Israel Archives - Not Even Past

From There to Here: Yoav Di-Capua

Map of Israel (via Wikimedia)

(UT History faculty come from all over the world. Here are their stories.)

I wish I could introduce clarity, coherence and a sense of purpose into the story of my arrival to this country from my native city of Jerusalem. I wish I could say that it was meticulously planned and well-executed. That it was a clean break with a past life that no longer resonated with me and that leaving behind parents, family, friends and memories was the natural and logical thing to do. I wish I could say that upon my arrival I actually knew English well enough and that it was all easy as it meant to be. That it was like in the movies. But, alas, I cannot. I never really pondered living here and America was never on my family’s radar. We were Europhiles of Italian stock. We did not travel to the US, we did not talk about the US or think about the US. Quite simply, it was not a part of our imagination. And though rock music was the soundtrack of my teenage years, the county as a whole stayed foreign to me.

That remained the case until I discovered the American life of the mind. Until I realized the brilliance of its academy, the beauty of its books and the depths of its intellectual tradition. Until I realized that it is not only Bob Dylan who was out there singing all by himself. And so, in late 1999, when I packed my bags to leave for Princeton I did not really immigrate to a new country with big cities, mighty rivers, unbelievable storms, manicured gardens and bad food. Instead, I immigrated to a new language, a new intellectual landscape and a new sense of perception. Above all else, that became my new home. It still is.

Life in the new country proved to be a mess. My manners were off. I was too rude, too direct, too disrespectful, too aggressive, too casual and too whatever you can imagine as improper and inadequate. The art of “small talk” eluded me. I could not follow the rules. The police took my driver’s license. By the end of four years, I badly wanted to go home, back to the tribal society of Israel where I could once again make sense of myself. A place where you earn points for being rude, direct and truthful and when you don’t need to drink a beer in order to open up your heart. So I did. I married an American girl and moved back home; subconsciously making it as likely as I could that my life in Israel would come to a quick end. And it did. For a while, I celebrated my reunification with the beloved Hebrew language and with its brilliant humor. I indulged in friends, memories, good food and music. A lot of music. But I was also shocked by what I encountered.

The Second Intifada just ended. I mourned the death and destruction. I took the collapse of the Peace Process personally and I hated, and still do, the occupation of Palestinians with every cell of my body. I became an activist and spent more time in threatened Palestinian communities than writing my book. Troubled and upset, the life of the mind was slowly slipping away from me. The politics of getting a teaching position in Israeli academia were something like an episode of the “Game of Thrones.” It was not for me. Months after my return, the prospects of making a life in Israel and building my career there appeared to be slim to non-existent. The fact that my wife was living in Damascus did not help matters, either. I guess this is what Philosopher Svetlana Boym meant when she wrote of the impossible condition of “homesickness and the sickness of home.” It was not good. My parents were also worried, loved ones tried to intervene and friends protested my activism. They wanted me to stop trying to fix the unfixable and settle down. I could see their point, and thought they were right, but I decided to do this settling down somewhere else: in Texas, to be precise. I loved them all, I still do, but that was it. Defying my provincial expectations, UT presented a rich intellectual –and more important – human environment. Fifteen years or so after my crash landing on this campus, it appears that my second coming to America was something of a rebirth. I love it here. Teaching, writing and raising kids is enough for me. I still miss home. I miss it daily, but I have acquired another one as well. It is a home I grew to appreciate and love slowly and patiently, taking it, just as my three daughters do, one step at a time.

Also in this series:

Tatjana Lichtenstein
Julie Hardwick
Toyin Falola

Rabin’s Assassination Twenty Years Later

By Itay Eisinger

“And I wish to add one more thing, if I can.
The Prime Minister died a happy man.//
Farewell to the dust of my Prime Minister,
husband and father, and what’s rarely said:
son of Rosa the Red.” (Dalia Ravikovitch, translated from the Hebrew by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld)

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, left, shaking hands with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, with U.S. President Bill Clinton in the center at the Oslo Accords signing ceremony, Sept. 13, 1993. (Vince Musi / The White House)

On November 4 of 1995, the Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin– “the beautiful son of the Zionist utopia” — was assassinated by Yigal Amir, a 25 year old law student and Jewish zealot. The assassin wished to thwart the peace process, led by Rabin, between Israel and the Palestinians. Twenty years after the assassination, the word “peace” seems to have evaporated from Israeli discourse as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promises his people will “forever live by the sword.” It is now crucial to reexamine the murder and its effect on the course of history, on the Arab-Israeli conflict and particularly on Israeli society. What role, if any, did the murder have on “the triumph of Israel’s Radical Right,” as the title of UT’s Professor Ami Pedahzur’s last book suggests?

Yitzhak Rabin, commander of the Harel Brigade, c. 1948. Via Wikipedia

Rabin became Prime Minister in 1992 with a promise to achieve peace between Israel and the Arabs. But for most of his life he was not a man of peace. In his teens, he joined a pre-state Jewish militia and later played a significant role in the Independence War of 1948. In his memoir, he writes frankly about the expulsion of Palestinian Arabs from the newly established Israel and his role in it. Rabin served another 21 years in the Israeli Army, becoming its Chief of Staff in 1964. He thus has a crucial role in Israel’s most famous military victory—the 1967 Six Day War, in which Israel occupied territories three times its original size.

Hence, for most of his life, Rabin was the ultimate embodiment of the Zionist ethos, a real Sabra—native born, socialist-secular educated, from Ashkenazi origins; he was a dedicated settler and a brilliant combatant. Later he would serve as ambassador to the United States, a member of the Israeli Parliament, Prime Minister, and Defense Minister. Beside the political ramifications of his assassination, the event also carries great symbolism. No leader represents the values of the old Zionist elite more than Rabin. His murder, in retrospect, symbolized the decline of liberal Zionism and the rise of a new radical elite.

The Israeli delegation to the 1949 Armistice Agreements talks. Left to right- Commanders Yehoshafat Harkabi, Aryeh Simon, Yigael Yadin, and Yitzhak Rabin (1949). Via Wikipedia.

Although a small coterie was responsible for the murder, it came after a long campaign inciting violence against the Prime Minister, run by the political right and directed at Rabin, Shimon Peres, and the peace process. The writing was literally on the wall and I remember seeing it daily, with slogans like “Rabin is a traitor,” or “Death to Rabin.” Thousands of right wing demonstrators set fire to photomontages of Rabin wearing an “Arab” Kafyyia or dressed as an SS officer. The abuse of Holocaust discourse was especially common and obviously loaded. Historian Idith Zertal notes that “central Israeli political figures and parties, including two individuals who were later, as a direct or indirect consequence of the assassination, to become Prime Ministers [Netanyahu and Sharon], and past and present cabinet ministers, played an active role in these demonstrations.” Yet, to this day, the Right has managed to disassociate itself from the assassination.

At the funeral, Rabin’s widow refused to shake Netanyahu’s hand and told the press: “Mr. Netanyahu [the head of the Opposition] incited against my husband and led the savage demonstrations against him.” It is here where the story revealed itself as a biblical, or Shakespearean, tragedy. Seven months after the murder, Netanyahu came to power and systematically destroyed the already-broken peace process. In the aftermath, many Leftists (such as Rabin’s widow) invoked the biblical story of prophet Elijah telling King Ahab: “Thus saith God, Hast thou committed murder, then also hast thou inherited?”

A poster of Rabin proclaiming him a traitor to Israel.

Zeev Sternhell, a world expert on fascism, wrote: “Israel was the first democratic state—and from the end of the second World War, the only one—in which a political murder achieved its goal.” Amir did not murder Rabin out of personal hatred. In Amir’s own words, “It wasn’t a matter of revenge, or punishment, or anger, Heaven forbid, but what would stop the Oslo [Peace] Process.” Yet politicians from the Right have managed to de-politicize the murder. They now depict the assassin, along with his colleagues and their mentors — the very rabbis who “sentenced” Rabin to death—simply as “bad apples.”

Since any peace agreement would necessitate at least some withdrawal from the occupied territories, both the secular and religious Right fiercely oppose such plans. The moderate right-wing, led by Netanyahu, argues that such a withdrawal endangers Israel’s security; the religious also perceive any territorial concession to Arabs as a betrayal of God’s Divine Plan. Beyond Israeli objections, the Oslo Peace Process was rightly criticized by many Palestinians for promising them only autonomy, not statehood. An agreement that fell short of satisfying the needs of the Palestinians also far exceeded what the Jewish Right-wing could tolerate.

Under the Oslo Agreement, Israel has (partly and slowly) withdrawn from some parts of the biblical, Greater Eretz Israel. For many religious and messianic Jews, this meant a secular attack on God’s plans. Rabin’s murder, writes philosopher Avishay Margalit, “was not confined to a direct assassin or assassins. The murder of Rabin… was a statistical question – who will actually commit the deed.” And yet, the forces that abhorred any partition of the Holy Land have gained a historic victory.

Binyamin Netanyahu speaks at the infamous “Rabin the Traitor” rally in Jerusalem, October 1995

Netanyahu observing one of the most violent demonstrations against Rabin. He has since said that he did not hear the shouts of the demonstrators nor did he see their slogans.

There is no guarantee that Rabin could have achieved a just peace. Waves of Palestinian terror attacks eroded public support of the peace process already prior to Rabin’s death. There is also no guarantee that Palestinians would be satisfied with the very limited gains the Oslo Agreement guaranteed them. What we do know is that under Netanyahu’s first premiership (1996-1999) and under his successors, the peace process was utterly sabotaged. A new cycle of violence, the Second Intifada, began following the final collapse of peace talks in 2000. For many Israelis, the Second Intifada vindicated the right wing. The so-called “Peace Camp” — supporters of the two state solution — virtually disappeared.

Twenty years after Rabin’s assassination, Israel is run by the most right-wing government in its history. The victory of the right-wing Likud party in 1996, the evaporation of the Zionist-Left since 2000, and the ongoing de-politicization of Rabin’s death have empowered those against peace with Arabs. The assassin’s brother told the media last week that he is very pleased with the results of their deed. The ongoing attack by the Likud government on what is left of the Left might turn the Israeli ethnocracy, which privileges Jews, into a theocracy, which will represent the values and politics of the extreme right.

The Israeli Republic, by Jalal Al-e Ahmad (2014)

by Lior Sternfeld

In 1963 Jalal Al-e Ahmad, accompanied by his wife, the renowned Iranian novelist, Simin Daneshvar, traveled to Israel as an official guest of the country. He later wrote a travelogue about the journey, published in Iran under the title, Safr beh vilayet esrail (Journey to the Land of Israel). Two years earlier the author had gained his leftist internationalist credentials when he published one of the most important Third World manifestos, known as “Gharbzadegi” (Plague from the West). Al-e Ahmad is perceived to have laid the intellectual and ideological foundations of the 1979 revolution in Iran; both the leader of the Iranian revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Iran’s current Supreme Leader considered Al-e Ahmad to be an influence and role model. This article reviews the most recent translation of Al-e Ahmad’s travelogue, and will be useful to anyone wants to know more about modern Iran.

Translator Samuel Thrope’s introduction allows the reader to understand the profound complexity that characterized Al-e Ahmad throughout his career. Thrope provides excellent biographical and historical contextualization of the text. He also confronts one of the profound dilemmas confronting Al-e Ahmad’s reader. The use of Vilayet in the title can be translated in two different ways. One is charged with religious meaning as “Guardianship of Israel,” while the second carries the more prosaic meaning of Territory. As the travelogue itself makes clear, Al-e Ahmad himself was divided about Israel’s role in that land.

Like a large section of the Iranian left, Al-e Ahmad viewed Israel as part of the Third World. Al-e Ahmad juxtaposes East versus West and draws the borders of the East from “Tel Aviv to Tokyo,” acknowledging Israel’s ability to create an indigenous culture (unlike in Iran, as he analyzed in Gharbzadegi), that did not blindly mimic other cultures but was based on the ancient Hebraic Jewish culture. Al-e Ahmad was especially impressed with the revival of the Hebrew language. His admiration for almost everything he saw in Israel, did not prevent him from arguing that the Palestinians, and by extension the East in general and the Arabs and Muslims in particular, paid the price for the sins committed by Europeans in the Holocaust.

Al-e Ahmad and Daneshvar spent some time in the north Israel kibbutz “Ayelet Ha’Shahar,” which allowed the couple to get a first hand experience of kibbutz life. They saw a play, hung out with kibbutz members, and immersed themselves in conversations about China, the USSR, and Cuba over glasses of beer. Just before leaving, Al-e Ahmad wrote in the kibbutz guest book: “not only were they hospitable, but I met people here that I never expected to meet. Learned people, understanding and open-minded. In a sense, they are implementing Plato. Honestly speaking, I always identified Israel with the Kibbutz, and now I understand why.” Simin Daneshvar added: “as I see it the Kibbutz is the answer to the problem of all the countries, including our own.

This text opens a window to the mindset of the Iranian left. Al-e Ahmad’s praise of Israel articulates his (and other Iranians’) dispute with the Arabs, his harsh criticism of Arab governments, and refutes Arab ideas about Iran’s inferiority.

800px-PikiWiki_Israel_3290_Picking_Cotton

Cotton fields of a kibbutz in Shamir, Israel, circa 1958 (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

The last chapter of the travelogue shifts tone and criticizes Israel for abandoning its Third World position and becoming a colonial power in its own right. The origin of the chapter is the subject of some controversy. Some believe that it was written in 1968 after the 1967 war and just before Al-e Ahmad’s death (in 1969), and reflects his own and the Iranian left’s disillusion with Israel. During the 1967 war, when Israel occupied the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights and then imposed military control over the entire population of non-citizen Palestinians., it became impossible for observers like Al-e Ahmad to view it as a nation that had taken part in a postcolonial struggle. The other explanation is that after his death, this chapter was written by his brother, Shams Al-e Ahmad, in order to get it approved in the radical revolutionary circles, for publication in Iran in 1984. Thrope adds some useful comments about this controversy as well. Thrope’s suggests that it was Jalal Al-e Ahmad himself who wrote this chapter, and that the voice expressed there is one of a literary character (a friend who wrote a letter to Al-e Ahmad). By presenting this fictional dialogue, Al-e Ahmad contemplates his ambiguous stand towards Israel and Zionism, or as Thrope writes: “Could Zionism really serve as a model for the remedy that Iran required? Just as importantly, as a Muslim, an Easterner, and an intellectual opposed to the Shah’s policies, which included close relationship with Israel, how should he relate to the Jewish State’s existence in the heart of the Muslim Middle East?” In this chapter, Al-e Ahmad not only criticized Israel as a colonial power, he harshly criticized the European intellectual left and singled it out for what he sees as double standards. While they vehemently fought against the colonization of Algiers and were outspoken in their criticism of the colonial project as a whole, they could live peacefully with the colonization of the territories gained by Israel in 1967. Al-e Ahmad blames Jean-Paul Sartre and Claude Lanzmann for leading this dreadful trend. He also blames the military regimes of the Arab countries for their incompetence in facing the changing reality of Israeli policy, and the “Petrodollar Empires” of the Persian Gulf for myopic political and economic goals in only caring about the oil industry.

Jalal Al-e Ahmad (r) with his wife, writer and intellectual Simin Daneshvar (l), in an undated photograph (probably from the early 1960s).

This book recounts a fascinating journey undertaken by an Iranian intellectual to an Israel that existed primarily in the author’s mind. The kind of utopia Al-e Ahmad saw would strike many Israelis as odd. Yet, I am sure that every reader would find this book (and its excellent translation) to be a window on the prerevolutionary Iranian left at a time when it was possible for an Iranian intellectual to embrace certain aspects of Israeli society; to get a glimpse of the history of the Israel-Iran relations and the greater Middle East too.

Listen to an interview with translator Samuel Thrope on 15 Minute History

Image of kibbutz guest book reproduced with the kind assistance of archivist Noa Herman at the archive of Kibbutz Ayelet Ha’Shahar.

Footnote (2011)

By Yoav Di-Capua

Is family solidarity more important than academic fame? Is empiricism a better guide to historical truth than theory? Is intellectual self-esteem generated internally, or externally, by communal acknowledgment? Taking as its subject the arcane field of Talmudic Studies and the Jerusalem School that persistently practices it, Yosef Sider’s latest film, Footnote, manages to transcend the cultural specificity of his subject matter to embrace a much broader theme. Far from being a film about narrow Jewish, Israeli, or obscure academic subjects, its universal concern is that of fame and recognition, the eternal quest for historical truth, the pursuit of power, and the dynamics of intellectual rivalry.

Eliezer and Uriel are competing professors of Talmudic Studies. Eliezer is a stubborn purist, a philologist who dedicated his life to the painstaking reconstruction of barely-legible manuscripts. Hard-working as he is in the eyes of some colleagues, after decades of work, all he has to show for himself is a footnote in the grand opus of his mentor, the founder of the Jerusalem School of Talmudic studies. Never recognized for his work, Eliezer hopes to win the prestigious Israel Prize for academic achievement. His rival, Uriel, is an up-and-coming star in the same field. He produces a string of enticing, cutting-edge and theoretically inspired books, which energize the next generation of Talmudic scholars. Deserting the purist tradition of textual reconstruction for the benefit of theoretical insight, Uriel differs markedly from the elderly Eliezer. Uriel is loved, respected and celebrated. Eliezer is marginalized and quite unliked. The duo symbolizes two different ways of thinking and represents two different generations. Yet, metaphysically, they share the same fate: for the philologist, Professor Eliezer Shkolnik, is in fact the father of the trendy son, Professor Uriel Shkolnik. The father, reduced to a mere footnote, looks with disdain on his son’s intellectual pursuits and constant need for the limelight, which he reads as sheer populism. And thus, academic rivalry intersects with the age-old theme of fathers and sons.

At the heart of this drama, which at times takes comic turns, is a peevish community of bickering scholars. A community infested with age-old rivalries, small jealousies and an endless cycle of bad blood. When the members of this community need to decide who is going to win the prestigious Israel Prize for Talmudic Studies their choice is between father and son. With both bearing the same family name, a fatal mistake occurs in the notification process, and the thus far restrained rivalry gets out of control.

Footnote, Israel’s official entry for the Oscar in the category of best foreign film, is a smart, sensible and nuanced film whose original cinematography and beautiful score realistically capture a subject greater than the sum of its individual parts.

Iranophobia: The Logic of an Israeli Obsession by Haggai Ram (2009)

by Lior Sternfeld

Two weeks ago the British Guardian revealed that the Israeli Air-Force has been conducting secret training exercises in preparation for an imminent attack on Iran. As the war drums beats get stronger, one should ask why Iran preoccupies such a large part of Israel’s inner discourse? If Iran imposes such an existential threat to Israel, why do threats sound louder coming from Jerusalem? I am no expert on nuclear issues, therefore the goal of this essay is not to assess the level of threat Iran poses to Israel, but rather to question the pathology of the Israeli obsession with an Iranian threat.

There could be no better time to read Haggai Ram’s Iranophobia: the Logic of an Israeli Obsession (full disclosure: Haggai Ram was my MA Thesis advisor and is a friend). Haggai Ram, a prominent Israeli scholar, offers a new reading of the long history of the relationship between Israel and Iran, and persuasively analyzes the problematic Israeli “reading” of Iran.

Prior to the 1979 revolution, Iran and Israel forged a close and very beneficial relationship, stemming from Israel’s strategy of “the Alliance of Periphery.” This alliance was aimed at bringing the three non-Arab countries of the Middle East — Israel, Turkey, and Iran, — and the Christian state of east Africa— Ethiopia—into a strategic collaboration vis-à-vis the Arab states. What brought these countries together was the fear of Nasser’s pan-Arabism, which appeared to be on the borders of each. Israel and Iran, apart from the strategic collaboration, also became trade partners. Iran supplied Israel most of its oil needs and Israeli companies worked throughout Iran in supplying military technology (ironically, even nuclear), agricultural assistance, and construction. The relationship thrived as both countries imagined themselves as non-Middle Eastern by nature. Israel’s self perception envisaged a Judeo-Christian civilization, and in Iran the Shah tried to instill the “Aryan Hypothesis” arguing that Iranians are of ancient indo-European tribes descent.

The 1979 revolution, however, took Iran to a different place in the Israeli imagination. Not only did Iran cease to be “modern,” but it also represented everything that seemed wrong and backward in the Middle East. The Israeli nightmare became a reality in the former close ally. Ram juxtaposes this development with the changing political reality in Israel, as the long time Ashkenazi ruling hegemony was voted out, and the ‘Likud’ party—overwhelmingly supported by religious Mizrahi Jews—came to power. At that point, Israelis saw Iran as a reflection of Israel’s own dark future if the Mizrahi forces in Israel should gain more political power. This sentiment grew stronger during the 1980s and the early 1990s. Ram brings a telling example of Iran’s function in the Israeli inner discourse in a slogan penned by Zionist leftist Meretz party in its 1992 campaign: “This is not Iran” (Kan lo iran). Ram explains: “in this slogan Meretz obviously rejected Iran, but at the same time it also suggested that Israel was becoming an Iran-like state, treading a dangerous path that might culminate in the establishment of a Jewish theocracy.”

In another important contribution of this work, Ram traces the place Iran had in the Israeli scholarship of the Middle East, especially on the Iranian Jews. Ram eloquently shows that the history of Iranian Jewry was written mainly by Iranian or Israeli Jews, and was deeply embedded in the Zionist paradigm, which denigrated Jewish existence anywhere but in Israel, and especially in a Muslim country. Therefore, the history of integrated communities in the Middle East was reduced to a history of persecution and cultural achievement.

Iranophobia is highly recommended reading for anyone interested in Israeli society. It helps explain Israeli anxieties about the Iranian nuclear threat and incidentally also helps explain Israeli anxieties in response to the Arab spring.

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