ISRAELI VOICES OF PAST AND PRESENT: A MEDLEY

(By: Michael Gottsegen, Ph.D.)

OAL

On the following pages, you will encounter a medley of voices, the voices of Jewish and Arab citizens of the State of Israel. We have gathered them together and set them side by side to dramatize the differences in their respective understandings of their "common" Israeli history. The running narrative on the left side of the page is drawn from the annals of Jewish first person testimony. The running narrative on the right side of the page (in italics) is drawn from the annals of Arab first person testimony. On the last page, you will find a bibliographical guide to the excerpts.

l.Hatikvah-The Hope As long as deep in the heart The soul of a Jew yearns And toward the East An eye looks to Zion Our hope is not yet lost The hope of two thousand years To be a free people in our land The land of Zion and Jerusalem

2.

Write, down, I am an Arab My card number is 50,000 I have eight children, The next will come next summer, Are you angry? Write down, I am an Arab I cut stone with comrade labourers, I squeeze the rock To get a loaf To get a loaf, To get a book, For my eight children. But I do not plead charity And I do not cringe Under your sway. Are you angry? Write down, I am an Arab, I am a name without a title, Steadfast in a frenzied world. My roots sink deep Beyond the ages, Beyond time.

And please write down On top of all, I hate nobody, I rob nobody, But when I starve I eat the flesh of my marauders Beware, Beware my hunger, Beware my wrath.

3. The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and national identity was formed. Here they achieved independence and created a culture of national and universal significance. Here they wrote and gave the Bible to the world. Exiled from Palestine, the Jewish people remained faithful to it in all the countries of their dispersion, never ceasing to pray and hope for their return and the restoration of their national freedom.

4. The Land of Palestine gave rise to one of the most ancient of all civilizations. Centuries before the first Hebre\v tribes migrated to the area 'Palestine ga\>e birth to a unique culture. In this period in Palestine, as far as we know, the earliest permanent villages in the world were built.' Palestine is also the birthplace of urban life. It is 'the only place in the world where a town is known to date back nine thousand years.' Jericho is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, being Jour thousand years older than any other urban settlement known at present.' It is one of the greatest ironies of history than in the middle of the twentieth century - in the golden age of peoples' rights to self-determination Palestine was dropped from the map of the world.

5. Impelled by [their] historic association, Jews strove throughout the centuries to go back to the land of their fathers and regain their statehood. In recent decades, they returned in masses. They reclaimed the wilderness, revived their language, built cities and villages and established a vigorous and evergrowing community with its own economic and cultural life. They sought peace yet were ever prepared to defend themselves. They brought the blessing of progress to all inhabitants of the country.

6. Actually the result of the purchase of land in Palestine by the Jewish National Fund has been that land became extra territorial. It ceases to be land from which the Arab can gain any advantage either now or at any time in the future. Not only can he never hope to lease or cultivate it, but, by the stringent provisions of the lease of the Jewish National Fund, he is deprived forever from employment on that land.

7. ...the real miracle of Palestine is the Jew who masters the labor of orchard and garden, field and vineyard, quarry and harbor, water and power, factory and craft, highway and byway. That sort of Jew the diaspora never made - and to many, only a few years ago, he still seemed a will-o-the-wisp even in Palestine. Not without reason were they skeptical.

8. The policy of the Jewish Labour Federation is successful in impeding the employment of Arabs in Jewish colonies and in Jewish enterprises of every kind. There is therefore no relief to be anticipated from an extension of Jewish enterprise unless some departure from existing practice is effected.

9. The Nazi holocaust, which engulfed millions of Jews in Europe, proved anew the urgency of the re-establishment of the Jewish State, which would solve the problem of Jewish homelessness by opening the gates to all Jews and lifting the Jewish people to equality in the family of nations.

10. Just as the heart-beat consists of two rhythmic operations - pumping-in and pttmping-out - so too the program of Zionism consists of two interrelated operations, each of which is essential for the heartbeat of Zionism and neither of which is dispensable: The detachment of Je\vs from their respective countries and their mass transfer to Palestine, and the detachment of the indigenous Palestinian Arabs and their mass transfer from Palestine.

11. ACCORDINGLY, WE, the members of the National Council, representing the Jewish people in Palestine and the Zionist movement of the world. HEREBY PROCLAIM the establishment of the Jewish State in Palestine, to be called ISRAEL.

12. The destruction of Palestine was not the unintended consequence of unforeseen events. It was, and still is, an essential part of the Zionist plan to transform Palestine into 'Eretz Yisrael. " When a young Israeli soldier participating in the invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 1982 said 7 would like to see all the Palestinians dead because they are a sickness wherever they go', he was giving crude expression to a longstanding theme within the Zionist movement.

13. "I am certain," Israel' s first president, Chaim Weizmann, wrote on the eve of the establishment of the State of Israel, "that the world will judge the Jewish State by what it will do with the Arabs." 13 a. The Arab flight from Palestine began as soon as fighting broke out, and, as the Haganah went forward, it became a rout. The State fell heir to an almost empty territory which the Mandatory [Authority] wilfully left in chaos, cut off from the world, without even telegraphs or posts. 15. For decades we collected pennies to buy a scrap of earth. Now we have millions of dunams to dispose of, but bare and waste. The unforeseen happened: we had to fight for our independence, for our very breath, and, when the fighting began, the Arabs fled the country and it was virtually emptied of its former owners. PreState Zionism could not have conceived of such a thing, much less been able to tackle its consequences.

14. In Ras Naqoura our lorry stopped beside many others. And as our turn came [to cross the border] and I looked towards the long line of lorries entering Lebanon, rounding the bends in the roads and putting more and more distance between themselves and the land of the oranges, I too burst into a storm of weeping. Your mother was still looking silently at the orange. And all the orange trees which your father had abandoned to the Jews shone in his eyes, all the well-tended orange trees which he had bought one by one were printed on his face and reflected in the tears which he could not control in front of the officer at the police post.

15a. "The Arab leaders left first, and no one did anything to halt what began as a rush and then became a panic." They were determined to go. Hundreds drove across the border, but some went to the seashore to wait for boats. Ben-Gurion called me in and said, "I want you to go to Haifa at once and see to it that the Arabs who remain in Haifa are treated properly. I also want you to try to persuade those Arabs on the beach to come back. You must get it into their heads that they have nothing to fear." So I went immediately. I sat there on the beach, and I begged them to return to their homes. But they had only one answer: "We know that there is nothing to fear, but we have to go. We'll be back." I was sure that they went, not because they were frightened of us, but because they were terrified of being considered traitors to the Arab cause.

16. "I was three years old in 1948, when the Israel Defense Forces surrounded our village, the old Ein Hud, and everyone fled. They had no choice but to flee. They feared a slaughter, because before the army reached Ein Hud they heard that there had been some cases in the area, at Tantura, where there was a massacre, so they were scared, and they thought the Jews had come to settle accounts with them, so they fled. 16a. [At the war's end, practically all Arab villages or clusters of villages were designated as closed areas by the military. In Lydda,] "the Arabs were not allowed to leave their own ghetto without a permit from the authorities [i.e. the military governor]. The most infuriating thingfor us was that our area and the other areas in Lydda which were inhabited by Arabs were under the military command, while the rest of the city in which Jews lived, was not. We were not allowed out without special licenses until the early fifties, while the Jews, of course, were free to walk anywhere except in our neighbourhood."

17. Then we affirmed: this is not the State of the 600,000 or so Jews who live in it, but a State destined for the whole people, and its doors are open wide to every Jew. The number added to us since that day, only four years ago, is greater than of those resident before the State or at the moment of its birth.

17a. Revival of sovereignty is forming anew our personal character and our outward lineaments. We are drawing near and nearer to the national root and source, that legacy of the spirit which Bible times bequeathed. And we are becoming more and more free citizens of the great world, and heirs to the universal human estate of all generations and peoples.

18. In May 1949 - May 22, to be exact - the army came to Kufr Qara and to all the villages in the area, and the military government took over. They wasted no time in letting us know that life was not going to be as it once was. We could live in the village, they said, but we would not be free to go about when and where we wanted. In a way, they turned the village into a prison. No bars or walls, but still a prison. At night, we were under a curfew - at first from 8:00 P.M. to 5:00 A.M., and later from 10:00 P.M. to 4:00 A.M. In the first few years it was strictly enforced. Later they eased up. In the daytime, we were unable to leave the area of the village without special travel permits.

19. In the two years since the State, we have founded 240 new settlements, settled 82,000 on the land, brought 2,100,000 new dunams under the plow. Just think! Thirty times as many settlements, seventy times as much cultivation, thirty times as many settlers, all this, almost incomparably creative as it is, done by Jews from the Yemen, Morocco, Turkey and eastern Europe, at it on the land and in the factories, building villages and towns, planting forests, making roads, repeopling the Negev, restoring Jaffa, Lydda and Rarnleh, Beersheba and Beisan. Many cannot read or write, but they learn quickly. Those of military age receive their Jewish and general education in the Army; the others in evening classes or from their children. Good soldiers these, and fine workers. Even in a day's journey you will see how land and people are changing: the land reclad after centuries of nakedness, the men and women - after centuries of misery, serf-dom and degradation - now free citizens proudly making their own lives, rebuilding their own country.

20. "If! remember that 26,000 out of the 36,000 dimams of my village's land were confiscated; if I remember that until the end of 19661 needed a special permit to go from my village to the neighboring one, because of the military government; if my village received electricity twenty years after the Jewish settlement next door received it; if the road to Ara was paved only three years ago; if the 'nationality' and 'religion' entries on my identity card raise eyebrows in every office; if I see Arik Sharon's maps in the newspaper showing how he wants to surround me with thirty to forty thousand Jews, to cut me off like a dangerous criminal; if every day more voices are calling for my, an Israeli Arab's, eviction from the country - if I put all those together, I should hate you. But I just can't hate you. I grew up within your culture. I was educated in a certain way. I can no longer hate you. "

21. The Proclamation of Independence promised that Israel would maintain "complete equality of social and political rights for all its citizens without distinction of creed, race or sex" and called on the Arabs in Israel "to play their part in building the state on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its institutions." Israel has carried out these pledges in so far as possible in a country under constant siege and menace by the surrounding Arab peoples.

22. When an [Arab] peasant said to an official of the Israel lands Administration: 'How can you deny my ownership? This land is my property, I inherited it from myfathers and grandfathers, and I have a title-deed to it,' the official answered: We have a more important title-deed. We have a title-deed from Dan [in the North of Israel] to Eilat [in the South].' When a peasant said to another official: 'What is this you are offering me? Only 200 pounds per dunam?' the official replied: "This is not your land, it is ours. We are paying you your wages as a "watchman. " You are only "watchmen"; you have "looked after " our land for 2,000 years and we are paying you your wages! But the land is ours!' 24. I want to rent an apartment... I read an advertisement in the paper, I dial a number. "Madam, I read your advertisement in the paper, may I come and look at your apartment?" Her laughter fills my heart with hope: "This is an excellent apartment on Mount Carmel, sir. Come over and reserve it quickly." In my happiness, I forget to pay for the telephone call and leave in a hurry. The lady takes a liking to me, and we agree on her terms. Then, when I sign my name, she is taken aback. "What, an Arab? I am sorry, sir, please call tomorrow. "

23. Along with all the rest of the building and settlement we did in those hectic seven years, we also built for the Arabs, because when we talked about the citizens of Israel, we meant all the citizens of Israel. Whenever I had arguments with local people in Kiryat Shemonah and similar places, there was always someone in the crowd who shouted that the Arabs were better off. It wasn't true, of course, but it is equally untrue and far more wicked - to claim that we ignored the Arabs altogether. The truth is that we used the houses of those Arabs who ran away from the country in 1948 for new immigrant housing whenever we could, although the properties remained under the supervision of a special custodian. At the same time we allocated more than 10,000,000 pounds for new Arab housing and rehoused hundreds of Arabs who remained in Israel but were displaced as a result of the fighting.

25. The Sinai Campaign began as scheduled after sunset on October 29 and ended as scheduled on November 5. It took the Israel Defense Forces less than 100 hours to cross and capture from the Egyptians the whole of the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula. 27. The Arab community which was far more than thirty years hostile to the coming state, should prove that it does not identify with the surrounding enemies and does not form a danger. Therefore, an Arab student should not be surprised if he is not accepted to a Jewish factory or to a key-position in the Jewish sector, since just yesterday he or his father or his uncle was an avowed enemy. He does not deserve automatically a treatment of confidence from the state or the Jewish community. 27a. Israel celebrated her 19th Independence Day on May 15, 1967. Three and a half weeks later, after the Six-Day War, the situation in the Middle East had been radically transformed: Israel was in control of territories stretching from the Golan Heights to Sharm el-Sheikh and a new upsurge of national energy and confidence was matched by a wave of concern and devotion that swept over world Jewry, engulfing hundreds of thousands who realized, when the Jewish state was in peril, how much its survival meant to them.

26. Do you know what happened here in 1956? That was the year of the Sinai War. Have you heard ofKufr Qasim? Well, let me tell you. Just before the Israeli government went to war against Egypt, they decided to make a show of force to the Arab citizens of Israel. With heavily armed soldiers they surrounded the village ofKufr Qasim, which is near here. They atmounced that in a few hours there would be a curfew and anyone not obeying the curfews would be shot. Well, all the people who were in the fields then, or outside the village, didn'/ hear the announcement. When they came home past the curfew time, they were shot dead -fortynine of them. And Kufr Qasim wasn 't the only village where the army fired shots. In many other villages around here they also made sudden curfews and shot at people, though none were killed. That same day I also was shot at while working out in my fields at dusk. After the war was over and they had won, the Israeli government issued an apology to Kufr,Qasim. But they had made their point. They let us all know that we were at their mercy.

29. Central institutions should give preference to the employment of Jews instead of Arabs. Proper arrangements should be made with the directors of industries operating under the Capital Investment Act in critical areas [such as the country's north] so that the number of Arab employees with not rise above 20 percent. We should reach an arrangement with the central marketing groups of various goods to neutralize and hinder Arab dealers, especially in the north, in order to prevent the dependence of the Jewish population on these dealers, especially in times of emergency. The government must find a way to neutralize grants to large families among the Arab population, whether by linking [this benefit] to economic status or by removing these grants from the purvey of the social security agency and handing them over to the Jewish Agency or Zionist Organization, so that they will be directed at Jews only. ...a special task force (Shin Bet) should be appointed to investigate the personal habits of [Arab politicians] and other negative figures, and to bring the findings to the attention of the voting public.

28. "The same in 1967. The rule of the military government had ended a year before. But during the 1967 war, they resumed it for about two weeks, until the end of the war. They watched over us and let us know that we were at their mercy. Had it looked like they were going to lose that war, I believe the Jews would have attacked us and massacred many of us. I say this even though I know there are Jews of goodwill here. It was Moti, after all, who helped save my village and my family during the military government period. For this I shall ahvays be grateful. But Moti, and people like him, were not able to prevent a lot of things that happened to us during those years. And anyone who lived through il Nakba [the Catatrophe of 1948], and the military government that came after it, learned one thing for sure - as Arabs in Israel, we have reason to be afraid. I am sad to say this, but it is the truth. "

30. "There is not one Arab who does not think to himself about how they will transfer him, nor am I free of that fear. It's ahvays on my mind. Either they 'II passively press us to the wall and I'll have nothing to do here, or they 'II do it physically: bring me to the border, on foot, in a truck, and say, Go!

(A Dialogue) 31. "Don't you have any historical perspective? You come to me with demands from within your private little hurt, and you forget -"

32.

"Little? Why is it little? Don't you measure my pain for me!"

(31.) "It is little compared with the horrible pain, yes, compared to, first of all, the pain of those people from your own Fasuta who were uprooted from here and ended up in refugee camps! Compared with the pain of Jews who were at the ovens and came here! You stayed on your land, you weren't uprooted, they defended you in that - they did not strip you of your identity, of the Koran, of the church - you're spoiled!"

(32.) "The minute you start talking on a large scale, my pain is obviously small My pain, and that of the Palestinian in the refugee camps, will never be heard, because it always has to pass through the filter of the Holocaust. But I am continually trying to draw you out from your pathos, from your pathos of tormented Judaism, to say to you that it makes no difference what the magnitude of my pain is. What is important is the reality we define for ourselves together, so that our grandchildren will not have to continue coping with the mess being created today. I am telling you that your dream of creating a minority that will find its ethnocultural, even linguistic place here, such a framework is unacceptable to me, because your entire view of reality is Jewish. Jewish! You see only yourself and forget the other components. How can you want to make me a partner in an Israeli identity, if Israel is the totality of Judaism? "

33. An Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion and on the opposite mountain I am searching for my little boy. an Arab shepherd and a Jewish father both in their temporary failure. Our voices meet above the Sultan's Pool in the valley between us. Neither of us wants the child or the goat to get caught in the wheels of the terrible Had Gadya machine. Afterward we found them among the bushes and our voices came back inside us, laughing and crying. Searching for a goat or a son has always been the beginning of a new religion in these mountains

34. An Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion and on the opposite mountain I am searching for my little boy. an Arab shepherd and a Jewish father both in their temporary failure. Our voices meet above the Sultan's Pool in the valley between us. Neither of us wants the child or the goat to get caught in the wheels of the terrible Had Gadya machine. Afterward we found them among the bushes and our voices came back inside us, laughing and crying. Searching for a goat or a son has always been the beginning of a new religion in these mountains.

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 13 a. 14. 15. 15a. 16. 16a. 17. 17a. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 27a. 28. 29. 3 0. 31. 32. 33. 34.

"Hatikvah," the Israeli national anthem Mahmoud Darwish, "Identity Card" Israeli Declaration of Independence (DI) Edward Said, "Profile of the Palestinian People" (DI) John Hope Simpson, "On the Employment of Arabs" David Ben Gurion, "On Jewish Labor" John Hope Simpson, "On the Employment of Arabs" (DI) Fayez A. Sayegh (DI) Edward Said, "Profile of the Palestinian People" Chaim Weizmann David Ben Gurion Ghassan Kanafani, "In the Land of Sad Oranges" David Ben Gurion GoldaMeir A resident of Ein Hod, quoted by David Grossman in Sleeping on a Wire Fouzi El-Asmar, quoted by Baruch Kimmerling in The Palestinians David Ben Gurion David Ben Gurion Quoted by Michael Gorkin in Days of Honey. Days of Onion David Ben Gurion Nazir Yunes, quoted by David Grossman in Sleeping on a Wire Israel Fact Book Quoted by Sabri Jiryis in The Arabs of Israel Golda Meir, Mv Life Mahmoud Darwish David Ben Gurion A resident of Kfar Karra, quoted by Michael Gorkin in Days of Honey. Days of Onion M.BenDor Israel Fact Book A resident of Kfar Karra, quoted by Michael Gorkin in Days of Honey. Days of Onion Israel Koenig, "The Koenig Report on the Judaization of the Galilee" Nazir Yunes, quoted by David Grossman in Sleeping on a Wire A.B. Yehoshua, quoted by David Grossman in Sleeping on a Wire Anton Shammas, quoted by David Grossman in Sleeping on a Wire Yehuda Amichai, "An Arab Shepherd is Searching for his Goats on Mount Zion" Yehuda Amichai, "An Arab Shepherd is Searching for his Goats on Mount Zion"