For
Palestinians, Memory Matters
By George Bisharat
14 May, 2007
San
Francisco Chronicle
Why
do some people have the power to remember, while others are asked to
forget? That question is especially poignant at this time of year, as
we move from Holocaust Remembrance day in early spring to Monday's anniversary
of Israel's declaration of independence on May 14, 1948.
In the months surrounding
that date, Jewish forces expelled, or intimidated into flight, an estimated
750,000 Palestinians. A living, breathing, society that had existed
in Palestine for centuries was smashed and fragmented, and a new society
built on its ruins.
Few Palestinian families
lack a personal narrative of loss from that period -- an uncle killed,
or a branch of the family that fled north while the others fled east,
never to be reunited, or homes, offices, orchards and other property
seized. Ever since, Palestinians worldwide have commemorated May 15
as Nakba (Catastrophe) Day.
No ethical person would admonish
Jews to "forget the Holocaust." Indeed, recent decades have
witnessed victims of that terrible era not only remembering, but also
regaining paintings and financial assets seized by the Nazis -- and
justifiably so.
Other victims of mass wrongs
-- interned Japanese Americans, enslaved African Americans, and Armenians
subjected to a genocide that may have later convinced Hitler of the
feasibility of mass killings -- receive at least respectful consideration
of their cases, even while responses to their claims have differed.
Yet in dialogues with Israelis,
and some Americans, Palestinians are repeatedly admonished to "forget
the past," that looking back is "not constructive" and
"doesn't get us closer to a solution." Ironically, Palestinians
live the consequences of the past every day -- whether as exiles from
their homeland, or as members of an oppressed minority within Israel,
or as subjects of a brutal and violent military occupation.
In the West we are amply
reminded of the suffering of Jewish people in World War II. Our newspaper
featured several stories on local survivors of the Nazi holocaust around
Holocaust Remembrance Day (an Israeli national holiday that is widely
observed in the United States). My daughter has read at least one book
on the Nazi holocaust every year since middle school. Last year, in
ninth grade English literature alone, she read three. But we seldom
confront the impact of Israel's policies on Palestinians.
It is the "security
of the Jewish people" that has rationalized Israel's takeover of
Palestinian lands, both in the past in Israel, and more recently in
the occupied West Bank. There, most Palestinian children negotiate one
of the 500 Israeli checkpoints and other barriers to movement just to
reach school each day. Meanwhile, Israel's program of colonization of
the West Bank grinds ahead relentlessly, implanting ever more Israeli
settlers who must be "protected" from those Palestinians not
reconciled to the theft of their homes and fields.
The primacy of Jewish security
over rights of Palestinians -- to property, education, health care,
a chance to make a living, and, also to security -- is seldom challenged.
Unfortunately, remembering
the Nazi Holocaust -- something morally incumbent on all of us -- has
seemingly become entangled with, and even an instrument of, the amnesia
some would force on Palestinians. Israel is enveloped in an aura of
ethical propriety that makes it unseemly, even "anti-Semitic"
to question its denial of Palestinian rights.
As Israeli journalist Amira
Hass recently observed: "Turning the Holocaust into a political
asset serves Israel primarily in its fight against the Palestinians.
When the Holocaust is on one side of the scale, along with the guilty
(and rightly so) conscience of the West, the dispossession of the Palestinian
people from their homeland in 1948 is minimized and blurred."
What this demonstrates is
that memory is not just an idle capacity. Rather, who can remember,
and who can be made to forget, is, fundamentally, an expression of power.
Equally importantly, however,
memory can provide a blueprint for the future -- a vision of a solution
to seek, or an outcome to avoid. My Palestinian father grew up in Jerusalem
before Israel was founded and the Palestinians expelled, when Muslims,
Christians and Jews lived in peace and mutual respect. Recalling that
past provides a vision for an alternative future -- one involving equal
rights and tolerance, rather than the domination of one ethno-religious
group over others.
Thus, what Palestinians are
really being commanded is not just to forget their past, but instead
to forget their future, too. That they will never do.
George Bisharat
is professor of law at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.
He writes frequently about the Middle East.
This article appeared on
page E - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Digg
it! And spread the word!
Here is a unique chance to help this article to be read by thousands
of people more. You just Digg it, and it will appear in the home page
of Digg.com and thousands more will read it. Digg is nothing but an
vote, the article with most votes will go to the top of the page. So,
as you read just give a digg and help thousands more to read this article.
Click
here to comment
on this article