The Jewish Question: Part One

This week I went to see a special screening of a Palestinian-Israeli documentary called 5 broken cameras. Shot over seven years by a filming-passionate Palestinian farmer, it tells the story of a West Bank village trying to resist, through non-violent protests, attempts by armed Israeli forces to grab their land. This grabbing exercise is known to the world as Israeli settlements.

Two days ago, on Thursday 30 March, Benjamin Netanyahu announced the first officially sanctioned settlements in the West Bank in more than 20 years.

5 Broken Cameras

Emad Burnat, a Palestinian farmer in a West Bank village Bil’in, got his first video camera in 2005, to film his just-born son. Bil’in happens to be located on the West bank border. Well armed Israeli forces, wearing masks and helmets, backed by the Israeli state, are on a mission to keep expanding Israeli boundaries by encroaching on the Bil’in land, bulldozing olive trees, building fences and new housing for Jewish settlers on a continuous basis. The villagers follow a Gandhian path of peaceful protests every week. The Israeli forces regularly shoot at the demonstrators with tear gas canisters and rubber bullets. It looks like a sci-fi scene between people from earth and aliens, a battle as asymmetric as it can be.

Since 2005, Burnat has been courageously filming the events. His brothers are arrested; he gets wounded, on one occasion a bullet that hits his camera saves his life. Every time a camera is destroyed by the Israelis, he desperately tries to get another camera. Over seven years (2005-2011), he shot more than 700 hours of footage. 5 broken cameras is a 94 minute edited version, directed and financed by an Israeli named Guy Davidi. The film was nominated for Oscars in 2013. This real first-hand and first-class documentation of the Israel-Palestine conflict didn’t win the Oscar. (Some people say it should be obvious why).

The film’s narrative has several human threads. Burnat’s son Gibreel is born in 2005, at the beginning of the filming. In the documentary, we watch him grow and celebrate his birthdays. The first words he utters are “wall” and “cartridge”. Adeeb and Phil are Burnat’s friends. They are at the forefront of the resistance. Adeeb goes to jail, and Phil is killed. This is a surreal experience for viewers. At the back of your mind, you usually know that the characters dying on screen are alive in real life. Here we see the gentle, laughing Phil, a man hugely popular with kids, appealing to Israeli soldiers without losing his smile, and later succumbing to a bullet. We see his death captured live by the camera.

The film is a chronicle of endurance, an emotional consequence of living under occupation. There are surprises for the uninitiated viewer. Strangely enough, Burnat, seriously injured, is carried to a hospital in Tel Aviv. He says if not for the Israeli hospital and doctors, he would have lost his life. The Supreme Court of Israel orders removal of the encroaching wire fence. Albeit with a four year delay, the fence is removed by the Israeli forces. It’s a small moral victory for the suffering villagers.

After watching the film, one wonders if Gibreel, the filmmaker’s son, when he grows up, would follow in his father’s non-violent footsteps or join some group like Hamas. It’s unlikely any of us would go to West Bank as tourists. I would unhesitatingly recommend watching this film to get an idea of what goes on there.

The screening was followed by a discussion. A man who looked like a Palestinian, but was an Israeli, came on the stage. He appealed to the audience: “What you saw was true, but it’s only a very small part of the story. Please, please you can’t judge Israel based on this one-sided viewpoint.”

Jews in my life

Fifty years ago, one of my neighbours in Bombay was a Jewish man named Abraham Mazel. A dark, moustachioed man, he owned a large black Doberman. I remember his grown-up sons getting into a brawl with the ground-floor neighbours. They threw soda-water bottles at the neighbours from above. The following morning, a police van took the sons away for a brief period. The Mazel family left our building in my childhood; it was rumoured they migrated to Israel.

Once I started living in Russia, suddenly I was surrounded by Jews, Jew stories and Jew jokes.

My ex-wife was Russian. A few years before we met, she was planning to marry a Jewish guy. Her family was fine with that, but the Jew boy’s family refused a non-Jewish bride.

When I worked for a tobacco company, the company’s Russian customers were mostly Jews. Judaism is not only a religion, but a race. I began to notice their facial features were different from Slavic people. The company’s first importer, Vladimir Ainbinder, told me disturbing stories about how he was ill-treated in his school and career.

In Moscow, we worked in an open office. Once I was speaking to Mr Ainbinder over the phone, and he asked me who Mr Dreitsen (another customer) was. I said, “He is a Jew, just like you.” I meant that as a single-word-compliment to their community’s business acumen. But the Russians in the office, who overheard the phone conversation, were stunned. Later, they would quote that as an example of my outspokenness or insensitivity. If I told a Buddhist that another man was also a Buddhist, I don’t think that would be considered insensitive. But in Russia, Jews have a special place – not a dignified one.

Mr Ainbinder told me horror stories about discrimination at school. Later, as a programmer, he was denied promotions in the company. The appointment of a Jew boss lifted his spirits. But his Jew boss refused to promote him. I can’t be seen favouring another Jew, that’ll ruin my career, he said.

Soviet Passports had the infamous ‘fifth line’ called ‘nationality’. Here Russians wrote “Russian”, Ukrainians “Ukrainian”, but Jews had to write “Jew”. Regardless of geography, Jews were outcasts. In the Soviet Union, this fifth line ensured that Jews could be identified irrespective of their features and accents.  Only in 1997, ‘nationality’ was deleted from Russian passports.

During Soviet times, the United States offered ‘Refugee Passports” to Soviet Jews. Mr Ainbinder, a successful businessman (he made a fortune by trading in cigarettes), along with his family emigrated to the USA on “Refugee Passports.” After the collapse of the Soviet Union, America stopped this scheme. Jews were no longer expected to be persecuted.

Judaism vs Zionism  

Zion is the hill of Jerusalem. Jews lived there 3000 years ago, and were periodically defeated and driven away from it. We learn about that period from the Hebrew bible and history books. But when you talk about events 3000 years old, it is difficult to distinguish between history and mythology. The return to Zion is a biblical story that talks about the return of Jews from Babylonian exile to the land of Israel. Inspired by this story, Jews have aspired to return to their homeland for centuries.

Theodor Herzl, a Hungarian Jew, is considered to be the founder of Zionism. In 1896, in his book Der Judenstaat (the Jews’ State) he wrote:  The Jewish question persists wherever Jews live in appreciable number. Wherever it doesn’t exist, it is brought in together with Jewish immigrants. We are naturally drawn into those places, where we are not persecuted, and our appearance there gives rise to persecution. This is the case, and will inevitably be so, everywhere, so long as the Jewish question is not solved on a political level.... The Jews who wish for a State will have it. We shall live at last as free men, and die peacefully in our own homes.

Herzl was opposed to the infiltration of Palestine by Jews migrating there sneakily. He wanted a dignified homeland. In the early 1900s, the ambitious Herzl identified Uganda (modern day Kenya) as one of the options. The British, the colonial masters of Uganda then, offered him 13000 sq kms surrounded by virgin forest. Though suitable in terms of weather, the area was found to be full of dangerous lions and unwelcoming natives. The Uganda plan was abandoned. Herzl died in 1904, without knowing the Uganda proposal was cancelled.

Balfour declaration, 1917

In the First World War the British defeated the Ottoman Turkish forces and occupied Palestine, Syria and Lebanon. Baron Walter Rothschild, of the well-known Rothschild family, was a leader of the British Jewish community, a banker, politician and a Zionist. He had financially helped Britain in their war efforts. He, along with other Zionists, actively lobbied for a Jewish homeland.  As a result of the activism, Britain’s foreign secretary Arthur Balfour finally sent him a letter to confirm the British government favoured the creation of a “national home” for Jews in Palestine. After much debating over political correctness and nuances, the final draft of the declaration proclaimed:

“His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

The British had their geopolitical reasons for initiating the move. The main reason was control over the Suez Canal. The opening of the Suez Canal had miraculously reduced the distance between England and India, the empire’s jewel crown, by 7000 kms. This was important for trade and management. A Jewish national home in Palestine was thought to be a safeguard to secure control over the Suez Canal.  

In 1920, the British Empire sent Herbert Samuel, a Zionist, as the first High Commissioner of Palestine. He was the first Jew to govern the historic land of Israel in 2000 years.

A British census of 1918 counted 700,000 Arabs (93%) and 56,000 Jews (7%) in Palestine. (Compare that to 6.4 million Jews in Israel today).

This action was mind-boggling. A European power (Britain) offered a non-European territory (Palestine) completely ignoring the presence or wishes of 93% of its natives (Arab population) as home to a third religion (Judaism) and to its foreign followers (worldwide Jews).

It was like a man enslaving a woman, and then offering her to strangers to rape.

Balfour declaration, 1917, by the British Empire is considered to be the trigger for the formation of a Jewish state on Arab territory thirty-one years later.

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(To be continued next week)

Ravi