srael? by SOUAD SHARABANI I am a journalist based in Toronto Canada. I was born in Iran to Iraqi Jewish parents who immigrated to Israel in the mid 1950s. I emigrated from Israel. However, the remainder of my family stayed behind. My family and I are Arab /Sephardic Jews. Culturally linguistically, and physically we are Arabs. In Israel at a very young age Israeli institutions including schools taught us that as Arab Jews we have nothing worthwhile to contribute to society. But above all, we are taught that Arabs are our enemies who want to destroy Israel. I, like most Jews in Israel, accepted that ideology. It was not until I left the country, went to university, and started asking questions and only then I reevaluated my own position as an Arab Jew and about the Israeli/Arab/Palestinian conflict. Roll the clock to 2014. Nothing much has changed. We are still at war and the idea for a just peace remains unattainable. The following is a transcript of a radio interview that took place last month. – Souad Sharabani *** Souad Sharabani: I have been struggling to understand why the Jewish communities around the world, unconditionally support Israelis’ treatments of Palestinians. I sat down with Prof. Norman Pollack to talk about this question and more. Norman Pollack: My name is Norman Pollack, I am professor emeritus of history in Michigan State University. I am Jewish, it’s my parents’ religion, and my wife Nancy is far more schooled in it than I. Though I am critical of some passages in Torah, I choose rightly or wrongly to see Judaism as a theology of social justice. My primary identity with it is secular. My pride in and identification with being Jewish as I grew up had to do with recognizing that Jewish people were in the forefront of radicalism and the arts. Therefore the criticisms I now make are not that of a self-hating Jew, the standard put down to silence all criticism of Israel, but the prideful affirmation of the Judaism I once knew, that of a progressive social force. Souad: Jews who want to know the truth can easily understand that Israel right now is neither a victim nor is morally superior. Plus the fact that there is the Internet, where people can see for themselves first hand without the filter of the TV what is going on in Israel, what is Israel doing in the occupied territories. I find it extremely difficult to understand how can they have such a blind spot when it comes to Israel? How can they see these pictures, read what they are reading, and still see that country as a victim? Norman: That is an excellent statement, if I can just work at it a little bit in terms of my own thought and perhaps a little bit of my own experience. I think the starting place might be that the Jewish community, especially in America, which is what I would know (it might hold in Canada as well), but certainly in America, really has abandoned its liberalism. And the question that now we are talking about is, why? And how explain that kind of obsession, an ironclad attachment to Israel. I would have to go back and say, this is actually a problem that begins following World War II itself, the whole McCarthyism and anti-Communism experience that Jews more than others felt vulnerable about. And that was the beginning of the collapse of the progressiveness. It did not happen all at once, but I think already inroads have been made. My sense is that by the 1970s you are already beginning to see a different Jewish community. I think before that the Jewish community in America was really progressive, having an important place in labor organizations, in militant labor organizations, and extremely so in term of civil rights. So I keep on going back to this magnificent threesome, if I may, of Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman–three young people, two Jewish, one black, who were murdered in Mississippi during that Freedom Summer. I was there right after their deaths. And I know through my personal experience and involvement in civil rights there was always that supportive context of Jewish young people of my age. Up until the 1970s the American Jewish community at all levels including business men and lawyers as well as working people and students had that kind of affinity toward the dispossessed and toward progressive movements, certainly disproportionately so. Souad: But that does not necessarily exclude their feelings towards Israel, but now it seems it is all about Israel. Norman: Right, Right, Right. Now why the emphasis on Israel? As we are talking, I am thinking it is almost like clinging to a life raft. Israel then becomes the symbol, if you will, of security, that even if one is not to go their oneself it would stand for a number of things. And one of the things it would stand for, to me, is very unfortunate; it would stand for a pride in militarism, a pride in standing up, no longer being pushed around, no longer being a people stereotyped as simply weak and mercantile.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 07:14:46 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015