- This is a review of The Other side of Israel: My Journey Across the Jewish-Arab Divide. Author: Susan Nathan. Publisher: HarperCollins, 2006
The State of Israel is a Jewish nation. Every Jew is guaranteed “the right of return.” Yet, inside the Jewish state, there are 1.4 million Arabs. Most of the Arabs live in Golan Heights, Haifa, Galilee, the Negev and Jaffa, the seaport next to Tel Aviv. The majority of them are Muslims, with 9% of the overall Arab population being Christians. Most of the Arabs have immediate family members who have lived in West Bank, Gaza and refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan since 1948 and 1967.
Legally, Arab Israelis have equal rights in economical, political and social arenas. However, Susan Nathan now believes otherwise. Nathan is an ex-AIDs counselor in London and has lived in Israel, first in Tel Aviv, then in Tamra, a town of 25,000 Muslims. In her book about the plight of Arab Israelis, she is upfront about admitting difficulties that stem from seeing herself as solely a member of a race facing years of racial discrimination and the memory of the Holocaust, and then suddenly discovering that she is a citizen of a country that implements racist policies toward its Arab citizens and neighbors. The care for human brings gives her courage to move to Tamra – “…human beings are immeasurably more important to me than labels and institutions. By choosing to live as a Jew in a town of Muslims I hoped I could show that the fear that divides is unrealistic. It is based on ignorance, an ignorance that the state of Israel tried to encourage among its Jewish citizens to keep them apart from their Arab neighbors.” She writes. (P.55)
In her book, Nathan records details of discrimination against Arab Israelis by their own government. Working as a teacher in the Arab town, she witnesses the crisis of education in the Arab sector. The Israeli government’s defense of the separate system for Arab students, according to Nathan, “is to preserve its culture, language and heritage.” Nathan thinks otherwise: “Having a weaker, under-funded Arab system to ensure lower educational standard prevail, to permit Jewish officials to interfere in the curriculum to remove any trace of Palestinian History or culture, and to intimidate Arab teachers and principals into silence on key issues concerning their schools.” (p.88) While Arab Israelis suffer from the loss of group memory and identity under the separate education system, the other potential problem, Nathan argues, stems from the system which gives religious schools twelve times more than Arab Schools. Religious schools favor less enlightened teaching on modern science, women’s issues, and race, and, as Nathan writes, “There has to be a serious question mark over why Israel should want to encourage this brand of Jewish Fundamentalism among the most impressionable members of its society.” (p.94)
The comment on the Israeli education system is worrying. Nathan sounds an alarm on the worsening situation Arab Israelis may face when religion fundamentalism adds hatred of non-Jews among the next generation. It also brings questions about whether Israel is really a secular state, whose government is not supposed to give money to religious conservatives to pursue their agenda.
The so-called “Peace Left” is also hypocritical in her eyes. She angrily writes, “I soon came to understand that these so-called left-wingers were hypocrites of the worst kind.” (p.167). The Problem of the left in Israel, she thinks, is “the feeling that they (Bedouins or Arab Israelis) must adopt our (The Israeli Left) values and beliefs before we can allow them to our community and our standard of living.” (p.190)
Nathan raises some blunt questions in regards to the work of peace activists, asking of their intentions when it comes to taking part in the peace movement: Are you a peace activist in name only? Do you still deeply believe that you are more superior to your enemy or neighbor? Do you support the two-state solution because you want to get rid of Palestinians? Can peace work when a group of people is determined to exploit the freedom of another group of people?
My only criticism is toward her solution towards the conflict between Israel and Palestine. She believes, despite admitting its difficulty, that a modified two-state solution is a better solution than the two-state solution envisioned all over the world. She refers to her friend, Dr. Said Zidani, a professor at al-Quds in East Jerusalem on the subject of the modified two-state solution: “The modified two-state solution, involves elements of separation along the lines of the two state solution and elements of sharing along the lines of the one-state solution. There would be one secular, democratic country, but it would be divided into two confederated states… This plan would allow most Palestinians and Israelis to remain in their homes.”(p.242)
Yes, the plan, as Nathan admits, is hard to implement because the business of Zionism has been ongoing for a century and the Jewishness of the State of Israel is perceived to be essential for preservation. In addition, while the modified two-state solution means the death of Zionism, it also means the end of Palestinian Nationalism that wants to have an independent state in West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
In this deeply disturbing book, Susan Nathan brings the plight of Arab Israelis into the spotlight. The book is also the self-discovery of an ex-committed Zionist who becomes a fighter for equal rights. Yes, the conflict between Israel and Palestine, the pain of Palestinians and the anxieties of Jewish Israelis may be over in the future, when peace deals are reached. Yes, the State of Israel can preserve its Jewishness. Yet, Nathan reminds us that the Israelis Arabs could go on suffering from chaotic discrimination, if prejudice continues to exist among Jewish Israelis and their political leaders.