semitism.net

I read them all, right and left. A rather simple post by David on his rah-rah nationalist blog, Israellycool, caught my eye. On Wednesday he wrote:

Today in Israel is Yom Hazikaron (Remembrance Day), the day on which we mourn all of the servicemen and women who have fallen in defense of this country. This totals over 20,000 people since November 1947.

May G-d bless all of those who have fallen defending this country, and may G-d bless their families.

OK, there’s nothing particularly original about the sentiment - but it’s earnest, and it reflects the feelings of most Israelis - and many American Jews as well. All politics aside, it is a simple fact that many, many young Israelis have died in combat in the 58 years of the country’s existence. Like soldiers everywhere, they believed they were risking their lives for the safety of their families and neighbors, for the defense of their country and the best of what it represents. Uniquely, most probably also believed they were fighting for the continued existence of the Jewish people.

On Mount Hertzl, the Prime Minster said:

"Today is a day of remembrance and unity. A day of rising above any disagreement. A day in which we remember the blood of our soldiers, which has soaked into the ground and made it holy.

"Their silence is louder than any siren. Today, we bow our heads and listen silently to their voices"

Sharon was no doubt referring to the anti-Disengagement protests. Dissent by Palestinians from Israel’s national vision does not cross his radar.

But as Israel turns its attention toward Independence Day, the Palestinians commemorate the Nakba - the Catastrophe, which is how they remember the creation of the state of Israel. There were protests all through the occupied territories and in the expatriate Palestinian communities, with calls for resistance to the occupation and for the Right of Return.

The usual Israeli outlets made the usual disparaging comments. Arutz Sheva trotted out the frayed and specious argument that there are no such things as "Palestinian ‘identity,’ ‘homeland,’ and ‘expulsion’".

Right-wingers may try to their shrunken hearts’ content to de-legitimatize Palestinian nationalism, but the displaced and the refugees will always carry in their memories the homes, fields, farms and hills of their childhood. Those born into Diaspora also carry this history, as the explanatory fact of their current circumstances. We, Jews, of all people, ought to understand this.

One of the more poignant moments on my recent trip to the West Bank was sitting at lunch with a hospital employee in Hebron. He was assuring me that he, like most Palestinians, accepts Israel’s right to exist within the Green Line. "Once," he said wistfully in passing, "it was all ours. I used to travel from Jerusalem to Gaza to see my family."

Statements like this may stir existential fear in Israelis, but for this man - for many older Palestinians - it is, no less than the scrapbook photos of fallen soldiers in Israeli homes, a simple fact: a part of his life, a memory.

A piece of history little appreciated outside the Palestinian community: during and after the War of Independence, Israel did more than drive 700,000 Palestinians from their homes and bar their return. It actually razed hundreds of villages to the ground, and built Israeli cities, towns, monuments and even graveyards over them with the explicit intention of eliminating any trace of their existence.

An interesting organization called Zochrot (Nakba in Hebrew) has dedicated itself to reconstructing this forgotten history. One of its current projects is to place signs on the sites of these villages. It also organized a tour of the village sites to commemorate Nakba day.

A sad thing about the conflict is that only rarely is either side able to acknowledge the pain and loss of the other. The courage and sacrifice of Israeli soldiers - their sincere belief that they were fighting for the survival of their people - has little meaning to the Palestinians, whose national future fell victim to Israeli arms. And we who, as victors, ought to be responsible for re-examining our actions and righting our wrongs, are instead pre-occupied with maintaining the dominance of our own narrative.

My own respects on Independence/Nakba Day are paid to the dead of both sides, to those who have suffered painful loss, and to those individuals and organizations - Israeli and Palestinian - able to quiet their own monologue of self-justification and listen to the Other.

Palestinian activist Mustafa Barghouti, whom I quoted at length in my last post, notes that "our family’s viewpoint was always shaped by opposition to social injustice, rather than by nationalism. My father used to speak to us of his Jewish comrades in Tiberias or Acre;" and asserts that "it’s imperative to establish points of contact with Israelis."

Eytan Bronstein writes, on the Zochrot site,

Zionist collective memory… prevents Jews from acknowledging their part in the destruction, from accepting responsibility and, consequently, from achieving real reconciliation with the Palestinians. The Jewish people have not taken and do not take any action aimed at acknowledging their part in the Palestinians’ suffering. Any possibility for such action is immediately rejected out of fear that recognition of injustices committed will oblige the Jews to leave Israel…

We seek to apply ourselves to these challenges: to commemorate and talk about the Naqba in Hebrew so that our language will be more peaceful and just; to witness what was wiped off the face of the earth in order to understand our neighbors’ pain and loss; to acknowledge the Palestinian catastrophes of 1948 and 1967 and, thereby, attempt to mold a peace-seeking Jewish-Israeli consciousness.

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