Borderline Crimes

Yesterday, Students for Justice in Palestine held its first event of the year at UC Berkeley. The Multicultural Center at the MLK student building was packed – I had to sit on the floor between the aisles for most of the evening. Our speakers, Israeli refusers Maya Wind and Netta Mishly, gave a highly eloquent presentation not only about their movement, the Shministim (twelfth-graders refusing to serve in the army), but on basic facts of the occupation that necessitate this refusal. I could hear many productive and stimulating conversations going on around me all throughout the evening, involving not just hardcore I/P activists but many who came from a different perspective. The discussions continued into the night, as several of us went out to a local café and to a party, in true SJP style.

Maya and Netta insisted on a very openly structured Q&A session, well beyond the comfort level of the rest of us. Although the talk focused on the occupation, the inevitable one-state/two state question came up: did the two speakers want to dismantle Israel, as the evening’s sponsors want to do? Maya (I think) answered that as an Israeli, she cannot support dismantling Israel (for me, this is the common error of confusing the country with the regime – many Iranians or Chinese support dismantling their regimes without destroying their countries). Netta, on the other hand, said she is not afraid to live in one secular state. Representatives from SJP and from Jewish Voice for Peace insisted that neither organization had a position on one-state/two states.

For most Zionists, this seems like sacrilege: how can one not have a position on this most fundamental question, the right of Jews for self-determination? Can this stem from anything other than an anti-Jewish sentiment? How can one continue a conversation with anyone who doesn’t believe in this obvious right? I thought I would use this opportunity to articulate some of my own thoughts on the subject. I don’t claim to represent anyone but myself, a non-Zionist Israeli, active for almost three years in SJP.

A lot of people simply make Zionism a private case of nationalism, and then continue to debate whether nationalism itself is a good idea. I think this is unnecessary, because Zionism is an unusual and a-typical kind of nationalism. When the French, or even the Palestinians, began talking of themselves as a nation, this meant a transition from local or religious identities into a more comprehensive one (in the late eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, respectively). This was also the case for another form of Jewish nationalism, the East European Bund. Zionism is nationalism with a significant twist: it was all about creating a national home for Jews in a country where Jews were, originally, a small minority. Some the original Zionists fantasized about how excited the local natives would be about this project, promising to bring them progress and prosperity. But if they failed to do so, there were other options too: as Nur Masalha has documented, from the beginning, the option of transfer was on the table for those whose response to becoming a minority in their own country was less than enthusiastic.

Throughout its history, most Zionist practices created a basic asymmetry between the growing structures of the homeland for the Jewish people, and the bystanders, who were barred from participating. This is very clear, for example from the text of the Balfour Declaration: Jews deserve a national home and representative national bodies, while non-Jews (the vast majority of Palestine’s population at the time) have some religious rights, but nothing comparable. Wherever Israel would be established, wherever its borders would have been, this would have been the case: anyone belonging to the indigenous Palestinian population would have to have lived as a non-Jew in a Jewish state, an inevitable second-class citizen.

Or, of course, they could have moved elsewhere. It is incredible for me to witness how common this answer is, how deeply inculcated this Israeli attitude is: why can’t those pesky Palestinians just move already, if their nationality is so important to them? You hear this across the board, from extreme right-wingers to self-declared leftists.

I think this widespread expectation that Palestinians will just get up and leave comes from several sources: one piece is Zionist education, that skips directly from biblical times to the nineteenth century, teaching us almost nothing of what happened in between – including the roots of modern-day Palestinians in their land, going back many centuries. With the last two thousand years (since the destruction of the Second Temple) mostly erased from view, Palestinians can appear as temporary guests who just arrived yesterday and will be gone tomorrow. Where are the museums of Yaffa’s or Ramlah’s history? Why did my Tel-Aviv school take me to see archeological remains from the Philistine period, near Tel Aviv University, but not the last standing houses of Sheikh Muwwanis, the Palestinian village that existed on that very spot until 1948?

Another piece is the historical Jewish experience. Most Jews are from all over, not living in one country for too long, often as a result of persecution. On my mothers’ side, my family is from Britain, Turkey, Egypt, Italy and Spain, going back to the great expulsion of 1492. On my father’s side we’re from Syria, but also from Russia, six generations back. The idea of migrating from country to country comes so naturally to us that we have trouble understanding the depth of Palestinian connections to particular places, particular villages and towns where their families had lived for centuries. Different villages have typical accents, sometimes typical clothes or unique shrines. The same plots of land were passed on from generation to generation. Famous families were linked to specific cities. To expect someone to give up all of that and move elsewhere is crushingly cruel.

Continuing the Zionist project in the present means more than preserving Jewish identity. I have never heard any Palestinians object to playing Jewish songs on the radio for the holidays, or to teaching Hebrew in schools. The issue of providing a safe haven for persecuted Jews is complicated, but solvable (I would start from distinguishing true refugees who want to come to Israel from those who were pushed into doing so by the government. At every historical junction, most preferred to go to the US or other western countries, and it often took a lot of pressure from the Zionist leadership to direct them to Israel, where they would help solve the “demographic problem”. For instance, I remember how Israel pressured the U.S. in the nineties not to accept too many Jews from the former Soviet Union).

Zionism today, as the state is practicing it, means taking concrete steps to ensure Israeli Jews have the upper hand. It means constant surveillance of Israel’s Arab population, security service involvement in the appointment of teachers, confiscating land from Arabs for Jewish-only communities, preventing urbanization of Palestinian citizens because they are easier to control in villages. It means constant talk of the “demographic threat” as equivalent to the “security threat”: a tiny, smiling, laughing child is the same as a dangerous explosive – a dire threat to our lives and security. What does this racism do to us? How do we let our thinking be twisted in such a way, beyond the most basic human feelings and values?

It means projects like Birthright, that welcome American Jews to Israel, even if their families haven’t been there for at least two thousand years (if ever), but tell Palestinians who were actually born there that they cannot come – simply because they are Arabs. You could say Palestinians as a people are homeless, so that celebrating our privileges in this way is like eating a lavish meal in front of a homeless person.

So these are some of the reasons why I don’t think continuing with a Jewish state in the present is a good idea. Why, if so, doesn’t SJP endorse an alternative, such as a one-state solution? Our mission statement, written by Borderline Crimes’ very own Yaman Salahi, puts it best: “It is not within our rights to decide ourselves what that solution is, only to amplify those voices working against injustice”. I think that what is important here is that we resist the temptation to engage in pseudo-politics. Too many times people feel they are taking a serious stance by playing “if I were Prime Minister…”, but this is really nothing more than a parlor game, and a pretty clichéd one at that. We need to think in terms of effective actions we can take as the citizens that we are, not as high-up politicians. No one is waiting with baited breath to hear what a bunch of students at UC Berkeley think the whole regime should be like, but we do have other, more realistic options. One of them is what Maya, one of the refusers, called “economic activism” – putting pressure on specific companies (of whatever nationality) that profit from the occupation. SJP tries to think creatively about what we can do from our current position, with our current resources. This is one of the reasons we don’t have an official position about one-state/two states, and why we don’t devote our energies to advocating an overall solution.

But nevertheless, on a personal level, I have found it very beneficial to talk, or even just to imagine a one-state solution and what it would look like. Not because it could happen tomorrow, but because this is the equivalent of committing yourself to a long-term partnership: as an Israeli, I am always going to live with Palestinians, in a relationship that I will endeavor to make equal. With all Palestinians, regardless of how the state categorizes them at the moment – citizens of Israel, residents of the West Bank and Gaza, and the external refugees. I have my right of self determination and they have theirs, and neither trumps the other. It is my duty to distinguish my legitimate rights from illegitimate privileges, and to earn others’ respect for my rights by seriously committing myself to protect theirs.

I don’t have a blueprint for this state: it requires a long, ongoing conversation. In order to take part in this conversation, I had to go against my fears, every step of the way: my fear of the “terrorist language” Arabic; my fear of going to the occupied territories and getting shot or kidnapped (aren’t Palestinians inherently violent?); my fear of phrases like “the right of return”, which turned out not to be a codeword for “throw the Jews into the sea”, as I had heard so many times; my fear of finding out exactly what happened in 1948, including in my hometown Tel Aviv, including at the sites of my parents’ house and my university. And I learned not to use these fears as an excuse to legitimate my privileges.

Because I’m not doing my Palestinian allies any favors. My activism isn’t a form of pity or of guilt. It’s because I know my liberation is completely bound up with theirs. I can only work out of my racism, the racism and fears I internalized so deeply for so many years, with their help. And thanks to them, it truly is liberating. Every step of the way.

Shana Tova.