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A Hope not Lost
By Uri Avnery
04/28/07 "ICH"
-- -- ON THE MORROW of Independence Day, a newspaper
reported that an Arab child had refused to stand up while the
national anthem was sung. The paper was furious. I was not. In
fact, it raised a childhood experience from the depths of my
memory.
It was in Hanover, Germany, some months after Adolf Hitler had
come to power. I was a pupil in the first class of a high school
that bore the name of the last German Empress, Auguste Victoria.
The rise of the Nazis to power did not, in general, cause
immediate and dramatic changes. Life went on. But in school
there was a marked change: every few weeks there was a
celebration for one or another of the many military victories
that German history is richly endowed with. On such days, all
the pupils congregated in the big hall, the "aula", the
principal made a speech full of pathos and the pupils sang
patriotic songs.
On one of these occasions - I think it was in celebration of the
conquest of Belgrade from the Turks by Prince Eugen in 1717 - we
assembled again in the aula, and at the end of the ceremony two
anthems were sung: the national anthem ("Deutschland ueber Alles")
and the Nazi anthem (The Horst Wessel song). The hundreds of
pupils rose to their feet, raised their right hands in the Nazi
salute and sung devotedly.
I was 9 years old, a pupil of the most junior class, and the
youngest child in the class. I was also the only Jew in school.
I had no time to think. I rose to my feet, but I did not raise
my hand and did not sing. One little boy in a sea of raised
hands. I was trembling with excitement.
Nothing awful happened. But afterwards, some of my class-mates
threatened that if I did this again, they would break my bones.
I was saved from this test. A few weeks later my family fled
Germany and went to Palestine, the land of my dreams.
HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of Arab children are now facing a similar
test. They are expected to sing an anthem that ignores their
very existence and reminds them of the defeat of their people.
This week, the publisher of Haaretz, Amos Schoken, the son of an
immigrant from Germany, proposed changing the anthem.
"Hatikva" ("The Hope") was written more than a hundred years
ago. At the time, a small Zionist community already existed in
this country, but the song reflected the point of view of the
Diaspora. "As long as deep in the heart / A Jewish soul is
yearning, / And towards the edge of the East, the orient, / An
eye is looking out towards Zion…" (My literal translation.)
Since then, the situation of the Jews and of this country have
changed radically. In the country, a large and strong Hebrew
society has emerged. Why should we sing about the "edge of the
East" when we are living in Zion?
True, the fact that a song has become obsolete, even ridiculous,
does not make it unfit to serve as a national anthem. The French
anthem calls on the sons of the fatherland to stand up against
the bloody tyrants (meaning Germans and others) and soak the
fields with their impure blood. The Dutch anthem speaks about
the injustices committed by Spain some 400 years ago. The
British anthem prays to God to frustrate the knavish tricks of
the enemies of the monarch. So we Israelis may be allowed not to
lose our hope to be "a free people in our land" - as if we were
under occupation. (Whose, exactly? Jewish? British? Turkish?) In
the original text, by the way, the hope was "To return to the
land of our fathers, / The town where David camped." It was
changed later.
No, the problem with Hatikva is not the text of the song, nor
the melody, which was swiped from Eastern Europe. The problem is
that it excludes the Arab citizens, who now constitute more than
20% of Israel's population.
I don't want start another discussion of whether or not Israel
is a "Jewish state" (What does that mean? That it belongs to the
Jewish religion? That the majority is Jewish?) Even somebody who
wants it to be so must ask himself: Is it wise to make every
Arab citizen feel that he or she does not belong? That this is a
foreign and hostile state?
Hatikva can well remain the anthem of the Zionist movement, and
Jews can sing it in Los Angeles or Kiryiat Malachy (both "cities
of the angels"). But it should not be the anthem of the state.
In World War II, Stalin decided that the then national anthem -
the Internationale - did not serve his purpose anymore. He
wanted to arouse patriotism and needed the cooperation of his
capitalist allies. So he announced a competition for the writing
of a new anthem. A rousing song was chosen, which struck such
deep roots that even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the
Russians preferred it to the old anthem of the Czars (familiar
to us from Tchaikovsky's "1812").
The time has come to discuss changing our anthem, not only for
the sake of the Arab citizens, but also for our own sake: to
have an anthem that reflects our reality. 38 years ago in the
Knesset I first submitted a bill In this spirit. It was soundly
defeated. Now is the time to revive the idea.
THAT IS also true for the flag.
The blue-white flag is the banner of the Zionist movement. It
took the Jewish prayer shawl, the tallith, added the Star of
David (an old Jewish symbol, which also appears in other
cultures) and created a new national flag. It has one obvious
fault: the blue and the white do not stand out against the
background of the blue sky, the white clouds and the grey
buildings. It is enough to compare it to the jolly American
Stars and Stripes, the solemn British Union Jack and the
esthetic French Tricolore.
But the main fault of the flag lies in the fact that it excludes
the Arab community from the family of the state. An Arab who
salutes the flag is lying to himself when he tries to identify
himself with symbols like the tallith and the Star of David that
exclude him and don't speak to him.
(The more so as many Arabs believe that the two blue stripes
stand for the Nile and the Euphrates, and that the flag hints at
the Zionist ambition to create a Jewish state according to the
Biblical promise (Genesis 15, 18): "Unto thy seed have I given
this land, from the river of Egypt into the great river, the
river Euphrates." This is an invention, but it makes the flag
even more difficult to accept.)
The aim of a national flag is to unite. This flag disunites. It
does not touch the heartstrings of an important community in the
state. It pushes them away. And not only them. As Gideon Levy
wrote this week, it has been expropriated by the extreme Right
and is connected, in the eyes of advocates of peace and justice,
with the shame of the roadblocks, the settlements and the
occupation.
Not so long ago, the Canadian state was facing a similar
problem. The national flag, based on the Union Jack, was pushing
away the minority of French-speakers. In spite of the fact that
these constituted only 10% of the population (to which could be
added the offspring of mixed couples), the majority decided,
wisely, that the unity of the country was more important than
their own British sentiments. A new flag was decided upon, a
flag that has at its center a symbol every Canadian can identify
with: the maple leaf.
THE OPPOSITION to the changing of the anthem and the flag does
not emanate, of course, only from a devotion to existing
symbols. It is mainly an opposition to the changing of the
Jewish identity of Israel.
The desire to preserve the "Jewish state" is strong and
profound. Lately it has been strengthened even more by the
demand of Arab intellectuals, citizens of Israel, to re-arrange
the relationship between the state and the Arab minority.
Almost daily, new proposals pop up. This week, Otniel Shneller,
a member of the Knesset and close friend of Ehud Olmert,
proposed a new idea: to turn over to the Palestinian state, once
it is set up, the Arab villages in the Triangle, an area on the
Israeli side of the Green Line, in return for the settlement
blocs on the Palestinian side, which would be incorporated into
Israel. This way the proportion of Arabs in the state will
decrease and the proportion of Jews increase.
Unlike Avigdor Liberman, who proposed something similar, this
Kadima member of the Knesset does not propose to do it by force.
He professes to a desire to achieve an agreement with the
inhabitants, so that they would retain some of their social
rights in Israel even after becoming citizens of the Palestinian
state. What is important for him is only that they - and perhaps
also the Arab inhabitants of Galilee - will cease to be
citizens, so that Israel will be more "Jewish and democratic",
or, rather, "Jewish and demographic".
Shneller and Liberman - both settlers, both belonging to the
extreme Right - do not propose to give up East Jerusalem, where
almost a quarter of a million Palestinians are living. That does
not worry them, because these Arabs have never been given
Israeli citizenship anyhow. When they were annexed to Israel in
1967, they were accorded only the status of "permanent
residents". Therefore, they are not required to hoist the
blue-white flag and to sing Hatikva.
By the way, these proposals show that these two Rightists have
lost hope for the Greater Israel, and resigned themselves to a
Palestinian state alongside Israel. Otherwise their proposals
would be meaningless.
HOW DO the Arab citizens of Israel react to Shneller's ideas?
They just ignore them. Up to now, not a single Arab voice has
been raised in support of this proposal, much as not a single
Arab voice has been heard in support of Liberman's ideas.
That sheds light on a fact that has escaped many: the Arab
citizens of Israel are much more connected with the state than
it seems. In spite of their suffering discrimination in
practically all fields of life, they are connected with the
political, economic and social system. They have no desire
whatsoever to give up Israeli democracy, social security
benefits and the economic advantages. They certainly want to
order the relations between them and the state on a new basis,
but they definitely do not want to be separated from it.
Many years ago, an Arab member of the Knesset, Abd-al-Aziz Zuabi,
coined the phrase "my state is at war with my people". That is
the dilemma of the Arab citizen of Israel. He is a part of this
state, and at the same time belongs to the Palestinian people.
Every "Israeli Arab" is faced with this reality, and every one
is looking for an answer of his or her own. The Azmi Bishara
affair (which I shall address in the near future) symbolizes
this dilemma. As long as there is no Israeli-Palestinian peace,
the dilemma will endure.
A new anthem and a new flag will not solve the problem, but they
will constitute a significant step towards a solution that both
sides can live with.
Uri Avnery is an Israeli author and activist. He is the head
of the Israeli peace movement, "Gush Shalom".
http://www.gush-shalom.org/
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