http://www3.haaretz.co.il/eng/scripts/article.asp?mador=4&datee=05/08/00&id=77592
Our celebrations, their tragedies
By Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz 05/08/2000
These are difficult days for the Palestinians in general and for Israeli
Arabs in particular. Between Holocaust Day and Independence Day, with
Memorial Day for IDF fallen in between, they swing from alienation to
hatred - remote from the festive Israeli experience and celebration of
statehood. It is difficult to expect them to feel any differently.Although
more Arab voices are being heard advocating a closer study of the
Holocaust in order to gain a deeper understanding, our Holocaust Day is
not their day. Many of them believe the Palestinian people was the
secondary victim of the Jewish Holocaust. They paid a heavy price for the
wrongs done to the Jews. Many Palestinians are willing to accept the
power of the Holocaust experience, but they also ask that their suffering
also be recognized. Without comparing our Holocaust to their
catastrophe, they are worthy of that recognition. But Israel is not yet
mature enough to demand of itself what it demands of the whole world:
recognition of suffering.
Does the fact that the Holocaust was the most horrific of all human
tragedies in history erase all other national tragedies? Aren't the
3,677,882 (according to UNWRA figures) Palestinian refugees living in
exile part of a national tragedy? And the 1,194,512 refugees living to this
day in 59 refugee camps in four countries, isn't that a tragedy?
Families torn apart forever, the social and cultural fabric of a nation rent
asunder, 417 villages wiped off the face of the earth - can any of this be
brushed aside?
Take for example the fate of an elderly refugee, Hadija Mehajna of Jenin.
She was born in the village of Majdal, on whose ruins the town of Migdal
Ha'emek was built. She carries the memories of her lost village with her
to this day.
Her brother Hussein lives in the Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria and she
has not seen him in 33 years. Her brother Ali lives in Saudi Arabia and she
has not seen him in 25 years. Her brother Mahmoud lives in Zarka, her
brother Hassan in the Jenin refugee camp, and her son Mahmoud was
executed in the Black September events in Jordan.
Her son Lutfi lives in Israel, in Nazareth, and her other seven sons have
all been administrative detainees in Israel. What should this old woman,
whose tragedy began on the day of our celebration, be feeling this week?
Is her tragedy not worthy of recognition, empathy, to say nothing of taking
responsibility?
One week after Holocaust Day, the siren is heard once again and this time
it calls upon us to remember our fallen soldiers, who were killed in the
struggle against them and their brothers, a struggle in which justice was
never the exclusive heritage of one side alone. Israel remembers, among
others, the soldiers who occupied their villages, the pilots who bombed
their relatives in the refugee camps in Lebanon, and the undercover
soldiers who killed their sons.
And then Independence Day celebrations begin. There is no other point in
the bloody history between Jews and Palestinians in which there was
more of a zero-sum game than in 1948. Everything we gained in that war,
they lost. A nation without a country arrived in a country without a nation
and conquered it, both militarily and culturally. The flag flown on
Independence Day is not their flag. Our anthem is not their anthem.
At first they found themselves lost, paralyzed by the trauma. In his story
"The Opsimist", Emil Habibi tells of those who flew two Israeli flags - just
to be on the safe side. For our part, we completely ignored what they must
be feeling on that day. We only wanted them to fly our flag and celebrate
our joy, which is a celebration of their tragedy.
Fifty-two years later, things have changed. They have more
self-confidence and national awareness, and Israel is strong enough to
release them from the burden of our celebration. Now we must put an end
to their stilted artificial receptions in honor of the holiday and allow them,
on the day of our celebration, to remember their tragedy. It's time we
stopped being shocked to see a poster declaring our Independence Day
as their catastrophe.
A country with 1,100 monuments, almost all in memory of the Jewish
fallen, can find a way to respect the suffering of the other within its
borders, even if it continues to evade all responsibility for it. There is no
more fitting time than the days between Holocaust Day and Memorial
Day and Independence day, when the Zionist ethos both celebrates and
weeps.
