A friend has passed along an email evidently sent out by the "Israeli Student Life" group at Columbia University to organize opposition to the Arab Student Association’s week of Nakba recognition. "Dear Israelis," the email says, "You are probably aware by now of the Palestinian campaign…We need your help to respond by posting fliers around the campus." It advises students to pick up fliers at the Hillel or download them online. "Please take 20 minutes of your time to do so- It is really important for the image of Israel and for our well being at the campus."
Here’s the
flier, created by Lionpac, the school’s Israel lobby, which says, "From 1947-1951, 800,000 Jews were forced out of Arab countries just because they were Jewish. Enough. We
can go on arguing like this forever…" The flier invites the Arab organizers of Nakba week to put an end to rancor between the two sides and sit down and talk about the Nakba rather than have forums.
What catches my eye is that phrase from the email, "for our well being at the campus." I take the Israelis at their word: Some Israeli students evidently feel physically afraid because of the Arab students’ efforts to publicize the Nakba. I think this is irrational, that the Arab students are merely trying to use the first amendment to put out the history of unending Palestinian dispossession since 1948, but it is a significant irrationality. Israel came to life out of the Holocaust. The Zionists brought a European experience of antisemitism and genocide to the Middle East. Menachem Begin had been imprisoned in Poland, later he was joined by the survivors of the D.P. camps who emigrated during the "Exodus." As John Mearsheimer indicates in the post below, many Zionists projected the image of genocidal Nazis on to Palestinian Arabs–who were only resisting colonization, as you and I would.
It cannot be said often enough that the Holocaust left lingering psychic wounds in my people. I’m sure Richard Witty would agree with that statement, if not the following: that those injuries continue to distort the Jewish understanding of our place in American life (we are not outsiders, but principals in the establishment) and the Israelis’ understanding of what they face in Israel/Palestine. A sense of victimization, after all, is the only thing that might rationalize Israeli atrocities against Palestinian innocents in Gaza as a legitimate campaign against "terror" and the utter separation of Jews and Arabs that you see in Israel.
I don’t mean to suggest that it is easy to get past the Holocaust memories, even 60 years later. But that they shouldn’t crowd out awareness of other people’s sufferings.
