The idea of teaching Judaism and Zionism to Arabs was not a very good idea, as the Israeli educational authorities were to recognize after a generation of experience. Those who taught Zionism were impressing on their pupils the supreme importance of national identity and national commitment. In the minds of young Arabs, that could only mean Arab national identity and commitment. Teaching Zionism to Arabs speeded up the growth of Arab nationalism in Israel. Some pupils even took over the vocabulary of Zionism, turning it against the Zionists. If we do not help ourselves, writes Muhammad Wattad, by taking the initiative so as to arrive at the greatest possible auto-emancipation, we will be ground down-- we will not be like every man, but like the dust of man. Autoemancipation! The spark that burned in the mind of Leon Pinsker [an early Zionist], a hundred years before in Russia, wafted through the air of a classroom of the Jewish State, into the mind of a young Arab, there to burn with a flame of a different color! --Conor Cruise OBrien, The Siege: The Sage of Israel & Zionism. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1986.
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 04:01:06 +0000