and the high culture of the society. Thus, if you were depicted as marginal or hostile, this was reflected in the authorities’ attitude towards you in mundane as well as existential matters. What this meant was that the power of the interpretation could be detected in every aspect of life, in such disparate areas as radio commercials, the characters of sitcoms and soap operas, children’s literature and textbooks, the government’s policy papers, politicians’ speeches, and so on.

  In addition, one could refer not only to what was present in the written or visual form to find how you, the Other, or anyone else was represented or misrepresented; you could also research what was absent from the text. As Edward Said pointed out, the attitude of Jane Austen and her contemporaries to colonialism was evident from the sheer fact that the colonies are hardly there in the novels. Similar absences of Arabs, Palestinians, Mizrachim and women were noted in scholarly Zionist work, films, museums, novels, national ceremonies and emblems – and that is not an imaginary list, as it objectively represents what was deconstructed in the 1990s. In fact, almost everything in sight was deconstructed, so much so that one sometimes had the impression that the process went too far in its depiction of every piece in the puzzle of one’s reality as a legitimate area of inquiry. All in all, though, deconstruction was an impressive salvage operation of hidden or silenced voices, unheard in the texts written by the oppressors or the rulers. It introduced oral history as a legitimate academic genre, and so even those who, because of illiteracy or destruction, left no written evidence could now tell their stories through the work of these scholars.

  Nevertheless, the measure of a scholar’s academic relevance had more to do with that other tool, positionality, which was also imported from abroad in the 1990s. This method demanded from scholars that they go beyond the indulgence and pleasure of slaughtering sacred cows or deconstructing to death the presentation of reality by the powerful. Now they were expected also to show commitment to the real people who were being victimised by that presentation. The process was far more difficult and much less enjoyable.

  Positionality meant that you had to locate yourself not in the national, Zionist narrative, but against it. When you defied the national claims for a collective past, identity, and future, you entered the arena of the politics of identity and multiculturalism. The most vibrant academic embodiment of this arose in 1970s America. In those years, quite a few US academics were involved in what became known as the ‘culture wars’ or the ‘campus wars’: heated debates about identity and its politics as legitimate criteria for assessing such matters as admission to the universities (whether as students or staff), promotion, the shaping of curricula, and the quality of one’s academic work.38 Even Hollywood succeeded in conveying that atmosphere in the memorable 1970 film Getting Straight, directed by Richard Rush, in which Vietnam veteran Harry Bailey (played by Elliott Gould) appears as a graduate student facing the pressures of the anti-war movement on campus on the one hand, and the conservatism of his examiners on the other.

  The striking feature of American identity politics in those years was that they were tangibly manifested on campuses: in the composition of departments, their teaching agenda and research orientation. Thus a department of history was asked to give voice to multiple historical narratives that had been ignored or misrepresented in the past by the hegemonic white American narrative. Hispanic, gender, African American, and gay histories were now offered, along with similar perspectives on culture, literature and other fields of inquiry. At times the debate was regarded as a war, because in some circles it was held that for these points of view to be fairly represented in academia, members of those very groups were the best candidates to put them across. Affirmative action and positive discrimination were sometimes the solution. Lawsuits, the disintegration of departments, and the sacking of staff members were the more extreme manifestations of this discussion. But, as in any academic war, nobody died or was even wounded.

  Israeli academics tried to follow suit. They wished to represent the Palestinian, the Mizrachi, and the feminist sides of the story, to demand their introduction into the national narrative, and even to claim a place for them in the cultural canon. They had the strong conviction that by representing these groups within Israeli academia, one was not only exposing their mistreatment in the past and present but also offering redemption for these evils in the future. The former goal – presenting the trials and tribulations of repressed, oppressed and marginalised groups – was achieved to a certain extent; the second, not at all. Indeed, the only group in Israel that is better represented today than in the 1990s is women. Palestinians, Mizrachi Jews, and in particular Palestinian and Mizrachi women, constitute a mere fraction of the ten thousand or so members of staff in Israeli academia (less than one per cent for Palestinians, 9 per cent for Mizrachi Jews, and one per cent for Mizrachi women).39

  For the Israel academic to be able even to experiment with what is called affirmative action – and I say ‘experiment’ because I am aware of the drawbacks of this technique – these scholars had to become activists against Zionism. For most of them, however, political activism did not go beyond writing articles or books. The price would have been too high.

  Demanding representation of other groups was thus a complex and risky endeavour. One could hide for a while behind politically correct jargon borrowed from the United States. This oversensitive, and at times exaggerated, language was about as useful as the postmodernist discourse that had earlier been adopted from Europe. In fact, to challenge the idea of Israel through the elusive idiom of postmodernism – which in Hebrew is even more undecipherable than it is in English and is understood only by like-minded people – meant that one would be, in effect, protected from swift repercussions.

  There were exceptions, to be sure, as can be seen in the work of, for instance, Tanya Reinhart, who followed the example of her mentor, Noam Chomsky, in the use of clear and unambiguous prose. Chomsky showed the submissiveness of the American academy when faced with hegemonic ideologies; Reinhart demonstrated the obedience of the local academia to its political masters. In addition, Chomsky’s double engagement – his expertise as a linguist, combined with his commitment as a conscientious, knowledgeable commentator on world affairs – served as a model for Reinhart and some of her colleagues in the department of linguistics at Tel Aviv University, such as Rachel Giora and Mira Ariel.40 They were joined by members of the philosophy department such as Anat Biletzky and Anat Matar, who, as professional moral philosophers, questioned and condemned Israeli academia’s apathy at best, or collaboration at worst, with the occupation and discrimination against the Palestinians. As Biletzky wrote:

  We must, as academics, never forget our political agenda: the eradication of evil. And the Israeli occupation of Palestine is the epitome of evil. We must constantly, as academics, identify with Palestinian teachers and students in conditions of severe repression. We must constantly, as academics, criticise the acquiescence of others in Israel to the occupation. And we must constantly, as academics, call for condemnation of the occupation.41

  However, Biletzky did not support the idea of an academic boycott, whereas her Tel Aviv colleagues Anat Matar in the department of philosophy, who equally demanded that academics become more active against the occupation, endorsed Palestinian civil society’s call for an academic and cultural boycott when it was declared:

  When the flag of academic freedom is raised, the oppressor and not the oppressed is usually the one who flies it. What is that
academic freedom that so interests the academic community in Israel? When, for example, has it shown concern for the state of academic freedom in the occupied territories?

  On the other hand, members of the Israeli academia staunchly guard their right to research what the regime expects them to research and appoint former army officers to university positions. Tel Aviv University alone prides itself over the fact that the Defense Ministry is funding 55 percent of its research projects and that DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in the U.S. Defense Department, is funding nine more. All the universities offer special study programs for the defense establishment.42

  The Tel Aviv University philosophers and a handful of others offered – either because they were influenced by similar conscientious voices, or because of their own integrity, or both – a different interpretation of what being an academic meant, beyond the professional career. What was wanted was a new breed of activist scholar, which alas, in the case of Israel (and, one should add, elsewhere in the West), more often than not turned out to be an oxymoron. But before the decline in the 2000s, at least in the 1990s it was attempted.

  Even becoming an activist against male chauvinism proved difficult. Activism and scholarly feminism did not always see eye to eye: the activists far more clearly connected gender issues to Zionism and nationalism, while those who remained in academia took a more cautious approach to linkages and associations. Eventually there arose much dissent and discord between the Mizrachi and Palestinian feminist agenda and what was regarded as a Western variety of feminism masquerading as a universal one. A crucial moment in the development of gender studies was the creation of feminist organisations that wished to be more closely associated with the politics of identity. In 1991, Al-Fanar, the Palestinian feminist organisation in Israel, was established; shortly afterwards, Achoti (Sister) for Women in Israel left the overall feminist movement to represent more faithfully the particular agenda of Mizrachi women.

  This was a local conversation that reflected a more general one, in the Middle East as a whole, between Islamic or Muslim feminism and Western feminism. In addition, the unwillingness of Israel, the state and the society alike, to be integrated into the region – its insistence of being an integral part of the West – affected issues of gender as well.

  Thus, a feminism that could have been regional, could have built bridges with feminist movements in the Arab world, failed to connect with a feminism that strove to grant equal rights to young women in the army, so that they could serve as fighter pilots or commando troops, and as a result, become unacceptable to the Arab world. Israeli fighter pilots and commando troops are prepared for one mission: to brutally police the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip, or to punish southern Lebanon. Despite these rifts, feminist activism and cooperation flourished through organisations such as Isha L’Isha (Woman to Woman), Achoti, and Al-Fanar.

  This does not mean that the feminist movement in Israel, whether we speak of its academic wing or its political/activist wing, did not have an impressive list of achievements. It is mainly in the sphere of legislation and changes in attitudes that these achievements are visible. However, as with so many other aspects of life in Israel, the formal and official façade covers up a far more depressing reality: a high rate of women being murdered (both in Arab and Jewish societies), occupational inequality, the growing influence of ultra-religious forces. These factors combine to create a renewed marginalisation and, in certain cases, exclusion of women in the already socio-economically deprived sectors of Jewish society.

  But the feminist challenge, especially in academia and subsequently in civil society, was influential in two areas. One was in importing into academia the theoretical and methodological frameworks that have helped feminists around the world to salvage women’s voices and experiences from the past and to empower them in the present – a toolkit that has also been used successfully by other oppressed and marginalised groups. Second, it was the progressive feminist research on the Israeli educational system that pushed forward a new agenda of anti-militarism and even pacifism as possible goals for a protest movement inside Israel. This worked better in the sphere of civil society than in academia, but in both places it was a fresh, bold move to deconstruct the Israeli educational system as a militaristic and manipulative tool that ensured youthful obedience to and admiration of the army, as well as the securitisation of the society.

  Mothers were invited to reconsider the wisdom of sending their children to die in the name of the idea of Israel. Towards the end of the prolonged Israeli presence in Lebanon (1982–2000), such reflections were translated into a short-lived political movement called Four Mothers (a reference to the four famous mothers of the Bible), which served as an effective lobby to pressure the Israeli government to withdraw its forces from southern Lebanon. The attempt to recruit motherhood in a similar way to end the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip failed dismally, however. Several years ago, mothers of sons who were physically able to serve in élite Israeli units but were commissioned for non-combat and logistics service demonstrated in anger at the main recruitment centre near the Tel Hashomer Hospital in Tel Aviv.

  Towards the end of the 1990s, what took place in the arena of gender – when the real action moved from campuses to civil society – affected post-Zionist scholarship as a whole. When the academic impulse petered out or was curbed, the same agenda would be taken up on a smaller but more committed scale by civil society and its NGOs, the most notable of which was New Profile. This group was established in 1998 by a group of feminists in Israel dedicated to persuading young people not to serve in the army. In Israel, a ‘profile’ is the overall assessment of eligibility for the army, especially for men. A 97, which is the highest profile, means that the young recruit can join the combat units; a 24 means he is mentally unfit to serve (which in many cases means that the candidate exhibited pacifist tendencies), a profile that can impact his chances of getting a studentship and a job. Hence, the idea of a ‘new profile’.

  One topic was not even engaged with openly by these courageous NGOs, and that was Holocaust exploitation. Only a handful of scholars addressed this matter, and they deserve to be recorded in the next chapter as the people who probably went further than anyone else in examining the validity of the idea of Israel.

  SEVEN

  Touching the Raw Nerves of Society: Holocaust Memory in Israel

  In August 2005, the Israeli government evicted from the Gaza Strip eight thousand settlers who had occupied the region since 1967. In a desperate attempt to thwart the government’s action, the settlers’ crusade adopted insignias meant to link the evacuation with the Holocaust: sewing yellow stars of David onto their clothing while tattooing numbers onto their arms. During the actual removal, many of the settlers, crying and shouting on their way to the luxury buses that whisked them off to Israel, re-enacted scenes they had seen in Holocaust films or museums. They cursed soldiers and police as Nazis, and likened senior army officers to Hitler.

  This was a supremely ugly manipulation of the memory of the Holocaust, witnessed in a state that had perfected such manipulation as a diplomatic tool in its struggle against the Palestinians. But even when the manipulation has been excessive or indeed pathetic, Israeli academics have nonetheless been very careful about criticising such occurrences.

  The protection of the Holocaust memory in Israel from any critique is consensual and widespread. For that very reason, recording those who in the 1990s did dare to ask some pertinent questions about it within academia must be an important part of this book. Their effort was as unique as those who challenged the 1948 foundational mythology, and so perhaps it is not surprising that, in both cases, the persons most associated with the academic research on the topic later retracted, becoming neo-Zionist defenders of Zionism as well as the chief critics of their former colleagues. These persons are Benny Morris, in the case of 1948, and Ilan Gur-Ze’ev, in the case of Holocaust memory.

  As is often true
, there were in fact earlier attempts, most of them not by scholars, to understand the impact and significance of Holocaust memory in the constructing and marketing of the idea of Israel. The search for truth was driven by moral and ethical concerns, and paved the way for the initiation of scholarly inquiry when a more amiable atmosphere developed in Israeli academia in the 1990s. A more open approach to Holocaust memory in Israel showed the connection between the state’s narration of the Holocaust – its causes and impact – and its justification of harsh policies towards the Palestinians. This connection became a major theme in the post-Zionist critique of Holocaust memorialisation in Israel.

  One of the first persons to voice a genuine concern about the way Holocaust memory was brought to bear in Israel was none other than Nahum Goldmann, founder and president of the World Jewish Congress through the late 1970s. Despite his senior position, he condemned as sacrilegious the way Israel manipulated Holocaust memory in order to justify its oppression of the Palestinians.1 Many years later, in our own century, Avraham Burg, a speaker of the Knesset and subsequently chair of the Jewish Agency, would voice similar concerns. He summarised his thoughts on this issue in a book whose title says it all, The Holocaust Is Over: We Must Rise From Its Ashes, in which he states: ‘In fact, the only hope we have to make peace with the Arabs is if we free ourselves of our Shoah mentality, and stop acting like a small Eastern European shtetl’.2