Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

The N.Y. Times has a new Israel correspondent, Ethan Bronner. He replaced Steven Erlanger, who I thought was a generally good reporter with a few serious blind spots when it came to dispassionate reporting on the conflict. Bronner has begun writing his first in depth reports based around Israel’s 60th anniversary.

Before I talk about them, I wanted to put this in some context. I read a lot of journalism about the conflict. My major source is probably the Times, since it’s the newspaper I grew up on. Because I am passionate about both Israel and good journalism, and because, for better or worse the Times is our nation’s newspaper of record–especially on foreign affairs, I’m finely attuned to how the Times reports this issue.

I was seriously disappointed by Bronner’s piece on Israeli Arabs and the Nakba, . Why? Good journalism about the conflict takes you inside the hearts and minds of those who live on both sides of the divide. I think that after reading a profile of someone on either side, the partisans from the opposite side should feel deeply discomfited. Because a great journalist forces you to walk a mile in the moccasins of “the other.” Many Arabs and Israelis distinctly do not want to do this.

Instead of writing deeply personal, intimate journalism, Bronner has written a very much outsider’s perspective on Israeli Arab society. He hasn’t gotten anything egregiously wrong. He hasn’t shown any explicit pro-Israel bias. But nor has he attempted to plumb the heart of his subjects. If you look at the journalism of James Bennet, one of Bronner’s predecessors as bureau chief, you’ll see what this means. In this profile, Bennet presents the paradox and double life of a former IDF soldier married to a Palestinian with heartbreaking detail. You emerge from reading this type of journalism with a profound sense of the tragedy of this conflict for both sides. As opposed to when you finish reading Bronner, you feel you’ve read a dutifully reported piece with little of the empathy evidenced in Bennet’s writing.

Good writing on the Israel-Palestinian conflict is all about nuance and emphasis. Reporters like Bronner will rarely get a fact wrong. But it’s all in how you put the facts together; where you place emphasis, and how heavily you emphasize one particular fact over another. And in this sense, the new correspondent’s work is disappointing.

Here are a few of the things that made me uncomfortable about Bronner’s piece:

On Thursday, which is Independence Day, thousands will gather in their former villages to protest what they have come to call the “nakba,” or catastrophe, meaning Israel’s birth.

While I am not an Arabic expert, I have never seen the word Nakba without a capital letter. Since this refers to a specific event, and a seminal and catastrophic one at that, removing the capital letter seems to diminish unintentionally the importance of the event. Again, perhaps not an egregious mistake, but a sign that the writer isn’t at one with his subject, but rather looking from the outside. Even more important, I take serious exception to Bronner’s interpretation of the reference of Nakba to “Israel’s birth.” There are some Israeli Arabs who may see Israel’s birth as a catastrophe. But the reference in almost any Israeli Arab’s mind refers to the disaster visited upon their uprooted society and villages by the War of Independence. 700,000 were sent into exile in this tragic event–one that rivals the Spanish exile of its Jewish community in 1492 or the Roman conquest of Palestine in 135 CE during which many inhabitants were exiled. It is this displacement that is their tragedy.

One may argue that the displacement and creation of the new state go hand in hand so that the two are interchangeable. Benny Morris and perhaps even David Ben Gurion may’ve believed this to be the case. But not even every Zionist of the era agreed. And I do not accept this and strongly believe Bronner should’ve been more precise in his discussion of the issue.

Polls show that most Israeli Arabs are neither revoluntaries nor anti-Zionist in their outlook. But they are a deeply aggrieved minority. The crime for them is not Israel’s creation, but the displacement and injustice done to them in the process.

That is why I believe that Bronner’s emphasis on the irreconcilable divide between Jew and Arab in Israel is misplaced. Yes, the divide is there and it is great. But by portraying Israeli Arab atttiudes as more fundamental and radical than they perhaps are, Bronner has set up the conflict to be intractable & unresolvable, which I don’t believe is the case.

Most [Israeli Jews] say that…an end to its Jewish identify means an end to Israel…

Again, there is imprecision here that should be amplified. What this attitude really connotes is that an end to Jewish domination of the state would mean an end to Israel as a Jewish state. Certainly there is no reason why having A (as opposed to “the”) Jewish identity in Israel means the end of the state. There might also be a recognition of An Arab identity in the state as well. So that two ethnic, religious identities could be enshrined in the nation’s fabric. This would certainly NOT entail “an end to Israel.”

What Bronner does in the above passage is accept a certain nationalist Israeli Jewish assumption without examining what underlies it to determine whether there is ground for compromise sometime in the future.

…A majority of Jews, polls show, favor a transfer of Arabs out of Israel as part of a two-state solution…Arabs here reject that idea partly because they prefer the certainty of an imperfect Israeli democracy to whatever system may evolve in a shaky Palestinian state.

I am glad Bronner added the word “partly” to this passage, but even here I think he has missed the key point for Arabs. Certainly in a practical sense transfer would be economically disastrous for them. But more importantly, they are citizens of the state and their presence and that of their ancestors predates that of most of the current Jewish inhabitants. So most Arabs say: “Why should I be forced to leave this place? It is just as much mine as the Jews’. They have no greater claim to it than I.” Pride and rootedness in the land are far more important motivators for them in opposing transfer than any concern about standard of living should they be forced to leave.

In a 10-minute interview accompanying this piece, Bronner also made a statement that lacks sufficient nuance:

For the vast majority of Israeli Jews it [a multi-ethnic state of "all its citizens"] is a non-starter and a very threatening thought because they’re here to be part of the Jewish state. They say: “Look, there are twenty-some Arab states and with any luck there will be a Palestinian state. And if you need to be in an Arab state to express your Arab national identity choose another one, not this one.

Here Bronner has done a good job of channeling a certain Israeli nationalist perspective on the necessity of retaining Jewish dominance within the State of Israel. But what he hasn’t done is allow for the transformation of such attitudes over time. Look at the racial attitudes of white America toward African-Americans before 1954. There was an equivalent deep divide in society. But over time and thanks to the leadership of African-Americans like Martin Luther King and politicians like Lyndon Johnson, many of the barriers have fallen. Admittedly, Israeli relations between Jews and Arabs have potentially even more complexity than those between whites and blacks. But the key consideration is that racial hostility gradually diminished. Integration gradually decreased. With good will, leadership and compromise, this can happen in Israel too.

Can anyone now imagine an Arab running for president or prime minister of Israel? Perhaps not. But it will happen as surely as Barack Obama is now running for president. Time heals wounds as long as people really attempt to grapple with the issues that divide them. In my heart of hearts, I believe that they, and Israel, will find a way to realize the deepest aspirations of Arab and Jew within Israel.

It will not happen overnight. It will not happen easily. But for Israel to realize the full meaning of its democratic nature and its Declaration of Independence, developments must gradually move toward Israel becoming a state of all its citizens. Otherwise, Israel will be an ethnocracy with truncated rights for its Arab minority. This redefined Israeli state does not mean that the country will become Arab or that Jews or Judaism will no longer be fundamental to the identity of this state. There must be a way to also acknowledge that Arabs deserve parity in this process. That means that Judaism will no longer dominate; will no longer be considered superior. But the difference between being respected and being dominant is significant. Perhaps most Israeli Jews now do not accept the possibility that this will happen. But over time, I am convinced they will.

tags After 60 Years Arabs in Israel Are Outsiders, ethan bronner, ethnocracy, israeli-democracy, james bennet

Hat tip to Ali Eteraz for this story…I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I read this. The first Israeli-Arab woman joined the Israeli Air Force. That’s good, right? Right. Except that she got in through an error.

It seems that Israeli Arabs are not allowed to serve in the air force because of the service’s elite status and because of the fear of their dual loyalty. So I’m guessing the woman didn’t reveal she was Muslim and no one asked. By the time the IAF found out it had a potential nightmare on its hands. Eject her from her unit and you have tons of bad PR, not only in the Israeli Arab community but throughout Israel and abroad. Retain her in the unit and you’ve created a potentially dangerous precedent in case another Israeli Arab seeks to serve. So they retained her.

To tell the truth, the story claims that her commander actually stood by her and enthusiastically endorsed her remaining in his IAF unit. So give credit to an individual officer and tons of demerits to an IAF which so mistrusts certain Israeli citizens that it refuses to allow them to serve in units in which any qualifying Jew can serve.

Contrast this Arab woman’s zeal to perform her duty as a citizen with an ever-expanding number of Israeli Jews seeking to avoid their compulsory army service; not to mention those Orthodox Jews studying in yeshivas who also avoid service.

Now for the crying I alluded to above:

Another Israeli-Arab’s dream of being a fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force, however, remains a pipe dream. “Soldier C” as he is officially known, and also from a village in the north of Israel, finished high school with top honors and received a certified pilot license before enlisting with the Israeli Defense Forces.

“My dream and ultimate ambition is to become a fighter pilot. I know I have the potential and ability to fulfill my dream and serve as a combat pilot with the IAF,” he wrote. “If deemed physically and mentally fit, I ask that I be able to serve in all of the elite units of the IDF, which are open to all other enlisted personnel.”

The aspiring pilot’s plea was unheeded by the Israeli Defense Forces, however, in spite of a letter of recommendation given to him by his flight instructor, a former major and combat pilot in the IAF, so he was forced to serve with another unit of the IDF where he currently remains.

It appears unlikely that the Israeli military’s ruling against Muslim and Arab Israelis will change anytime soon, especially in light of the deteriorating political situation.

The next time AIPAC (”Israel–the only democracy in the Middle East”) or any other Israel-booster tries to tell you how things are in Glockamora for Israel’s Arabs remember this story and ask them to explain it. Here you have a nation claiming it is a democracy; but which cannot manage to treat 20% of its citizens with anything remotely close to equality or full democratic rights. It won’t even allow them to fully discharge their obligations as citizens: to serve in the army unit of their choice (depending on satisfying qualifications).  Such treatment is not just and it makes a travesty of the Israeli Declaration of Independence which boasts that it will accord fully citizenship rights to all ethnic groups within Israel.

This is what is known as an ethnocracy, not a democracy. Ethnocracies are nations which provide vestiges of rights to minority groups within their midst; but full citizenship is only available to the ethnic majority.

tags dual loyalty, ethnocracy, first israeli arab woman in iaf

The reactions from Israeli journalists and politicians to Azmi Bishara’s Knesset resignation provides a sort of Rorschach test for Israeli attitudes toward democracy. The first lesson you must learn about the attitudes of the majority of the 75-80% of Israelis who are Jews is that both the State and its democracy exists primarily for them and only secondarily for anyone else (that is, the Arab minority which comprises 20-25% of the population). And since the State has accorded citizenship to its Arab minority while according them second (or third) class status, one cannot really call Israel a democracy. Israeli political scientists like Yoav Peled have adopted the term ethnocracy to describe Israel’s peculiar political system. That is, a system that awards superior rights to a majority ethnic group while according vastly diminished status to the ethnic minority.

For most Israeli Jews, Arabs are a royal pain in the ass. The center of the political spectrum tolerates them while the right longs for the day when they can be transferred out of Israel. Most Israelis would vastly prefer a homogeneous state composed only of Jews. A former progressive like Benny Morris is characteristic of this attitude in wishing that Ben Gurion had actually forcibly expelled a much larger proportion of Israel’s 1948 population than he did. Even some on the left adopt a profound mistrust of the Arab minority.

What all of the above neglect to understand is that an Israel shorn of its minority would no longer be a democracy since it would’ve forcibly extirpated a part of its polity. And a State which doesn’t expel this minority but continues to refuse to accord it full equality still cannot call itself a true democracy. A fragmented or not-quite democracy perhaps but not a democracy full stop.

Let’s take a look at a JTA article about Bishara’s resignation and an interview with Yossi Alpher, viewed by some as a center-left analyst of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The latter is published at no less progressive a source than the Americans for Peace Now website:

Israeli tolerance for Bishara’s views has been remarkable.

This is quite a remarkable statement considering that the Knesset has twice stripped Bishara of his parliamentary immunity in order to compel him to face criminal investigations, NONE of which resulted in a court case being filed. Remarkable too in light of the fact that the government attempted to prevent his party from running in one election for its refusal to accept the primacy of the Jewish state.

Two elections ago, the High Court of Justice reversed Electoral Commission determinations that Balad’s political platform violated the constitutional demand that all parties recognize Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, thereby allowing him to run. His frequent visits to Syria and Lebanon, including during war-time–where he met publicly with Bashar Asad and Hassan Nasrallah, praised their policies and condemned those of Israel–were also tolerated by the security community, to the extent that some Israeli Arabs concluded that Bishara must be a collaborator.

Notice that a supposedly progressive analyst has the temerity to slip in this imputed charge of “collaboration” without any proof whatsoever of the charges. And to say that Bishara was “tolerated” by a security establishment which has investigated him multiple times seems far-fetched to say the least.

In fact, all this took place in the name of Israeli pluralism and based on the assumption that it was better to have internal critics of Israel’s existence, however extreme, out in the open than to drive them underground. But there can be no mistake that Bishara has become clearly identified by the Jewish public as an enemy of the state. His association with the most reactionary and oppressive of Arab leaders in Syria and Lebanon and his readiness to level outlandish accusations against Israel–e.g., “in the entire history of mankind there have never been acts of plunder like those carried out by Israel”–clearly belie his rhetoric about democracy and equal rights.

Here Alpher has run off the rails. Bishara has identified himself with the two closest Arab neighbors to Israel’s northern Arab communities: Syria and Lebanon. But who is to say that Hezbollah and Syrian leaders are “the most reactionary and oppressive Arab leaders?” Worse than the Saudi dynasty or Egypt’s Mubarak or Iran’s mullahs or Iraq’s Hussein? This is an entirely specious argument. Bishara’s alliance with Hezbollah and Syrian is mostly geographic. And who would Alpher have him make an alliance with who would have him? Doubtless, Jordan’s King Abdullah would not be interested since he values good relations with Israel and wants to wash his hands of continuing intra-Arab strife. So who’s left for Bishara to turn to for support outside Israel?

One useful aspect of Alpher’s interview is that he further confirms information I published here from the Palestinian news agency Maan about the specific nature of the charges against Bishara:

A former associate at Bir Zeit University in Ramallah, where he taught for several years before going into politics, told me that Bishara had received large sums of money from Syria and Hezbollah for use by his political party and had apparently kept them for himself: this could explain both the criminal and the security components in suspicions against him.

But I would strongly caution that this is terribly vaguely and inauthoritatively sourced. And even if it is true that Bishara accepted funds from Syria, it is quite another thing to prove in a court of law that he acted corruptly in retaining funds for personal use. That’s the Shin Bet’s job and they’ve by no means proven their case. In fact, in keeping it secret they’ve done precisely the opposite: allowed people to believe that the secrecy conceals a weak case.

Bishara’s legacy in Israeli politics is a negative one: greater polarization between Arabs and Jews and closer ideological proximity between Israel’s Arab community and the most extreme elements in the Palestinian national movement.

Now, that would depend entirely on whose viewpoint you represented. Do you think that Israel’s Arab minority agrees? It is preposterous to blame Azmi Bishara for the polarization between Arabs and Jews in Israeli society. What about the 2000 massacre of defenseless protesting Nazareth Arabs by Israeli Border Police who were never even charged for their criminal behavior? Alpher doesn’t even come close to acknowledging that the radicalization represented by Bishara might stem just as much from Israeli intransigence in the face of Israeli Arab demands for their rights and Palestinian demands for theirs. Yossi Alpher may not be a flaming leftist but he’s no fool as an analyst of Mideast politics. That’s why the blinders he wears in this exchange are very instructive regarding the utter lack of awareness even intelligent Israeli Jews have of the democratic contradictions represented by the Arab minority in their midst.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency has a mixed record of Jewish journalism. On domestic issues it publishes solid, reliable reporting. But when it comes to Israel, often it might as well have come from the AIPAC press office. That’s a wee exaggeration perhaps for effect, but not much. Let’s take Dan Baron’s article on Bishara. I tried earnestly to get JTA to write a story about Bishara’s secret Shin Bet investigation speaking with their DC correspondent for some time. Unfortunately, Baron’s article is JTA’s feeble coverage of the story. I’d call the following journalism by sloganeering:

Israeli Arab lawmaker Azmi Bishara has abruptly ended a parliamentary career built on denouncing the Jewish state from enemy capitals and then dodging charges of sedition at home.

That is the extent of Bishara’s career? Not the penetrating slogan: “A state for all its citizens,” which has resonated far beyond the Israeli Arab minority as a reasonable democratic demand.

For many mainstream Israelis, it was goodbye and good riddance.

You’ll notice the lazy man’s ‘many’ used by many to propound a questionable argument. Who are the “many?” What would’ve been far more accurate would be to say that “goodbye and good riddance” was the response of Israel’s far right politicians, one of whom even called for the Shin Bet to kidnap Bishara and return him to Israel for trial on charges of treason! How’s that for democracy??

Bishara stood out for his especially provocative antics.

To how many Jewish politicians would Baron attribute the dismissive label “antics?” And I’d like to remind you that southern Whites labeled Martin Luther King’s Montgomery bus boycott or Malcolm X’s speechifying in precisely the same terms. You dismiss what you fear and do not understand. But you do so at your peril because dismissing it will not make the issue or person go away.

Bishara overcame repeated attempts to have him tried for fraternizing with Israel’s enemies, invoking his parliamentary immunity from prosecution.

This is misleading if not downright inaccurate. Bishara’s immunity was stripped twice by the Knesset thus enabling the legal system to charge and try him. But it never did. Why not? Because they could not build a case. Why blame Bishara for shielding himself from prosecution when the state and its organs have done everything in their power to dismantle his political power?

Some moderate Israeli Arabs also sought to distance themselves from Bishara, so astounded by his temerity as to suggest it was all an elaborate cover for a role as an Israeli spy or covert diplomat.

Isn’t it interesting that we see the “Israeli spy” charge once again. But who gains from circulating such an unfounded charge? The Israeli right and Shin Bet of course. So we have to ask whose bidding are Alpher and Baron doing even if unintentionally? The forces who seek to diminish Bishara and Israeli Arab nationalism. I believe it is shameful journalism to disseminate a charge without having any credible source to back it up.

Baron leaves the most interesting and useful portion of his article for the very end of course. You wouldn’t want to include material favorable to Bishara in any other portion of the article now, would you?

Yaron London, saw in Bishara a sort of latter-day version of the Diaspora’s old political mavericks — the revolutionaries and utopianists.

“I once said to Azmi Bishara that he is more Jewish than I,” London said. “The heart of a Jew, even one who lives among Jews in their state, is the heart of a minority figure, but a Christian Arab who is a citizen of the Jewish state is an island within an island, a minority within a minority.”

“Bishara, a brilliant and arrogant intellectual, bossy and stormy, charming and easily offended, has no time to waste. He realized that the Jews would not accept his vision unless they were greatly weakened — and therefore they must be weakened.”

This is one of the truest and most incisive characterizations I have read in all my research on Bishara over the past two weeks. It is a statement that should be taken to heart by Israelis especially Bishara’s enemies in the Shin Bet and government. Think of all the political insurgents who were hated in their day only to return to glory leading their country or at the least playing a significant role in its political future.

I do not make a judgment on Bishara’s political views one way or the other except to say that they must be grappled with. And to those who falsely believe they have seen the end of Azmi Bishara, I say to you: “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” Think of DeGaulle in exile, Washington sulking in the snow at Valley Forge, Martin Luther King in the Birmingham jail, Mandela on Robben Island. The list goes on. Their causes eventually triumphed.

Finally, let’s explore the responses of the Israeli right to Bishara’s resignation. Predictably, they are overjoyed. I wrote that Yuval Steinitz wants the Shin Bet to forcibly return Bishara to Israel to face proper justice. What we should learn from all these responses is that the right cares not a whit for democracy. All that matters for them is that Israel is a Jewish State. Israel could be a Jewish version of Putin’s Russia, the People’s Republic of China or Mugabe’s Zimbabwe for all they care. When they talk of rights they are talking of Jewish rights. No other rights matter. Is this the model of a Jewish state which we wish to embrace? Many would say no. But if you take the logic of the Baron’s and Alpher’s to their end point they take you perilously close to the Israeli right. For our two journalists, the only acceptable Israeli minority is one that is quiescent, that accepts its subordinate role, that doesn’t grasp too insistently or aggressively for its rights. But is this a reasonable expectation? No, of course not. And once we accept that Israeli Arabs will no longer be quiescent isn’t the logical end point a Lieberman-Kahane like forced transfer, thus ridding Israel of its “fifth column” and creating a homogeneous Jewish state?

I hope and believe this will not happen. But the only thing to prevent it will be for well-meaning Israelis to realize that the Israeli Arab minority and its rights cannot be dismissed or swept under the rug.

tags azmi-bishara, dan-baron-ynetnews, ethnocracy, israeli-arab-nationalism, peace-now, yossi-alpher