New Government Offers A True View of Israel

Over the past several weeks, the rumblings from the new Foreign Minister of Israel, the right-wing idealogist Avigdor Lieberman, has met with predictable and justified derision from Palestinians and Westerners alike who see the aftermath of the new ruling-right coalition spelling almost certain disaster to any prospects of a two-state solution in the region.

To his credit, Lieberman appears to be assuming the mantle of agitator far too comfortably - recently stating that Israel would not be bound by the agreement reached in Annapolis (i.e. the roadmap to a two-state solution). Using the hackneyed conservative battle-cry of non-negotiation with ‘extremists’, Lieberman not only outraged the only partner available to Israel in the peace process, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, but sent the country into an almost certain collision course with the new Obama administration.

Shoring up the damage, Prime Minister-designate Benyamin Netanyahu quickly sealed a coalition agreement with Labour’s Ehud Barak - an all too transparent message to the U.S. that things had not yet ‘gotten totally out of hand’.

Forgetting for a moment that Ehud Barak as Defense Minister engineered the recent offensive in Gaza - and even neglecting the troubling fact that Labour governments in Israel have presided over massive settlement expansion in the West Bank over the past two decades - does this moderate ’shift’ to the left spell a more benign government - or rather, a government poised to take the necessary steps toward peace?

For those who have followed Israeli politics closely, it is clear that the ongoing policies of international belligerence and racial cleansing will doubtless continue - and perhaps even intensify given the empirical belief system endemic in the new ruling coalition.

Digging deeper, however, there may appear to be a modest silver lining - a bittersweet opportunity amongst the impending suffering that is set to befall the Palestinians (yet again).

For decades, Israel’s well orchestrated PR machine has been the envy of Western governments - successfully winning ‘the hearts and minds’ of Americans and many European alike - with charismatic spokespeople (usually assuming American or British accents) ready to defend the actions of the country on the nightly news or challenging television debates.

Israeli Spokesman to the UK, Mark Regev, Defends the Bombing of a UN School in Gaza in January 2009 on BBC Television.

While the PR is still very much in place, can it possibly be prepared for the daunting task ahead? With caricatures like Benyamin Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman, and even Ehud Barak set to guide Israel into the ‘Obama Era’, can the world fail to see what has been expertly polished away for so many years?

Perhaps the only positive effect of the ongoing rhetoric from ideologues such as Lieberman, is the slim hope that the world will finally glean the true policies of the Israeli government. Policies that are almost identical to previous administrations.

With the message remaining the same, perhaps the best hope lies in the messengers themselves - a government that cannot help but show their defiance to the West’s growing desire for a fair and just solution to the illegal occupation and rights abuses of the past 60 years.

At the very least, ambassadors like Mark Regev will certainly be working overtime to cover their tracks…

A Simple Denial of Culture

It is difficult to avoid obvious cliches when contemplating recent actions taken by the Israeli police on Saturday to silence a small crowd of Palestinians in East Jerusalem from celebrating the city’s new designation as ‘capital of Arab culture’ for 2009. 

According to Al Jazeera, about 20 Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem were detained, flags and banners confiscated, and at one school in the area, balloons carrying the colours of the Palestinian flag to be released by children to mark the day were burst.

Celebrations in Nazareth (the largest Arab city in Israel) were also cancelled by police.

With absolutely no violence reported, it is almost impossible to justify or condone the rampant silencing of culture within a claimed  democratic state. Given the recent violence in Gaza, and its subsequent mobilizing of Arab sympathy across Israel and the Middle East, such brazen attempts to further suppress Arab expression must be seen as inciteful, and perhaps even taunting.

With Jerusalem following Damascus as the capital of Arab culture (an honour that is passed to a different city by the Arab League every year since 1996), this weekend’s celebrations and events were in no way designed to inflame discourse between Jewish Israelis and Arabs. Historically, the chosen city has marked the occasion with poetry, music, dance, and sporting events. 

In the media vortex that is ‘Middle East violence’, everyday facts and events like the freezing of cultural expression are often neglected, and their significance underestimated. Because the crucial subtext of this article admits the term ‘no violence’, these acts go relatively unreported in world headlines or in local evening news segments. 

This is indeed a pity, as in many ways the acts of the Israeli police on Saturday better summarize the ongoing denial of cultural identity that is occuring both within Israel borders as well as those areas in occupation whose names light up headline ticker tape. 

Perhaps even more urgently, it is crucial to realise that this story occurs every day, in a thousand places from Israel to Darfur to Tibet. Without the media catalyst of ‘violence’, rockets, and casualties, these stories seem less important - less weighty. 

Marshall McLuhan famously quipped, ““All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values.” 

It is difficult to deny this point to some degree, but the facts remain that meaningful stories do exist - and in a world of fully interactive and real-time access to diverse media sources, blogs, and digital opinions, it is everyone’s duty to find them.

Where On Earth is a Palestine Football Jersey?

OK this isn’t funny anymore. In the throes of my Palestinian football fervor, I spent nearly 4 hours online yesterday trying to simply locate and purchase a Palestine National Team football jersey. Brimming with respect for the accomplishments of the Palestinian National side against Jordan in Ramallah on Sunday, I felt it my duty to proudly sport the kit around London (at least before it gets too cold) - while trying to politically dilute the annoying club football jerseys you see at every turn.

The result - absolutely NOTHING. Apparently had I desired the national team jersey of Namibia or Kazakhstan or perhaps that casino-rich little island nation of Macau (pop. 400K) I’d be in business.

So as a mild departure from serious issues facing Palestine this week, I am appealing to sportswear manufacturers worldwide to end this blockade of Palestinian jerseys. Let your silkscreens run without prejudice! Free your polyester from the vestiges of imperialism!

Heck, I’d even take a replica t-shirt or some socks at this point…

Palestine Football: Escape to Victory?

I have been extremely heartened to read that the first International friendly match was played in Palestine for the first time yesterday as the Palestinian National side drew 1-1 with neighbor and rival, Jordan. Now that FIFA has officially recognized Palestine’s right to play a home match (for the first time in its history), is that not a form of International recognition of the State of Palestine?

An overjoyed fan at Ramallah’s new FIFA-sponsored $4 million football stadium summed it up perfectly:

Our national team, in our stadium, means we exist no less than any other nation in the world.

What is more encouraging is that unlike International matches played in Jordan or Qatar (as has been the norm for the Palestinian Team), several players from Gaza were allowed to travel, including Palestine’s first goal scorer on home soil, Ahmed Kashkash.

After months of negotiation, Israel finally granted 2-day passes to several Gaza players, although any International Football Manager will tell you that 2 days is far from adequate to train and acclimate the players to all aspects of the team’s gameplan.  Worse, several Palestinian players (many rated as the best in the squad) were not allowed access to the West Bank to join the National Team for reasons Israel has defended as ’security concerns’.

So while we can rejoice at the tremendous odds surmounted by a National Team under Occupation, I can’t help but feel an odd correlation to the less than polished 1981 World War II film, Escape to Victory (or simply Victory in the US). I will do you the service of not dwelling too long on this rather simple film - but its premise is strangely similar to what occurred yesterday in Ramallah. Let’s see:

Imprisoned football players living in camps struggling to form a team = Check.

Occupiers deny many of the best players access to the team = Check.

Local crowd (amidst Occupation) feel national pride for the first time years = Check.

Heroic match ends in a symbolic draw = Check.

Only problem with that film - it was FICTION. Luckily there is some tidy reality left to keep us entertained. That’s better than Hollywood any day, and for those searching for yet another reason to recognize Palestine and what can be achieved even under Occupation, there is no better evidence. Hopefully this bit of news can appeal to those who require a little hand holding - or simply to those who know a good script when they see one.

Regardless, Bravo Palestine! I’m off to buy my new team jersey…

Mahmoud Darwish (1941 - 2008)

Dispensing of the politics and the arguments and the angst and the anger, this post is dedicated to one of the world’s most important and infleuntial poets, Mahmoud Darwish, who died of heart failure earlier this week in Houston, Texas.

Darwish was not only a profound and urgent poet of his times - he was a sensitive and sober observer of the human condition - creating some of the Middle East’s most important verse; whilst providing his Palestinian homeland a creative voice, a passion, and a cultural identity.

To many Palestinians he was a Goethe or a Shakespeare or a Whitman. To many Palestinians he was simply their own - and used his tremendous talent to inform, polarize and persuade.

Rather than re-phrase or worse, re-state some of the wonderful obituaries that have already been written, this post will simply end with a thanks. A profound thanks. Poetry is an art whose champions rarely leave the paper and truly affect a nation, a world. Darwish was an exception - and poetry, Palestinians, and the world will always be grateful.

I believe Darwish’s own views of poetry will suffice as a coda:

A person can only be born in one place. However, he may die several times elsewhere: in the exiles and prisons, and in a homeland transformed by the occupation and oppression into a nightmare. Poetry is perhaps what teaches us to nurture the charming illusion: how to be reborn out of ourselves over and over again, and use words to construct a better world, a fictitious world that enables us to sign a pact for a permanent and comprehensive peace … with life.

Racism on the Rise

No surprise given the fundamentally racist tenets of Israel’s Zionist founding, but for those left unconvinced, an independent civil rights group has recently released its findings that racist incidents against Arab in Israel has risen some 26% in the past year. According to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel:

Israeli society is reaching new heights of racism that damages freedom of expression and privacy. We are a society under supervision under a democratic regime whose institutions are being undermined and which confers a different status to residents in the center of the country and in the periphery.

A few other key takeaways from the study to keep in mind:

• The number of Jews expressing feelings of hatred toward Arabs has doubled.
• Only half the public believes that Jews and Arabs must have full equal rights.
• Among Jewish respondents, 55 percent support the idea that the state should encourage Arab emigration from Israel and 78 percent oppose the inclusion of Arab political parties in the government.

The report also goes on to detail the daily racial profiling and regular abuse that is the norm in Israeli institutions and society such as the ‘routine’ ridicule leveled on Arab families at Ben Gurion airport.

Arabic angrily scratched out in a urinal sign at Ben Gurion airport.

Having travelled through the airport on several occasions in the past year, the filthy treatment of Arabs by airport staff and security is truly unbelievable. During one ‘routine’ check through an Arab family’s baggage, I witnessed a security official ripping through and breaking fine china, chocolates and gifts (undoubtedly valuable to the owners) while a mother stood by and wept.

In any Western country in the world, this ongoing, methodical racism would not be tolerated. Worse, we are regualrly subjected to scenes of human rights violations in Zimbabwe, Tibet, and Indonesia and government officials are outraged - demanding sanctions, regime changes, and even invasions.

The rules need to apply universally - and one of the greatest abusers of human rights must be called to task.

Is an Ethnic State Democratic?

We have debated and - in many cases celebrated - the founding of a Jewish State as a safe haven and cultural and geographic center of the Jewish diaspora and people. Lost in these emotions and post-War sentiments is an understanding of what an ethnically-homogenized State involves - and how dreadfully undemocratic this concept is.

I encourage you to check out an excellent article on today’s Alternative Information Center dealing with the Right of Return of Palestinians to Israel. Quoting some recent comments by Omar Barghouti that I believe sum up the absolute danger of an ethnically singular “democratic” State:

In that perspective, one has to unequivocally reject the very idea (and existence) of a Jewish state, whatever will be its borders. For a Jewish state (in the demographic sense of the concept) necessarily implies the drive for exclusion and expulsion. Any ethnic (or confessional) state considers the non-dominant ethnicity as a threat, and aspires to its disappearance through more or less violent means.

As former Yugoslavia and Rwanda have tragically shown, ethnic states are always both the cause and the result of mass-expulsions and massacres, and the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1947-1949 is one among many examples of that historical phenomenon.

Anyone denying an ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Palestine took place on a mass scale following the founding of the State of Israel - and continues to this day in subtle but recognizable ways - needs to do two things: 1) Visit Palestine and see the ethnic cleansing taking place in a thousand ways and in a thousand places, 2) Read Dr. Ilan Pappe’s exceptional treatise, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

Israel cannot assert its position as a Democratic and Ethnic State - the two concepts are simply and ultimately gross contradictions.

Creative Polymath of Palestine

A true renaissance man - embracing an extensive range of creative talents including writer, poet, translator, critic and accomplished painter - Jabra Ibrahim Jabra is not only responsible for demonstrating the fascinating range of the Palestinian artist, but also for his ground-breaking translations of Western literature - making the works of Beckett, Camus and Shakespeare accessible to the broader Arab and Palestinian community.

Born in Bethlehem in 1920, Jabra finished his high school education in Jerusalem before attending Cambridge University. After returning to Jerusalem, Jabra taught art at Al-Rashidiyyeh School and founded the Art Club of Jerusalem. Following the Nakba and forced migration of the Palestinian people in 1948, Jabra fled to Iraq where he died in 1994.

The recipient of numerous awards including a Harvard Fellowship in 1952 and the Taraga Europa prize for culture by Inter Art Forum in Rome among countless others, Jabra is not only well known as a painter - but as an accomplished critic, writer and translator - his publications include seven novels, an autobiography, three collections of poetry, and eight collections of essays.

As a translator, Jabra bestowed one of his greatest creative gifts to Palestine and the Arab world - creating the still definitive Arabic translations of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, and works by Dylan Thomas and Albert Camus. Most famously, Jabra’s translations of Shakespeare’s works include accomplished versions of Hamlet, Coriolanus, Tempest, and Twelth Night. His overarching personal goal in his translations was to “to enlighten the Arab audience with the creative works of world known authors.”

As an encyclopedic polymath of vast range and abilities, it is perhaps not unfounded to link his diverse contributions to Palestinian art and culture to such towering figures as Albrecht Durer or even Goethe - men who defined the artistry and culture of their nations through every channel of their creativity.

Anti-Zionist Jews: Not In Their Name

I have received a lot of comments recently about bruised earth being either anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli, or both. Like many Palestinians and many Israelis I have met and discussed the occupation with, there is a fundamental and urgent point everyone should understand - there exists a profound difference between speaking out against the political tenets of Zionism and voicing racist, blatant antisemitism. There is also a profound difference between being anti-Israel Policy and anti-Israeli. The difference is governments and people.

It is crucial the difference is understood. We should all be intelligent enough to debate these issues - separating policies from population. If not, we will - like many of our politicians - quietly debate the issue of the occupation in our heads rather than with our voices - frozen in fear of being labeled antisemitic.

People must also wake to the reality that there is a large and vibrant community of Israeli Jews - both in Israel and across the world - who refuse to allow Zionism and the subsequent actions of the State of Israel to be performed in their name. In many ways, they are the bravest and most powerful of voices, refusing to remain silent and speaking out in the face of great opposition from their families and communities.

To that end, I would like to offer a few examples of two exceptional and brave men. Both Jewish - one Israeli, one American. The first is Professor Ilan Pappe, one of Israel’s acclaimed New Historians who debunked the idealized Zionist version of the Jewish State’s history and exposed that massacre, rape and dispossession of the native Palestinians that attended its birth.

Professor Pappe is an advocate for a single secular democratic state in historic Palestine with equal rights for Jews and Arabs. His outspoken views put him out of favour with the Israeli mainstream and recently, he has decided to leave Israel to teach at Exeter University. His most recent work, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine is a striking and urgent review of Israel’s actions in 1948, and its ongoing policy of racially segregating Palestinians and Jews today.

An excellent portion of a lecture by Professor Pappe (I encourage everyone to spare the time) can be viewed here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2378048083114640496

The second Jewish profile is American-born Mike Marqusee, an exceptional writer, speaker and intellectual I have had the profound pleasure to meet and work with on a book event some years ago. His latest offering, If I Am Not for Myself: Confessions of an Anti-Zionist Jew is a “thought-provoking exploration of what it means to be Jewish in the twenty-first century”. It traces Marqusee’s upbringing in the 60’s in an Jewish-American family, his subsequent pro-Palestinian activism, and experiences as a Jew living among Muslims in Pakistan, Morocco, and Britain.

Like Professor Pappe, Marqusee has faced and experienced the effects of living as an anti-Zionist Jew, and has chosen to work toward breaking the mold of blindly accepting the actions of the State of Israel simply because of his Jewish heritage.

This post is therefore dedicated to Marqusee, Pappe, and the brave scores of Jewish men and women around the world who against substantial odds, are speaking out and forcing their communities to re-think and discern the crucial difference between Judaism and Zionism; anti-Israel and anti-Israeli; people and policies.

Bravo.

Poetry of Palestine

Taking a break from the ongoing politics and drama of the occupation, we’re going to shift gears and focus a bit on Palestinian literature and the arts - an often overlooked aspect of a region and a people. Reflecting on the media portrayal of Palestinians, the usual image proferred is of a demeaned, angry, aggressive society. The extremes of this caricature is of course the suicide bomber - but the more subtle renderings depict a classless, lawless, cultureless population.

In an effort to re-paint this distorted image of Palestinian culture fueled by the media, over coming weeks bruised earth will profile intellectuals, artists, writers and communities that challenge the popular notions prevalent in the West.

The famous Zionist edict of “a land without a people for a people without a land” is being recycled day after day with the ongoing denial of Palestinian culture and the arts. After all, denying a people’s culture is the first step in dehumanizing and dispossessing a population. Occupation is far more than barriers and fences and walls.

With that, today’s bruised earth profile focuses on the Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish. Born in British Mandate Palestine in 1941, Darwish is perhaps the most celebrated Palestinian poet alive today - with over 30 volumes of poetry and 9 works of prose to his oeuvre. A one-time member of the PLO Executive Committee, Darwish resides in Ramallah (a town fluent with the modern Palestinian arts scene) and has lived in Beirut (during the Israelis invasion of 1982) and Cairo.

A voice of modern Palestine and one of the greatest Arab poets of the century, Darwish’s voice is urgent, engaging, and razor-sharp - having been best described by the poet Fiona Sampson as:

This most public of Palestinians is the master not of reductive polemic but of a profoundly lyric imagination, one that draws together the textures of daily life, physical beauty - whether of landscape or of women - longing, myth and history.

A few excerpts of his poetry can be found here. And to help get a sense for his range and his structure, a few special clips are reproduced below:

Whenever I search for myself I find the others
And when I search for them
I only find my alien self
So am I the individual- crowd?

-from Mural

Stripped of my name and identity?
On soil I nourished with my own hands?
Today Job cried out
Filling the sky:
Don’t make and example of me again!
Oh, gentlemen, Prophets,
Don’t ask the trees for their names
Don’t ask the valleys who their mother is
From my forehead bursts the sward of light
And from my hand springs the water of the river
All the hearts of the people are my identity
So take away my passport!

- from Passport

 

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