Perspective
SINGER, SUZANNE F.
PERSPECTIVE Editor’s Viewpoint The Attack on Israel's Pride and Legitimacy pride and confidence in Israel's legitimate presence in its land are in dwindling supply today in Israel; guilt and...
...Playing the game of "who was there first" is fruitless, but to play it using only the Palestinian rule book is yet another wallowing in guilt...
...Fifty-two years since Israel's birth under fire, this state, which today in large part perceives itself safe from imminent siege, is lifting the corners of history—ancient and modern—and looking critically at its past...
...It is admirable to question whether it could have done better for its immigrants, for its Arab fellow citizens, and for its Arab neighbors who share the land...
...We stood on a hilltop overlooking the town with its 500 families and the empty treeless hillsides between it and the distant Arab village...
...guilt and uncertainty find a ready market...
...I trust Israel's compassion, its readiness to face, however painfully, the unresolved problems of an imperfect state...
...The Arab states together came to 40 million...
...In the magazine section of the October 29, 1999 Ha'aretz, the favored newspaper of Israel's intellectuals," Tel Aviv University archaeologist Ze'ev Herzog debunks all of Israel's early history, claiming that die following conclusions must be drawn from recent archaeology: "The Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel...
...It is a central and meaningful battle in the war over the identity of Israeli society...
...No nuances...
...Her-zog's political subtext becomes evident in his final paragraph: "Part of Israeli society is ready to recognize the injustice done to the Arab inhabitants of this country...
...Our host was Yisrael Harel, a founder of Ofra and former chairman of the Yesha council, the association of settlers in Judea and Samaria...
...But I fear our diminishing belief in our legitimacy no less than I fear weakened military defenses...
...so as to ensure that our hoys and girls will...
...No discussion of Palestinian multiple origins...
...Back on the bus, our NTF guide gave us the "correct" understanding of what we had just heard...
...Here's what they learn today in a text by Tel Aviv University professor Eyal Naveh: "On nearly every front and in nearly every battle, the Jewish side had the advantage over the Arabs in planning, organization, operation, equipment and also in the number of trained fighters who participated in the battle...
...His explanations of the Jewish presence in Ofra were reasonable...
...Nimrod Aloni, director of the nonprofit Organization for State Humanistic Education and advisor to education minister Sarid, writing in the October 12, 1999, Ha'aretz left no doubt: "The debate about history is not much ado about nothing...
...Sarid declared that teachers should "mark this day...
...recognize an illegal order" and because "The Arab citizens in this country deserve a clear message that we are ashamed at what happened at Kafr Kassem...
...This year, three new ninth-grade texts were introduced into Israeli high schools informing students that the familiar account of Israel's desperate situation in 1948 was in fact wrong...
...The long-held image of Arabs evacuating their villages, assured by their leaders that they would soon return when Israel was vanquished, has been modified—even superseded—by that of Arabs fleeing before Israeli forces or being deported so that Israel could take their lands...
...but it is not up to adopting die archaeological facts that shatter the biblical myth [and the] mythical foundations of Israeli identity...
...Herzog reduces the Bible to a tendentious polemic, written by our ancestors to justify and glorify their deeds...
...On that evening, unaware they were violating a curfew ordered by the Israeli army, 49 Israeli Arab villagers from Kafr Kassem near the Jordanian border, returning from their fields, were shot and killed at close range by an Israeli Border Police unit on the outskirts of their village...
...But along with these admirable impulses has come a readiness to label the old understandings—whether they be the modern origins and history of the state or the biblical connections to the land of Israel—as "myths...
...The Jewish community numbered 650,000...
...Yiska reminded us that while Ofra had been on its land for 25 years, the Palestinians had been there since the seventh century...
...We are not trying to hide our shame but to confront it openly and honestly...
...Our destination that afternoon was Ofra, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, north of Jerusalem...
...Are these children also being told that the police, who had obeyed the illegal order, were tried in a military court and sentenced to between 7 and 17 years in prison...
...and early Israelite religion adopted monotheism only in the waning period of the monarchy and not at Mount Sinai...
...The orders given by Issachar Shadmi, the brigade commander in charge, were to shoot anyone who was not in the village by 5 p.m., whether or not they knew about the curfew...
...Again the message of illegitimate Jewish presence was clear...
...History is part of a high stakes political game in Israel...
...Education Minister Yossi Sarid declared October 29, 1999 a day to remember in the public schools—the 43 rd anniversary of a shameful massacre on the eve of Israel's invasion of Sinai to break the Egyptian blockade of the strait that was Israel's outlet to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean...
...The chances of success were doubtful and the Jewish community had to draft every possible fighter for the defense of the community" (Not on a Silver Platter: From National Howe to Sovereign State 1939-1949...
...But shame is not confined to events of modern history...
...A last personal example comes from a New Israel Fund (NIF) field trip I recently joined...
...the united monarchy of David and Solomon was at most a small tribal kingdom...
...Will the generation growing up today feel the pride that comes with hearing stories of courage, of learning about our ancestors who walked this land and gave the world an ethical compass...
...his support for the outcome of recent negotiations between the government of Israel and settler representatives (to determine which of the 42 Jewish hilltop outposts would be removed) marked Harel as a settler willing to compromise on territory...
...History is treated by the so-called new historians as the personal "narrative" of a self-serving Jewish people promoting its own agenda...
...I wonder why Sarid calls for this national day of shame and reconciliation with its underlying message that Israel never faced its guilt and responsibility...
...Will they learn that complex and nuanced understandings of history—ours and others—reinforce our right to live here and to meet the challenge granted us to create a society whose merit will spread throughout the world...
...Until this year, students learned that "[T]he numerical standoff between the two sides in the conflict was horrifyingly unbalanced...
...Harel explained Ofra's history, the people who settled there 25 years ago, its need to occupy and protect this hilltop because it may soon be only a few meters from a Palestinian-controlled road...
...And Rabbi David Hart-man, liberal Orthodox rabbi and founder of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem told journalists at a seminar at the Institute: "He who mediates the past will decide what the future here will be...
...No credence given to ancient Jewish persistence in the land, to Israel's modern foundation by international law, or to Israel's territorial enlargement in 1967 in a defensive war...
...He and others simplemindedly deny the historical core that surfaces throughout the Bible...
...Are they learning that at every level of military training in the Israel Defense Forces since that terrible day, the story of Kafr Kassem is taught as a warning to soldiers to apply their judgment to illegal orders they may receive from commanders...
Vol. 25 • February 2000 • No. 1
