Last year, Palestine commemorated the 60th anniversary of that great catastrophe, mourning the 67% of their land that was lost forever. They commemorated, without concrete prospects for peace, without the creation of a State on the land that was left -but occupied later-, without a solution to the issue of the right of return for the refugees, and by witnessing another year of Israeli occupation in Gaza and the West Bank.
The Nakba celebration is sadly incredibly repetitive here. Today, in 2009, we are commemorating the 61st anniversary of the great expulsion, without viable progress toward a just and sustainable peace.
And it is hard for Palestinians to add another candle commemorating another year of dispossession. It also hard for us journalists to present the Palestinian Nakba every year, from the same perspective, and realize of much nothing has changed, and how much work needs to be done.
This year, we decided to dig further into the ‘other side’ and understand what Israeli know, or do not know about this part of their History.
Eitan Bronstein is an Israeli Jew, who has worked for years in civil education in Israel and in joint Palestinian and Israeli peace organizations, trying to raise awareness and mutual understanding between the two communities.
Nowadays, he works for Zochrot, an Israeli organization that aims to raise awareness on the Palestinian Nakba among the Israeli Jews, as he believes that taking responsibility and including the Nakba in the Israeli Jew’s collective memory is a necessary step to achieve peaceful cohabitation.
Palestine Monitor: What is the aim of Zochrot (Remembrance) your organization?
Eitan Bronstein: We started in 2001, with the idea to raise awareness of the Nakba amongst Israeli Jews, because we realized that Israelis know pretty much nothing about. We believe that Israelis knowing about that catastrophe is essential for any possibility of reconciliation in the future. We also believe that our mission, that of Israeli Jews, is to take responsibility for our part of the Nakba. We were not the only ones involved; but we have a great responsibility and we have to know, recognize and acknowledge it. We have to absorb that information in our collective memory. Then, we’ll have to work to repair or improve the conditions of the Palestinians. When we talk about acknowledgment, we do not only speak about statements, talks or by expressing how sorry we are - it is mainly about actions. There are many options of actions that our society should take: We could teach the Nakba to Israelis, map the land, post signs to indicate the places that were destroyed in 1948 or establish a museum of the Nakba… Politically, we also support the right of return for the Palestinian refugees, as we believe that this is key to any possibility of cohabitation and reconciliation.
P.M: How would you describe the knowledge of the Nakba in Israel?
E.B: The answer to this question is not as evident as it seems. On one hand, many Israelis know something about it. There is a sort of an oppressed knowledge about it, a knowledge that is not really explicit or visible. People who are living in old houses know that these were Palestinian houses. They know that Yafa (The Southern part of Tel-Aviv) was a Palestinian village but they do not know anything further than that. They don’t know what Palestinians were doing there, what their life was like or why they have left the place, where they are today and what they want now.
P.M: I assume it is also hard to dig further because people may be afraid to discover something dark behind…
E.B: Yes, a lot of complex feelings are being released when you discover what is behind our history on this land. But this trend is slowly changing and we witness more and more people interested by the other side of the story. Already the fact that Zochrot exist as an organization in Israel for over 8 years means something. The challenge was great. More and more Israelis are open to the topic. Still we are a minority in this State but there is some change.
P.M: How is the History of Israel taught in your schools? We often hear that Israel was presented as ‘a land without a people for a people without a land.’ Is that really the case?
E.B: Yes, the perception of the Israeli Zionist leaders is something that many Israelis would have been taught. Here is how the story of Israel is presented in our schools: There were some people living here –we do not call them Palestinians- but they were Arabs. This was during the Ottoman Empire and later regulated by the British Mandate. There were Arabs here, along with Jews, we’re told. But the real proportions were not taught. We learn that there were 600.000 Jews on this land, but they do not teach us that there were one million of Palestinians too. Then, we’re told a war occurred. A war that began, -according to the Israeli narrative- because the Arabs did not accept the Partition Plan. We, the Jews, accepted it, but they did not. So they broke up with the war, they started it- they taught us. And then, we retaliated, we needed to defend ourselves. They wanted to kill us so we acted in self-defense. And as any war has a result, the outcome was that we won it, they lost, and they deserved to pay the price.
But one thing that almost nobody knows in Israel is that the Nakba itself was the outcome of a political decision. It is not –unlike what many Israeli people believes- the consequence of the war and the fact that people ran away from fear. The Nakba occurred because Israel and its leaders did not allow the Palestinians to return to their homes. And this is the core of the Nakba. We prevented, by a political decision and the strategy that followed, their return. And we prevented them for 61 years now.
This is something that is never told here. When I explain this to Israeli Jews, they are shocked. But it is a matter of fact: one month after the creation of the State of Israel, our government issued a political decision to prevent the Palestinians to return back. And that was the logic of the plan, they wanted to establish a Jewish state, so they needed to prevent them from returning.
P.M: What were the real proportions of the population at that time?
E.B: In 1948, there were in Palestine (In the territory that gathers now Israel and Palestine), 1.300.000 Palestinians and 600.000 Jews. The territory that Israel was founded on -or that Israel occupied- in 1948 represents 78% of Palestine, where there were –before the war- around 900.000 Palestinians.
Out of them, remain 150.000 Palestinians in what is now the State of Israel. Those persons are now what we called the Arab Israelis. But among them, 20.000 to 30.000 were internally displaced people. They are also refugees, but inside of Israel and they became Israeli citizens.
The other 750.000 Palestinians are now refugees outside of the borders of the Israeli States, meaning in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, West Bank and Gaza.
P.M: You also aim to teach the History of the Nakba in High Schools, by having designed and produced an educational package for teacher. Can you describe this?
E.B: We designed a 13 Units educational package that aim to teach the Nakba to Israeli Jew students in Hebrew, entitled ‘how do you say Nakba in Hebrew?’ These schools units are the results of an intensive work of 3 years collaboration with Israeli teachers to analyze how to present the Nakba to an Israeli audience. We approach different issues such as the Nakba in the landscape, its history. It also includes a DVD with testimonies of the devastations and materials for teachers to present and distribute to the students. But above producing, publishing and teaching the unit, there is a further great process of absorption. We cannot just present it and ask people to read it and leave the process there. It has to be accepted and intergrated.
One of those unit is dedicated to the right of return. Even though we support that option, we do not try to convince others but rather to explain and create debate on the topic. Currently in Israel there’s no such a debate on the right of return. It is something that is unacceptable, and not even being negotiated. Most of the time, because it is not debated, there is also a lack of knowledge. People do not what it means, or what it could imply.
P.M: Are Israeli teachers free to teach the History of the Nakba to their class? I am saying this because, recently, a tour guide from Yed Vashem – the Israeli museum of the Holocaust in Jerusalem – was fired because he compared the holocaust to the Nakba?
E.B: It is of course, not easy. But in the end, there is more freedom that what people may think in Israel. When the teachers close the door, there is some free space for discussion between the imposed curriculums. But often, it is more the teachers themselves who are afraid of the reactions they will get from the students, the parents of the pupils or from their colleagues. Again, the challenge is great, but I know, by experience, that some teachers do it, so it is achievable.
P.M: How does Zochrot proceeds elsewhere than in classrooms to raise awareness on the Nakba?
E.B: We have different projects. Here, the denial of the Palestinian disaster that took place in 1948, has no place in the language, the landscape, the environment, and the memory of the Jewish collective in Israel. So we have to focus on all these aspects. On the landscape level for example, we designed maps of Israeli cities that includes the Palestinian villages that existed there and organize tours of historic places from 1948. During those public and free tours, we post signs to indicate the places – but we have to admit that they are often quickly removed. We present testimonies from refugees, from the first, second, or third generation. Those testimonies are later collected and gathered together in small brochure on each village, both in Hebrew and Arabic.
Today we are currently hosting an exhibition of photographs of the Nakba period including captions that present a totally different perspective that what the officials from the government would present. We organize seminars and debates with researchers and have a collection of testimonies in video. We produce magazines and maps.
P.M: How do you proceed to reach a new audience, I mean, to reach people that are not already aware of the Palestinian suffering?
E.B: What matters is not running after the audience, but rather to do good and unique work. Then, people will come by themselves. Our booklets are unique in the world. This doesn’t exist elsewhere in Hebrew for sure, sometimes, not even in Arabic or English. We brought this very new material for the use of researcher, academics, and libraries. And by producing a valuable material, now people address us. We have become somehow a reference.
But yes, it is hard to reach an audience of people than are not already sympathetic to the cause. But when people come to our tours or seminars, if they learn a new knowledge from us, they’ll talk to their friends, and this is the way we approach a broader audience.
Recently, for the 61st anniversary of the creation of the State of Israel, we received an email from the editor of Ynet (The most read online based Israeli newspaper, with 70% of market parts) who proposed Zochrot to write a column about the Independence Day! That gave us a big window of opportunity to pledge for the remembrance of the Nakba, advocate for the right of return and the end of the occupation of Palestine. Of course, that article received almost 500 comments in talkbacks and obviously most of them were aggressive and right-winged. But it was interesting.
P.M: Do you also set up an advocacy strategy for the Knesset members or the political class?
E.B: We do very little on this level and I personally believe very little in the advocacy for the political class. I have more and more the feeling that the political level in Israel are not that important as people tend to think. The politicians here a reflection of the civil society, we are still a democracy, from the electoral perspective. So it is more useful to work on the civil society. We rarely approach the state’s organs and mainly concentrate on educating the citizens.
P.M: Are you facing some problems in you work, such as censorship?
E.B: We received some threats from individual citizens, but never from the Israeli authorities. And people are often very surprised to see how critical our work is, without being disturbed. In a way, Israel is still a democratic state and there is some space for some freedom of speech. But if Zochrot grows –and perhaps maybe even without growing – I will not be surprised if the authorities will attempt to lower our voice and actions. This happened already to some of our colleague organizations.
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