16 - 22 May 2002
Issue No.586
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 16 - 22 May 2002 Issue No.586 |
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Reflections of the '48 Generation
Returning to a letter written during the 1948 War many years later, Tikva Honig-Parnass, a member of the '48 Generation and of the Palmach Brigades, meditates on what it reveals of the Zionist mindset of the time
The "'48 Generation," also known as the "Palmach Generation" or the "Sabra Generation" is the name given to the generation that followed the "founding fathers" of the Zionist project in Palestine. This generation includes those born in the country between the end of the First World War and through the 1930s, and those who were affiliated, both formally and informally, with the social frameworks of the Labour Zionist movement. It also includes immigrants who came to Israel either as children or as adolescents and were integrated into such frameworks, which included the kibbutzim and moshavim (work and agricultural collectives), the educational institutions, the Hebrew 'gymnasia' in the big cities, the Labour Zionist youth movements, and the Palmach Brigades that were established in the 1940s.
In 1983, one year before she died and as a way of putting things in order, my mother presented me with a large plastic bag in which she had placed the letters I had written to my family in Hadera since leaving home at age 16 to study at Beit Hakarem High School in Jerusalem. One of the first letters I pulled out of this bag had been written to my parents on 30 October, 1948, in the midst of the war, during which I served in the "Harel" Brigade of the Palmach. This letter is the main starting point for this article, but before describing its contents I would like to dwell on details in my own history that are typical of the "'48 Generation", such details providing the background to the emotional life and ethics reflected in the letter.
The day after the UN resolution declaring the partition of what was then the British Mandate of Palestine on 29 November, 1947, I terminated my studies at the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem, which I had begun only one month earlier when I came to Jerusalem after finishing my "year of work" at Kibbutz Hachotrim. Such work was a precondition for continuing to study after high school, according to a decision made by the Zionist "national institutions."
I, like many other students at the time, hastened to enlist in the Jerusalem Brigade of the "Hish" ("Field Units") associated with the Hagana, and two months later, I joined the Palmach, which was then generally accepted as the crowning achievement of the Jewish Zionist youth I identified with the Labour Zionist movement. This movement led the Palmach, and I admired the "Sabra" image that characterised the world-view and conduct of the Palmach's members.
Like many of my generation, I was captivated by the appearance of this "guerrilla army" that seemed to be fighting for its people's freedom. Such appearances helped to blur any suspicion that one might then have had that what was in fact being admired was simply "might is right". Militarism had already been implanted deeply within us, contributing to the myth of legitimate "self-defence."
According to this myth, cultivated by the Labour Zionist movement, the Palmach, a military strike force, had been established as a purely defensive force whose purpose was to defend the Jewish inhabitants of the land against their attackers. The position we then internalised said that we were witnessing not the development of a military force waiting for an opportune time to realise Zionist plans of conquest and the dispossession of the Arab inhabitants of Palestine, but rather a "revolutionary army" made up of the oppressed.
Such a view was a typical expression of the 1984-style double speak and Orwellian thinking that characterised particularly the socialists among us, of whom I was one. Indeed, in the two years that preceded the 1948 War, I thirstily drank in all the Marxist literature in Hebrew translation I could lay my hands on: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Rosa Luxembourg, and so on. Given this background, it is not surprising that I came to depend on the cynical and hypocritical "truths" expressed in the myth of "self- defence", as these have been termed even by the well-known Zionist historian, Anita Shapira. How could things be otherwise, given the evident contradiction that existed between the universalist values I was absorbing from the socialist materials that I was so eagerly reading and the particularistic values I was imbibing from Zionism and from the Labour Zionist movement?
photo: Mohamed Youssef
The beginning of an ongoing catastrophe. Former Israeli Prime Minister Menachim Begin (wearing glasses), then a Zionist militant, briefly in the hands of Palestinian captors (left); refugees in 1968, just arrived in east Jordan at the site of the destroyed Allenby Bridge, after fleeing from Israel's occupation of the West Bank
I was one of the "salt of the earth," a member of the praised "'48 Generation" that faithfully represented the mythological Sabra. This was the generation viewed admiringly by parents, teachers, leaders, and, until quite recently, by many of the best social scientists in Israel. This was the "jewel in the crown" of the whole Zionist enterprise. Indeed, the '48 Generation was thought of as being the most glorious product of Zionism and the outcome of the socio-cultural engineering, as it has been described by Professor Baruch Kimmerling, that created the effective instruments for realising Zionist aims. Our generation was to be the "'silver platter' on which the Zionist state was delivered to the Jewish nation."
This early conditioning stayed with me for many years. Long after I had learned to view Zionism as a colonialist enterprise that from the beginning had sought to build an exclusivist Jewish state in all of historic Palestine, using force to dispossess the Palestinian people, I was still captive to the myths cultivated by Israel's social and cultural elites. With sentiment and nostalgia, I would return in my imagination to the places where I spent my youth, "to the innocence of youth, and the beauty of fair hair and form," to the open, informal social norms that characterised youthful relationships, and, above all, to the brotherhood and comradeship in arms that was the emblem of my generation. In these things I was still tempted to see expressions of supreme values, not realising, or only later realising, that this warm humanism was limited to those who were "like us," and that it had nothing but contempt for those who were other.
Reading the letter I found in the bag that my mother gave me 19 years ago, then, was a turning-point for me, supplementing the ideological and political alienation from Zionism that I already felt. Reading it long after it had been written, my personal and moral self-image changed, and I viewed my generation differently, since the letter revealed only how the glorious "'48 Generation" had in fact been programmed to reject the concept of human rights and to accept subjection to "the collective aims" of Zionism.
The letter uncovered an advanced stage in my own dehumanisation process in my youth, as well as the spiritual and emotional crippling that my generation had undergone in order to conquer the land, expel its indigenous Palestinian residents, expropriate their lands and turn them into the property of the state. A military government was then imposed in Israel that lasted 17 years until 1966.
The letter had been written near to 'Artuf, Beit Gemal, Beit Nabala and Zacaria, whose inhabitants had been expelled and on whose lands cooperative farms for new Misrahim immigrants had been established. It was written over several days in the former 'Artuf gas station on office stationary. At the top of the paper was printed, in Arabic and English, "Ahmed N Sharabti, Manager, 'Artuf Petrol Station, PO Box 712, Jerusalem, Palestine."
Astonishingly, I do not refer to these words on the stationary on which I was writing in my letter, not even a word. As I tore page after page from the block of paper I had found on the gas station manager's table, I must have been confronted with the amber words printed at the top of each page. Indeed, I must have known that here was a man who had lived and worked here, but had been expelled or forced to flee by "all my glorious brothers" in the unit in which I served.
Yet, this complete ignorance of the humanity of the "enemy" that we then felt, this serenity even as we lacked all feeling, were characteristic of the remote stance, the apparent lack of affect, that the '48 Generation had towards the Palestinian Arabs. This stance was congruent with the perception of the latter as being an "environmental nuisance" that should be dealt with in a rational manner and without hatred, and, we should not hesitate to make use of the spoils left behind after this nuisance's removal. Had I not done this when I insouciantly appropriated even the poor man's stationary?
By then I was already taking part in the mental acrobatics involved in ignoring this "nuisance." Throughout my childhood years in Hadera I used to see Arab women from the surrounding villages sitting on the sidewalk in front of the open-air market in the centre of the town, the fruits and vegetables they were selling spread out around their feet. I became an "expert" in the art of passing them by, even stepping over their feet which stuck out into the road, without so much as glancing at them. I cannot recall a single time that I entered into a conversation with one of these women, nor can I remember a single time when they were mentioned in conversation with my friends.
I barely knew the names of the villages from which they came. Indeed, there was no hatred -- it was simply a case of the complete objectivisation of the "enemy," allowing us to maintain our false self-image of ethical superiority. And this contradiction between our self- image and the violent "might is right" ideology implanted within us found full flower in my letter as well.
Beginning with a description of "the holiness and quiet which rests on the surrounding mountains that our soldiers captured a few days ago," and after mentioning the villages that had been "emptied" of their inhabitants, I made a sort of complaint: "We don't know how to be conquerors. Maybe it's because of the centuries we spent in exile that we do not know how to be conquerors."
What could I have meant? What were we, the conquerors, supposed to do that we hadn't? I had handed down my judgement, but I had failed to explain it, since the universal values for which the Labour Zionist movement ostensibly stood had prevented me from continuing even my then modest attempts at thinking. I could not have openly argued for demolishing the Palestinian villages and expelling and killing the Arabs, since that would have involved an obvious contradiction. And yet, on the other hand, I could not completely ignore what lay beneath the complaint "we don't know how to be conquerors," being forced to deal with these words, even if indirectly.
At the time I did this by turning the discussion into an attack on Jewish Zionist "others," on non-Sabras who had dared to challenge "our" Zionist morality. There were two volunteers from abroad attached to the unit in which I was serving, and they were part of a large group of recently discharged Jewish-American soldiers who had served in the Second World War, later volunteering to help the Jewish community in its war in Palestine.
Of these people I wrote in my letter to my parents: "Among our patrol there are two Americans who only came to the country a month and a half ago. Nice fellows. But yesterday, when they saw all the Arabs, the women and children returning to their villages starving for bread, they became 'soft-hearted and had pity on them,' and in the evening they began to shout that if the Jewish state lacked the means to take responsibility for the economy in the territories it had occupied, it should never have gotten involved in a war. And that there was no reason just to kill Arabs without any justification."
"In short," I wrote, "this America, with its idealistic Zionists, gets on one's nerves sometimes. Their entire philanthropic approach towards life and the world is also expressed in their attitude to Zionism, and of course also in regard to this problem that I have mentioned."
When I had written these words, I must have taken a deep breath, being immediately overcome with anxiety for having broached this subject, since I was then someone who had learned very well not to ask questions. Thus, I hastened to return to everyday topics: how was my brother-in-law doing and where was he serving, news about the shirt I had bought on my last leave in Jerusalem, a request to my mother to send fresh sheets.
Yet, it seems that even this return to everyday, routine matters was not sufficient to restore the peace of mind that had been shattered by the two "American Zionists." For I felt compelled to return to the ranks as fast as possible, to strengthen my attachment to Zionist values, to reassert my solidarity with the group fighting for their implementation and to cling once again to the "myth of self-defence."
This is how I concluded my letter: "Our morale is high here. There is a group of people that were in Gush Etzion (south of Bethlehem) for a long time, and they returned from there after the area was captured by Jordanian troops with the famous convoy (which was attacked and rescued by the British). They are full of enthusiasm to redeem Gush Etzion once again. Similarly, the road to the Negev is open from here, and we hope that it will become more and more secure."
In writing this, I showed myself to be typical of the '48 Generation. Distancing myself emotionally from the plight of the Palestinian women and children who were "starving for bread", as I had myself written, I turned my strong feelings of disdain and rage precisely on those who had dared to express human emotions towards them, and who had refused to subordinate universal values to the aim of establishing a Jewish state.
Moreover, I had been quick to label these people as inferior, soft-hearted and even as lacking in "true" morality, for this is what had been implied in my referring to them as "idealists" and "philanthropists."
Of course, my criticism was not directed only against these two volunteers personally, but was also against all the "American Zionists," whose Zionism, in contrast to "ours," was "idealistic" -- ie, divorced from the reality that forced us to dispossess and to starve the Palestinians. These American Zionists were "philanthropists" in my eyes, in other words, they were the representatives of a Zionism of smug satiety prepared to throw the Arabs crumbs from someone else's table, and for all the wrong reasons (and I might then have said "at our expense" as well).
In the world of thought that characterised my generation, there was no place for criticism of Zionism and of its leadership. In the essays I used to write, hung in a prominent place on the wall in my elementary school in Hadera, I repeated the mantras that had been drummed into me. We never asked the obvious question: "But why should the Arabs attack us?" Indeed, we were well-trained not to think and not to challenge, learning instead to accept the assumption implied by this question -- that they did so simply because they were "evil by nature", too "backward and ignorant" to value the benefits of civilised life.
This was the only way in which the Israeli '48 Generation could be persuaded to "give their utmost" and sacrifice their lives in order to starve, expel, uproot and destroy the Arab population of Palestine and the Palestinian people.
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