File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_2002/postcolonial.0205, message 249


Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 07:07:42 -0700 (PDT)
From: jamil khader <inbetween_2000-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: palestinians (second)class citizens of israel


--0-383827537-1022767662=:38985


These poll as others have indicated shows nothing about the identity of palestinians second-calss (or maybe third or fourth after the oriental and Flasha jewery) and its ambiguities. And I don't think anyone denies that Palestinians in Israel feel some level of identitifcation with Israel, but nonetheless continue to express the rift between what they have called my state/my people conflict in their lives (someone describes it as the third way, another as walking the tight rope. Smadar Levi has even talked, and wrongly I might add, about the third space [a la Bhabha] in the poetry of an Arab Druz, where his existential alienation from his village and his experience of dislocation in Israel is celebrated as an example of disembodiment in an extra-territorial space). This, by the way, requires thinking about different identity narratives such as age, religion, education, ethnicity among Palestinians citizens of Israel to better understand the complex shifting structures of identification with Israel. Complex and shifting they are because they depend on the changing political climate in israel and the arab world.

In israel now, for example, the political climate is dominated by ideas of ethnic cleanising, what  sharon calls population transfer (46% Israeli Jews believe in this fascist solution), which will make Palestinian Israelis wear the skullcap should it be their only way out. My uncle was recently caught in an anti-arab demonstration in Haifa, where bloodthirsty mob was chanting "death to arabs"; he had no other choice but to chant his own death. This same political climate is forcing many educated Palestinians to assimilate--speak only hebrew and teach their kids hebrew only for fear of vengeful acts in Jewish neighborhoods.

And for Ayelet, it is not enough to mindlessly repeat what polls and newspapers publish and it's certainly self-vindicating to show palestinians citizens of israel wanting to be israelis most of all. This is your easy way out. Absolution my friend comes when you struggle to de-Judaize Israel and de-zionize it, so that Israel becomes not only the state of the Jewish people but also the state of its citizens. Israel/is have still to confront the foundational myths of their state, decosntruct those myths, and learn to accept the Palestinians everywhere as equal human beings. 

Jamil


Jamil Khader, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of English
The English Department
Stetson University
421 N. Woodland Blv.
Deland, FL 32720
(386) 822-7366 (w)(386) 740-1416 (h)


---------------------------------
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup
--0-383827537-1022767662=:38985

HTML VERSION:

These poll as others have indicated shows nothing about the identity of palestinians second-calss (or maybe third or fourth after the oriental and Flasha jewery) and its ambiguities. And I don't think anyone denies that Palestinians in Israel feel some level of identitifcation with Israel, but nonetheless continue to express the rift between what they have called my state/my people conflict in their lives (someone describes it as the third way, another as walking the tight rope. Smadar Levi has even talked, and wrongly I might add, about the third space [a la Bhabha] in the poetry of an Arab Druz, where his existential alienation from his village and his experience of dislocation in Israel is celebrated as an example of disembodiment in an extra-territorial space). This, by the way, requires thinking about different identity narratives such as age, religion, education, ethnicity among Palestinians citizens of Israel to better understand the complex shifting structures of identification with Israel. Complex and shifting they are because they depend on the changing political climate in israel and the arab world.

In israel now, for example, the political climate is dominated by ideas of ethnic cleanising, what  sharon calls population transfer (46% Israeli Jews believe in this fascist solution), which will make Palestinian Israelis wear the skullcap should it be their only way out. My uncle was recently caught in an anti-arab demonstration in Haifa, where bloodthirsty mob was chanting "death to arabs"; he had no other choice but to chant his own death. This same political climate is forcing many educated Palestinians to assimilate--speak only hebrew and teach their kids hebrew only for fear of vengeful acts in Jewish neighborhoods.

And for Ayelet, it is not enough to mindlessly repeat what polls and newspapers publish and it's certainly self-vindicating to show palestinians citizens of israel wanting to be israelis most of all. This is your easy way out. Absolution my friend comes when you struggle to de-Judaize Israel and de-zionize it, so that Israel becomes not only the state of the Jewish people but also the state of its citizens. Israel/is have still to confront the foundational myths of their state, decosntruct those myths, and learn to accept the Palestinians everywhere as equal human beings.

Jamil



Jamil Khader, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of English
The English Department
Stetson University
421 N. Woodland Blv.
Deland, FL 32720
(386) 822-7366 (w)(386) 740-1416 (h)



Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup --0-383827537-1022767662=:38985-- --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005