Dear President Kadhafi,
I will confine myself to asking you a few questions [ . . . ]
How can you so radically call in question the Jewish national liberation movement, and the state that stems from it, whereas you are one of the embodiments of the Arab national movement? Why would the Jews alone not be entitled to what you hold to be most sacred, after your religious faith, to a nation?
Is it true that you have said that once the European Jews were sent back to Europe, only the Jews born in the Arab countries could continue to live there?
Do you seriously believe that the German or Polish Jews, at least the few survivors, could go back and live in the places where their parents, wives, husbands, and children were burned in the oven?
In that case, what would you do with the children of those Western Jews, children born in Israel and who now make up 25 percent of the population?
Do you believe that the Jews born in Arab countries can go back and live in the countries from which they were expelled, before being plundered and massacred? [ . . . ]
Is it true that you have said that the Jews have always lived at peace in the Arab countries? And that you have nothing against Jews, only Zionists?
Can it be that you seriously believe in the myth, deliberately invented for the sake of reassuring Westerners, that the Jews led idyllic lives in the Arab countries? [ . . . ]
Don’t you think that we could halt this mutual suicide at which powerful interests may be secretly rejoicing right here? Don’t you think that you on your side and we on ours could turn our backs on our old quarrels, regardless of how cruel they have been? That we should make an effort to leave our respective myths behind? Finally, now that each of our peoples has restored its characteristic essence, could we not bring them together to build a world where each of us would have our own nation, our free state, united this time not by contradictory and destructive myths but by economical and cultural benefits?
An Arab chief of state has just made us a generous, and unexpected, proposal: “Go back home,” he said. “Return to your native country.” It seems many people were touched by this and, in their excitement, they believed the problem was solved. [ . . . ] So excited were they that they did not hear the price that was to be paid in exchange: once we had gone back to our respective countries, Israel would no longer have any raison d’être. Because the other Jews, the horrible European usurpers, would also be sent “back home”—to remove the remains of the crematoria and rebuild their old, demolished districts, I suppose. If they were not willing to leave after all, then a definitive war would be declared; the chief of state was very clear on that score. People also seem to have been particularly struck by one expression he used: “Are you not Arabs like ourselves?” he is said to have added, “Arab Jews?”
Ah, what a lovely term! It even made us secretly nostalgic; yes, of course we were Arab Jews, or Jewish Arabs,1 in our customs, our culture, our music, our cooking. . . . I have said so often enough in writing, but must one remain an Arab Jew if that means having to tremble for one’s life and the future of one’s children? If it means being denied any existence of one’s own? People know that there are also Christian Arabs; what people do not fully realize is the humiliating tactics they have to use in order simply to survive. Jewish Arabs—that’s what we would have liked to be, and if we have given up the idea, it is because for centuries the Moslem Arabs have scornfully, cruelly, and systematically prevented us from carrying it out. And now it is far too late to become Jewish Arabs again. Our homes too, not just those of the German and Polish Jews, have been wrenched from us, destroyed, scattered; objectively, as one is supposed to say today, no more Jewish communities are to be found in any Arab country, nor can you find a single Arab Jew who is willing to return to his native country.
All right, I can see I’ll have to put it more bluntly: the supposedly “idyllic” life led by Jews in the Arab countries is all a myth! The truth—since I am being forced to say it—is that we were, first of all, a minority in hostile surroundings and, as such, we had all the fears and anxieties of the overly weak, their constant feeling of precariousness. As far back as my childhood memories can take me, in the stories told by my father, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, cohabitation with the Arabs was not only uneasy but [also] filled with threats, which were periodically carried out. This extremely significant fact must be recalled: that during the colonial period the Jews’ position was safer because it was more legalized. That explains the care and hesitation with which most Jews in the Arab countries made their political choices. I did not always approve of their choices, but the Jewish community leaders cannot be blamed for their ambiguity; they were merely reflecting the deeply rooted anxiety of the people for whom they were responsible. For, with regard to the precolonial period, the collective memory of the Jews of Tunis leaves not the smallest doubt. The few narratives and stories that remain to us of that time paint a somber picture. The Jewish communities lived in the shadows of history, in a climate of arbitrariness and fear, under all-powerful monarchs whose decisions could not be annulled nor even discussed. Everyone, you say, had to submit to those monarchs, sultans, beys, or deys. Yes, but Jews were delivered up not only to the monarch but also to the man in the street. My grandfather still wore distinguishing marks on his clothing; and he lived at a time when any Jewish passerby was liable to be hit on the head by any Moslem he met. That pleasing ritual even had a name, chtáká, and included a sacramental phrase that I have since forgotten. A French student of Arabic once protested to me, during a meeting: “In the Moslem countries, Christians were no better off.” That is true, but what of it? That is an argument that cuts both ways, for what it is really saying is that no member of any minority lived in peace and dignity in a predominantly Arab country! There was, however, one considerable difference: the Christians were generally foreigners, and as such they were protected by their respective countries. If some emir or some Berber pirate wanted to enslave a missionary, he had to face the government of the country from which the missionary came, even the Vatican or the Knights of Malta. But no one was going to save a Jew, because the Jews had been born in those countries and as such were handed over to “their” monarchs’ whims. Never, I repeat never—except perhaps for two or three eras with very clear boundaries in time, such as the Andalusian period, and even then—have the Jews lived in the Arab countries otherwise than as diminished people in an exposed position, periodically overcome and massacred so that they would be acutely conscious of their position.
Thus, during colonization, the Jews acquired a certain degree of security; this was true even for the poorest classes, whereas traditionally it was only the wealthiest Jews, those who lived in the European part of the city, who lived more or less decently. The population in those quarters was more cosmopolitan, and the Italian or French Jews were generally less closely in contact with the Arab population. Even those Jews, however, remained second-class citizens, subjected from time to time to an explosion of popular wrath that the French, English, or Italian colonizers, deliberately or through indifference, did not always quell in time.
I have experienced alerts in the ghetto—the doors and windows being closed, my father running home after hastily locking and bolting his store because of the spreading rumor that a pogrom was imminent. My parents stocked up on food in expectation of a siege, which did not necessarily take place in fact, but this gives some idea of our anxiety, our permanent insecurity. At those times, we felt abandoned by the whole world including—alas!—the Protectorate authorities. I cannot prove that those authorities deliberately made use of such movements for internal political purposes, as distracting from a possible revolt against the colonial power, but that is what we—we Jews in the poor districts, at least—felt. My own father firmly believed that when the Tunisian infantry went off to the front during the war, the Jewish population was clearly handed over to them. We believed that the French and Tunisian authorities at best closed their eyes to the extortions practiced on our ghetto by which soldiers, or malcontents, relieved their feelings. The police did not come, or else arrived hours after it was all over. . . .
Shortly before the end of the colonial period, we shared an experience with Europe: the German occupation.
In my novel, The Pillar of Salt, I have told how the French authorities coldly abandoned us to the Germans. But I must add that we also lived amidst a hostile Arab population. . . . That is why very few of us were able to get through the lines to join the Allies. A few people tried it anyhow; they were usually denounced and caught.
Nonetheless, we tended to forget that terrible period once Tunisia became independent. Few Jews, it must be acknowledged, took an active part in the fight for independence, but, on the whole, the percentage was not so very much lower than for the great bulk of non-Jewish Tunisians. On the other hand, our intellectuals, including the communists, and there were a great many of them, took a clear stand in favor of Tunisian independence; some of them fought in the ranks of the Destour. I myself belonged to the small team that, in 1956, or so, some time before Tunisia became independent, founded the newspaper called Jeune Afrique. I was to pay dearly for that, later on.
After independence, at any rate, the bourgeoisie, who made up a considerable portion of the Jewish population, thought that they would be able to work with the new authorities, that it was possible to get along with the Tunisian population. We were Tunisian citizens, and we had sincerely decided to “play the game.” Ah! It would not have taken much to keep us on the Tunisians’ side! But what did the Tunisians do? Just like the Moroccans and the Algerians, they liquidated their Jewish communities. They went about it with intelligence and flexibility. They did not use overt brutality, as in other Arab countries. It would in fact have been difficult for them to do so, after so many services rendered, so much assistance given by a large portion of our intellectuals. There were other reasons too: worldwide public opinion, which took a close interest in what went on in our countries, and the matter of American aid, which the new authorities so badly needed. But they strangled the Jewish community by economic measures. Where tradesmen were concerned, it was easy: all they had to do was refuse to renew their permits and refuse to grant import licenses, and at the same time give advantages to their Moslem competitors. With regard to the administration, things were no more complicated: Jews were not hired; or those already employed were faced with insurmountable linguistic difficulties that were not imposed on the Moslems. From time to time, an engineer or some big merchant was sent to prison on the strength of mysterious Kafkaesque accusations that made all the others panic.
Not to mention of course, another factor: the relative nearness of the Israeli-Arab conflict. At every new crisis, every event of any importance, the rabble invaded the streets, burning Jewish stores; this happened again during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Bourguiba was probably never hostile to the Jews, but always there was that singular “delay” that meant that the police didn’t arrive on the scene until after the stores had been looted and burned.2 Under the circumstances, what is surprising about the fact that the exodus toward France and Israel continued, and even speeded up?
I left Tunisia myself, partly for professional reasons, for the sake of joining the literary world, but also because I could not have gone on living in that atmosphere of underhanded, and sometimes unconcealed, segregation.
Naturally, it is out of the question to regret the stands we took, in the name of historical justice, in favor of the Arab peoples. I do not regret anything—neither having written The Colonizer and the Colonized, nor having applauded each time a people of the Maghreb became independent. In fact, I have continued to defend the Arabs in Europe itself, through countless administrative formalities, papers, signatures, manifestos. . . . But let’s be frank: We were defending the Arabs because they were oppressed. If they are oppressed no longer, if they in turn become oppressors, or if they have unjust political regimes, then I don’t see why they should not be asked to account for their actions. Today, Arab nations exist, and they have a foreign policy, they have social classes, they have their rich and their poor. Besides, unlike many people, I never believed in the liberals’ naive assumption nor in the communists’ sly claim that after independence there would be no problems, that our countries would be lay states wherein Europeans, Jews, and Moslems would cohabit on good terms with one an other.
I knew, in fact, that once the country had achieved independence, there would not be much room in it for us. Young nations are very exclusive, for one thing; for another, the Arab constitutions are not very compatible with the lay, or secular, concept. Colonel Kadhafi gave us a timely reminder of that not long ago, and, in so doing, he was merely saying out loud what other people silently think. I was also aware of the problem of the more humble elements among the colonists themselves, the “petits colons,” but I thought that all of that was the inevitable conclusion of an establishment doomed by history. I believed that the gamble was worth taking in spite of every thing. After all, we never had had very much room in the country; it would be enough if we were allowed to live in peace. The situation was dramatic, but it was historical drama, not tragedy; and solutions, though mediocre, did exist. But, no, as it turned out, not even that was possible; we were all obliged to leave, one after the other.
At that juncture, I arrived in France, and there came face to face with a fable that was very popular among the left-wingers in Paris, namely, that the Jews had always lived in perfect harmony with the Arabs. I was almost congratulated on having been born in one of those countries where race discrimination and xenophobia were unknown. [ . . . ] But it did begin to bother me when it became a political argument, that is, from 1967 on. The Arabs then got the idea of using this countertruth, which moreover, fell on very favorable ground: the reaction against Israel after its 1967 victory. Now it is time to denounce this fraud.
If I had to explain why this myth has been so successful, I would list five converging factors. The first one is the fruit of Arab propaganda: “The Arabs have never hurt the Jews, so why do the Jews come and take their land away from them, whereas responsibility for the Jewish condition lies entirely with Europe? Full responsibility for the Middle East conflict lies with the European Jews. The Arab Jews have never wanted to found a separate country and are full of trusting friendship for the Moslem Arabs.” This is doubly untrue: the Arab Jews mistrust the Moslems even more than the Europeans do, and they dreamed of the Promised Land, Eretz Israel, long before the Russians and the Poles did.
The second argument is due to the cogitations of one portion of the European left: the Arabs were oppressed people, therefore they could not be anti-Semitic. This is stupidly Manichaean: as if you could not be oppressed and racist at the same time! As if workers were not xenophobic! Besides, the maneuver is too obvious: opposing Zionism, which bothers the USSR, with a clear conscience.
The third factor we owe to contemporary historians—including, oddly enough, Western Jewish historians. Having suffered the frightful Nazi slaughter, those Jewish historians could not even imagine such a thing elsewhere. But if we leave out the crematoria and the murders committed in Russia, from Kichinev to Stalin, the sum total of the Jewish victims of the Christian world is probably no greater than the total number of victims of the successive pogroms, both big and small, perpetrated in the Moslem countries. Until now, Jewish history has been written by Western Jews; there has never been any great Eastern Jewish historian. As a result, only the Western facets of the Jewish misfortune are known. The reader will recall the absurd distinction that Jules Isaac,3 who usually had better ideas, made between “true” and “false” anti-Semitism, the “true” being the result of Christianity. The truth is that it is not only Christianity that creates anti-Semitism but also the fact that the Jews are in the minority, whether in the world of Christianity or in that of Islam. I am sorry to say that by making anti-Semitism a Christian creation, Isaac minimized the tragedy of the Jews in the Arab countries and helped to create a false understanding of the question.
Fourth factor: many Israelis, extremely worried at the idea of their coexistence with their Arab neighbors, want to believe that there was already such coexistence in the past; otherwise the whole undertaking would seem hopeless! Whereas, in order to survive, it is better to be lucid and take one’s surroundings into account.
Fifth and final factor: our complicity, as Jews of and in the Arab countries, our more or less conscious complaisance as uprooted people tending to embellish the past, people whose nostalgia for their native Eastern homelands makes them minimize or even completely erase the memory of persecution. In our recollections and our imagination, it was an altogether marvelous life, whereas our own newspapers of the times bear witness to the contrary.
Ah, how I would have liked all that to be true! How I would have liked us to have led an exceptional life compared with the usual Jewish condition! Unfortunately, all that is as false as can be: the Jews lived very badly in the Arab-dominated countries. The State of Israel did not stem solely from the unhappiness of European Jews. Unlike what part of the political left in Europe thinks—if thought there be—a people can very well free itself from oppression and in turn become an oppressor itself, oppressing, for instance, its own minorities. We see this happen with so many new nations.
And now?
Now, it is out of the question for us to return to an Arab country, as we are insincerely invited to do. The very idea would seem grotesque to all the Jews who have fled those countries—the gallows in Iraq, the rapes, the sodomies of Egyptian prisons, the political and cultural alienation, the economic strangling practiced in the most moderate countries. The Arabs’ attitude toward us does not seem to me much different from what it has always been. The Arabs never did more than tolerate the existence of the Jewish minorities. They still haven’t got over their surprise at seeing their former subordinates lift up their heads and even wish to win their national independence! For the Arabs, only one answer was conceivable: off with the Jews’ heads. The Arabs want Israel destroyed. There had been great hopes for the Algiers summit meeting.4 But what demands were actually made there? Two items recur, as a leitmotiv: the restitution of all the land occupied by Israel, and restoration of their full national rights to the Palestinians. There might be some illusions about the first argument, but what about the second? What does it amount to? To setting up the Palestinians as the masters in Haifa or Jaffa? In other words, the end of Israel. If that is not the idea, if the idea is merely to divide up the land, then why don’t they say so? But on the contrary: the Palestinians have never stopped claiming the entire region, and the Arab summit meetings continue, all alike. The Algiers summit took up where the one in Khartoum left off; there is no fundamental difference from one to the other. In other words, the Arabs’ official position, whether implicit or out in the open, brutal or subtle, is nothing other than the perpetuation of the anti-Semitism we have already experienced. Today, just as yesterday, it is our life that is at stake. A day must come when the Moslem Arabs will admit that we too, we Jewish Arabs, or Arab Jews, if you will, have a right to existence and dignity.
Does anyone even know that we too were colonized for centuries, and not just by the French but by the Arabs as well? That our ghetto was one of the poorest in the world, that our exodus was one of the most pitiful?
I myself have never tried to take our case up seriously, at length. I wrote an entire book on colonization, in which I sketched a portrait of “the colonizer and the colonized,” but how much of that did I devote to the colonized Jew? Only a few lines. [ . . . ]
But that the Jew had indeed been colonized, had endured all the deficiencies, humiliations, and destructions endured by other colonized men, had shown the reactional and relational types of conduct of any dominated man—this I never said in so many words [ . . . ]
What was the Jews’ situation? [ . . . ] They were characterized I believe by two specific features, which I did at least suggest, though too rapidly, in the The Colonizer and the Colonized: with regard to the Jewish condition in general, and with regard to the other colonized peoples.
To the extent that, in a colony, anything which is not on the colonizer’s side bears a common denominator, the physiognomy of the North African Jew is largely identical to that of the colonized man: the situation of the North African Jew is also that of the colonized man. [ . . . ] The colonial condition is by no means accidental and secondary; on the contrary, it is indispensable to an understanding of Judaism in the Maghreb.
Politically speaking, the Tunisian and Moroccan Jews belonged to the ranks of the colonized. I am leaving aside the Algerians, because it is the fashion to make that distinction although I am convinced it is a distinction of form only, not substance.5 The colonizer wanted it that way. Without always saying it openly, the colonizer carefully measured the amount of legal and political westernization doled out to the Jews. Naturalization was never tolerated in any but the smallest doses. For instance, it was not until a few years before independence that Tunisian Jews were able to obtain jobs in the civil service. And so forth. The colonized Jew did in fact share the restrictions and persecutions borne by the colonized people in general.
But this historic and very real oppression was not experienced by the Jews in the same way as by the Moslems. Sociologically and psychologically, the Jew’s problem is far more complex than the Moslem’s. Roughly speaking, the originality of the portrait of the North African Jew stems from two ambiguities.
The first one is an historical ambiguity, which has to do with the meaning of colonization. In the beginning, the arrival of the Europeans, which was a catastrophe for the Moslems, was a sort of liberation for the Jews. The interpretation placed on that event, of vital importance to the history of the North Africans, was to weigh heavily, to leave a nearly permanent imprint on each side’s attitude toward the other. No matter what demands the Jews may have expressed later on, no matter how gravely they reproached the colonizers, they always harbored a little indulgence toward them: not as colonizers, of course not, but as representatives of Europe. Today, now that the North African Jews have to reconsider their relations with their Moslem fellow citizens, they are not very eager to recall those ties of affection. I think this is a mistake. During a period when construction is the order of the day, it is in everyone’s interest that the balance sheet be complete and accurate.
The second one is the ambiguity that is common to any colonized man. In the initial stage of the itinerary that the colonized person follows, he almost always feels a burst of enthusiasm toward the colonizer. The colonized man’s condition is one of unhappiness: he is in political bondage, he is economically exploited, his culture is declining. Amid such gloom, the colonizer embodies prestige and strength, material comfort and spiritual superiority. Openly or otherwise, the colonized man begins to have an ardent desire to be like him. And the colonized Jew is no exception. Moreover, in his case, this saving urge is coupled with a deep-seated affinity. He enthusiastically copies the colonizer’s customs, the way he dresses, and the food he eats. I will not take time here to describe the “candidate for assimilation” again; the whole chapter applies, if you simply replace the words “colonized man” by “Jew.” [ . . . ]
I tried to demonstrate how assimilation failed, how, in fact, it was impossible, given the conditions of contemporary colonization. Rejected by the colonizer, the colonized man falls back on himself; he soon returns to his own traditions and values, which he revives and in which he finds his reasons for living and struggling. With the Jew, however, this return to self does not occur, at least not in the same conditions. The colonized man’s second step, his second response, are virtually nonexistent among Jews, and for good reason: these traditions and values are not theirs. Let’s probe further: if the Jew was to carry out a veritable return to self, it is not necessarily at this point that he would end up. [ . . . ]
How can a colonized Jew change tactics in the name of Arabism, for instance, or Islam? Now, the young Tunisian nation and the Moroccan nation proclaim themselves “Arab States, of the Mohammedan religion.” And I must add that they cannot be seriously blamed for it. A nation is not simply founded against other nations; it must have a content, it must have positive values. Those values may be debatable, and others may be proposed—social justice, socialism, what have you, but it must not be forgotten that those values will have no chance of being adopted unless a people consents to recognize them as its own. The only ideology which, for the time being at least, could succeed in the Arab countries was of course Islam and Arabism. Regardless of whether or not they as individuals wished to, the only type of nation which the Moroccan and Tunisian leaders could found was the Arab, Islamic type. To reproach them with this is to reproach them with working for the rebirth of their nation. And after all, seen from that angle, the situation is not basically different in Israel, where the state is far from being secular.
But, then, what becomes of the colonized Jew amid such a movement? Three possibilities would appear to be open to him. Not possibilities that he dreams up but ones that history imposes on him and which are contained in the logical sequel to this analysis:
The first one would be to pursue the process of assimilation to the Europeans in spite of everything. The Eastern Mediterranean past is definitively rejected and the only way out seems to be to move toward the West. [ . . . ]
The second solution is for the Jews to adopt the new fate of the non-Jewish colonized people, just as they shared their fate, whether they wanted to or not, during the days of oppression. Since colonization came to an end, the Maghrebi have changed: they have won freedom, now they are going to discover the political responsibilities of modern men. In time, life in North Africa should not be any different from life in Europe.
The ex-colonized Jew decides to be a loyal Tunisian or Moroccan, just as the French Jews are loyal Frenchmen first of all. Sometimes the Tunisian and Moroccan nationalists invite them, even if only grudgingly, to be loyal citizens. [ . . . ]
But a Jew who [ . . . ] submits to the laws and customs of the new state, then in exchange [ . . . ] hopes that those laws and customs will not be so particularist that he cannot live under them without being ill at ease, or even experiencing a grave conflict. He wants to assume that the present physiognomy of the new nation is temporary, that it will change; he will fight for that evolution—just as the French or English Jews would fight against a reactionary or clerical government. Provided, of course, that he is allowed to put up that fight; that his Jewishness does not make him so suspect that he is forced to maintain the same cautious immobility that he was accustomed to maintaining. Unfortunately, that is what generally happens.
The third solution is to fall back on one’s own totally Jewish self. [ . . . ] For the North African Jew, however, who (just like all other colonized people) has never had a nationality or a history of his own, Judaism once again becomes everything, provides the answer to everything: tradition and religion, culture and politics. Obviously, the necessary conclusion in this case is Zionism and the departure for Israel. This was and still is the conclusion reached by many young men, who also take their families with them. This of course involves certain difficulties.
Thus, whereas for the vast majority of Moslems there was only one, obvious solution, the liberation and reconstruction of themselves, it was impossible to rally all the colonized Jews to one, single undertaking. Although they wanted to see an end to colonization, they hesitated as to what aftermath they wanted. And all three of the solutions I have just outlined were adopted to an equal extent, because they corresponded to three equally strong requirements: keeping a European option open (and let us not forget that this option was taken up and confirmed despite the vivid errors of colonization); continuing to associate one’s destiny with the country of one’s birth, with which one is actually in closest harmony (if the experiment had been feasible, it would certainly have been legitimate); and recreating a more complete Jewish existence by returning to the sources and conquering the national dimension, which, for the Jews of the Maghreb, was a way of liquidating their own colonial oppression. When all is said and done, I do not believe that political morals can condemn any given attitude. No one solution could be found to an essentially ambiguous condition. It is clear, however, that the one which would run exactly parallel to the self-retrieval of the colonized Moslems, namely, the genuine and specific rebirth of the Maghreb Jews, would consist of their national reconstruction and affirmation; in other words, the State of Israel.
Before voting for the most recent Zionist manifesto, the Jerusalem Program, I read it attentively. Principle 3 proclaims that “The State of Israel must be consolidated because it is founded on the ideals of justice and peace exalted by the prophets.” It is wonderfully convenient for a people to have guarantors who carry such prestige; but the prophets must not remain mere myths to which you doff your hat before going on to deal with reality. I feel certain, of course, that deep in their hearts, most of the great Zionist leaders hope to be ranked, one day, among the prophets; in which case they must give serious thought to present-day social justice, just as the prophets fought for justice in their day. Doubtless Israel’s economy is fairly healthy and rapidly developing, which is reassuring, in terms of the Israelis’ future standard of living. Doubtless, compared with other young nations, Israel is not so badly off when it comes to national revenue. That does not alter the fact that the gap between the highest and the lowest incomes within the country is still far too wide and likely to obscure the socialistic physiognomy that we had hoped to see Israel preserve. Doubtless, that unduly large gap exists in many democracies, and it is far wider in France, or Italy. But one injustice does not excuse another.
What is more, if Zionism is not socialist, then it loses some of its meaning, for Zionism is not concerned only with the building of a nation; Zionism has aimed for the social, economic, and cultural normalization of the Jewish people, as have in fact many—not all, unfortunately—of the contemporary nationalist movements. [ . . . ]
The second problem, which we had to put aside, is that of the ethnic groups; now we have to come back to it. It is an extremely serious problem, although, there again, it is not peculiar to Israel. [ . . . ]
In a major newspaper, I read an interview with the chief of state, Mrs. Golda Meir. Irritated, I suppose, by the demands made by ethnic groups, she spoke of people who had lived in caves before arriving in Israel, who used bathtubs as places in which to store vegetables, and who used the pajamas which the government gave them free of charge as rags or even flags. Speaking of a very specific part of the population, namely, certain Middle East Jews, she even accused them of congenital laziness! [ . . . ] That is racist language, the language of people in a dominant position talking about a dominated population, which should be absurd in Israel. [ . . . ]
I do not believe that the Israeli leaders, or a portion of the population, have consciously sought to use Sephardim for the more menial tasks or have systematically prevented them from occupying positions of leadership or acquiring property. [ . . . ] When a group that is socially and economically strong deals with a group that is sociologically weaker, then by some unfortunate fatality, the weaker group is crushed. This is probably what happened where the Sephardim and the Ashkenazim are concerned. The latter group came to the country earlier; there they naturally occupied the top positions and formed a sort of elite but also a sort of feudal rank. [ . . . ] First, differences between ethnic groups must be recognized; then full equality between ethnic groups must be promoted, above and beyond the differences. The respect for different ethnic groups, the struggle against domination of one by another—that too is called socialism. [ . . . ]
If you agree that no nation can long tolerate an injustice within it, because such injustice is likely to cause the entire nation to suffer, then you should agree that religious Jews in Israel hold too high a rank, play too large a role and wield too much power. [ . . . ]
By continuing to refrain from separating religious from secular matters, by giving the believers too important a role, compared with their numbers, in the conduct of political affairs, the Zionists are behaving exactly like the Moslem states [ . . . ]
It is not we, the nonbelievers or the laymen, who lack tolerance; it is they. The Jewish state was created for several reasons; one of them was so that the practicing Jews could practice their religion freely. What we ask of them, on the other hand, and I do not believe it is too much to ask, is simply that they not require of us what we do not require of them. We do not in the least ask them to give up their beliefs or practices: why then do they ask us to hold beliefs that we find foolish, or to observe practices that we find abnormal? [ . . . ]
On the first evening I heard an important rabbi call for the official disapproval of mixed marriages. Now, a few days before coming here, I attended a meeting of Parisian intellectuals; they were all pro-Israel, or even Zionists; most of them had contracted mixed marriages. What are you going to do with them? Are you going to blame and reject them? Are you thinking of their children? Are we going to continue putting up with this farcical excommunication, these exhausting, humiliating discussions? I know that many of you are thinking of the negative aspects of mixed marriages: you are afraid of the results they might have on Judaism taken collectively. But why not also think of the positive aspect—the way such marriages can enrich the Jewish people? The fact that a spouse in a marriage becomes a new ally? [ . . . ] It is even historically false that the Jewish people has always lived enclosed within itself. That is actually a persistent ghetto mentality. [ . . . ]
In short, religion can, if really necessary, be used to serve the cause of national liberation, but that cause must not exact a certificate of faith from nonbelieving citizens. If it does, then, once again, by trying to make the unity of the nation exaggeratedly secure, it may actually stifle the nation and make life there unbearable.
Now I come to one last point: the awkward problem of the Palestinians Arabs. I know how easy it would be here to give simplifications. There are people who keep telling you that you simply ought to open your doors, immediately give back the territories occupied since the 1967 war, or even since 1947, and stop believing in Arab hostility; those people either haven’t much to lose if you were to do as they advise, or else they are fools. For it is a fact that many Arabs throughout the world, many of their leaders, are obsessed by Israel’s existence and genuinely want to see Israel wiped off the map, that geographical map that they take to be the seat of the great united Arab nation. Many Arabs, politically sincere though they may be, have not understood the importance and the significance of Zionism, i.e., of the Jewish nation, as a fact. [ . . . ] I know that this definitive aggression, this new final solution, would be to some people’s liking. Other people, though they believe themselves less radical and less hostile, reason just as absurdly. They say to you: Israel exists; all right; but it should stop being Zionist.
Although this is the case, [ . . . ] it is impossible and dangerous to continue to overlook the Palestinian situation. [ . . . ]
Certain Israelis have come to assume that they alone can decide, to suppose that with time things would eventually calm down. A serious mistake, that. Because what we have in this case too is the awakening of a nation [ . . . ] They know, or at least I hope they do, that the Palestinian phenomenon is also a national phenomenon, and that a solution along national lines has to be found. [ . . . ]
I am well aware that neither of these two proposals, which only seem to be contradictory—economic and political integration of part of the Palestinians into the State of Israel, and/or the creation of a Palestinian national entity alongside Israel—will easily win the approval of the Palestinians themselves, many of whom, it is true, think of only one thing: reconquering Israel. But, even so, it is in that direction that efforts must be made. Giving the impression that one is not looking for any solution to the problem is certainly the most disastrous position to take, in the long run, for it cultivates despair and hatred, from which nothing good ever comes. [ . . . ]
I realize how presumptuous it is for an outsider to talk about grave problems to the people who live with them, whereas he does not share their day-to-day difficulties. By way of excuse, I will simply say this: while we insist again and again that the affirmation, the consolidation, and the unity of the Jewish people are essential to its survival, at the same time rights and duties—particularly the right and the duty to speak—are not the prerogative of the Israelis alone.
What is going on in the Middle East is no more frightful or insane than what goes on elsewhere, or else the whole history of mankind is cruel and stupid—which it doubtless is; but in this situation of relative stupidity, what is happening between the Arabs and Jews is legible enough for anyone who takes the time to decipher it [ . . . ]
Since I am not merely one of their friends, that is, since I refuse to take an attitude toward them which, at bottom, is paternalistic and is also, as I well know, a mixture of old colonialistic scorn and newfound benevolence—I do not reduce the Arabs to their emotions alone. I believe them worthy of having a policy, i.e., of assuming the deliberate and rational conduct of their collective affairs—more or less deliberate and rational, of course, as with all peoples. [ . . . ] It consists essentially of achieving the national independence of their several countries, usually by wresting it from the colonizers, and, now, of going beyond independence in each case to the building of new societies. [ . . . ]
The Israelis’ intention is no less clear, [ . . . ] it is no less legitimate: they intend to finish building a Jewish nation, not only so that today’s Israelis can at last live there in peace but also so as to offer a possible refuge to Jews whom misfortune may yet strike. And we know, we can see, that such an eventuality cannot yet be ruled out: in too many parts of the world, the Jews’ situation is still precarious [. . . .] Anyone who considers the Israeli adventure without taking account [ . . . ] the threats and oppression suffered by the Jews throughout history and still today at various points on the globe, without referring to the overall Jewish condition, is not really trying to understand anything about it. And to speak of de-Zionizing Israel or of dismantling its structure as a state, which is all that can provide protection to those individual refugees, is of course to utter the most astonishing piece of nonsense imaginable. In short, Israel’s intention is also a national one; it was born of misery and oppression, it is comparable to that of the Arab peoples, and it is no less honorable than theirs. [ . . . ]
It is not easy to build a nation, especially when, as in the case of the Jews, the very body of it has to be put back together again; or when, as in the case of the Arabs, a modern economy has to be launched from a point close to zero, and political institutions adapted to the contemporary world have to be completely reinvented. [ . . . ]
I am taking the liberty here of denouncing this Arab myth, or alibi, because, first of all, I did not hesitate to examine at length, and to denounce, a certain number of traditional and still-flourishing Jewish myths. [ . . . ]
And finally, I am taking the liberty of speaking about a problem that is primarily the Arabs’ business, not only because in the long run it all affects our common destiny but also because I defended the cause of various Arab peoples [ . . . ] at a time when it was folly to do so; today it is too easy. [ . . . ] It does not help the Arabs to encourage them to go on with their myths and countermyths. [ . . . ]
It seems clear to me [ . . . ] that “Arab unity” and the “single Arab nation” actually belong to some mythical future; as does the image, which stems from those, of “Israel as thorn in the side of that Arab nation.” Erasing Israel from the map of the Middle East, for that is fundamentally what is involved, is an integral part of one of the myths of the modern Arabs and, even though the conflict goes back a long way, it is also an integral part of one of the myths of decolonization. [ . . . ]
It is obvious that what we now have to deal with is a series of young nations that are too jealous of each other to go along with any form of merger in which they would be likely to lose the autonomy they have gained with such difficulty. Not to mention the obstacle of tremendously divergent regimes, social structures, interests, and even philosophies. [ . . . ]
Israel is an intolerable impediment to the realization of such a grandiose plan. At the same time, the struggle against Israel must mobilize the energies of all the diverse Arab peoples and create a bond between them, reconciling contradictory interests and muzzling opponents within any of the Arab countries. In short, Israel’s presence sustains and confirms the myth, showing the impossibility of it and, at the same time, assigning that impossibility to a fortuitous cause. [ . . . ]
At any rate, for our purposes, the whole idea seems to be that realization of the Arab plan necessarily requires the destruction of the Jewish plan. [ . . . ] Anti-Semitism, as diversionary tactic and catalyst, was one of the Nazis’ best psychological tools. [ . . . ] But henceforth there is the State of Israel in the side of the Arab nation. Israel becomes the Jew of the Arab countries. [ . . . ]
To cease to look upon Israel as the absolute Enemy, the supreme danger, would be to abandon the perfect excuse, which can be fallen back upon whenever a difficulty arises—in short, it would mean giving up the myth. [ . . . ]
There is no denying, of course, that there are real contradictions between the two intentions, the Jewish and the Arab; conflicts of interest on such and such score, possible border disputes, differing political concepts, population problems—but in the last analysis, there are no more contradictions than between any two Arab or Moslem nations [ . . . ] If the Israeli-Arab problem were stripped of its adjuncts and its mythical diversions, it would be no harder to solve than the problems that cause Algeria to be eyed with anxiety by its two neighbors, Tunisia and Morocco, Egypt by Algeria and Libya, and Iraq by poor Jordan, which in fact fears everyone without exception. [ . . . ]
Until now, the Arab countries had denied the existence of the Palestinians, but now they are only too happy to discover and use them in order to perpetuate their absolutist myth and diversionary tactic. The Palestinians’ right to existence, and even to a national existence, must be recognized; but they must not, in turn, climb on to the same hobbyhorse of a myth and proclaim that what they too want is the reconquest of all Palestine and “the end of the Zionist State” . . . in other words, the same impossible apocalypse. [ . . . ]
This nonrecognition of Israel, such that its existence is constantly challenged by guerrilla raids and border skirmishes, leading inevitably to periodic war, [ . . . ] this open conflict, is the worst solution and the most costly, not only of course for Israel but also for all the young Arab nations. Whatever advantages certain leaders and certain ruling classes may derive from it, the overall price paid by the peoples involved is exorbitant, for this policy of waging war exhausts their economies’ possibilities in advance, impedes all efforts at democratization, and leaves cultural development to stagnate—not to mention the lives that are wasted.
You want to know what Israel is? Ask yourself first what a Jew is.
Well, what is a Jew?
A religion? Not only that. A nation? He possesses neither state nor territory. A people? He is scattered throughout the universe. A language? He speaks hundreds of languages. A culture? He has the culture of the other peoples. . . . Who, Jew or non-Jew, has not tried his hand at one time or another at this great scholarly game, only to give up quickly, defeated by the constant difficulty of clearly and distinctly grasping what makes a Jew a Jew?
The reason is that the Jew is defined not only by what he is but also by what he is not. The Jew is not exactly from here, he doesn’t come exactly from there, he doesn’t quite belong to this people, or that past. Whether he likes it or not, whether he consents to it or not, he is also a reference to an elsewhere of the most disturbing sort: an elsewhere that is nowhere. An elsewhere that is above all an absence, a void that cannot be filled, a phantom that cannot be exorcised.
There is of course the Book which may or may not be sacred, [ . . . ] that very book, the Jew’s reference, is itself a reference to an elsewhere. [ . . . ]
And then suddenly this void, this phantom becomes solid flesh and is called Israel. [ . . . ]
A faithful mirror, and as everyone knows, it is never easy to look at your own reflection. Already they must have recognized themselves, with shame and pain, horror and pity, in the ghosts of their charred and slaughtered friends and relatives. Now they are face to face with their own portrait as farmer-soldiers.
I say that no Jew today can think of Israel without feeling disturbed. [ . . . ]
Israel has restored to the Jew virtually his whole being. [ . . . ]
The Jew had no state, no nation, no flag, no land, no language, no culture. His religion, to which he clung desperately, had never placed him in the majority. His memory, which he obstinately cultivated, never told him anything but his own miseries. Do you know what that’s called? It is described as, experienced as, and called oppression. The Jew was one of the oldest victims of oppression in universal history. Israel has almost put an end to the oppression of the Jew.