Peoples Geography — Reclaiming space

Creating people's geographies

Talking to the neighbours: It’s time Israel embraced the Mideast

Pretty sensible and innovative to me – I think this Israeli is a visionary of sorts. Having Arabic on the Israeli school curriculum and valuing Arab culture would do wonders … I bet it would go over like a ton of bricks in some of the more racist quarters of Israeli society, but all this is just common sensical, shrewd, forward looking and smart policy. This piece also reminds me of Tony Judt’s excellent articles, well worth a read. One interesting fact that I gleaned from this article is that the Talmud was written in what is now Iraq. Highly recommended.

***

by Avi Azrieli | International Herald Tribune | August 29, 2006

PARADISE VALLEY, Arizona Israel’s recent hopes for peace, fueled by the disengagement from Gaza and elections won on plans to cede the West Bank, have given way to another war and to grim talk of eternal fighting. Israelis now speak of the Arabs’ hate as a chronic disease that Israel is destined to live – or die – with. To revive its hopes, Israel must dare to consider a change of paradigm: transform itself into a Middle Eastern country.

While Israel has flourished economically and technologically by modelling itself on the Western European culture of its early Ashkenazi pioneers, the cultural alienation from its neighbours has intensified Israel’s pariah status in the region. Even the peace with Egypt and Jordan remains cold, while hate toward Israel in the Arab street heats up to new records.

Israel’s current predicament is particularly unfortunate: Just as it had once been America’s Middle Eastern front against the Soviet Union, it has now become a focal point in the conflict with Iran.

A change of paradigm for the intensely besieged Israeli society would not be easy, and embracing the culture of the enemy could be confusing, if not outright repulsive. Yet it is necessary and possible. Israelis must accept that the people surrounding them are not only their current enemies, but also long-term cohabitants of the same troubled part of the world.

The immediate effort should centre on language. Few Israelis speak Arabic, even though it is one of Israel’s two official languages, alongside Hebrew. The government should fund a campaign to teach Arabic to every Israeli.

Fluency in Arabic should be a condition for a high-school diploma, for a government job and for a professional license of any kind. National television and radio stations should offer parallel Arabic programming. All government and business documents should be written in both Hebrew and Arabic, all laws adopted in both languages, and agencies should be ready to serve the public in Hebrew and Arabic.

Complementing its embrace of Arabic, Israel should absorb Arab culture. Israel’s decidedly Westernized self-identity has implied a rejection of everything that is Arab. Israelis need to engage in a dialogue with the Arab people in order to understand their aspirations and frustrations.

This should begin by following the Jewish edict that “charity begins at home.” Currently, more than 20 percent of Israeli citizens are Arabs, including Muslims, Christians and Druze, many of whom complain of being treated as second-rate citizens. Israel should secure positions for Arabs in the executive, legislative and judicial branches of its government. Public services and facilities in the Arab sector should be brought up to par with the rest of Israel.

Is there a contradiction between Arabism and Zionism? The answer is no. In his seminal work “Old New Land,” Theodor Herzl, modern Zionism’s founder, envisioned a national homeland that would accept every Jew, not an exclusive state that would reject all others.

The driving force behind the early pioneers’ energy was not messianic fantasies of biblical fulfillment, but socialist pragmatism. They sought to create a safe haven from murderous anti-Semitism and to substitute diaspora life with self- ruling Jewish society founded on democracy and equality. (Ironically, both goals failed: Israel is the most dangerous place for Jews in the world today, and its democratic aspirations are suspended by its 30-year military occupation of a large Arab population in the Palestinian territories.)

Nothing in modern Zionism contradicts an acceptance of Arab culture. Some Jews have always sought to understand their neighbours better. My great-grandfather and namesake, the rabbi of a farming community on Mount Carmel a century ago, learned Arabic in order to converse with his neighbours. (Unfortunately, he and his family were massacred while visiting relatives in Hebron during the 1929 Arab riots.)

Would the Arab world accept such a Jewish state into its fold? Islamic extremists aside, Arab society traditionally embraced religious and ethnic pluralism. There are millions of Arabs who are not Muslims, and millions of Muslims who aren’t Arabs.

Many religions and ethnic groups have prospered as part of the Arab world, such as the Druze, Kurds, Bahai, Copts, Christians and Jews. Islam itself is permeated with different varieties, most prominently Shiite and Sunni.

Power-sharing between various groups is common in the Arab world because of its diversity of faiths and ethnicities. Jews, in particular, were once prominent in politics, law, medicine and trade throughout the Arab world. Jewish scholars produced prolific works in Arab lands, some forming the mainstream of Judaism, including Maimonides, Nachmanides, Yosef Karo (author of Shulhan Aruch, the definitive code of Jewish law), and the great Jewish poet Ibn Ezra. The Talmud itself was written in what is now Iraq.

Only with the rise of modern Zionism, perceived by the Arabs as a form of European colonialism, were Jews forced to flee Arab countries to Israel, where their culture and language were dismissed as primitive by the Ashkenazi establishment. In hindsight, this original sin has contributed to Israel’s sore-thumb status in the region.

Those who would ridicule the idea of a whole nation learning to speak Arabic should remember that a little over 100 years ago, Hebrew was solely a liturgical language. The challenge of turning it into a spoken language was much greater than learning Arabic, an established, rich language spoken by Israel’s own minorities and by all its neighbours.

By making Arabic a true national language beside Hebrew, Israel would send a clear message to its neighbours: We respect you and we are here to stay.

The process of shifting from survival by intimidation and isolation to accommodation and dialogue would demonstrate Israel’s respect for the Arabs and its desire to belong in the region. Coupled with the eventual settlement of territorial disputes, such a cultural shift would deflate much of the hostility against Israel and marginalize the voices of radical imams.

It would be naïve to contend that Israel could douse overnight the fire raging around it. To paraphrase President Theodore Roosevelt, Israel must “speak Arabic and carry a big stick.”

Yet an Israel that accepts its identity as a Middle Eastern country would be harder to demonize. Its efforts would foster a perception of indigenousness and spread seeds of personal bonds that would trickle up to the political and ideological spheres, ultimately reversing the tide of destructive enmity.

With time, the Arabs would discover that the combative Israelis are even more passionate as friends, and thus more valuable as allies than as enemies.

While Israel might still have to live by its sword for a long time, by integrating into the Arab world, a smaller Israel would become an indispensable bridge to the West, a Singapore for the Middle East.

Avi Azrieli is a veteran Israel Defense Force officer and the author of “One Step Ahead: A Mother of Seven Escaping Hitler’s Claws.”

See letters in response to this article – after the usual point-scoring negative nay-sayers decrying human rights abuses as if they were the exclusive preserve of the countries there but not Israel, there are positive letters that show the message wasn’t missed.

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-- Aldous Huxley

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