History, Myth and Reality in the Israeli
Jewish-Palestinian Arab Dialogue
Daniel J. Elazar
(The author made this statement at a 1989 conference in
Toledo, Spain, which brought together Sephardic Jews from Israel
and the diaspora and Palestinian and other Arabs.)
All of us here share a dream of peace, a peace in which
Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs will live side-by-side,
shaping their own destinies. But any such peace must be based on
truth. I have the difficult task of trying to speak the truth as
I see it and as I believe it is understood by the vast majority
of Israelis.
We are gathered here in Toledo because of its significance in
the history of Arab-Jewish or, more accurately, Christian-Muslim-
Jewish relations. Toledo reminds us of the Golden Age in Spain
when the three communities lived side-by-side and together
constituted a major center of world culture. According to my
count, whether our immediate roots are in Eretz Israel, the
Balkans or North Africa, most of the Jews here are Sephardim in
the original sense, that is to say, descendants of Jews who lived
in Spain and were expelled nearly 500 years ago.
Several us have explicit family connections to Toledo. In my
case, one branch of my family was of prominence in the Toledo of
which we speak. As you tour the city you may see two buildings
built by my forefather, Shmuel Halevi Abulafia -- the El Transito
Synagogue and his home. According to family tradition, the
Halevi family, among their other activities, engaged in the
practice of medicine and as such were given the Arabic name
"Abulafia," which, as you know, means "father of health." Shmuel
Halevi Abulafia actually served as finance minister to the King
of Castille in Toledo. Hence, Toledo has a special place in my
heart.
But here we must face the truth squarely. This conference
seems to be laboring under the misapprehension that this
flowering took place in the days when Toledo was part of Al
Andaluz, under Muslim rule. In fact Toledo became a center of
culture and a haven for Jews under Christian rule after it was
reconquered in 1085. Jews fled to Toledo to escape Muslim
persecution following the takeover of the government of Muslim
Spain by Muslim fundamentalists who instituted the persecution of
non-Muslims (and, for that matter, of non-fundamentalist Muslims,
some of whom fled to Toledo as well).
Christians who had welcomed the Jews expelled them. At that time,
one branch of the Abulafia family is reputed to have gone from
Toledo to Jerusalem, one of the seven families to have settled in
Eretz Israel at the time of the expulsion and remained to this
day.
We Jews have learned from this and similar historic
experiences that we need our own homeland where we are in control
of our own destiny, where we can cooperate with other peoples
without being subject to their rule and their whims, where we are
not a minority and from which we cannot be expelled. We remember
the Golden Age of Toledo and Spain with great fondness, but we do
not want to return to that condition under any circumstances.
Even when Christians or Castillians, Muslims or Arabs, and
Jews lived here, each community had its own autonomy under the
overall rule of the king. Toledo actually had three municipal
governments side-by-side -- Christian, Muslim and Jewish. It was
understood by all that the Jewish people remained a nation, even
in exile. No one thought to deny that reality, even as we
remained a world civilization, no matter how small our numbers.
Any dialogue between us must begin with the recognition of
Jewish nationhood and civilization. It is not sufficient to
recognize the existence of Israel as a state. The Palestinian
and other Arabs must explicitly acknowledge the existence of the
Jewish people and our right to self-determination, even as they
ask us to acknowledge their existence and right to
self-determination. We have heard some at this conference repeat
the old notion, which seems to continue to exist among the Arabs,
that the Jews are only a religion and not a people; hence they
are not entitled to self-determination -- indeed that most of us
here are "Arab Jews." This simply will not do.
What of the Palestinian Arabs? Over a decade ago a colleague
of mine, a professor at the University of Kashmir in India,
himself a Muslim who had spent many years teaching in Egypt, in
the course of a conversation about ethnicity in the world, made
the profound comment that the Arabs have to be understood as a
federal nation. What he meant was that Arabs have a common sense
of Arab nationhood, yet also a more particularistic sense of
Syrian, Egyptian, Iraqi, Moroccan, etc. peoplehood. In the past
two decades, the Palestinians have also claimed peoplehood within
that special Arab context.
In fact, for the Arabs themselves it is not clear where
nationhood lies, though the trend in the twentieth century has
been to give greater emphasis to the particularistic, albeit
without abandoning the general. The Palestinians are among the
last to assert their particularistic peoplehood. Under such
conditions, when the Arab nation and its peoples are still
struggling for self-definition, it is not surprising that it has
taken other peoples, including the Jewish people, a longer time
to recognize that a separate Palestinian identity exists. Perhaps
we have to be helped to learn and understand the Arab and
Palestinian Arab reality. That will necessarily take time.
When Toledo flourished, Europe was Christendom, a largely
Christian continent in which Christians saw themselves as united
under a single church (even though that was not exactly accurate
even then). Christendom no longer exists, but now, increasingly,
Europe does and will even more so after 1992. That is another
reality which all of us must confront, which will have its impact
on both Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians.
This brings us back to the Jews' role as a bridge between the
Christian and Muslim worlds, between Europe, Asia and Africa and
now the new worlds as well. In the past we played that role in a
painful way since we lacked statehood. From now on, we will play
that role as a people with both a state and a diaspora. We will
not do so monolithically since by our very character, Jews
express various viewpoints. But we will do so as Jews secure in
our statehood and peoplehood. The Palestinians, too, can be a
bridge to achieve peace between Jews and Arabs.
That modern and contemporary Jewish civilization is very
dynamic is known to all, proving once again how the Jewish people
is a world civilization. It is important to understand that the
the very dynamics of the Jewish civilization of our times in all
its parts is rooted in Zionism. This is true from the
ultra-Orthodox camp to that of the extreme political left.
Whether they know it or not, whether they recognize it or not,
all Jews have been transformed by Zionism and our civilization
entirely informed by the Zionist revolution. Anyone who wishes to
understand us must understand that today there can be no longer
be a separation between Jewishness and Zionism in that sense. The
Zionist revolution has had too much of an impact on us all.
Because our civilization is so dynamic, the Jewish people and
particularly the State of Israel often seem to be very powerful.
In fact, we remain a small people, and our power is inevitably
limited by that fact. I would suggest that we are more vocal
than powerful. Hence, we cannot be expected to take risks that
larger peoples with greater power may be able to take. Even
though we enjoy a stronger position politically and militarily
than we have in millennia, in our heart of hearts we know that
our power is slender because we are small and vulnerable, and we
react cautiously to possible diminutions of that power, requiring
clear, unambiguous and convincing reassurance that we are not
taking dangerous risks.
All the foregoing suggests that with regard to Jews and
Arabs, Israel and the Palestinians, things have changed. We all
must recognize the changes and learn how to respond to them. We
are not here to apologize for having returned to our land and
reestablished an independent Jewish commonwealth within it. Nor
are we prepared to accept that the situation of the Israelis and
the Palestinians is symmetrical. We are not here to measure the
extent of suffering, nor are we here to equate two millennia of
exile with that of a generation.
I say to you, my Arab friends, do not be fooled by the voice
of the Jewish left or the new revisionist history that is
appearing. As a historian, I have always distrusted revisionist
history, since it soon turns out that most of it is written
either for ideological purposes or to advance the personal
interests of the revisionist historians. Talking only to such
Jews who come to such dialogues can be misleading. We, in turn,
must admire the discipline and solidarity of the Palestinians
during the first year and a half of the intifada and in these
dialogues, in contrast to the various voices with which Jews
speak.
Let me suggest to you that the Shamir plan is a major step
for Israel. Prime Minister Shamir speaks for the Israeli people
no less than the PLO has been able to establish itself as
speaking for the Palestinians. I know there are many aspects of
the plan that are objectionable to the Palestinians, but it
offers a way to begin, to move from dialogue to negotiation. Both
Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians, today speak of living
together. That is a great step forward and that is what must be
fostered, patiently, step-by-step.
