Exodus
At the Ben-Gurion Duty Free store, about to catch a business flight to Canada, I purchased the movie Exodus. Watching movies, snuggled up on the couch with my children, is one of my favorite activities. Not only is watching movies fun, but some classics are based on significant moments in the history of Israel, and I believe that children can learn history more naturally by watching a movie than by sitting in class.
Exodus is one of those classics. At that time, the outside world thought very highly of Israel, and Israelis themselves firmly believed that they had "right" on their side. Since then our image has gone steadily downhill, so it is refreshing - comforting, even - to remember a time when it was obvious who were the "good guys" and who the "bad guys" - and we were the "good guys," with the right to a state of our own.
As I approached my 40th birthday, I was warned by older friends that after 40 the memory starts to go. Unfortunately, they were correct. On the other hand, one of the few advantages of a poor memory is the experience of watching a movie again and enjoying it all afresh. It would be hard not to enjoy watching Paul Newman play Ari Ben Canaan, the man who, along with his beautiful sister Jordana, his non-Jewish blonde American lover Kitty, and other pioneers, demonstrated decisiveness and determination, heroism and sacrifice - all with poise, beauty, and that Hollywood razzle-dazzle.
We do not need a blue-eyed Paul Newman or a Hollywood movie about the most significant chapter in the recent history of our people in order to feel emotional about the establishment of Israel. We are talking about a true miracle here. From almost complete annihilation, after suffering methodical murder and destruction, then overcoming the hard hearts and cold shoulders of most of the world - under unimaginable circumstances, against all odds - the Jews established a state of their own in their historical homeland, then defended it from enemies who outnumbered them many times over, and finally turned that state into a thriving island of democracy. If that is not a modern miracle, then what is?
Watching this long movie, my children were struggling to understand the chronology and follow the plot. As I answered their questions, I began to draw an unavoidable comparison between the desire of the Jewish people for a state and the similar desire of the Palestinian people. That is an uncomfortable comparison for a Jewish-Zionist to draw - it fact, it is more than uncomfortable, it is distressing and downright disturbing. I readily concede that the comparison is not perfect and the two cases have many differences. Nevertheless, it is a comparison that is difficult to ignore.
First, let us consider the differences:
Unlike the Jewish people, whose roots go back thousands of years to the Patriarch Abraham and the Land of Israel, there has never existed a historical "Palestinian people" - "the Palestinian people" is an invention of the 20th Century, and it came into existence largely because of the Israeli occupation, not in spite of it.
Unlike the State of Israel, which is the only place on earth where Jews have their own country, there are many Arab and Muslim countries in the world that could have given the Arab-Muslim Palestinians a home.
Unlike the State of Israel, which rose out of the ashes of the Holocaust just a few years after the annihilation of millions of European Jews, those who now call themselves "Palestinian" never accepted the right of the Jews to their own nation-state. In 1947 they fiercely opposed the Partition Plan, and in 1948 they attacked the Jewish Yishuv in Israel - and lost.
Unlike the Jewish people, which asked only for the right to a state of its own in a tiny corner of the Middle East and had no expansionist ambitions on the neighboring states, the Palestinian leadership, for the most part, wants to overrun the entire Jewish State and wipe it off the map.
Unlike the State of Israel, which has created, from scratch, an island of prosperity and progress in the midst of a maelstrom of misery, the Palestinians have, until recently, focused on perpetuating that misery and demanding help from outsiders.
Unlike the Jewish Yishuv, which aspired to become a people in the homeland that had been ruled for generations by foreign invaders and various empires, the Palestinians aspire to establish a state in place of the Jewish one.
And the most significant difference of all: The Jewish State is "us" and the Palestinians are "them." One of the phrases I remember most clearly from my kindergarten days in the Kibbutz is, "It's not fair!" Since those days I have learned, sometimes the hard way, that "life isn't always fair."
But the bottom line is - over a one and a half million human beings, who are not citizens of any Arab country, who live in territories that Israel rules, who define themselves as Palestinians, and who live under an occupying power with limited rights, yearn for independence. Recently they have started to use methods that are more and more reminiscent of those used by Israel's founders, as I realized while I watched Exodus.
Some of those methods are:
Establishing national institutions and building the infrastructure necessary to establish a state: At the Herzliya Conference about 18 months ago, I listened to Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Prime Minister, who spoke after one of the senior ministers of Israel. After hearing both speeches, I had the feeling that most of the audience would have actually preferred Fayyad to represent them and not the Israeli minister... Fayyad presented, clearly and calmly, his vision for the institutions, processes, and culture of transparency that would form the infrastructure of a future Palestinian State. And this is what is happening in practice; even if the Palestinians do not unilaterally declare a State of Palestine in September 2011, it is obvious to anyone watching that they are doing what they can to establish a state.
Engaging everyone in the struggle: One of the most moving chapters in the establishment of Israel is the absorption of the illegal immigrants who, having survived the horrors of Europe, made their way however they could to the shores of the Promised Land. I remember hearing stories from Yishuv veterans, of hundreds of legal residents who went down to the beach to mingle with the newly landed illegals, to prevent the British authorities from identifying the illegals. Israel was not established by individuals, but by the entire people. One of my saddest experiences as a young officer during the First Intifada in 1987 was the sight of hundreds of Palestinian villagers who blocked roads, participated in demonstrations, and threw rocks at us - the occupying army. I thought of the founding generation of Israel, of the mass struggle... only this time I was on the less heroic side of the barricade. Ever since the First Intifada it has been clear that the Palestinian uprising is not a phenomenon of a few individual extremists, but of the whole society.
Mobilizing the support of the world community: The methods are completely different, but the principles are the same. What Jewish leaders such as Chaim Weizmann once did via messages, letters, and sea trips, Palestinian lobbyists and their supporters now do via digital media, online journalism, and social networks. In universities across the world, the Palestinians are gaining support for their goals among the future leaders of the Western world. The November 1947 declaration in the UN General Assembly establishing a Jewish state in the Land of Israel was the culmination of efforts to mobilize public opinion. The Palestinians, after several wasted decades of using terror and violence to gain legitimacy, now understand the power of non-violent protest and public pressure on governments and decision-makers, and plan to use that power to gain a UN General Assembly resolution for their own state.
Overcoming differences in support of a common goal: Exodus described the divisions between the Haganah and the Lehi, a group that advocated violent struggle and acts of terror against the British. The Yishuv was divided about the best way to deal with the British and the Arab residents of the area. But the common goal - the establishment of a Jewish state -united the different factions of the Yishuv in the 1940s and led to a remarkable achievement: overcoming seven Arab armies and establishing a state. The Palestinians have only recently managed to join forces officially and in principle (and it is still too soon to tell how long that will last) as part of their efforts to achieve a state.
Using the weapons of the weak: In one of my strategy classes in Officer Training School, victory in battle was defined as "conquering territory and destroying the enemy." As the world becomes "flatter" and methods of communication become more sophisticated, information is transmitted across the entire globe in real time and the emphasis has moved from conquering territory to conquering public opinion. When the Exodus was intercepted and the refugees on board were not allowed to land in Israel, they declared a hunger strike and broadcast their struggle to the world using a primitive radio. The case last year of the Mavi Marmara is just one example of a military success that was a public opinion failure, a battle that the Palestinians and their supporters won by wielding the weapons of the weak. The popular uprisings in the Arab world in the last six months demonstrate the power of the weak, and the Palestinians will certainly continue to use these weapons.
In early 1988, at the height of the First Intifada, the Israeli leadership was struggling to respond to this unexpected and puzzling popular uprising. The commanders of my tank battalion asked me to be interviewed by foreign journalists. The First Intifada was a very challenging time for us, both professionally and ethically. We were combat soldiers trained to fight, but we were contending with women and children who cursed us and threw rocks and bottles at us. What could I say to a foreign journalist who, seeing a combat soldier facing a young boy, is sure he knows which is the "bad guy" and which the "good guy"--and, in his eyes, the "good guy" is certainly not the combat soldier.
When I spoke to the American journalists, I tried to be loyal to the truth and my values while also making my modest contribution to Israel's public opinion struggle. I told them: "We Israelis are good at being David, but poor at being Goliath."
I believe that is still true today, with one small but critical difference:
In 1988, the Palestinians were not Goliath, but they were also not David. I hope they will never be Goliath, but step by step they are learning to be David.
Sagi Melamed lives with his family in the community of Hoshaya in the Galilee. He serves as Vice President of External Affairs at the Max Stern Yezreel Valley College, and is the Chief Instructor in the Hoshaya Karate Club. Sagi received his Masters degree from Harvard University in Middle Eastern Studies with a specialty in Conflict Resolution. He can be contacted at: melamed.sagi@gmail.com.
June 2011
