Interview: Dr. Jeff Halper of ICAHD. Oct. 3, 2012 from Radio Against Apartheid on Vimeo.
I caught up with Jeff Halper last week, and did an interview for Radio Against Apartheid. In his recent ICAHD position paper, Jeff and ICAHD endorsed the one state solution and the Palestinian right of return. So I wanted to sit down with him and hear Jeff elaborate on his position. I also asked him about his own personal background, and what made him decide to make Aliyah.
Here’s an excerpt:
MG: What do see as the Palestinian claim to the land of ’48?
JH: Zionism came in.. I tend to see the country as binational – having two national groups there. But the problem was that Zionism came in with this idea of exclusivity. That this land belongs exclusively to the Jewish people – its the land of Israel. And Arabs – because we don’t use the word Palestinians, because that gives too much recognition, legitimacy to a collective – so the Arabs, in a very general way, are the intruders in our country.
MG: Well, with the Sudanese, its becoming apparent that its non-Jews, isn’t it then?
JH: Yeah, we’re getting rid of them. I mean, see, that’s the problem. When you adopt – and it was an Eastern European, Russian form of nationalism that couldn’t allow for multiculturalism. It had to be a purely Jewish place. You’re carving out a Jewish space, in a sense. So even today, when you have, you know, the Sudanese coming, Eritreans coming, others from West Africa coming, you can’t let them stay because then you wouldn’t have a Jewish country. You see, in other words, multiculturalism – Jewish multiculturalism – Jews from Yemen, from Kurdistan, from the States, from Russia, whatever – but not multiculturalism in that wider sense, including Arabs of course. So I think that Israel got locked in to a kind of nationalism that we call an ethnocracy. You have an ethnocracy, rather than a democracy, when a country belongs to one particular people. You know, Russia belongs to the Russians. South Africa, in the days of Apartheid, was defined as belonging to white people. And Israel follows that model – an ethnocracy means that Israel belongs to the Jews. And therefore it wasn’t able to deal with Palestinian nationalism. So from that point of view, it was very colonial. I mean, it displaced the Palestinians until today. There’s no place for Palestinians in the country.
MG: So you’re saying it is colonial?
JH: It was colonial. It was a colonial movement, although… I don’t know. I don’t want to get too much into details, but this is an important point here, and that is that there was an impulse to Zionism. In other words, it wasn’t the story of a British farmer that gets up one day and decides to go to Kenya to get free land. I mean, there was a genuine historic tie between the Jewish people and that country. Even if its a narrative, even if its a story, every country has its narratives. You know, this country has a couple. So, y’know, the point is that the Jews living abroad really saw the land of Israel as their territory and so what I’m saying is that it was a genuine national movement coming back to its territory. Then it became – ten minutes later it became – colonial; because it was displacement and it was denial of Palestinian identity and rights and everything else. Why is that important? Because if in fact Zionism was simply a settler-colonial movement, like the colonial movement – the French in Algeria, or the British in Kenya – its irredeemable, I mean, then when Palestine is liberated the Jews …. go home. And one reason why I think its not a colonial movement, was there wasn’t a mother country to go home to. You see i mean , the French in Algeria, you could go back to Algeria, you could go back to France. Jews have nowhere to go back to. But uh uh if in fact you give at least acknowledgement that there was a genuine national kernel, y’know nucleus to this thing, then Zionism can be de-colonized. In other words, then you can envision one state – binational or democratic, y’know however its worked out – in which the people stay there but but hmm only if Zionism is sort of cut that slack, that at the first ten minutes it was a genuine movement. It has to be held accountable for all of the terrible things it did after that, of course, but I think to hmm completely call it a colonial movement it misrepresents what Zionism is about.
the Jews outside Palestine saw the land of Israel as their territory? Jews specifically where and how many? But not until Hitler arrive on the scene, as has been mentioned before on MW, as I recall, prior to that there being mostly apathy to outright opposition of world Jewry to the idea of emigrating to Palestine. What Halper seems to be doing is trying to provide cover, post-liberation, for Israeli Jews to remain in the new Palestine. – “Hey, we weren’t colonists for the first ten minutes, so that makes us natives, just like you Arabs (er, Palestinians).” Understandably, because the worst case scenario for Israeli Jews would be a repeat of what happened post-liberation to the colonists in Algeria. Except is it likely that the newly liberated Palestinians will buy this ten minutes makes us natives argument?
“…You see i mean , the French in Algeria, you could go back to Algeria, you could go back to France…”
In this connection, it’s not irrelevant that most of the colons weren’t from France. They had come to think of themselves as ‘French’ — as opposed to ‘Arab’ — but they weren’t. The majority of them were Spanish, Italian, Minorcan…this and that.
Happily, Israel almost pathetically identifies with the United States. Also happily, we bear the bulk of the moral responsibility for that place. So we’ll just take ’em.
Problem solved — and the Israelis Jews are about as ‘American’ as the colons were ‘French.’
They just don’t know it yet. But hey — they’ll all be happier here. Really.
…and the Palestinians will definitely be happier with them here.
As to us…well, at worst it’ll be fit penance. It should be kind of amusing to watch everyone simultaneously try to do a 180 on the ol’ immigration debate.
My understanding in the beginning of the interview is that Halper is saying he was enamored with national identity like strong Zionists are, except that he understood and rejected the oppressive occupation.
One thing I could point out is that if the national identity is so beloved, then why not follow it to love for Palestinians, since their culture itself comes to a big extent from the ancient Jews. To give an example, some 19th century Russians were proud nationalists and their “empire” was strong, but they were able to follow this thinking into concern for other slavic people who weren’t even Russian. I am not denying the downsides of Russian nationalism. Rather, I am trying to draw an analogy to the small pro-Semitic or “Canaanite” movement in Israeli politics to which Uri Avnery belonged. The point is that you do not have to assume just because you identify with your own ethnicity that you can’t find good ways to identify with others either.
Jeff Halper makes a good point:
Zionism is a like a settler-colonial movement, but without a mother country.
Another bit that I don’t know where to stick (maybe there should be a ‘topic’ for this sort of thing).
“…Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised 96.8 percent of his NIS 1.2 million in campaign contributions from foreign donors, according to the State Comptroller’s Office, which published the candidates’ campaign contribution reports for the last two years on its website on Thursday…”
— Haaretz
96.8%? My.
Remember this if you ever start thinking that the US doesn’t bear moral responsibility for Israel’s crimes.