Confessions of a Jewish refugee
Nobody likes to talk about it.
In fact, there is nothing that enemies hate more, than to be told that they are alike.
But just this once …
“It was the experience of exile that forged the Jews and the Palestinians both”, writes Bradley Burston. “We are who we are, in no small part, because of the hardships, longings and insecurities conferred by displacement from home… For the Jews, the insecurity manifests itself as fear, fear of being annihilated, fear of being cast out by force. For the Palestinians, the insecurity finds expression in humiliation and profound loss of honour, that stretches over the decades that the State of Israel has existed… We are, all of us, Jew and Palestinian, victims of our refugee mentality, the one we cannot shake, that makes us into villain and victim both.”
(Source: Haaretz. Read full article here)
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10 Comments on “Confessions of a Jewish refugee”
After reading the whole article ,i really think we are far from alike,the jews were hated ,dispised refugees .Palestians of dispora are refugees but they wernt hated by all the nations throught out history. am a third generation refugee ,but i live decently and so did my father and his father to a point.
Jewish refugees ,all over the world were expelled and kicked out and misstreated by who ever lived close to them .From the early days ,in eygpt to russian revolution ,hitler era to nowaday eastern germany.
Yes maybe palestinian refugee struggle mentally that they dont have a country they can go back to,the fact their homes were destroyed and lands taken away,but still its all mentally ,nothing serious considering the jews refugee history,for example ,palestinian were welcomed into neigbouring arab countries ,jews were kicked out of every land they refugee to ,in europe they were laws prohibiting bussiens with jews,never with palestinians.
i am a palestinian refugee and am proud.
The final few paragraphs reflect greatly what I have been trying to say in other posts. Why not mutual respect and recognition as equals? Why not understand that both groups have claims to the land, and both need to share it as brothers? Thus, my statements before that the bloodshed on both sides and the disregard for innocent human life on both sides has to end. There is something good to be had there on that tiny piece of land.
Ziad…what a brave statement. I find your analysis intriguing and insightful. It was refreshing to see you looking at both sides of the issue (you, too, Haitham).
How thoughtful of you to agree that (paraphrasing here):
The Israelis will have their state when the world recognises their biblical authority in the region and Jerusalem as their capital.
The Palestinians will have their state when they stop being terrorists.
Until that happens, we’ll be refugees. (fade violins)
I like also how the author states that Israel generously gave 50 percent more control over Gaza than before. 50 percent of nothing is still nothing, and the Israelis were illegally occupying Gaza in the first place. Steal my home from me, then give it back as a gift. How generous.
This is another Israeli trying to appear “dove-ish” to the world, while proclaiming the rights of Israel supercede all.
Read the comments that follow the article for a broader definition of the feelings of the readers of Haaretz.
Allow me to be more specific. I’d like to address a general problem of language as it is used in the shaping of opinion.
On further examination, Burston appears to be trying to put both sides in equal light. But if you examine his language, it is clear that he is vague and general when it comes to Palestinian refugees, but more direct when it comes to Israeli refugees.
Burston states, “Palestinians the world over treasure the keys to former family homes in the Holy Land, many or most of which may no longer be standing. ” Then later, “The war in the territories continues to create Palestinian refugees as well, people, whose houses we demolished for various reasons and in various ways.” Yet, Burston does not go on to describe what “various reasons” or “various ways” actually mean. He fails to expound upon the means by which the Palestinians have become refugees.
In contrast, he defines the various ways in which the Jews became refugees, namely the expulsion from Egypt, the Holocaust, and the expulsions from Arab countries, adding that they are “ground down by the burden of being eternal refugees.” (I do not here deny the Jews their place of victim in their Holocaust, but do not support their ongoing victimisation of the Palestinians as the price of exchange.)
Burston cursorily places the start of the Palestinian refugee problem, only as a segue to highlight Jewish expulsions. “The wars in 1948 and 1967 sparked the Palestinian refugee problem, and also spurred the exile of masses of Jewish refugees from Muslim lands.”
“… sparked the Palestinian refugee problem” is much gentler language compare to “spurred the exile of masses of Jewish refugees from Muslim lands.” Any Palestinian who lived through the Nakba of 1948 or any subsequent expulsions, who have been disallowed by Israel to return to their family home, would resist being defined as a “problem”. This especially when the state of Israel is so often defined as the best solution to the problem of Jewish refugees.
(I might add also that refugee is stretched by the Israelis to mean any Jew that wants to live in Israel. Any Jew born and raised in, say, Los Angeles, can rise to Zion, and gain full rights of citizenship. Palestinians are not afforded this opportunity, even in the cases where they were born and raised in Palestine. And there are hundreds of thousands of such cases.)
The following excerpt sums up the inequality of standing that Burston really gives between the Palestinian and Jewish refugees:
“Then there is the refugee’s ultimate weapon, one that figures in the arsenals of both sides. It is the wily stubbornness that is the child of the union of memory and rage. In the Jewish refugee it is as old as Joseph in Egypt. It is called the trait of a stiff-necked people, a people who will even stand up and defy God if they so choose, and the trait has been ours since the Exodus.
In the Palestinians it is called sumud, or steadfastness. It is a trait that makes Palestinians defiant, rather than compliant, as we throw shell after shell at them.”
Establishing that the Jewish refugee is “as old as Joseph in Egypt”, and the Palestinian as simply steadfast and “defiant” establishes language for regarding whom is more the refugee, and therefore sets us up to feel more sorry for one victim than the other. He does it gently, so as to appear non-partisan, but be reminded that anything repeated enough times begins to sound like the truth unless it is questioned.
I want to appreciate Burston’s attempt to be inclusive, I really do, but his language bespeaks an exclusivity of victimhood that colors how so much of the world negotiates and understands the occupation. This brand of language has become a kind of soft-occupation, much like the globalisation of American branding. It infiltrates in small degrees, eventually creating indelible “facts” on the ground which serve to redefine social, cultural and political boundaries.
“Language is a virus”, said William S. Burroughs. I offer that we should challenge language in order to keep it from influencing our judgements.
Raymond,
You have provided an exceptionally incisive deconstruction
u cant compare jews and palestinians. one is a religion, one is a nationality. b4 israel existed, there were palestinian jews. however, the jews in israel today are not semitic- most of them aren’t anyway– they are european, and became jewish only b/c the king of the khazars chose judaism as a religion and converted all his people. so really, these jews are not refugees, many jews today have absolutely no ties to the land. to claim the land in the name of a bibilical cause sounds alot like the white man’s burden to me.
bingo umkahlil.
Haitham c’mon gimme a break … Its not about being “alike”… we all share some common genetic material. Its about rights, Haitham, or lack thereof. Its about the worth of human beings. The reality is, Jewish refugees have an exclusive right to go and settle in Israel, while Ziad, and my husband Yassine, and countless others can only watch from afar and listen to “give up your dreams”, “existential threat”, etc. etc. And Ziad maybe youre xperience was better, but Yassine’s sure wasnt’ “welcome” in ANY Arab state-he grew up in Lebanon’s camps and till this day hardly one Arab country will grant him a visa-and of course Israel will not allow him to come to Gaza to join me-so we can only meet in the good ‘ol U.S. of A.
Laila (and others),
Just to set things straight.
I’m not saying we are alike, it’s just a nice to read article (and none of the words in this post is mine, all quoted from the same source), and what I liked in it is the way this guy thinks, but I don’t necessary agree with it.
Hope this makes things clear!
And thank you for the note, Laila.
Probably most important, is that the man in the article is looking for common ground for Israelis and Palestinians to join on. And that is admirable. That kind of thinking at least has the promise of opening the dialogue that would begin the peace process.
Sure Haitham anytime, =)