"Many post-Zionists advocate the evolution of Israel from a theological state in to a non-ideological, secular, liberal and democratic state. They also say that "with the proclamation of Israel, Zionism has attained its goal. Now a new epoch begins, which consists of the normalization of the internal and external mechanism of the Zionist structure."
Jason P.
For all its citizens
By: Mahmoud Labadi
Since its creation Israel was haunted by the specter of its original
sin perpetrated against the Palestinian victim. Yet Israel refuses to
confess its sin by ignoring the tragic developments of its creation
and continues to nurture its traditional narrative on the (Nakba), the
events of 1948 and the saga of the heroic Jewish national liberation
movement which triumphed against the British mandate and Palestinian
terrorism. Obsessed by the logic of power and superiority it closed
its heart and mind as well as it closed its doors in the face of its
Arab and Palestinian neighborhood behaving like a besieged castle.
Israel went on with its castle mentality and found its salvation by
launching additional wars and occupying more Arab land to use it as
barter, in the hope to compel Arabs to bargain on new occupations and
forget previous ones.
On the internal front and in relation to the Arab remaining minority
inside Israel it practiced a policy of racial and cultural
discrimination. Arabs in Israel were treated as second or third class
citizens. All kind of repressive measures were practiced against them
in order to force them to emigrate and leave the floor to Jewish
immigrants. In spite of their loyalty to the Jewish national state the
oppressed Arab minority never felt as full citizens of Israel. For
the last 60 years the policy of discrimination went on regardless of
minor improvements in their daily life on different levels.
The official Israeli narrative recounts that Israel is a state for the
Jewish people and has to preserve its Jewish character and maintain
its Jewish majority. An Arab minority has to be kept in a limited
size and the demographic balance between Jews and non-Jews should not
shift to the benefit of the Arab minorities. There fore Israel has to
encourage Jewish immigration from Diaspora countries in order to keep
that balance unchanged.
After the first Gulf war and the resulting Madrid Conference in 1991,
Israel was tacitly recognized by all Arab States. Secret negotiation
took place between Israel and the PLO led to the Oslo agreements of
1993. A new dawn of peace started to show up and Israel started to
reconsider its former policies and the castle mentality started to
crack. However, painstaking questions were raised by the Arab minority
about their status and their rights. A country claiming to be the
only democracy in the Middle East cannot go on propagating a
democratic discourse while one fifth of its citizens suffer from
discrimination and oppression.
Besides, some open minded Jewish academics started to raise questions
about the Israeli treatment of the remaining Arab minority in Israel.
A new Israeli tendency started to talk about an opening towards the
Arab and Palestinian surrounding. Neo-Zionist enlightened thinkers and
academics advocated the notion that Israel belongs to all its citizens
and should enjoy equal rights, whether Jews or non-Jews. A major
argument used by Dr. Azmi Beshara, a Knesset member and an Arab
leading political figure in Israel. The U.S. model which unites all
kinds of races, cultures and religions living together in social
harmony provides an excellent example for Israel.
However, self-identified post-Zionists differ on many important
details, such as the status of the "law of return" and other sensitive
issues. Modern post-Zionism is closely associated with the new
historians, such as Ilan Pappee, represent a school of historical
revisionism which examines the history of Israel and Zionism in light
of classified government documents with an eye to uncovering events,
hitherto down played or suppressed by traditional Zionist historians-
especially those pertaining to the dispossession of the Palestinians,
which the new historians argue was central to the creation of the
state of Israel. Many post-Zionists advocate the evolution of Israel
from a theological state in to a non-ideological, secular, liberal and
democratic state. They also say that "with the proclamation of Israel,
Zionism has attained its goal. Now a new epoch begins, which consists
of the normalization of the internal and external mechanism of the
Zionist structure."
According to the norm established by post-Zionists, "Zionism as a
national movement is essentially obsolete, incapable of responding to
the challenges of the present time. It obsesses itself with a problem
which has long ceased to exist, or which has undergone a metamorphosis
which demands solutions very different of those of yesterday."
"Since its inception, Zionism was an intrinsically colonialist
movement, which never really offered a solution to the problem it
ostensibly wished to solve. However, it is responsible for the series
of gross injustices perpetrated on the Palestinian people, and, hence,
has also defamed the Jews," according to post-Zionists. There fore,
"it is high time then for a different route to be taken, in the hope
of overcoming past wrongs and marching to the beat of the prevailing
individualistic and supra-national tendencies of post-modernism."
Nevertheless, post-Zionism, in its initial phases, strives for the
logical extension of Zionist objectives, not their negation. The
contemporary brand of post-Zionism, however, emerges as a harsh critic
of the very nature of the Zionist movement.
The tendency of opening found a door to the Israeli ministry of
education during the mandate of Yossi Sarid as Minister of Education
in the Barak government. Sarid started by admitting some changes and
amendments in the Israeli curriculum, thus paving the ground for
mutual understanding and social peace between the Jewish majority and
the Arab minority. A new program was introduced calling for
understanding the tragic dimension of the Palestine question and the
reconciliation with it. It intended to teach the new Israeli
generations a new enlightened formula of the history of the state of
Israel far away from propaganda, incitement and stereotyping. This
aroused the anger of the castle mentality proponents represented by
the Likud and other religious extremist parties. Consequently, with
the advent of Sharon in 2001 and the elevation of Limor Livnat to the
post of Education minister the whole process was stopped. Walking on
the footsteps of Jabotinski, Livnat advocated in an article in the
Jerusalem Post on January 26, 2001 the idea of the "iron wall" as a
negation to the Oslo ideology of opening towards the Arabs and
Palestinians.
The not honoring of the Oslo agreements unleashed the Intifada and
raised again the painful question of reconciling Israel with its Arab
and Palestinian neighborhood. However, if Israel has to take such a
wise step, it has to start by confessing its original sin, and
rectifying its error by shouldering its moral and historical
responsibility towards the tormented Palestinian victim. Only through
reconciliatory steps from both sides the long awaited historical
reconciliation between Israel and its next door Palestinian neighbors
and Arabs can take place.
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* Mahmoud Labadi served as the spokesperson of the PLO until 1983. He
was the director general of the Palestinian Legislative Council until
his retirement in 2005.