Learning about Israel Part 1
In the 2004 film Control Room, Lt. Josh Rushing, a press officer from US Central Command, said that his experiences in Iraq revealed to him how important the Israel-Palestine question was in the Middle East. Since being in Iraq, he took it upon himself to educate his friends and family back home about how that question informed every aspect of how the U.S. is viewed in Arab states.
I was a senior in college on September 11, 2001, and at that time, I probably couldn’t have told you that the modern state of Israel didn’t exist before 1948. Since then, I’ve come to feel that the violent dispossession of 750,000 native Palestinians and the overtly racist rhetoric of the early Zionist movement constitute a humanitarian crime with striking similarities to the experience of the Native Americans.
I believe that the lingering after-effects of that crime (only 58 years old), the continued displacement and dispossession of Palestinians scattered throughout the Middle East, and the ardent refusal of Israel and the U.S. to acknowledge that a crime occurred is still the prime motivating factor in anti-U.S. sentiment throughout the Arab world.
We live in the era of post-colonial thought, where intellectuals are breaking free of the prejudices of an earlier era, taking responsibility for the sins of their fathers, and actively addressing the need for reconciliation and restitution. The state of Israel is the most recent instance of racist colonial conquest. There has still not been an institutional recognition on the part of Israel that every scrap of their land was deliberately taken by force at the expense of 750,000 Palestinians, whose decendents numbered between 4 and 9 million worldwide in 2001.
When I undertake an effort to learn about something new, I find the best place to start is often a comic book. Consequently, here comes my review of Palestine by Joe Sacco.
Joe Sacco is a cartoonist/journalist who makes a habit of hanging out in warzones, interviewing their inhabitants and rendering the experience in comic-book format.
Palestine was valuable to me in giving me a starting place in learning about the history of the Zionist movement which led to the forceful displacement of the native Palestinian population, with illustrations and quotes from some of it’s key players, such as early Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir’s infamous quote: “It was not as though there was a Palestinian people considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.”, contrasted with Israel’s founding father David Ben-Gurion’s quote “In each attack a decisive blow should be struck, resulting in the destruction of homes and the expulsion of the population.”
Historical vignettes such as these are sparingly interspersed with the illustrated conversations and experiences that Joe had spending time in various cities in the Occupied Territories in the winter of 1991-1992.
Palestine illustrates the human reality of being a Palestinian in the Occupied Territories. Everyone is under curfew, movement is curtailed, most of the men have spent time in giant Israeli prisons under dubious charges, and most everyone Joe meets spends their time swapping gallows humor in shabby houses which are regularly knocked down out of hand by Israeli bulldozers.
Sacco writes with a charmingly self-deprecating style, painfully conscious of his own role as a Western observer and comic book doodler being given the royal treatment by the poor households of Gaza.
Perhaps the most valuable contribution to my own exploration came from the forward, written by Edward Said. Edward Said was a literary scholar and social critic, whom Joe Sacco cites as a personal hero. Said was Palestinian-born, but his family permanently relocated to Egypt in his youth, shortly before 1948. Over the course of his life, he came to terms with his Palestinian identity and sense of rootlessness and alienation, and devoted most of his remaining years to wrangling with the Palestinian Question. His writings have been my best guide so far in understanding the origins of Israel, the Palestinian experience, and putting the modern peace process into context. The next two parts of my Learning about Israel posts will be about what I’ve gained from the two collections of his writings that I’ve recently finished.
Until then, I highly recommend Palestine as the appropriate comic with which to begin any serious inquiry.
Oh boy, a multi-part post! This is exciting.
Israel is the most recent instance of racist colonial conquest? What about Iraq? Afghanistan? Grenada? Panama? Cuba? Vietnam? Korea? Maybe Israel was the most “successful” in recent history, but I don’t know how you could say it’s the most recent.
Comment by OrangeBeard — May 18, 2006 @ 7:12 pm
Although those are perhaps examples of colonial conquest, Israel incorporates the additional aspect of not just puppet governments and military bases, but full-scale removal of a native population.
The Israeli conquest came straight from the Zionist movement, which has been around since the 1800’s, when people took their racist rhetoric straight up.
I think that the Zionist movement is part of an “old-school” colonialism that the newer examples can’t quite live up to. And the combination of it’s virulent racism combined with its stunning success combined with a massive denial its own wrongdoing contributes to its pernicious results.
But yes, your point is well taken.
Comment by Skankrot A.R. III, Esq. — May 18, 2006 @ 7:26 pm
I think that “old-school colonialism” is tribalism. The full-scale removal of a native population isn’t colonialism, because colonialism requires a native population to colonize - not just land. Segregation is tribal. Domination is colonial. Israel seems more about segregation than domination. More importantly, colonies can be de-colonized. There’s nowhere for Israelis to go back to. I think the language of colonialism suggests impossible solutions to the ongoing conflict.
Comment by OrangeBeard — May 18, 2006 @ 8:34 pm
I’m comfortable saying that I’ve overstated my point. In fact, on reflection, there are more recent examples of more vicious instances of racist violence and displacement. Yugoslavia or Sudan for example.
I think it’s worth noting, though, that Zionism’s rhetoric has strong parallels to the rhetoric of the colonists who displaced Native Americans.
Both refer to a savage and degenerate people who have to be assimilated or eradicated for the sake of a better world. In the case of Palestine, for the sake of the land.
In both cases, the rhetoric refers to a people whose time is past and whose passing is natural, if they are referred to at all.
I agree that Israel can’t be decolonized, but it can be desegregated, which would be a great step in the right direction.
I think that institutional recognition of the suffering inflicted on Palestinians would also be called for, and I just find it bizarre that in our current culture, where it’s okay for leaders to make class-action apologies, that Israel can’t bring itself to that one simple step.
The language of colonialism as it applies to Palestinians and Native Americans might be useful in illustrating to the American public that a wrong has really been committed, since I think few Americans would disagree that Native Americans were unfairly dispossessed.
Comment by Skankrot A.R. III, Esq. — May 18, 2006 @ 11:12 pm
Did Joe Sacco also write a moving comic/graphic novel about Sarajevo? That work was my introduction to a larger conflict in the same sense regarding that conflict.
Thanks for a thought-provoking post. While I feel that the parallel to anti-native american rhetoric is apt, I wonder how one deals with another factor I find troubling in this situation, that is, the world-wide (or perhaps western-wide) guilt following the Holocaust and the manner in which that guilt helped enable this “solution” to the Jewish homeland problem and silenced doubts from Jews and gentiles alike.
While there may be a parallel between the quest for religious freedom so enshrined in textbook early American history (though it often turns out to be the quest for economic freedom/opportunity) and the need for a homeland for religious and political dissidents at the cost of the native American peoples and the creation of the state of Israel, I think the guilt as well as the fear of being described as disloyal or anti-Semitic is a complex and powerful force behind the “ardent refusal of Israel and the U.S. to acknowledge that a crime occurred” that you describe, and makes it far more difficult to foster the kind of post-colonial analysis you describe.
Comment by pandsteefleegee — May 31, 2006 @ 10:59 am