An Israeli in Palestine

Jeff Halper

Description

Israeli anthropologist and activist Jeff Halper throws a harsh light on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the point of view of a critical insider. While the Zionist founders of Israel created a vibrant society, culture and economy, they did so at a high price: Israel could not maintain its exclusive Jewish character without imposing on the country's Palestinian population policies of ethnic cleansing, occupation and discrimination, expressed most graphically in its ongoing demolition of thousands of Palestinian homes, both inside Israel and in the Occupied Territories.



An Israeli in Palestine records Halper's journey 'beyond the membrane' that shields his people from the harsh realities of Palestinian life to his 'discovery' that he was actually living in another country: Palestine. Without dismissing the legitimacy of his own country, he realises that Israel is defined by its oppressive relationship to the Palestinians.



This second edition is includes an epilogue gauging the chances for peace after the failed Annapolis process.
Illustrations and Maps

Introduction: Getting It and Going There

Part I: Comprehending Oppression

1. The Making of a Critical Israeli

2. The Message of the Bulldozers

Part II: The Sources Of Oppression

3. The Impossible Dream: Constructing a Jewish Ethnocracy in Palestine

4. Dispossession (Nishul): Ethnocracy’s Handmaiden

5. The Narrative of Exodus

Part III: The Structure Of Oppression

6. Expanding Dispossession: The Occupation and the Matrix of Control

7. Concluding Dispossession: Oslo and Unilateral Separation

Part IV: Overcoming Oppression

8. Redeeming Israel

9. What About Terrorism?

10. Apartheid, Warehousing Or….

11. Where Do We Go From Here?

Appendices

Bibliography

Further Resources

Index

Sujets

• Political Advocacy
• Political Process
• Political Science
• Middle East
• Activism

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 05 juillet 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783714162
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

An Israeli in Palestine
An Israeli in Palestine
Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel
SECOND EDITION
Jeff Halper
First published 2008 Second edition 2010 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © Jeff Halper 2008, 2010
The right of Jeff Halper to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN  978 0 7453 3071 6  Paperback ISBN  978 1 8496 4570 6  PDF eBook ISBN  978 1 7837 1417 9  Kindle eBook ISBN  978 1 7837 1416 2  EPUB eBook
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services Ltd, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton Printed on demand by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, UK and Edwards Brothers in the United States of America
Contents
Illustrations and Maps
 
Introduction: Getting It and Going There
PART I: COMPREHENDING OPPRESSION
1.
The Making of a Critical Israeli
2.
The Message of the Bulldozers
PART II: THE SOURCES OF OPPRESSION
3.
The Impossible Dream: Constructing a Jewish Ethnocracy in Palestine
4.
Dispossession ( Nishul ): Ethnocracy’s Handmaiden
5.
The Narrative of Exodus
PART III: THE STRUCTURE OF OPPRESSION
6.
Expanding Dispossession: The Occupation and the Matrix of Control
7.
Concluding Dispossession: Oslo and Unilateral Separation
PART IV: OVERCOMING OPPRESSION
8.
Redeeming Israel
9.
What About Terrorism?
10.
Apartheid, Warehousing Or….
11.
Where Do We Go From Here?
 
Appendices
Appendix 1:
House Demolitions in the Occupied Territories Since 1967
Appendix 2:
The Road Map and Israel’s 14 Reservations
Appendix 3:
Letter from US President George W. Bush to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
Appendix 4:
ICAHD’s Call for BDS
 
Bibliography
Further Resources
Index
Rami and Micha, the Civil Administration officials who carried out the demolition of Salim and Arabiya’s home.

The author resisting a demolition, and being arrested.

The author resisting a demolition; here by chaining himself in a home.

The demolition of the Shawamrehs’ home.

Salim, beaten for resisting demolition, lies on the ground during the demolition of his home.

After Israeli, Palestinian and international activists poured the concrete for the first rebuilt home. Here Salim is shaking hands with Gush Shalom leader Uri Avneri.

Arabiya building her home with Israeli activists.

At the building site. Left to right : Arabiya and some of her children, the author, Uri Avneri, Salim, Ata Jabar (from the Baka Valley near Hebron, whose home was demolished twice and rebuilt each time by ICAHD), and Latif Dori of Meretz.

Map 1: Israel and the Occupied Territories/the Full “Two-State Solution”

Map 2: Areas A, B and C

Map 3: Israel’s Settlement Blocs: (1) Jordan valley, (2) Western Samaria, (3) Modi’in, (4) Givat Ze’ev, (5) Ma’aleh Adumim, (6) Gush Etzion, Efrat-Beitar, Illit, (7) Hebron

Map 4: Route of the Separation Barrier/Wall

Map 5: Two Emerging Scenarios of the Palestinian Bantustan (a) minimal areas Israel will retain

Map 5: Two Emerging Scenarios of the Palestinian Bantustan (b) maximal areas Israel will retain
Introduction: Getting It and Going There

One way of looking at the history of the human group is that it has been a continuing struggle against the veneration of “crap”. Our intellectual history is a chronicle of the anguish and suffering of men who tried to help their contemporaries see that some part of their fondest beliefs were misconceptions, faulty assumptions, superstitions and even outright lies. We have in mind a new education that would set out to cultivate just such people—experts at “crap detecting”….We are talking about the schools cultivating in the young that most “subversive” intellectual instrument—the anthropological perspective. This perspective allows one to be part of his own culture and, at the same time, to be out of it.
—Neil Postman and Charles Weingarten, Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)
When I began my career as an educator almost 40 years ago, I shared the simple, commonsensical and optimistic assumption of my fellow educators that people, when given sufficient information, will “learn.” Indeed, education is based on the fundamental principle that if people are provided with the rudimentary tools of understanding—facts, context, concepts and an ability to figure things out for themselves—they can and will change their opinions and behavior. This does not mean they must easily give up the views and values they have been given by their society or which they have adopted themselves. It does mean, however, that they are capable of adapting their worldviews in light of issues or situations they might not have fully understood originally. Equally important—and this is the essence of learning—they are capable of modifying their worldviews even if the issues or situations at hand lead them to conclusions contrary to what they have hitherto accepted as “right.” As an anthropologist, an educator and a political activist, I still cling to that naïve idea. I am incapable of surrendering the belief that people are basically good and rational, the problem being that their deeply-held cultural identities, narratives, norms, experiences and interests often put them on a collision course with other equally good people whose own worldviews, practices and politics are diametrically opposed. It is this fundamental tension between the ability to learn and change, on the one hand, and, on the other, the fact that people are defined by the social and cultural templates they internalize and fiercely defend, that prevents us from transcending our ethnocentrism and finding ways to deal fairly with those we define as our “enemies.”
This tension explodes into full-blown xenophobia when we add other elements characteristic of our global village. Rapid technological and political change keeps us in a constant state of confusion, tension and defensivity as the very values, views and lifestyles we grew up with are thrown into question. “Future-shock” as Alvin Toffler called it. Conflict rises, but a new and more threatening type of conflict, not traditional wars between ideological enemies but seeming “clashes of civilizations.” Given, however, the unsustainable lifestyle of ours, the privileged portion of humanity, civilizational “clashes” are but a self-serving way of concealing a brutal reality: that in order to maintain our lifestyles we must control the increasingly scarce resources found, for the most part, in lands of marginalized peoples. Our standard of living depends upon domination and oppression. “How did our oil get under their sand?” as the American bumper-sticker has it. No wonder the defensive mechanisms go up and the good and privileged ones—everyone reading this book—stop listening and circle the wagons.
This is always disappointing to educators, but it does not contradict our conviction that rationality will eventually prevail if people have genuine opportunities to understand and act. Contrary to popular views, this is something permitted by all cultures, all of whom contain both conservative and liberal elements. When cultures close down and appear to become xenophobic or oppressive, it is invariably because of adverse external circumstances rather than anything deriving from the culture itself. The problem of good, intelligent, rational people tolerating and even supporting oppression, intolerance, chauvinism and conflict has, therefore, little to do with “human nature” or “clashes of civilizations.” It arises, instead, because people are disempowered by their society’s power elite and their cronies, “opinion-makers.” Parents, teachers, political and community leaders, clergy, celebrities and the media—all play their role in confining us to the “box,” a narrow set of behaviors and opinions that define us as “normal.” Since boxes can be confining and supremely boring, the most effective way of keeping us in them is, as the American educator John Taylor Gatto has persuasively argued, to “dumb them down.” Assigned to teach “average” kids from whom nothing in particular was expected, Gatto (1992:xi–xii) noticed over the years that

the unlikeliest kids kept demonstrating to me at random moments so many of the hallmarks of human excellence—insight, wisdom, justice, resourcefulness, courage, originality—that I became confused. They…did it often enough that I began to wonder, reluctantly, whether it was possible that being in school itself was what was dumbing them down. Was it possible I had been hired not to enlarge children’s power, but to diminish it?
The great task of any educator, therefore, is to break people out of The Box, to enable them to transcend the confines imposed upon them and to re-link their innate capacity to understand with those elements of their cultures that allow them to reach out rather than close in. This is not an easy task. Liberating ourselves from The Box means bucking those very “gatekeepers”—gatekeepers who possess significant power and sanctions—who constructed it and who work so diligently to keep us inside. If holes can be punched in The Box most people will do what comes naturally: they will peek outside. Now the p