Sunday, January 8, 2012

United States: No TV for Palestinians

I've gotten used to the state of affairs of the Palestinian crisis: the world is waking up to the injustice of Israel's treatment of its Palestinian population while Israel continues to indulge in blissful apathy. So, I haven't posted much recently. But this news item got to me. The US is withholding $130m in USAid money from the Palestinian Authority as punishment for September's statehood bid.

The United States Declaration of Independence inspired me to move here and become an American citizen. The succinct phrases that speak with dignity of the right to self-determination are America's gift to the world. America, through its ideals, inspires people all over the world. Americans enshrine freedom and the quest for liberty as a core value.

Except when it comes to Palestinians. The Palestinians were told by Israel, backed by the United States, that they may not take their bid for international recognition to the United Nations. When the Palestinians did so anyway, Israel and the United States decided to punish the uppity natives.

So, Russia is worthy enough to get Sesame Street but Palestinian children will have to do without. Go figure. Shouldn't USAid be promoting democratic values around the world?

Perhaps it's the Palestinians recent, impressive accomplishments in building a democratic polity that convinced Congress that they did not need the education that American and Israeli children get.  Hamas and the PA are uniting; the Palestinian people have displayed remarkable commitment to non-violence in the face of unremitting violent occupation.

And the results are showing: the Palestinian cause is gaining momentum on American campuses. Yet  the US Congress plan is to browbeat the Palestinians back into passivity. Or perhaps the US Congress prefer it the old way of Palestinian disunity, violent opposition to the military occupation and no self-determination

The Origins of Zionists vs. Palestinian

At last week's rally, I had an interesting conversation with the Palestinian intellectual, Prof. Rashid Khalidi. He has a thesis about where Zionism went wrong.

Zionist immigration from Europe to the Land of Israel is understood as distinct waves of arrivals, or aliyot. The first aliya in the early 1880s was precipitated by the reactionary and punitive policies of Russian Tsar Alexander III. According to Khalidi, the Zionists of the first aliya wished to be integrated into the multi-cultural Ottoman Empire, of which Palestine was a part. Our Eastern European forbears were famously multi-lingual.  Living in the multi-ethnic Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires was good training for life within the Ottoman Empire.

Not so, the second  - and much larger - aliya that began in the wake of the pogroms of 1905-6. These young men and women built the institutions that culminated several decades later as the State of Israel. David Green (Ben-Gurion) was just one of the leaders who emerged from the second aliya.

This group sought to impose a separate national, Jewish identity on Palestine. According to Prof. Khalidi, this was the beginning of Jewish domination at the expense of the majority, native population of Palestinians.

The relationship between mono culture, nationalism and language is of interest here. The battle for the supremacy of Modern Hebrew began, in earnest, with the second aliya. Interestingly, while the first aliya, launched an early version of spoken Hebrew (with the iconic myth of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda as the father of Modern Hebrew), their version of Hebrew was superseded by that of the second aliya. Hebrew culture in Europe had continued to develop independently of Palestine. These second aliya Zionists brought with them their own Hebrew, which, due to their numbers, overtook that of the first aliya.

There is a debate among left of center Jews about where Zionism went wrong. Liberal Zionists usually point to 1967 and the Occupation of the West Bank. Progressives, such as Martin Buber and his followers today date the souring of the Zionist project to the 1940 and Ben Gurion's so-called "statist" agenda.

But there were others such Martin Buber's disciple and Zionist executive, Hans Kohn, who saw the writing on the wall in the 1920s. They were concerned that Zionism had no plans for engaging the indigenous Palestinians in a common vision for sharing Palestine. Kohn resigned his post at the Zionist Jewish Agency in Jerusalem and moved to the United States. He said: "my children will be American." Buber disagreed, and when he fled Germany in 1938, he moved to Jerusalem. Even though he campaigned against Ben Gurion in the late 1940s, Martin Buber chose to stay and live out his days in the State of Israel.

I expect Hans Kohn would agree with Rashid Khalidi's judgement of the second aliya.



Sunday, January 1, 2012

3rd Anniversary of War on Gaza

Yesterday, the last day of 2011, dozens of Palestinians along with Jews and other allies gathered in downtown Chicago to commemorate the 3rd anniversary of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza in December 2008. At the end of the rally, over 300 black balloons were released. Each balloon had a card attached with a name of a child who was killed by the Israeli army,


 

It was a significant moment to publicly acknowledge the killing of innocent children (and many adults). I have participated in many interfaith and cross-cultural events in Chicago. Coming together in solidarity with Palestinians to acknowledge the death of children on the other side of the world was a moving experience. As the balloons flew up into the air, up and beyond Chicago's indifferent skyline, I felt the presence of all those children, if only for a moment.