The following is an email exchange between Eitan Bronstein, the executive director of the Israeli organization Zochrot, and a Jewish Israeli supporter of the organization. Zochrot’s mission is to make the history of the Nakba accessible to Israeli Jews. As part of this work they offer guided tours for Israelis of destroyed Palestinian villages. In addition they advocate for "equal rights for all the peoples of this land, including the right of Palestinians to return to their homes."
This exchange speaks volumes. As the Zochrot website states – "Acknowledging the past is the first step in taking responsibility for its consequences."
Sent: Sunday, December 6, 2009, 15:34
Subject: Shemesh, your family
Dear Nurit [names and other identifying information have been changed],
I’m writing you again regarding Avraham Shemesh. I’m not sure if you told he’s either your uncle or grand-uncle… Umar is preparing the tour to Al-Araqib, and met with Nouri and other elderly people from their village. They mentioned Avraham Shemesh as someone who tyrannized them. Umar told me that he dealt very severely with the residents of Al-Araqib. That is, he not only was involved in expelling them from their land, but abused them as well.
I imagine that it isn’t easy for you to read this, or to hear about it, and I sympathize with you. But I think you can make an important contribution to the booklet we’re publishing, “Remembering Al-Araqib.” I understand that you aren’t able to interview any members of your family because the matter is very sensitive, and you already have conflicts with them. So I have a different suggestion/request: Write a short piece about the subject, even anonymously, from your own personal perspective, as a member of the family. For example, how significant is it for you to know that a relative of yours was involved in expelling Palestinians during the Nakba? Does it create problems for you? Opportunities? Do you feel guilty? Responsible? What does all that mean? – and anything else you think of?
What do you say?
Eitan
Sent: Sunday, December 6, 2009, 16:22
Subject: Re: Shemesh, your family
Hi, Eitan,
Avraham Shemesh is the husband of my (…’s) sister. That is, he was; I think he’s dead. I already knew he’d abused the residents of Al-Araqib. I spoke with Nouri al-Oukbi about it, and heard about it a few years ago. It wasn’t easy at all. But I never did anything with it. For a long time I was ambivalent about whether to detonate the topic within the family, but decided that I’d already caused enough explosions.
I’ll think about your suggestion, about what I might have to say about the subject. When do you need an answer?
Nurit
Sent: Sunday, December 6, 2009, 16:53
Subject: Re: Shemesh, your family
Nurit, thank you, excellent.
Our deadline is this coming Tuesday, the day after tomorrow, in the morning our time. It would be great if you could write it in Hebrew and in English, but we’ll make do if it’s just in Hebrew…
I think that a text like yours has an importance that goes beyond your own family, so I don’t think it really matters whether you write anonymously. I also understand completely the difficulty involved in exposing family skeletons. I have some of my own that I don’t dare touch.
Eitan
Sent: Monday, December 7, 2009, 03:41
Subject: Re: Shemesh, your family
Hi, Eitan,
I tried to write something today about the al-Araqib tribe. The result was awful, and I think I’ll give up. The problem seems to be that I’m ashamed, and feel guilty – that I never did anything with what I knew. I think I should have done something – confront my family, help Nouri in order to compensate for the injustice done to him. But I never did a thing, just fled to America.
It weighs on my conscience, and I don’t feel like admitting it publicly.
I don’t know what else I can tell you. You could interview the widow – her name is (…) (formerly…., today Shemesh). Today she’s quite old; I think she still lives in Be’er Sheva. She has four daughters, one of them recently widowed. Her twin sister lives in Kibbutz (…). She’s a strong, impressive woman. It might be interesting to speak to her – she may know and remember things. Just don’t tell her that I sent you…
Sorry,
Nurit
Sent: Monday, December 7, 2009, 09:51
Subject: Re: Shemesh, your family
Hi, Nurit,
Listen, you couldn’t have written anything stronger. It could appear just as it is, as an exchange of e-mails between us, with no connection to you. I won’t specify how you’re related to Avraham. If you dared to speak more openly to me I’d try to convince you that I think it’s fine to avoid creating a family crisis. That’s not the issue at all. The issue is the burden on your conscience, which makes you feel that if you bring things to a head at home it will help somehow. But it won’t. It will only help you feel better.
A public act would be much more powerful. What you wrote in this brief e-mail is much more powerful than any sophisticated formulation which conceals more than it reveals.
Please allow me to publish it. It’s very important! PLEASE! By doing so, you will have acted. What if the issue arises again for you in the future? What will you do then? Where will you flee to?
Look, maybe you feel like an idiot for having told me about this. If you hadn’t told me, everything would have passed “quietly.” We would have gone there on Saturday, without you, Nouri will probably lose in the Be’er Sheva court when he tries to prove that he has rights to the land and all of us will move on, from one injustice to the next.
Now I’m the nudnik, trying to convince you to do something that won’t be good for your health. No doubt about it.
Nurit, do a good deed and allow me to publish it. I promise to show you the text before it appears so you can approve it.
I wish I could hug you,
Eitan
Sent: Monday, December 7, 2009, 15:08
Subject: Re: Shemesh, your family
Hi, Eitan,
I don’t know. I’m also ashamed for my family. We always thought very highly of ourselves. We weren’t very wealthy, but we were members of the elite – my great-grandfather was a very educated, progressive person, and the Zionist underground in Baghdad was established in their house. We always saw ourselves as the salt of the earth, the moral leaders. It’s true that Avraham Shemesh is connected to my family, the (…) family, only by marriage – he was married to a family member. But I’m still very embarrassed to be connected to him. And I also understood that (…), one of my (…’s) brothers, is also somehow connected to the story – I think he worked with Shemesh.
Yes, I know that Zionism is racism, and that there can’t be Zionism without injustice. But I also see complexity. You can understand the Zionism of Jews in the diaspora, and I can understand it even better after living two years in America and realizing what it means to be a stranger. What it means to be a member of a minority – even if you’re not being persecuted.
The problems began with their behavior when they arrived in Palestine, which wasn’t of a piece either. What Shemesh did was the worst of all. So even if all of us are wallowing in the mud, Shemesh is really immersed in it.
That’s why I feel guilty myself. Didn’t I have any personal responsibility for Nouri and his family? Shouldn’t I have taken this single, isolated case and fought so that justice was done? Shouldn’t I have expected such behavior from someone whose family member had done me a similar injustice? Why didn’t I break the vicious cycle?
I haven’t any good answers. Maybe I tired of tilting at windmills. I’m sick of losing all the time. I wanted to finish the dissertation, live a normal life. Perhaps I also wanted to stop thinking about what my relatives did. It’s hard to face Nouri – seeing him reminds me exactly of what happened and who’s responsible.
Why do you want to publish it? What value has it? I don’t think my identity can be concealed, because there are people who know…
Nurit
Sent: Monday, December 7, 2009, 15:44
Subject: Re: Shemesh, your family
Hi, Nurit,
Thank you for what you wrote.
Your words remind me of Derrida’s wonderful and difficult text, “On Forgiveness.” Here’s a link to a fascinating, short video about him. Perhaps I mentioned it to you.
I see in what you’ve written, in the feelings you’re burdened with, exactly what Derrida refers to (if I understand him correctly…). That you can’t really be forgiven by Nouri al-Oukbi because there’s really no forgiveness for what was done to him. There can be forgiveness, as Derrida says in the video, for political, for therapeutic, for other purposes, which are important considerations, important to many people. But from a rigorous philosophical perspective, there isn’t any way to forgive the expulsion and the series of humiliations which Nouri and his family has suffered since the Nakba. That’s the reason for your terrible dilemma, which is completely understandable.
But that’s exactly what’s important here. That you understand the mess that you and all of us are living in, from which there’s no way out. And certainly not through Zionism. Your personal family problem is a synecdoche (a part that represents the whole) of the problem all of us here confront. Your great advantage over most of the country’s Jews (even – and perhaps particularly – over the leftists) is, I think, that you understand that the problem is insoluble given the way we live here. So what must be done is to fundamentally remake Zionism, or flee to somewhere else in the world, or become addicted to television or some other drug.
Nurit, that’s the tremendous value in publication. Publishing the “We’ve no way out.” That’s more important that presenting various wonderful solutions.
This is an opportunity – yours and ours – to cry out aloud that we already lost Nouri’s suit a long time ago, and there’s no chance we’ll be found innocent.
How I wish you’d agree.
The likelihood that someone will recognize you and tell your family is one in a million. You could ask those close to you politically, who might identify you, not to tell your relatives.
I tried to call you a few minutes ago, but there was no answer.
Eitan.
Sent: Tuesday, December 8, 2009, 03:56
Subject: Re: Shemesh, your family
OK.
Nurit
Translation: Charles Kamen
The Jewish people in Israel, or at least most of them, and nearly all Americans, live in complete ignorance or even denial (in the case of the Jewish people in Israel and the Jewish people and Christian Zionists in the USA)) of the Palestinian disaster that took place in 1948, the Nakba. The Nakba has no place in the language, the landscape, the environment, and the memory of the Jewish collective in Israel or the American collective in the USA.
In stark contrast, in the USA every American grows up learning about the history of slavery and the Jim Crow period. MLK has a calendar celebration day. Ditto, in Germany, every German grows up with a heavy burden they are taxed for, and which
curtails their free speech, concerning a mere dozen years in their whole German history.
“a mere dozen years”
These are courageous people.
Very interesting exchange. Heep, heep, hurray for Sochrot!
Inscription on Tutankamon’s tomb:
“I’ve seen yesterday, I know tomorrow.”
I love how EB coaxed it out of them. The soul of tact. A hard act to maintain when one is seething with rage at injustice.
Not entirely true. I think at this point, perhaps the most efficient thing any moral, honest Israeli Jew can do at this point to bring an end to Zionism… is to leave Israel.
Every Jew that leaves Israel is another iota of evidence that Israel is not the future of the Jewish people.
I don’t necessarily agree, Chaos. Leaving is better than nothing. (Better, in other words, than uncritically exercising unfair privileges and colluding in abuse.) But a fair and peaceful solution will depend on conscientious or sobered Israelis. Each one of them is important. For the forseeable future, Israelis hold the power, more so even than Americans (a group in which each individual is less significant anyway).
And not that you weren’t, but I think it’s important for us to support the existence (or the option) of a Jewish “home” society in the land of Israel/Palestine, even while we oppose the idea that that (segment of) society requires political dominance.
That’s a nice thought but I don’t believe it is possible to change the character of Zionism. I don’t think there is a way to fix an ideology predicated upon ethnic mythologies, segregation and privileged rights for one group at the exclusion of all others.
Just look at the examples we have. The only Israelis I have encountered, here or elsewhere, who are anywhere near Jewish principles of justice and who don’t heave to the dictates of Zionism… they left Israel.
Ultimately, Israel was created as a surrender by the rest of the world to Zionist terrorists (who at times attacked other Jews, with violence, to further their agenda), in much the same way as the Third Reich was created as a surrender by the rest of the world to Nazi war-mongers advancing on Poland and Slavic territories.
And if the innocent people leave Israel, they can deprive those terrorists of the vast population of Jewish human shields they have thus far maneuvered onto occupied territories.
I’ve mentioned this before, but Ursula K LeGuin’s story “The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas” is really pertinent to this issue.
I don’t think we disagree so much. As I understand it, Zionism essentially IS the “Jews require political dominance” idea that I was saying we should struggle against. I’m with you in that it needs to be scrapped.
The distinction I was trying to make was between the passive resistance of withdrawing from the Zionist state and active efforts to undermine it from within (a position of strength), which I would consider more productive.
And I was also saying that we should be wary of suggesting that any solution requires Jews leaving Palestine/Israel (again, not that you were suggesting that). They are established there, many were born there, so at this point for most of them the ability to stay is a human right. I also think it’s a humane position to allow unlimited Jewish immigration to Palestine (allowing immigration in general is good in my opinion) as long as Palestinians at least have that same group right. In itself that would hurt no one.
nah, Zionism in essence is Jews must show solidarity with other Jews, even the shits.
This is a really affecting story. Sometimes I think about the fact that my apartment in the San Fernando Valley of California is built on stolen Mexican land, and stolen Native American land before that. I think all of us in the West are living on stolen land of one sort or another.
Is the only difference between us and Israel that their land grab and ethnic cleansing was more recent? Why isn’t there an active movement for indigenous people’s rights in this country, to have an independent Indian state or a one state solution with Indians getting equal rights?
Has the statute of limitations on it not being OK to live on stolen land passed for us in America, or Canada or Australia?
For how many years does Israel have to create facts on the ground for, until it’s no longer OK to bring up a just solution for Palestinians?
Good question in light of the Nuremberg trials, not that they mean anything.
Somehow I think you are more interested in deflecting the discussion away from on going Israeli land theft to some other topic. It is always, look over there, look over there for you and your comrades. The ongoing land theft is illegal and is being resisted. Today this keeps on resulting in war that the Israelis have somehow convinced the US to fight. This forum is for that discussion.
You’re missing a big difference, JGlatzer. The United States is not a “White state”. I don’t know much about the reservation system, but outside of that, historically dispossessed native peoples have essentially equal rights here. In other words, the United States is the one-state solution. Our institutions are framed as safeguarding universal, not ethnic rights. (And I assume this is basically the situation of the other states you mention.) Is it a situation of perfect justice? Probably not. But adherence to liberal democratic principles is an important minimum standard that the state of Israel has failed to meet.
(Hence the truly moderate nature of the one-state solution. It merely proposes the triumph of the otherwise uncontroversial principles of liberal democracy.)
Your distinction of “more recent” dispossession in Palestine is probably significant as far as the current existence of property owners who were personally dispossessed, as opposed to the heirs of the dispossessed whose claims or rights might be more complicated. I’m uncomfortable with most forms of inheritance, but it can’t be respected/abolished selectively. And certainly, I don’t believe in the inheritance of superior political rights (I don’t believe in unequal political rights at all).
Almost everyone in the world is living on land that some previous tribe was killed or driven out of. The difference is the Israel is still doing it.
Yes, we seem to repudiate the past where others were driven off their land. That is part of what makes Israel so immediate – it shows that we do not repudiate the past if we continue to do what we claim to oppose.
Its still going on in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Africa, Central Asia.
Don’t you read?
I’d ask you, Witty, if everyone was going to jump of a bridge, would you do it but we pretty much know the answer to that.
Why isn’t there an active movement for indigenous people’s rights in this country, to have an independent Indian state or a one state solution with Indians getting equal rights?
Maybe because the latter has already been accomplished? Native Americans are US citizens. Israel, as far as that is concerned, is where the US stood ca. 1890 – the majority of natives being (barely) recognized as people, but not as citizens.
If all Palestinians had the same ability to vote on the policies that govern them as American Natives have, the one-state solution would be a reality.
The difference is not the time which elapsed, but the relative numbers. A state built on ethnic or cultural supremacy can not tolerate a majority or sizeable minority of cultural “others” with voting rights. If the relative numbers of Palestinians were equivalent to the number of American Natives in the US, Israel would’ve long ago given them full citizenship and boasted everywhere of its wonderful tolerance and multiculturalism. Israel has done this in the past, pointing to the Arab citizens living inside the pre-1967 borders (while conveniently overlooking the situation in its colonial territories.)
JGlatzer, you do not get the status of being the “the land of the brave and the home of the free,” until you almost annihilate the indigenous population. Essentially this is what Israel is pushing force, the “privilege” of mass murder.
The other settler states, that is the elite who have benefited for the most part, have sympathy for Israel, for them it is like watching a young child grow up until full murderous adulthood of the settler mentality. A tear falls from their eye in memory of their own barbarism. Now, if you want to know how screwed up these Hegelian nation states are, that is, the real movers for atrocities both foreign and domestic, just consider that (before mentioned).
Secondarily, if they begin to give the indigenous rights in one settler state, the rest feel they will be obligated next – and have to pay a tidy sum for their theft and murderous activity. So they shudder when they see the indigenous gaining ground anywhere where their interests lie. The settler states are all religiously oriented (especially during their beginnings), and the nations as they are made up today in their governmental function as merely franchises of the elite
ALL THE SAME
A remarkable exchange. I would like to think that if every member of Congress read this, it might change a vote or two.
CALL IT A DEMOCRACY
I think the effort to show the history of the land, the history of what is known, even if uncomfortable, is an important effort.
This is the history of Israel, Witty. This was not part of Palestine before your comrades showed up.
I also assume that there are similar dialogs in Palestinian and other Arab families. “Do you know what your uncle did in 2002?”, also recent history.
And how many Palestinian families have stories of wiping out whole villages, razing the farms, littering the ruins with mines and shooting any of the fleeing refugees if they dared to return?
I don’t put much stock in the exchange of letters, as it just seems like a bunch of mushy B.S. that’ll never get anywhere because it isn’t meant to do so.
Seriously , they still make excuses for Zionism, and have an understanding that Jewishness makes one a stranger among non-Jews. The worst part is that they feel entitled to just flit off anywhere they wish when the need arises, and go back to Israel when the mood is over. Why should they be allowed to come to the United States? We don’t need them or their problems.
And bringing up the American Indians whenever Israel comes under scrutiny is tired. Why does America have to tear itself apart or become a proposition nation without a wrothy people, culture or history whenever Jews get nervous?
For individuals like Nurit, what personal moral/ethical duty to mitigate arises from another’s harm in the past? None. But since the crime of Nurit’s ancestor is not only a personal crime, but also a national one that Israel continues to commit, Nurit’s personal moral/ethical duty (as that of any human being) is to do nothing, absolutely nothing, that could aid Israel’s continuing national crimes. On this point countless American Jews violate their human moral/ethical duty, by giving (to use a well-recognized concept of duty in the United States) “material aid” to criminal Israel. (We may be guided by the breadth of “material aid” in our anti-terrorism statutes). As accessories to criminal Israel, their motives are no more relevant to their guilt than are the motives of an accessory to a bank robber to the crime of bank robbery. And those giving “material aid” to criminal Israel should expect to be condemned by those who recognize a criminal accessory when they see one.
Why on earth would the Nakba be hard for Jews to understand? It’s just like a pogrom, and all the Jew-specific laws we suffered from for centuries, only this time we get to be one the “winning” side.
Ingenuity, combined with the baldest ingenuousness, that’s us. It’s getting pretty disgusting, and it’s gonna backfire.