Unknowing what is known
Miriam Reik* and Fouzi Slisli* plug into the Cook/HaCohen debate
Ran HaCohen and Jonathan Cook, in a recent exchange in the pages of Al-Ahram Weekly, explored a largely neglected aspect of Middle Eastern politics, namely the reasons why Israeli society has shown little opposition to the gross repression of the Palestinians by their army in the last three years.
HaCohen and Cook provide insightful and interesting perspectives on this problem. However, as studies of German society during WWII or of Afrikaner society under Apartheid show, the issue of society's response to the oppression of another people by one's government is complex and multifaceted. In addition, the accusation of anti- Semitism has made commentators cautious about looking at the Israeli occupation from the perspective of the moral complicity of Israeli society at large. For these reasons, and others, we think the discussion that HaCohen and Cook started deserves further exploration.
HaCohen and Cook agree that the state of Israel's gross human rights record, apartheid policies and well documented war crimes pose a critical moral issue to which the Israeli public has not responded adequately. The reason, according to HaCohen, is that the Israeli military establishment, especially its top brass, has kept the public ignorant. Cook, however, asserts that the Israeli public is fully aware of what is being done in its name, but their "Zionist training" prevents them from grasping its significance. Subsequently, HaCohen agreed, noting that withholding of information by the military government and Zionist training are but two sides of the same coin; internal "repression" by the individual and external withholding of information by the government.
Thus, in the context of less than full information, Israelis have a kind of unknowing knowing -- a situation in which people push to the margins of their consciousness information they would rather not acknowledge.
Of course, no explanation of Israeli response to the oppression of the Palestinians will apply uniformly across the whole society. The ignorance argument, as advanced by HaCohen, for instance, is more cogent for Israelis living in Tel Aviv, where the conflict can seem very distant and where the Israeli and Palestinian populations are segregated, than for much of the rest of the country. In Jerusalem, for instance, it is impossible not to confront some aspect of the massive repression of Palestinians, whether in discussions of the Intifada's impact on the economy, or for Israelis who live near the West Bank and Gaza, by actually viewing Israeli helicopters firing missiles into apartment buildings or lines of Palestinians queuing at checkpoints, as they drive to work every morning. Indeed, contrary to HaCohen's argument, information seeps in: genocidal ideas of population transfer are openly discussed on Israeli TV, in newspapers, on the floor of the Knesset, and are scrawled in graffiti on walls, for instance. Moreover, news via the Internet is widely available, and readily reveals the moral loathing with which Israel's behaviour is regarded in much of Europe for those who read foreign material.
Cook is, therefore, right in discarding the ignorance argument, and pointing to what he called the "Zionist training" as the reason behind the Israelis' indifference to what's being done to the Palestinians in their name. He explains the massive lack of conscience throughout society by the cult-like indoctrination which every Israeli undergoes. This includes education in Zionist schools teaching Jewish exclusiveness, and near universal military training. Concepts imbibed there are frequently reiterated in cultural and media messages. So thoroughly are Israeli perceptions shaped by Zionist indoctrination that when they process information about war crimes by their army, it is stripped of its "significance". Cook does not elaborate on the elements of this Zionist training, perhaps because its fundamental racist nature has so much in common with many other bigotries. However, it also possesses some important distinctive characteristics that facilitate unknowing what is known.
Zionist training instills the certainty of Israeli intellectual and technological superiority over Arabs, whose culture and history are absent from Israeli education and nowhere valued, rendering them both abstract and inferior. Jewish accomplishments in science, in particular, are frequently mentioned in contrast to Arab lack of modernity. Israeli identification with Western culture also denigrates oriental ones (a prejudice which discriminates against Middle Eastern Jews as well), and in this regard, Israeli Western "democracy" is juxtaposed to Arab Eastern "despotism" and "backwardness". In this way, the indoctrinated Israeli public perceives Palestinians with the same condescension that kept white Afrikaners content with Apartheid, and white Americans indifferent to the plight of their black neighbours.
Moreover, people living in racist societies in which menial work and poverty, for instance, are predominant among the oppressed populations, be they Black or Arab, hardly question it. It is the norm, and as natural as the language they learn. There is no need to change things if "inferior" people are in their proper "place" -- it would also be counter to one's self-interest. Some racists may experience a pang of conscience and feel that it is a matter of regret that Palestinians or Blacks are disadvantaged, but the disadvantage is not perceived as something inflicted upon them, but rather as the result of their innate qualities (laziness, lack of intelligence, etc) or unwelcomed behaviour. Among these people, the issue of equal rights therefore doesn't arise. Their poverty or discrimination is not perceived as a condition requiring a moral response, but rather sympathy, as if an illness had befallen them.
Of course, rebellion by the population discriminated against is a threat, and evokes loathing, suspicion, and retaliation. In the case of the Palestinians, the ease and lack of shame with which they have been referred to by Israelis as "cockroaches", "insects", "beasts" and "viruses" is shocking, but without it, the ease with which they are subjected to the harshest punishment is otherwise incomprehensible.
Thus far, Zionist racism is much like other bigotries, often repeated in colonial history. But it also has special characteristics. An important ingredient of Israeli sense of supremacy is not only an intellectual and technological superiority, but also a moral one. Judaism's tradition of social justice as conveyed by the Old Testament prophets is often evoked to extol Jewish contributions to human rights, such as their activity in the civil rights movement in America. The history of Jewish persecution is also summoned up as witness that their suffering has instilled a special commitment to justice and peace. Israel's army is therefore a "defence force", ie not aggressive, and it is "the most moral army in the world". This harping on a sense of moral rectitude greatly supports the ability of Israelis to deny the brutality of their government: after all, people with such ethical precepts are not capable of wanton cruelty. Thus, Israeli army spokesmen repeatedly assert after especially nauseating attacks that the Palestinians "left us no choice" but to attack their civilian population, or that the slaughter of children, the elderly or the crippled were "accidents". It is not acceptable to military authorities to admit that the world's fourth largest army, bristling with the most advanced weaponry that it has launched upon a civilian population, constitutes aggression, which would be beneath it.
Staring at the rubble of Jenin, Israelis can still deny that it was a terrible assault, deriding the idea that their "defensive", "moral" army could perpetrate a "massacre".
The sacralisation of the Holocaust in Israeli culture may be its most singular characteristic. While the destruction of European Jewry was undeniably a central event in the history of the Jews, their insistence that they continue to be objects of anti- Semitism or injustice is unique among colonial peoples. No other colonial group has so fiercely proclaimed its own victimhood while so thoroughly dominating an entire region. No other colonial power has inflicted such terrible decades-long punishment on a largely unarmed population while continuously claiming "security" needs that, although patently false, are readily supported by its knowingly unknowing citizens -- citizens who would be repelled to see the same behaviour in another government.
Finally, since the threat of being labelled an anti-Semite hovers over every analysis of Israel's behaviour, critics feel compelled to couch their criticisms in deferential acknowledgements of Jewish suffering, thus giving a kind of blessing to Israel's false claims of victimhood and security needs. By so doing, commentators also assist Israelis in pushing the facts of the occupation to the margins of their consciousness and facilitate unknowing what is known.
We have left out of this discussion the margins of Israeli society -- the settler mentality which need not unknow the deeds it perpetuates because it entertains no guilt -- settlers are, in their consciences, only exercising rights granted directly from God -- and the refusniks. These latter show that not every conscience can be moulded by a combination of ignorance, propaganda, societal pressure and self-interest.
* Miriam Reik taught literature at several American Universities including Temple University and Wayne State University. She is a former congressional press secretary, and a former journalist. She currently lives in New York.
* Fouzi Slisli taught at Essex University (UK), and St Cloud State University (USA). He is former editor of the Arab-American literary journal, Mizna, and former board member of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, Minnesota, where he currently lives.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 25 Sept. - 1 Oct. 2003 (Issue No. 657)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/657/op32.htm