Palestine

Matters of Truth and Justice

Azmi Bishara

• Publisher: Hurst Publishers
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781787387102
• eBook ISBN: 9781787388468
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

In January 2020, US President Donald Trump announced his ‘deal of the century’. Supposedly intended to ‘resolve’ the Palestine-Israel conflict, it accepted Israeli occupation as a fait accompli. Azmi Bishara places this normalisation of occupation in its historical context, examining Palestine as an unresolved case of settler colonialism, now evolved into an apartheid regime.

Drawing on extensive research and rich theoretical analysis, Bishara examines the overlap between the long-discussed ‘Jewish Question’ and what he calls the ‘Arab Question’, complicating the issue of Palestinian nationhood. He addresses the Palestinian Liberation Movement’s failure to achieve self-determination, and the emergence of a ‘Palestinian Authority’ under occupation. He contends that no solution to problems of nationality or settler colonialism is possible without recognising the historic injustices inflicted on Palestinians since the Nakba.

This book compellingly argues that Palestine is not simply a dilemma awaiting creative policy solutions, but a problem requiring the application of justice. Attempts by regional governments to marginalise the Palestinian cause and normalise relations with Israel have emphasised this aspect of the struggle, and boosted Palestinian interactions with justice movements internationally. Bishara provides a sober perspective on the current political situation in Palestine, and a fresh outlook for its future.

PART ONE

REFLECTIONS ON A JUST CAUSE

1

ON NARRATIVES, MYTHS AND PROPAGANDA

This chapter is specifically intended for readers accustomed to the idea that the Palestine question is the problem of a people under occupation and dates from the Israeli seizure of control over the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. The problem is much older and deeper. In this chapter, I will demonstrate how the origins and the fuller dimensions of the Palestinian cause reside in the Nakba (calamity, catastrophe), an Arabic term, the term denoting the catastrophic consequences of the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. During the 1948 War, the majority of the Palestinians, who had until then accounted for the bulk of the population in historic Palestine, were systematically expelled from their homeland. The stark contrast between Israel’s independence and the Palestinian Nakba is not only the most appropriate entry point to the topic, but also an opportunity to examine some Zionist myths and the underlying ideological contradictions in dominant political culture in Israel. This chapter starts with the birth of Israel and ends with the birth of the PLO.

Independence

Israel’s founding is celebrated in accordance with the Hebrew calendar. This has created a symbolic disjuncture between two dates: the date of Israel’s “Independence Day,” which the state marks on 5 Iyar, in line with the Hebrew calendar, and the date of the Nakba, which Palestinians commemorate on the day the state of Israel was declared, albeit on 15 May, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. The resultant temporal gap—the two occasions are usually about a week apart—serves as an appropriate metaphor for the distance between two irreconcilable narratives concerning the same historical event, that of the coloniser and settler, and that of the colonised and the dispossessed refugee.

On “Independence Day,” the celebratory fervour in Israel far exceeds that of any other country marking its independence, let alone Arab states where such celebrations are comparatively feeble. In Israel, Independence Day constitutes the main holiday that includes some of the chief rites of the nationalist religion. No religious holiday surpasses it in terms of public participation except perhaps Yom Kippur, which is not festive, but rather a day of fasting, repentance and religious atonement.

Independence Day celebrations are not just official but also social and community events. Families attend local festivities with their children while patriotic songs and films dominate the airwaves. People visit military museums, and listen with rapt attention to accounts of different battles. State-run and commercial television stations air a panoply of documentaries, panel discussions, and personal interviews, reiterating various aspects of the Israeli narrative of the forceful occupation of Palestine and the Zionist project. Parents visit army units in military camps and organise picnics and day trips in the countryside (or what’s left of it) and to historic battle sites. All this feeds into the broader construction of an Israeli collective memory centred on the “War of Independence” of 1948.

It is no coincidence that the official Holocaust Memorial Day is also set according to the Hebrew calendar, on 27 Nisan, about a week before “Independence Day.” The intended message is clear: the latter is the answer to the former. But the Zionist project to move to Palestine to create a Jewish state was launched long before the Holocaust. In fact, decades after its inception, Zionism was still a marginal phenomenon among European Jews, the primary victims of the Holocaust, and almost non-existent among Mizrahi (Oriental) Jews. Most Jewish Holocaust survivors departed for the US and the majority of those who ended up in Palestine had no other choice, either because of closing immigration doors or due to lack of financial means.

In the late nineteenth century to early twentieth century, an increasingly steady flow of Jewish immigrants made their way from Europe to the US, with numbers peaking in 1905–6. Between 1907–9, Jewish immigration to Palestine increased, but absolute numbers remained very low in comparison. The total number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine from 1905 to 1914 represented only 0.95 to 4.27 per cent of the number of US-bound Jews (a few thousand to Palestine vs tens and hundreds of thousands to the US). Other places, such as Argentina, were also popular destinations for Jewish immigration. After the US recovered from its 1910 economic crisis, the number of immigrants to the US increased and immigration to Palestine and Argentina declined. Between 1911–14, the rate of immigration to both the US and Palestine increased, and continued to rise until World War I.¹

However, in 1921, the US took measures to limit immigration by imposing quotas based on country of birth.² The Immigration Act of 1924 further tightened and codified these limits.³ In mid-1924, following the establishment of the British Mandate in Palestine and after the US shut its doors, Jews started to immigrate in greater numbers to Palestine. But they also migrated from Palestine. Liebmann Hersch stated that “considering the whole period 1922–29, Jewish emigration carried off from Palestine 30 percent of the immigration. This is all the more striking since the Jews entered Palestine […] with the intention of staying, and since this enormous rate of return is found in Palestine just when immigration elsewhere was made excessively difficult for the Jews.”⁴

Table 1.1: Jewish Immigrants to the United States and Palestine (1899–1939)

Source:	Liebmann Hersch		Gur Alroey^5		The American Jewish Year Book
Year	Jewish Immigrants to the US^6	Jewish Immigrants to Palestine^7	Jewish Immigrants to the US	Jewish Immigrants to Palestine	Jewish Immigrants to the US^8	Jewish Immigrants to Palestine^9
1881–1898	–	–	–	–	^10533,478	–
1899	37,000	–	–	–	^11829,244	–
1900	61,000	–	–	–		–
1901	58,000	–	–	–		–
1902	58,000	–	–	–		–
1903	76,000	–	–	–		–
1904	106,000	–	–	–		–
1905	130,000	–	129,910	1,230		–
1906	154,000	–	153,748	3,450		–
1907	149,000	–	149,182	1,750		–
1908	103,000	–	103,378	2,097	656,397	–
1909	58,000	–	57,551	2,459		–
1910	84,000	–	84,260	1,979		–
1911	91,000	–	91,223	2,326		–
1912	81,000	–	80,595	2,430		–
1913	101,000	–	101,330	3,050		–
1914	138,000	–	138,051	2,182		–
1915	26,000	–	–	–	79,921	–
1916	15,000	–	–	–		–
1917	17,000	–	–	–		18,885^12
1918	4,000	–	–	–
1919	3,000	–	–	–
1920	14,000	–	–	–
1921	119,000	–	–	–	119,036
1922	54,000	7,844	–	–	53,524	7,844
1923	50,000	7,421	–	–	49,719	7,421
1924	50,000	12,856	–	–	49,989	12,856
1925	–	33,801	–	–	10,292	33,801
1926	–	13,080	–	–	10,267	13,081
1927	–	2,713	–	–	11,483	2,713
1928	–	2,178	–	–	11,639	2,178
1929	–	5,249	–	–	12,479	5,249
1930	–	–	–	–	11,526	4,944
1931	–	–	–	–	5,692	4,075
1932	–	–	–	–	2,755	9,553
1933	–	–	–	–	2,372	30,327
1934	–	–	–	–	4,134	42,359
1935	–	–	–	–	4,837	61,854
1936	–	–	–	–	6,252	29,727
1937	–	–	–	–	11,352	10,536
1938	–	–	–	–	19,736	12,868
1939	–	–	–	–	43,450	16,405

There is a noticeable correlation between the increase in Jewish immigration and waves of antisemitism in Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Europe. Even before the Holocaust, most Jews seeking refuge during waves of discrimination and persecution or economic hardships immigrated to the US, much like other Europeans at the time. Few Jews chose Palestine as a refuge. As for the relative handful of Zionists that did go to Palestine, they were still akin to a fringe cult. Unlike Jewish religious communities that settled in Palestine over the centuries in order to be in close proximity to the “graves of the ancestors,” the new Jewish colonists were motivated by a different zeal. They saw themselves as the vanguard of a national movement intended to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. The early Zionist discourse, in general, disparaged and derided the character and image of “diaspora Jews,” and scorned the Jews who chose not to join the settlers in Palestine. Diaspora Jews were expected to at least support the Yeshuv)¹³ and, later, the state of Israel and to lobby for it abroad.

The national “Independence Day” celebrations and other festive seasons were carefully designed, since 1951, to create rituals filled with symbols, codes and emotive memory triggers, the ultimate aim of which was to construct a nation. By nation, here, I mean not a nation state, but a nation for whom the state must be created; a nation whose diverse histories are re-imagined as an indivisible monolithic history, a single nationalised history that, “necessarily”, yes, even teleologically, leads to a Jewish state. This type of creation or foundational myths gives rise to a political culture centred around a proprietorial relationship between an ethnic group (or, in this case, ethno-religious group) and the state and that prioritises ethnic affiliation (or ethno-religious affiliation) as a criterion for the acquisition of rights. It is little wonder, in such cases, that the poorest and most underprivileged tend to stress their ethnic identity, which is identical with that of the state, as a means to demand equality.

Israel’s “Independence Day” is an ideal opportunity to reproduce many of the state’s founding myths and narratives, starting with the “War of Independence” as a war of the few against the many. Others are the “rebirth” of the Jewish state in Palestine, the narrative of the secular-nationalist construction of the “new Jew” who carries weapons and tills the earth in Eretz Israel, and the “Negation of Exile” (shlilat hahgula), the myth of the apolitical existence of diaspora Jews without a nation. This negation, which is essential to Zionism, is performed by turning the Jews into a “nation like all nations”¹⁴ by establishing a Jewish state¹⁵ and by repudiating the “weak” minority status and character of “diaspora Jews” who could not own and cultivate land or protect themselves. This is all to say that, not only were many Jews against Zionism (those willing to participate in European secular society as integrated citizens, and others wanting to preserve their perceived Jewish exilic uniqueness), but also that Zionism was against many Jews. Zionism openly despised the exilic existence, ways of life and general character of diaspora Jews.

Zionist ideology underwent some transformations since it first fused some indispensable religious myths (the eternally promised land and the promise of return) with a secular settler colonialist drive and a militaristic creed in order to found the Jewish nation and establish its link with Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel). Under the combined forces of nation-building nationalist propaganda, ongoing territorial and settler expansion and growing militarisation, the secular myths would grow sacred and the sacred (religion) would become more...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables, Figures and Maps
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part One Reflections on a Just Cause
• Part Two The Trump-Netanyahu Deal
• Appendix: Arab Public Opinion on the Palestinian Issue
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover