Discourse

in Israel During the Death of the Peace Process: An Investigation into an Israeli Orientalism in News Media and Academia
Abstract This study looks into the ways that the Israeli media and academia portray both the Palestinians and the peace process in the post-Oslo years, with a view to ascertaining the prevalent Israeli attitudes towards the Palestinians, taking the years from 2000 through 2005 as a sample. These years are important in assessing the political zeitgeist as they mark the closing era of the Oslo peace process, punctuated by the Camp David talks and the second Palestinian intifada. The research aims to look at how Israeli narratives regarding their neighbours are an expression of certain trends within Israeli society, coupled with the reporting of political developments. It is primarily looking at how the citizens of Israel see both the Palestinians and the nature of the Israel- Palestine conflict, and as such the study does not delve into the narratives that come from other Western pro-Israeli commentators or from the Jewish Diaspora. The focus on a nation, and more specifically certain voices within that nation, is in order to investigate the narratives that dominate within the society and conflict in question.
1. 2. 3. 4. The background and context 10 An exploration and analysis of the News Media 16 A study of Academia 27 The Hypothesis 34

The development and maintenance of every culture require the existence of another different and competing alter ego. The construction of identity ... involves establishing opposites and others whose actuality is always subject to the continuous interpretation and re-interpretation of their differences from us.1 - Edward W. Said

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been framed in many different ways by scholars and journalists trying to locate a common thread, a cohesive understanding of the protagonists motives and actions. Chronologically we can summarise the various stages of the conflict in uncontested categorical terms, though decisions on where to start and what to emphasize remain problematic. However the attempt to impose common grand narratives, sequential meta-stories which explain the desires and aims of the parties involved in terms of their fulfilment of pre-ordained roles, has characterised much of the coverage. This is a tempting and perhaps inevitable paradigm for reporters and commentators to succumb to, but such an approach leads to a framed view of the conflict, with nuances that run contrary to the practitioners established narrative ignored or downplayed. Our choice of language shapes the meaning and interpretation of our words, and it is surely impossible to have inherently neutral dialogue regarding these issues. If we can accept this truism; that dialogue is inherently loaded with meaning and subtext, and that it colours the way we imagine the conflict and informs our decision making, we can attempt to recognise the narratives, their character and structure. Some narratives may be so uncontroversial they barely register, as with the commonly-accepted notion that the holy sites in the region are of great importance to the three main monotheistic religions, or that Israel is somewhat unique politically and militarily among its neighbours. Some are more brazen and contentious, as with the depiction of the Palestinians as the irrational enemy, a narrative that is a subject of this study. Though the careful reader is just as surely informed by her own bias and prejudice, and thus an un-neutral description of the views of others is not feasible, it can be informative to explore the ways in which commentators paint a picture of the conflict. All art is propaganda, but it at least lacks a pretence of objectivity;
1 Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 2003), p. 332. 2

the artist takes pride in exhibiting her personal vision of the material world. Media commentary and academic scholarship, on the contrary, attempt to locate truth and relay the facts, with overt displays of preconceptions or bias the ultimate journalistic transgression. However, it has been argued that this new professionalism; the demand for impartiality in reporting, has led a more firmly entrenched worldview in that it sets the boundaries for acceptable debate to what can be gleaned from professional sources, such as government statements and the viewpoints of those with power. Dissent is encouraged as long as [it] remain[s] faithfully within the system of presuppositions and principles that constitute an elite consensus, a system so powerful as to be internalised largely without awareness.2 Assumptions which fit the conventional narrative are internalised, and thus deviation from these basic underlying assumptions is only accepted within the narrow framework of conventional common knowledge; Daniel Hallins sphere of legitimate controversy.3 The media can thus become self-regulating, providing a coherent spectrum of ideas about the perceived issues, all of which fit roughly into a paradigm shared by (supposedly) all. Nevertheless, the media is a complex institution, and analysis is further complicated when taking into account regional differences, and the functioning of the media in national contexts. This may be down to economic considerations, as with the limited possibilities for third world media outlets, or it may be due to societal peculiarities themselves. Thus it is important to distinguish between the various ways mass media can function, and recognise that no one analysis will hold true for all media outlets that we encounter. Parameters In this study I will be focusing on the Israeli media, specifically during the years 2000-2003 as a case study, and with a spotlight on the peace process and Israeli interactions with the Palestinians. Firstly, my parameters for the research are as follows: 1. The raw material will be taken from Israeli news media and in a broader sense official Israeli government public announcements, with the two having some obvious overlaps. 2. The sources in question will be online, specifically Ynet, Jerusalem Post Online, and Haaretz Online. Each are English language and have online archives for the period in question. 3. In order to focus the research, certain important incidents from the period will be selected, and related news articles will be compared to see if some form of Israeli narrative can be identified. 4. In order to provide context I will employ articles from the international press (BBC, Reuters, etc) so as to compare, however these are not the focus of the
2 Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (London: Vintage, 1994), p. 302. 3 This sphere surrounds the Sphere of Consensus, the region encompassing social objects not regarded by journalists and most of society as controversial. Outside Legitimate Controversy however, comes the Sphere of Deviance, the realm of views simply outside the boundaries of acceptable thought, deemed by journalists and societys political mainstream as unworthy of being heard. Daniel C. Hallin, The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam (London: University of California Press, 1989), p. 116. 3

The reasons for these parameters are primarily to do with the ease of access and understanding they allow for both myself and the reader. As I will be looking nuances of language I have focused only on English pieces where possible, rather than allowing any of the meaning to be lost through inept translation. The purpose of this dissertation is to ascertain the prevalent Israeli attitudes towards the Palestinians, taking the years from 2000 through 2005 as my sample. These years are important in assessing the political zeitgeist as they mark the closing era of the Oslo peace process, punctuated by the Camp David talks and the second Palestinian intifada. My research aims to look at how Israeli narratives regarding their neighbours are an expression of certain trends within Israeli society, coupled with the reporting of political developments. The research is primarily looking at how the citizens of Israel see both the Palestinians and the nature of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and as such I am not looking at what other Western pro-Israeli commentators or other Diaspora Jews have expressed. My focus on a nation, and more specifically certain voices within that nation, may seem overly exclusive and arbitrary. The reasons for my choice of focus are related to the nature of the society and conflict in question. Israelis, having constructed a strong and well publicised national identity, see themselves and their state as culturally, ethnically, and politically distinct. To be known as the Jewish State, a cultural homogeneity has to have been encouraged to some degree, and indeed the Israeli source of national pride and patriotism is more tangible and identifiable than the vague notions of liberty or equality that underpin other nationalisms. The IDF is a peoples army in which all Israeli Jews (other than ultra-Orthodox) are expected to serve, contributing to a heightened awareness and even reverence of the military. Israels national dogma even has a specific term, definite history, and set of principles, characteristics lacking in even the famously strong American patriotism. Zionism can be called the defining ideology of Israel, and it binds Israels defenders, including a large majority of its population, together, constructing for them a common history and narrative for the future. It is for this reason that the views of Israelis living, and participating, in the state which espouses and promotes this set of doctrines are of such importance in identifying the framework they have helped to create. It is justified to focus only on a national population because they themselves have sought to emphasise that paradigm, be it as us versus them or participants in the Zionist project. Israels large Jewish immigrant population, its short history (as a modern nation state), and its political idiosyncrasy as the Jewish State all contribute to this. Thus the focus of this shall be the Israeli perspective and narrative; that of the participants themselves, as opposed to their sympathisers, allies, or enemies.

study and so shall only be used to indicate what differences, if any, the Israeli narrative has with international sources. Whether we accept the international sources as a more balanced or fair account is a separate question. 5. A further source will come from published academic articles from journals within Israel, or by Israelis.

Possible Shortcomings Naturally, even though I maintain that a dominant framework within which the competing Israeli narratives may function can be ascertained, the evidence used here to identify it is unfortunately narrow and not fully representative. Due to linguistic, technological, and space constraints, I have elected to focus on the online (English language, or translated from Hebrew) print media, and academic sources surrounding this, which of course leaves out television media, the Hebrew-only press, sources unavailable online (which are thankfully less frequent now than only a few years ago), and other representations of Israeli consciousness which your humble researcher has been unable to address. The reader should bear this in mind when assessing my conclusions. The analysis will be divided into four chapters, followed by my conclusions. The chapters and their individual purposes are as follows: 1. The background and context in order to chronologically ground my research, provide a basic history as proves relevant, and to predict any problems that may occur. 2. An exploration and analysis of the News Media Collating and quoting from newspaper articles on key moments during the run up to the Al-Aqsa Intifada and incidents after. Attitudes to Camp David, the outbreak of violence, and the behaviour of the state apparatus will be assessed. The purpose will be to identify terms and compare their usage and implications. The main newspaper studied will be Haaretz, as being the generally accepted most liberal mainstream daily, it can provide us with the limits of debate on the left, or peace camp. 3. A study of Academia Looking at academic journals, opinion pieces, and explicit justifications for Israeli behaviour. We will attempt to locate the debate and development of narratives towards the Palestinians and the nature of Israel itself. 4. The Hypothesis Assessing whether there is an Israeli Orientalist complex. With reference primarily to Edward Said, we will see if a coherent Israeli narrative can be identified. Is it a simple story of actors behaving as their pre- ordained roles, or are events and reactions to them more random? The study shall thus be both empirical, in so far as these limited case studies may be construed to be representative of a larger trend, and analytical, as the study shall be assessing the prevalence of an Israeli Orientalism in the outlets of relevant thought on the subject. Further to this, it shall be advancing an original hypothesis that ties together the specific nature of modern Zionism with the consequent delineation of linguistic space in Israeli discourse. My primary sources will serve as the first port of enquiry into Israeli attitudes, with secondary literature also employed for comparative analysis. For my own personal analysis an attempt at a more holistic approach will be made, and so I shall look at how theories of social psychology and the securitization of threats can apply, along with the application of Edward Saids Orientalism thesis to this specific arena. In keeping with this, an attempt at a
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deconstruction of language and meaning in commentary on the Palestinians and the peace process will be my focus. Background The timeline I have chosen to focus on is important for three reasons: It marks the culmination of the first attempt at direct negotiations between the antagonists It is important for Israel as the peace process began as a reaction to continued and focused Palestinian resistance and violence, and marked a change in official Israeli policy regarding the Arab enemy, with a consequent change in the public narrative. Thus it was a break in the status quo an Israeli reaction to new circumstances and provides an interesting historical test case. The peace process (starting with Madrid in 1991 and ending, temporarily at least, with Taba in 2001) as an experimental policy provided Israelis on all sides of the political spectrum with an opportunity to test their opinions of the Palestinians and the idea of negotiation itself . As this new chance for analysis was represented through the Israeli press and other organs at the time, it is easy for a researcher to view both related primary sources, and the direct wave of Israeli public opinion. Crucially, during the Second Intifada certain segments of Israeli society began to gain more prominence due to their foresight in predicting disaster for the peace process, and thus the Israeli press became far more homogenous in their treatment of the interactions with the Palestinians. Its important to note that this is a selective and not necessarily representative period, and thus conclusions we can make from any changing Israeli attitudes may not be generally applicable, nor should they be seen as descriptive of the overall Israeli psyche or that of the Zionist project. However, the narrative patterns that can be gleaned from the Israeli media and wider society in this period may be indicative of a wider trend, and can help us understand the Israeli perception of a still-unresolved conflict. My terminology also falls short in appearing to ascribe some sort of hive mind to all the inhabitants of Israel regarding these issues, and thus wildly over-generalising. If such an impression is left by the following dissertation, my defence is my desire for concision and linguistic brevity. Naturally, Israeli society boasts a complex and diverse market of ideas, even among solely the Jewish Zionist segment. 20% of Israels population are Arab Palestinian Israelis, and a further 10% are ultra-Orthodox Jews, generally hostile to Zionism. Thus when I speak of a coherent Zionist narrative in Israel these voices, among others, are left out. What my use of Israeli or Zionist narrative must be shorthand for, then, is the identifiable dominant trends of thought during our time period. This is also why the mass media serves as the initial focus of the study. Though it is elitist, professionalised, and otherwise limited, it represents some form of the prevalent ideological trends that manage to surface in Israel. Henceforth, the reader will hopefully forgive my unspecific terminology for these reasons. What concerns this study are the predominant trends and the narratives given primacy by the media, academia, the Israeli state, and thus to some degree the Israeli people.
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A Brief History The context of this period should be outlined firstly. Unfortunately space permits only a cursory discussion of the events that led up to the point at which this study begins, so a degree of awareness of Israeli history is presumed of the reader. For brevitys sake, the Oslo years shall refer to 1993-2001 henceforth, unless otherwise indicated. The 1987 Palestinian intifada, or uprising, occurred during the 20th year of Israels occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, caused mainly by perceived continuing injustice suffered by the Palestinians under Israels totalitarian control.4 Relations between the two communities, Jewish Israelis and Arab Palestinians, were extremely poor, with Palestinian opinion being that we are desperate ... There is no political solution, ... unless we do [something] ourselves, nobody is going to care.5 The violence continued up until the Madrid Conference of 1991 which marked the return of the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organisation) from their exile in Tunis. During these four years 164 Israelis were killed, and 2162 Palestinians.6 Politically, Israel remained dominated by the Likud Party, who under Menachem Begin had come to power in 1977, breaking continuous leftist rule for the first time in Israels history. Begins political revolution (known as the Mahapakh) was important in introducing a new acceptability for overtly colonialist dialogue in Israeli parlance, Begin himself having gone to extraordinary lengths to dehumanise the Palestinians ... describ[ing] them in a speech in the Knesset as beasts walking on two legs.7 Though a peace agreement had been signed with Egypt in 1979, and later Jordan in 1994, the post-Six Day War period was characterised by continued violence, with the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 both successful deployments of an increasingly well equipped and well trained IDF. Thus the attempt to build a peace process that emerged in the wake of the bloody intifada was a palpable change of direction in official Israeli policy, but yet was neither a surprise nor an isolated initiative. By 1993, when the Oslo Accords were signed marking the official commencement of the peace process, 89% of Israelis were in favour of negotiations, with 71% thinking it possible to achieve peace with the Arabs.8 When forced to choose between initiating peace talks, and strengthening military capacity, 64% chose peace talks, though this was a 10% drop from previous years.9 So a significant majority of Israeli public opinion favoured this approach in the early 90s, and yet less than a decade later support was to end, with a new Palestinian Intifada and the election in Israel of the right wing Likud government under Ariel Sharon. This study aims to look at some of the perceptions that helped to fuel this change, and to assess the significance of underlying assumptions versus perceived political developments. The impact of the failure of talks and the lack of a partner for peace narratives will be investigating. Above all, the use of language and the shaping of public discourse is our most important indicator of shifting attitudes.
4 Israel Shahak, Commentary, Middle East International (26 May, 1990), 365 (1): p. 24. 5 Raja Shehadeh, quoted in Jerusalem Post (15 January, 1988). 6 BTselem, Statistics: Fatalities in the First Intifada, (http://www.btselem.org/english/statistics/first_Intifada_Tables.asp). Accessed on 30 March 2010. 7 Amnon Kapeliouk, Begin and the Beasts, New Statesman, June 25, 1982. 8 Asher Arian, Israel and the Peace Process: Security and Political Attitudes in 1993, JCSS Memorandum No. 39 (http://www.inss.org.il/upload/%28FILE%291192437876.pdf), February 1993, p. 7. Accessed on 30 March 2010. 9 Ibid. 7

The internal developments during these years will be individually addressed, but a brief look at the international context is also instructive. The break-up of the Soviet bloc, and its final collapse in 1991, removed the primary patron of the nearby Arab states, leading to what Shlomo Avineri calls the deglobalization of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and thus the enhanced chances for peaceful negotiation as he sees it.10 There was undoubtedly a change in global security and international relations theory, with the bipolar Cold War world suddenly history. The Madrid Conference (1991) was held weeks before the dissolution of the USSR, with a stated new understanding of international communication and mediation; a spirit of good will and mutual respect ... the peace process can begin to break down the mutual suspicions and mistrust that perpetuate the conflict.11 However tensions in the region remained high, with Iraqi Scud missiles launched into Israel within days of the outbreak of the Gulf War in early 1991. Israel declined to respond in kind not out of a newly found pacifism, but because its main sponsor, the US, thought it better to keep the war as limited as possible. Nevertheless, internationally there was an expectation and consensus that negotiations for an end to the conflict, based on the land for peace doctrine laid out in UNSC resolutions 242 and 338, were overdue and necessary. The initiation of the peace process changed certain facts on the ground, with the PLO given a degree of autonomy and self-government for the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. However, the slow death of the Oslo Accords was, it has been argued, due to the fact that the primary actors in the situation had not changed their views. The dove, Yitzhak Rabin, continued to expand settlements12 and implement a military division of the West Bank.13 Overall the number of settlers increased by at least 65% during the Oslo years, an unprecedented 14 growth, which led to a belief that Israel (or the PLO, in many of their obligations) had acted contrary to the true spirit, if not the letter, of the Accords. The continuing failure of the peace process was felt on both sides of the divide, with violence permeating the 90s and making a mockery of the high minded declarations of a just and lasting peace. There were attacks by dissident Palestinians and Israelis, and officially- sanctioned violence seemed unperturbed by any supposed limitations that Oslo had called for. In 1995, a hard-line Israeli assassinated Prime Minister Rabin, and after a spate of Hamas suicide attacks in 1996, Likuds Benjamin Netanyahu narrowly beat Shimon Peres of the Labor Party for the post of Prime Minister. Disillusionment with the Accords made itself clear in Israeli public opinion, with support for returning occupied lands in exchange for peace hovering only around 12-38% in 1996, and staying more or less constant for the rest of the Oslo period.15
10 Shlomo Avineri, Israel and the end of the cold war: the shadow has faded, Brookings Review (Spring 1993), Vol. 11: p. 1. 11 United States and Soviet Union, Letter Of Invitation To the Madrid Peace Conference, (http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=430&CategoryId=10), 1991. Accessed on 30 March 2010. 12 Israel Moves to Expand Settlements / Palestinians condemn decision, Associated Press, (26 January 1995). 13 Dianna Cahn, Rabin Wants Separation in the West Bank, The Daily Gazette, (30 November 1994). 14 Camille Mansour, Israels Colonial Impasse, Journal of Palestine Studies (Summer 2001), Vol. 30, No. 4: p. 86. 15 Institute for National Security Studies, Israeli Opinion Regarding Peace with the Palestinians, (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Society_&_Culture/ispopal_87to07.html), 2005-2007. Accessed on 29 March 2010. 8

The culmination of the process itself, which by this point was an attempt to rescue what many were arguing were hollow and failed peace efforts, came in July 2000 when US President Bill Clinton called a summit in Camp David, Maryland, to hammer out the final status negotiations that Oslo had stipulated. Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat both faced domestic opposition and growing frustration with the lack of progress, especially as progress towards any nascent Palestinian state was minimal. The meeting ended in failure, and months later the fragile peace process collapsed, with the Al-Aqsa intifada sparked by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharons physical assertion of Israeli control of the Temple Mount. This Second Intifada proved far more violent and bloody than the first, with the death toll estimated at over 5500 Palestinians and 1000 Israelis.16 It hardened popular Israeli attitudes towards the Palestinians, with the Peace Camp losing support in Israel and as civil and political force. This renewal of violence has continued, with no official end ever declared for the Al-Aqsa Intifada. The latter years, from July 2000 and Clintons Camp David talks onwards through the beginning of the Intifada are where this study commences. In the next chapter, where key moments in the post-Oslo years will be discussed with the aid of news media articles, it will be possible to shed more light on the precise trends in Israeli elite and public opinion. The question to consider is whether a discernable Israeli narrative, either factually based or otherwise, informed the parameters of discourse and thus the public perceptions of their Arab neighbours and the peace process itself. This will be explored through a reading of period newspaper articles in conjunction with a critical look at the corresponding events and the dialogue employed to explain them. A Study of the News Media Israels media, like its society at large, is diverse and largely free. It is, of course, structured in various ways, and so the news outlets I will be focusing on come from different sections of the broader Israeli news media. The Nature of the Israeli Media Haaretz, with a relatively small daily circulation of 72 000, is an influential Israeli paper catering to the political and economic elites, as well as other sections of the Israeli intelligentsia. As Israels liberal beacon, it is seen to serve as both public forum and chronicle of a religious and political movement that has, for good or ill, transformed a region and consumed the world.17 Gideon Levy, perhaps Israels premier left wing journalist, has said in working at Haaretz he is less constrained in his punditry than most columnists are in the United States and Europe For these reasons it serves as an excellent medium
16 BTselem, Statistics Fatalities, 2008, (http://www.btselem.org/English/Statistics/Casualties.asp). Accessed on 11/4/10. 17 Stephen Glain, Haaretz, Israels Liberal Beacon, The Nation, (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070924/glain/3), 6 September 2006, p. 3. 9

through which to investigate the prevalent Israeli liberal opinion, unrestricted by state censorship or overt political repression within the society. However, the argument that Levy, Noam Chomsky, and other activists have made is that papers like Haaretz and much of the Israeli media have a great degree of self-censorship, a non-hierarchical form of media filtering that results from working within the Israeli consensus. Levy, a Haaretz journalist, argues that the Israeli medias self-censorship comes from a desire to please the readership, which entails a process of dehumanising and demonising the Palestinians ... [and] really hiding the occupation.18 He claims that the Palestinian side of the story is heavily twisted, and essentially obfuscated by the Israeli Zionist narrative that most of the popular press promulgates. Thus the censorship, Levy claims, is not imposed by the government and carried out at their behest, but is a the result of a tacit consensus in Israeli society that newspapers must work within if they are to maintain a readership. So Israelis are not exposed at all to the Palestinian narrative, maintains Levy, and for example nobody makes the connection between terror and occupation. For most Israelis there is terror because the Palestinians were born to kill, not because there is an occupation. So those goals [of solidifying an Israeli narrative consistent with the more extreme elements of Zionism] were achieved mainly by the Israeli media.19 That Haaretz reporting has been found, contrary to its adversarial image, to consistently report from the Israeli side, with a more frequent pro-Israeli slant than otherwise,20 is a partial testament to this, but the focus of this investigation is to assess if and how it forms part of an overlying framework to limit discourse by delineating the boundaries of reasonable debate. As has been shown, particularly by Neil Kressel21, attempts to assess bias in the media and to conduct image versus reality investigations often rely on wildly varying and subjective criteria of what the idealised unbiased media should be, and as such I will try not to venture in to discussions of the misrepresentation of facts. Rather, I will be, subjectively, assessing the dialogue and terms used to frame the conflict and the Other. To provide a more complete image I will be relying, to a lesser degree, on the Jerusalem Post, an English language-only daily that caters mainly to expats and non-Hebrew speakers, with a small but also influential readership inside Israel. Generally regarded as to the right of Haaretz politically, and within the centre of mainstream Israeli politics22, it espouses a more prevalent Israeli viewpoint in its opinion pieces and editorials. Haaretz We shall first address Haaretzs coverage of several important events in the peace process years, in order to assess the validity of Levys accusations. The Camp David peace talks in July 2000 are probably the key turning point in our period of study, with the failure of negotiations leading to Palestinian frustration and a second intifada. Haaretz reported in
18 Gideon Levy, in interview with the author, 2010 (Included in Appendix). 19 Ibid. 20 Matt Viser, Attempted objectivity: An analysis of the New York Times and Ha'aretz and their portrayals of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics (2003), Vol. 8, No. 4: pp. 114-120. 21 Neil J. Kressel, Biased Judgements of Media Bias: A Case Study of the Arab-Israeli Dispute, Political Psychology (June 1987), Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 211-227. 22 BBC News, The Press in Israel, BBC News (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4969714.stm), 08/05/2006. Accessed 24/04/2010. 10

detail on the negotiations themselves and the aftermath, with a range of opinion pieces from both hawks and doves. In studying a sample of Haaretz articles from the period, and in order to assess the claims made by Levy and others that the Israeli liberal press is self- censoring and depicts Palestinians in an Orientalist, colonialist manner, the study shall endeavour to locate instances of grouping in the media dialogue where Palestinians are collectively described as a monolithic, alien, and fundamentally irrational entity in short, an Other. Naturally, attempts to ascertain the meanings of, or intentions behind, words are subjective, and uses of language in different contexts will suggest different things to different readers. Nevertheless, what Mr. Levy is asserting, and I am investigating, is that the parameters within which Israeli journalists must work are definable and narrow, with some exceptions. Therefore the intentions behind the use of certain language when describing the Palestinians are not the subject of investigation, but rather the evidence that this language provides of a certain framework in the media; an Israeli Zionist narrative. For instance, during the Camp David peace talks the negotiations were aimed at creating a viable Palestinian state, with the borders based on the internationally agreed Green Line, a ceasefire border which marked Israels territory before the 1967 war. The land, or at least the amount of land, on which a Palestinian state was to be created had thus been pre- determined, what was necessary was merely to negotiate the exact borders and character of the state. The majority (55%) of Israeli public opinion acknowledged that Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) should not be part of Israel, as they were not Israeli territory.23 However, in the Israeli media, almost without exception, the negotiations whereby Israel would relinquish its hold on occupied territory were characterised as Israeli concessions, as if parts of Israel were being conceded for peace. Dan Margalit, writing before the eventual failure of the talks, proclaims that [Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Barak has given his consent at Camp David to far-reaching concessions, while the best course of action for [Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser] Arafat is to study these concessions and, especially, to weigh the alternative. Barak has already announced that his flexibility will disappear if he is not given an affirmative reply.24 Daniel Sobelman echoes this formulation after the talks had ended, eulogising that Barak had dared to offer President Yasser Arafat a deal with far more concessions than could be reasonably expected.25 The implicit message, articulated by these moderate doves in Israels liberal beacon, is that Israel is making painful concessions by following international law, only to be met by Arab rejectionism (this ism is now almost exclusively associated with the Palestinians in modern international relations discourse) and irrationality. Of course, concessions would and are made on both sides in negotiations, otherwise the talks are really a dictat. However, if Palestinians were to accept less than the full amount of territory for their state afforded them by international law and the global consensus, it is difficult to see how this would be an Israeli, rather than a Palestinian concession. Similarly, before talks had started, Moshe Arens writing in Haaretz warned of the implications of the far reaching concessions that Barak was about to make, aghast that he seemed to be willing to cede almost all of Judea and Samaria, including the Jordan
23 Public Opinion Research of Israel, Israeli Opinion Regarding Peace with the Palestinians, (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Society_&_Culture/ispopal_87to07.html), September 2003. Accessed on 29 March 2010. 24 Dan Margalit, No leader will offer a better deal, Haaretz, 24/07/2000. 25 Daniel Sobelman, Israel offered PA half of Old City, Haaretz, 22/09/2000. 11

Valley, to Arafat ... [and was] ready to give up Israeli control.26 Arens, of course, considers such defeatist diplomacy as akin to surrender, but if we look objectively at the situation, as far as international law will allow, this seems an obvious mischaracterisation. Returning land won illegally through war is only seen as a concession by a rogue state, who considers that the land should have been theirs anyway. Internationally, we recognise that returning land that was gained outside the boundaries of global political norms is an expected and necessary move for the aggressor to take; an obligation on the occupier. Talk of India maintaining control of Bangladesh after 1971, or the US annexing Iraq to its control after 2003, would have been justifiably regarded as breaches of the rules of states, as military conquest is no longer considered a just way to acquire territory. Implicit in Arens indignation, the like of which was commonplace in the media at this time, is the assumption that Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, in other words Biblical Eretz (Greater) Israel, are de facto to sovereign territory of the modern State of Israel. This forms an important part of the modern Zionist narrative, and doesnt even necessarily stem from Judaism and a religious belief in the gift from God, but rather a secular conviction in the Jewish national history of the region; the argument that we have lived here for more than 2000 years. If such a claim is taken as pre-existing fact, as I argue it is within the boundaries of Zionist discourse, then to relinquish any of the land is indeed a painful concession. Indeed the Oslo Peace Process, in stipulating that neither party was, by entering into the Agreement, to be deemed to have renounced or waived any of its existing rights, claims or positions27 in fact signalled a most crucial concession by the Palestinians as they had granted a legitimacy to an Israeli claim on land that was near-unanimously regarded as Palestinian; the broadly affirmed claim of the Palestinians to the occupied territories [had been] put on a par with the broadly denied title of Israel to them.28 Thus a linguistic nuance already prevalent in the Israeli discourse acquired legal legitimacy; the territories were now disputed rather than occupied. This terminology remains a staple in Israeli editorialising about the territories, with a liberal/conservative consensus especially apparent in the post-Camp David years.293031 An objective reading of the negotiations or diplomatic record is not what would prove any nefarious Israeli scheming, such conspiratorial behaviour is relatively marginal. The importance of the dialogue surrounding these issues is that it enables discussion where none would exist otherwise, and curtails the possibility of even conceptualising an opposing narrative. Would generous Israeli concessions be a topic for debate, much less a seemingly self-evident reality, if they were not created as the starting point for discussion? Others may debate as to why Arafat rejected the offer at Camp David, but importantly the Israeli press was united in the characterisation of the negotiations as historic concessions on the Israeli side, where it became clear that the Palestinians could not really be negotiated with if they were refuse such generous offers. This is quite literally the limits of debate that we find,
26 Moshe Arens, Heading for a Crash Landing, Haaretz, 11/07/2000. 27 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip (Washington DC: 28 September 1995), Article XXXI. 28 Norman G. Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (London: Verso, 2003), pp. 172-173. 29 Disputed that is, that Israel has a legitimate claim over to sovereignty over these lands - Caroline Glick, Without Prejudice, Jerusalem Post, 23/01/2004. 30 We should have an awareness of the lexicon and the proper terminology is disputed territories - Yoel Marcus, The Horse is out of the Stable, Haaretz, 06/06/2003. 31 Settlers described as knowing that their presence in disputed territory was controversial - Dror Nissan, Give Us a Hug, Ynet, 09/03/05. 12

and such limits appear narrow given the existence of the Palestinian perspective, even as reported by the British press.32 More telling, as far as the limits of discourse go, is the attitude to negotiating itself. Arens, in the same article, mocks the notion of creating an agreement with the Palestinians, stating that there is ample proof that whatever agreement is achieved at Camp David will only be a way-station for further Palestinian claims against Israel, that anything achieved will merely be an interim agreement, and no more, and that the notion that Israel can negotiate with the Palestinians is a dangerous illusion.33 In Arens language is a fear not just of the Palestinian enemy, but of conceding to even have negotiations overseen by an impartial arbiter, in this case the United States. He makes it clear: Summit meetings, that inevitably move the United States from a position of supporting its Israeli ally to one of arbitrator in the Israeli -Palestinian conflict, do not serve Israel's best interests.34 Israels best interests, as always, are defined by the beholder. Here we see that the very idea of having negotiations on an equal footing is harmful to Israel, that it somehow is in itself a concession to deign to speak with Palestinians as equals, and that this is primarily because the Palestinians themselves are inherently untrustworthy. This could perhaps be seen as the more hawkish view within the Israeli media. We shall now address the argument of the doves. Zeev Schiff, a veteran Haaretz journalist, wrote an interesting post-Camp David article where he reminisced about fellow Israeli militarist-turned-dove, Yehoshafat Harkabi. Schiff and Harkabi pre-suppose the necessity of equal-footed negotiations, though they maintain that Israel must exercise the utmost caution, as the Palestinians have violated every agreement, and we should not have any faith in them.35 Schiff is reliably comfortable with describing the Palestinians as a monolith to be outwitted or foiled, mentioning Arab hatred of Judaism, but also expressing pity for the Palestinians, lamenting that it was very depressing to see the Palestinians return to square one.36 The language of compromises and concessions is emphasised, again marking a key staple of Israeli dialogue regarding Camp David and negotiations in general that both sides, being ostensibly equal partners for peace, need to make sacrifices and allowances to achieve a settlement. Whilst on the face of it this a reasonable and self-evident statement, it ignores that the Palestinians have no land or possessions which they can concede, and the Israelis are not being asked to concede any of their sovereign territory. Thus, though negotiation is the appropriate nomenclature, the accompanying concession and compromise would only follow if both partners had something to offer, and thus equal standing. This paradigm was dutifully kept to by both the liberal opinion pieces and news reporting, where Barak and Shlomo Ben-
32 The coverage of Palestinians cheering their leader's refusal to yield to Israeli demands that he drop the Palestinian claim of sovereignty over east Jerusalem was not refuted or addressed by Israeli media, merely ignored. Clinton Upbeat after Camp David, BBC News (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/853350.stm), 27 July 2000. Accessed 22/03/10. 33 Arens, Heading for a Crash Landing. 34 Ibid. 35 Zeev Schiff, On Making Peace Despite the Risks, Haaretz, 04/08/2000. 36 Ibid. 13

Amis (Israeli Chief Negotiator) efforts were reported as compromise as opposed to the Palestinian, or sometimes merely Arafats, intractable and disappointing stubbornness, with Palestinians insisting on their positions and when faced with Israeli leeway, making it plain that this was not enough.37 Again the factual record of the negotiations themselves is both hard to ascertain and unnecessary to our study, what is instructive is the faithfulness to the Israeli narrative of negotiations in general both sides are equally obliged to make concessions, and yet the Palestinian side, as is their nature, continue to be untrustworthy and intransigent. The Jerusalem Post In the Jerusalem Post the editorial pages espouse similar conventions, with Baraks Camp David offer (which was entirely verbal, with no written record of it save what was put in the retrospectives of the negotiators, years later) described as, variously, extremely generous, the maximum concessions, and the end of the road. The emphasis is on Israels honest attempts to go as far as humanly possible in order to make peace, and Arafats refusal either unrealistic perceptions or an unwillingness to make peace with Israel under any terms.38 The reluctant conclusion is that the result of the Camp David summit is that neither a left- wing nor right-wing government will be capable of achieving peace with the Palestinians in the foreseeable future.39 This is again predicated on an offer of which the details were never released to the press, where only Baraks team and US negotiator Dennis Ross asserted that the offer was the best that could possibly be made, and where even the post- negotiations stated offer fell significantly short of the basic requirements of international law. The Israeli media, from right to left, concluded that the definite proof had finally been unearthed; it was now clear that Arafat would never agree to peace, and that he and the Palestinians could not be trusted as partners for anything other continued war. As to an analysis of post-peace process events, One sadly comes to the conclusion that hatred of the other - irrational, unreasoning and completely unjustified - lies at the root of the violence. And such hatred does not respond to the rational question of Why? For in our most dangerous world, their irrational answer to the question of Why? is Because!40 Whereas the author reasons, in contrast, that; I think that there is little that can be done by Israel to answer the "Why?" question. Misplaced sympathies with the plight of our enemies, illusory dreams and false cease-fires and meetings, have all led nowhere. We need to protect ourselves and sit tight and wait for a change in the mindset of our enemies.41
37 Aluf Benn and Yossi Verter, Summit fails; PM says dream of peace still lives, Haaretz, 26/07/2000. 38 Editorial, Best Chance for Peace, Jerusalem Post, 03/08/2000. 39 Ibid. 40 Berel Wein, Why? Jerusalem Post, 05/10/2001. 41 Ibid. 14

What should be made clear is that a disparity does exist between Israeli public opinion and the limits of discourse in the media. Public opinion in Israel tends to be more dovish on key issues, and yet, especially during our period of study, support for right wing rejectionist parties and repressive policies continued to grow. Furthermore, those in Israel who do oppose further settlement construction, and even support a major withdrawal, tend to think that their position is that of a small minority. 60% of Israelis support dismantling most of the settlements as part of a peace agreement, while only half that think that such a position is the mainstream in Israeli society.42 The liberal Israeli media, along with other avenues of opinion dissemination in Israel, manage to perpetuate a narrative which states that the peace industry and draft-evaders are the problem, and primarily that evidently, there is no partner.43 This narrative is the arena in which cognitive discourse can function, it defines how Israelis can speak about themselves and the Palestinians, and yet it does not necessarily represent the opinion of the majority of Israel. However, it is there, it is the only discussion Israelis see and actively participate in, and so it defines how the society functions. Academia Certainly, Western academia has been replete with orientalist explanations for the Arab world and its interactions with the West, with the classic modern text being Raphael Patais The Arab Mind (1976). An attempt to understand, or describe, the characteristics of Arab culture that put it at odds with the West has been at the forefront of academic dialogue on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Much as has been shown with the news media in dealing with the Arabs, Western and Israeli academics have ruminated in highly ideological terms about the modern Arab mind, [talking of] its alleged propensity to violence, its culture of shame, the historical overdetermination of Islam, its political semantics, its degeneration vis--vis Judaism and Christianity.44 Israeli academia, much like the media, is largely free from government control and censorship, and can boast of a globally renowned and well funded base of universities and academic think tanks. It is, however, of marginal influence and public presence compared to the media, and thus contributes less to the formation and justification of an Israeli national identity. In what we can garner from the academic influence upon societal narratives, it is best to focus on the developments in the 1990s and 2000s, the rise of and backlash against the New Historians, and the growing importance of Israeli academic discourse in the English speaking world. Naturally academia as a subject of study is both narrower than the media, in that it is specialised and isolated from public consumption, and broader, as the various disciplines concerned with our subject of study; politics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, literature, and history, allow for a greater range of perspectives and comparisons when assessing an Israeli Orientalism. Again, unfortunately, this study will have to limit itself to a few scattered and isolated examples from each.
42 Alvin Richman, Israelis Public Support for Dismantling Most Settlements has risen to a Five-Year High, World Public Opinion, (http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brmiddleeastnafricara/659.php?nid=&id=&pnt=659&lb), 15/04/2010. Accessed 21/04/2010. 43 Ari Shavit, Left, Right, Left, Haaretz, 17/09/2009. 44 Edward W. Said, Culture & Imperialism (London: Vintage, 1994), p. 314. 15

Debates within Zionism The academic debate regarding the Palestinians, the conflict, and the question of Israeli identity itself came to be defined by the rise to prominence in the late 1980s, upon opening of new archival material relating to Israels inception, of the New Historians, such as Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim, and Ilan Papp, and subsequently their traditionalist opponents, primarily Efraim Karsh, Dan Schueftan, and Arnon Sofer. The debate over Zionism itself formed a part of this, but the lines have not been clearly delineated, with New Historian and revisionist Benny Morris anything but a Post-Zionist. In summary, the argument of the New Historians was that much of Israeli historiography was flawed, and it served to create an artificial national story and identity friendly to the interests of the more extreme elements of expansionist Zionism. This concept was sufficiently radical to transform the landscape of Israeli academia from the late 1980s until recently, with the traditional defence of Zionism as instrumental and necessary for the survival of the Jewish people having re- asserting its dominance in the wake of supposed Palestinian intransigence. In addition, a large part of radical secularism, a significant force in Israeli society, has been enveloped in the Jabotinsky tradition of Zionism that has become mainstream; the understanding that the sovereign state need only nominally to be founded on Judaism, and that Israel is really just culturally Jewish rather than religiously, as it no longer can be purely ethnically so. As such, radical critiques of the Zionist narrative can often remain within the overarching doctrine that Zionism, for all its flaws, is a crucial defining part of Israeli, and even pan- Jewish, identity. Benny Morris perfectly captures the modern critical-defence of Zionism, positing that The whole Zionist project is apocalyptic. It exists within hostile surroundings and in a certain sense its existence is unreasonable ... [but it] was not a mistake. The desire to establish a Jewish state here was a legitimate one, a positive one. But given the character of Islam and given the character of the Arab nation, it was a mistake to think that it would be possible to establish a tranquil state here that lives in harmony with its surroundings.45 The character of the Arab nation remains in the new discourse, especially with the self described left-wing Morris, who goes on to explain the deeper causes of Arab terrorism; namely a world whose values are different. A world in which human life doesn't have the same value as it does in the West, in which freedom, democracy, openness and creativity are alien ... Arab tribal culture [is] barbarian, ... a very sick society [which] has to be contained.46 Morris rejects the idea that Israeli society and scholarship exhibit Orientalist and functionally racist traits towards the Arabs, charging that on the contrary, Arab intolerance
45 Benny Morris, in interview with Ari Shavit, Survival of the Fittest? An Interview with Benny Morris, Haaretz, 10/01/04. 46 Ibid. 16

of the Jewish State is a xenophobic, Muslim rejection of the other which has existed throughout Muslim history.47 A key discussion among the historians is the events of 1948, the birth of Israel and Zionisms founding myth as Ilan Papp calls it. The debate, again, is primarily among Israeli historians and concerns itself with what happened in Israels founding War of Independence, how the refugee problem came to be, and the Arab war aims, which by extension often becomes a discussion of the Arab character. The debate is key to the entire Zionist narrative, with 1948 being Israels triumphant War of Independence, while for Arab Palestinians it marks the Nakba the Catastrophe. Thus, the debate cuts to the core of Israels image of itself.48 The new findings published in Morriss, Papps, and Shlaims books had a profound effect on the nascent peace process, and dialogue within Israel. No longer could the traditional narrative simply ignore issues like the Palestinian refugee problem, and indeed the new affirmation of a Palestinian narrative led to demands for recognition of the plight of the refugees at Camp David and negotiations since. Instead, a new, more hard line approach was taken, one which confronted the Palestinian narrative in order that it be made compatible, even complementary, with the Zionist understanding. Morris himself, especially during the early 2000s, was to spearhead this effort, arguing that pre-New Historian Zionism disclaimed the legacy of the Palestinians, basically fearing that admission of such claims would be at the expense of Zionism itself, whereas in reality both had degrees of moral legitimacy,49 though he seeks to justify Zionist brutality only, presumably omitting Palestinian violence from his moral legitimacy caveat. For Edward Said, the most demoralising aspect of the Zionist-Palestinian conflict is the almost total opposition between mainstream Israeli and Palestinian points of view ... There simply is no common ground, no possible area for genuine reconciliation.50 It seems that, even with a genuinely new approach as exemplified by Professor Morris, the song remains the same: Zionist discourse has always stipulated that the very existence of Palestinians, no matter how confined or disempowered, constitutes a racial and religious threat to Israels security.51 The Palestinians must be either denied or destroyed, they are at once Zionisms existential enemy, and a cause of its unifying dynamic. Translation A question of simple nomenclature also arises in academic discussion of the Palestinian question, sometimes with regard to translation issues, and sometimes regarding specific word choices. An excellent discussion of both can be found in Yonatan Mendels work on Zionism and the Arabic language, where he deconstructs the accepted terminology used to describe the conflicts key events, including terminology used by both sides. Mendel argues
47 Benny Morris, in discussion with Andrew Whitehead, No Common Ground: Joseph Massad and Benny Morris discuss the Middle East, History Workshop Journal, (Spring 2002), No. 54, pp. 205-216, p. 213. 48 Avi Shlaim, When Historians Matter, Prospect Magazine, (http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2008/06/whenhistoriansmatter/), 29 June 2008, Issue 147. Accessed on 24/04/2010. 49 Morris, in discussion with Whitehead, No Common Ground, p. 211. 50 Edward W. Said, Palestinians Under Siege: Putting Palestine on the Map, London Review of Books (14 December 2000), Vol. 22, No. 24: pp. 9-14, p. 14. 51 Ibid, p. 12. 17

that, in translation, some of the most basic language we can use to talk about the conflict has become infused with a political agenda; that the word's meaning is being re-filled with Israeli-Jewish political content, context and understanding, which is so 'natural' and obvious that it need not even be explained.52 He gives the example of intifada, the accepted terminology in Israel, the Arab World, and the West (evidenced by my own previous use of it) to describe the Palestinian armed uprisings in 1987 and 2000. In a Hebrew-language piece by Baruch Kimmerling, the word hitkomemut is used in reference to the Palestinian riots. The Hebrew is correct in that it translates directly to an uprising, but has positive connotations as an act of resistance or heroism. As a Hebrew term, the word is so rarely used in Hebrew language literature to describe the actions of the Palestinians that to do so would be near incomprehensible, in that context. Rather, the Arabic word intifada is left untranslated in both Hebrew and English scholarship, and has come, especially in Israel, to denote rioters, terrorism, Molotov cocktails, stone throwing, burning tires, blood and clashes ... as an unexplained expression it maintains rather intimidating, demonic and violent connotations.53 However, were one to check an Arabic-Hebrew dictionary, it would show that the two terms are direct translations of each other. Mendel believes the use of the untranslated Arabic intifada to be a conscious choice on the part of Israeli scholarship and the media; loyalty to the word's meaning is seen to be kept due to the use of this authentic version, and simultaneously the word's genuine meaning is emptied due to the lack of appropriate translation ... [thus the Arabic], which is basically a responsive and defensive concept, came out to be at least in the Israeli Jewish concept an offensive and violent notion, as distance as possible from its reactive nature and from Israeli ongoing occupation.54 Intifada can then be used to describe all sorts of negative behaviour in Israel, much as the, when strictly defined, innocuous, term fundamentalist has become in English. When an Israeli Arab member of the Knesset (Israels Parliament), Muhammad Barakei spoke of his respect for the intifada, meaning resistance in the West Bank to continuation of occupation, he was roundly vilified and investigated for violation of Incitement to Terrorism laws.55 A similar case exists with the word Shahid, meaning witness in Arabic but primarily used by Muslims to depict martyrs. The connotations once again suggest those who die in the name of a moral cause, much like the original English meaning of martyr. Mendel also addresses the Israeli use of the word in public discourse; Israeli Orientalists and media perceive this concept of shahid or shahada as alien to Israeli/Jewish society, and definitely inhuman. The idea of valuing one's death over one's life is seen as a kind of backward Islamic concept only confirming what 'we' already 'know' about Islam, Muslims and Palestinians.56
52 Yonatan Mendel, Whats in a Word? On Israeli Translations of Intifada, Shahid, Hudna, and Islamic Movements, Cambridge Literary Review (2010) Issue 3, (Forthcoming). 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid. 55 Barakei (Hadash) added to the litany of statements that portray radical Israeli Arab leaders as a fifth column ... [he and other Arab MKs] must be held accountable for supporting attacks against Israel Editorial, Barakeis Intifada, Jerusalem Post, 6/11/2000. 56 Mendel, Whats in a Word? 18

Prof. Yoav Gelber from Haifa University summarised these national divides: there are cultural differences between the Christian culture of confession, and the Jewish self-accusation culture, and the 'everyone should be blamed but me' Palestinian-Arab culture[There are differences] between a culture which places the sacredness of life in the centre [Judaism] and a culture that encourages suicides and shahids [Islam]57 The term is sufficiently known to be even used as a threat in the Israeli press, as when former Haaretz editor Matti Golan noted that Yasser Arafat recently said his life's dream is to become a shahid. Perhaps it's time we seriously explored the possibility of making his dream come true.58 Such casual incitement to targeted assassination of the man who is ostensibly the only peace partner available is shocking to Western observers, but as the practice was and is routinely carried out against opposition leaders in the territories, and was tried many times on Arafat himself, it has become both a legitimate notion in Israeli discourse and a common tactic in practice. Incidentally Golan doesnt presume that such a move would change much on the enemy side; the animal-like Palestinian leaders will be preoccupied with fighting over the inheritance.59 Dehumanisation is employed through the differentiation of concept associated with us; Israeli Jews, such as self-criticism, openness, and rationality, as opposed to the polar opposites which are duly associated with them, the Arabs, notably self-righteousness, fanaticism, and irrationality, from which all other more specific allegations, such as anti- Semitism and a propensity to violence, follow. Hypothesis The Limits of Language The discourse evident in this period is interrelated to the new linguistic devices we have seen throughout the world, and not just the West, in the War on Terror. This War on a proper noun has served as a defining shibboleth for how we engage in security discourse today, with the concept of Securitization, popularised by the Copenhagen School of international relations, arguing that security is a speech-act; a social construction whereby issues are brought into being as a security situation by successfully representing [them] as such.60 This Wittgensteinian approach, where the use of language creates meaning in itself, is relevant especially in that it allows, in the words of the Copenhagen theorists, for the casting of issues as an existential threat; an issue of supreme priority, thus by labelling it as security an agent claims a need for and a right to treat it by extraordinary means, taking
57 Yoav Gelber, History, Memory, Propaganda: The Historical Discipline in Israel and in the World (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2007), p. 15. 58 Matti Golan, Why Should the Left Save Arafat? Jerusalem Post, 23/10/2003. 59 Ibid. 60 Michael C. Williams, Words, Images, Enemies: Securitization and International Politics, International Studies Quarterly (Dec., 2003), Vol. 47, No. 4: p. 513. 19

political issues and lifting them above politics.61 Frequently, repressive Israeli actions against the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories have been, even if condemned as disproportionate, justified under the guise of security. Security concerns have been Israels carte blanche for increasingly destructive retribution and collective punishment of the Palestinian population, with 4182 people left homeless in the four years following the latest intifada (2001-2004) simply due to punishment house demolitions.62 In the research so far, I contend that we have seen evidence of a specific type of Israeli Orientalism, where the media and academia are to a large degree complicit in creating a monochrome spectrum through which the Palestinian Arabs are viewed. The Palestinians, as the designated Other, and enemy, are portrayed in a way that conforms to a great degree with the narrative that negates their own story; that of expansionist Zionism. I propose that this particular portrayal is born less out of the typical Western fascination with, and pity for, the East historically, and more due to the peculiarities of that defining characteristic and ideology of Israel; Zionism. Israeli Orientalism is reactionary, and not a prior justification for imperialist adventurism as was, and is, the Orientalism of sections of the Western elite. Saids Orientalism First, I shall outline the scope of Orientalism, how it relates to my study, and how what we have identified in Israeli print media and academia differs from Edward Saids classic concept. In 19th Century Europe, Orientalism equated to a set of idioms and linguistic truths. Said, in his seminal 1978 work Orientalism, investigates the nature of language in order to ascertain how it can frame our understanding of the physical. Wittgenstein proposed that language did not describe the world in the sense that it was a universal categorising device, but rather that language created meaning itself, that the meaning of a word is its use in the language.63 Nietzsche dismissed the truth of language as nought but a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are.64 We need not fully embrace Wittgenstein and Nietzsches dismissal of language as an objective labeller, as such a notion is merely important in order to highlight the subjectivity and latency of language, especially when being used to describe a notionally effable set of facts, such as the nature of the Orient and Orientals, or the character of the collective
61 Barry Buzan, Ole Wver, Jaap de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner, 1998), p. 26. 62 BTselem, Statistics House Demolitions as Punishment, 2005, (http://www.btselem.org/English/Punitive_Demolitions/Statistics.asp). Accessed on 11/4/10. 63 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953), p. 43. 64 Friedrich Nietzsche, On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense, in The Portable Nietzsche, editor and translator Walter Kaufmann (New York: Viking Press, 1954), p. 46. 20

Palestinian psyche. Thus Said argues that, in fact, these idioms and truths that Western Orientalists employed to describe the Eastern other did not necessarily refer even to the real Orient (whether such a thing as the real Orient exists is another matter), but instead the field that had been constructed surrounding the word. Europeans discourse about the Orient was determined by the confines of the language that had been used to describe it. The conception of Orientals as effeminate, weak, unenlightened, curious in their backwardness, and essentially at odds with the divinely sanctioned Western civilisation, was not just a conclusion drawn after study and argument, on an equal standing with possible other conclusions. These truths about the Orient, both specific and even at the level that suggested it was possible to formulate truths about this Other, were pre-suppositions in Orientalist discourse, they shaped the discussion that could be had. As Orientalism was prevalent to a great degree in Europe, Said suggests, and indeed was the only framework in which Europeans could conceptualise this Orient; the only language that was available to them, the discourse surrounding the Orient that emerged was necessarily a reflection of these imperialist and self-congratulating truths. Said goes so far as to say that the existence of the field of Orientalism, in being a system of truths (as Nietzsche had defined them), meant that every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric.65 Orientalism was crucially also a profession, and as can be seen in Israel where study of and commentary on the Arabs is an almost exclusively Jewish Israeli pursuit, the isolation of the Oriental from the debate creates a more latent and caricatured image. Orientalism as a practice today How then, is Orientalism utilised? In the section of his book outlining Orientalisms Worldliness, Said identifies Rudyard Kiplings White Man as a specific and powerful ideological notion. Being a White Man, especially in the colonies, involved certain sorts of behaviour and was a form of authority before which non-whites, and even whites themselves, were expected to bend.66 The Otherness also served to create an Us-ness, a common bond and identity constructed primarily from the doctrine of the White Man in the colonies, and how the behaviour expected of him was a result of his innate differences with, and superiority to, the natives. We can see this in basic psychology, and especially in self-categorization theory, where people represent, define and identify themselves on the basis of group membership. The delineation of in and out groups is vitally important to form and maintain social identity. Individuals look to other groups (out groups) to understand what their group (in group) is not, the natural tendency being to deem your own group as more positive than the other. Furthermore, individuals try to align themselves as closely as possible (in terms of their behaviour and attitudes) to their conceptual prototype of the typical in-group member.67 Such an identity can be extremely powerful, and when combined with the dehumanisation
65 Said, Orientalism, p. 204. 66 Ibid, p. 227. 67 Scott Tindale et al., Group Processes and the Holocaust, in Understanding Genocide: The Social Psychology of the Holocaust, ed. Leonard Newman and Ralph Erber (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 146. 21

that often accompanies creating the out group, it is much easier to coerce the in group to commit atrocities.68 It is this facet of Orientalism which perhaps applies best to the Israeli situation. Israels behaviour towards the Palestinians, defended and reinforced by the dominant narratives promulgated in Israeli society, is less about anti-Arab sentiment as a first cause, and more about the special place and authority afforded to Israelis if one subscribes to the ideology of Zionism. It is an especially strong form of group identity, one more overt than is usually seen, and one that is codified and preached as a state doctrine. Even more apparently than with white European colonialism, for practical Zionism another link in the chain binding us together was formed while another outsider was banished.69 Nevertheless, it would be mistaken to simply see Zionism as nothing but an offshoot and region-specific expression of 19th century European colonialism. Certainly there were chauvinistic characteristics inherited, but the ideology of Zionism is far more particular than the general expansionism called for in the White Mans Burden. Nor, of course, does Zionism itself even necessitate what we would think of as imperialism, but rather facilitates for those who wish to employ it in this manner. Its differences from the products of European Orientalism are obvious even from the fact that Jews, along with Arab Muslims, were subjects of Orientalist thought in dealing with the Semitic races. Dan Rabinowitz argues that Oriental othering stems from the notion of culturalism: an active, often conscious attempt by formal and informal state agencies to establish composite notions of culture.70 This was manifested in Israel by a certain interpretation and appropriation of Zionism, a thoroughly modernist ideology, whereby the state sought to create a new secular and modernised identity.71 This identity was formed not just at the expense of the Arab populations reasons for an attachment to the land, but was a conscious negation of any Palestinian narrative regarding a connection to historic Palestine. It furthermore was necessarily in opposition to the perpetuation of the idea of the Jewish Diaspora; the notion of Jewish communities integrating into their native societies whilst remaining culturally Jewish. The Zionist project, both in its early labour-orientated, bi- national character, and in its later sovereign territorial identity, argued for the responsibility of Jews to make aliyah (immigration to Israel), thus creating a new culturally Jewish identity to replace the old. This new identity, tied up with the doctrine of Zionism, became dominant in the 1930s and 40s, and much more so after the establishment of the State of Israel. The solidification of this identity, and the further links in the chain binding us together, came with the encountering, othering, and dispossessing of the Arab Palestinians. Revisionist Zionism, associated with Zeev Jabotinsky, emphasised forcing the Arab population of Palestine to accept a sovereign Jewish state, in contrast to the labour Zionism of the kibbutzim, the majority of the early Yishuv (the Mandate Palestine Jewish community). Early Israeli anthropological dialogue was key to this, with the language used revealing an interesting reverse correlation. Traits that Israeli writers single out as defining Arab culture
68 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men (London: Penguin Group, 1992), p. 73. 69 Ibid, p. 228. 70 Dan Rabinowitz, Oriental Othering and National Identity: A Review of Early Israeli Anthropological Studies of Palestinians, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power (2002), 9: pp. 305-324, p. 306. 71 Yael Zrubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 22-35. 22

are often diametric oppositions of features many Israelis see as typical of their own identity.72 This was certainly true in the creation of a national identity, but remains so today in the Israeli analysis of the Palestinian character and motivations. Avenues of Narrative: The Israeli Media As has been demonstrated, both the popular media and the elite sphere of academia largely conform to a pre-existing societal construct; a Zionist framework through which the conflict must be explained. This identity construction is part bourgeois nationalism and part pan- national ..., but is strengthened and even partially created by a conflict and relationship with a contradictory identity. This identity; that of the Palestinians as portrayed by the ideological organs of Israeli society, does not exist as an independent and self-sufficient concept, it is instead another of Nietzsches linguistic truths; in this case a definable other to serve as the counterpoint to Zionisms us. This Orientalism is indeed more necessary and formative to its authors than the European version Said exposed, with it serving to bind and fortify an identity construct that is young and often fragile, held together by movable borders, a military machine, and a vulnerable state. The State Zionism built has been remarkably diverse in its structure, and yet now more than ever, unified in its primary national discourse. It is split ethnically, with the Ashkenazi (European), Sephardic (Spanish and North African), and Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) Jews, along with sizeable Arab and Druze minorities. Culturally and linguistically it is as diverse as any multicultural Western nation, and there has remained a degree of non-homogeneity even in its legally defining characteristic; Judaism, with only a vocal minority comprising the haredi (Ultra-orthodox) whilst secular Jews are still the majority. Furthermore it appears clear that Israel is more complex than just a European settler-colonial state; a kind of Middle Eastern Rhodesia. There is a genuine attachment for Jews to the Holy Land, and certainly the Holocaust was a crucial factor in spurring the international community to recognise the needs of self- determination for the Jewish Yishuv. These facts exist, and are not mere products of the web weaved by the discourse within Zionism. Nevertheless, in its complexity, the modern Zionist discourse has important and fundamental constructions regarding its own nature, and that of its perceived enemies. Indeed, the very existence of its enemies, however real they may be, is a crucial part of the narrative without which it would cease to be. The reason then, I contend, for a striking national consensus in the midst of a diverse and unlike-minded society, is the special place occupied by the Arab Palestinian Other in the modern Zionist narrative. The characterisation which has been shown; that of the Arabs as worthless creatures who just want to kill Jews and block Israel's noble efforts to create a modern flourishing Jewish state,73 is crucial to a political dialogue which serves the purpose of continuing to create the us. This development can even be traced, as it evolved with the changing conditions in Israel following the occupation, and then the post-intifada peace process. Jonathan Cook argues that the Israeli, or modern Zionist, consensus regarding a distinct Palestinian identity, which had previously been denied, resulted from a new approach to the demographic threat, and the political demands of the Oslo period and possible Palestinian statehood. The characterisation, as we have seen especially in Israeli academia, of Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line as part of some kind of over-
72 Rabinowitz, Oriental Othering and National Identity, p. 307. 73 Noam Chomsky, in interview with the author, 2010 (included in Appendix). 23

arching and conspiratorial Palestinian national plot to destroy the Jewish state, and therefore of the Arab Israelis as fifth-columnists, began as a programme of creating a weak and controllable Palestinian state in which to eject the demographic problem, and ended, after Camp David, as an intellectual framework in which the Palestinians are necessarily two-faced, incorrigible terrorist(s) ... [and either the] enemy (Hamas), a fifth column (Palestinians inside Israel), [or] as an enemy that could possibly be reined in under the right leadership and with enough US pressure (Fatah).74 Debate on an Israeli Orientalism There is a debate on this characterisation of Israeli Orientalism, with some arguing that Israelis are encouraged to view all non-Jews (Goyim is the pejorative term used uncritically by most Hebrew speakers) as inherently anti-Semitic and therefore anti- Israeli,75 and thus Arabs are merely the focal point of media demonization through accident of geography. There is some merit in this argument, but it ignores the specific colonial relationship that exists between particularly Ashkenazi Israelis and the Arab world in general, a European intellectual tradition of the civilisers versus the underdeveloped. Though the British, for instance, were probably as anti-Semitic and hostile to the Jews as much of the Arab world, and had occupied the land of Palestine since 1916, the same dynamic did not exist. A specific division as was created between Arab and Israeli could not apply as forcefully to other players within the region, as the strength of the Other distinction in the case of the Arabs shows. Another consideration is the clash of religions, which is certainly a factor, but should not be overemphasized. First, the Palestinians are not now, nor have been, overwhelmingly homogenous in their religion, with sizeable Christian and secular minorities, along with the dominant Sunni Muslim majority. Second, Israeli society and a majority of Zionists, as mentioned before, define themselves as secular. Whether Zionism is Orientalist today, and especially in our 2000-2005 timeframe, is contested as an anachronistic charge. The term in Saids usage was primarily directed at 18th and 19th Century European intellectuals and artists, though he did maintain that it continued in modern scholarship, especially in the work of historians like Bernard Lewis. Dr. Ilan Danjoux of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem argues however that Israeli characterisation of Palestinians is situational and not generalised, and that the narrative suggests that where Palestinians support violence, this is because it is strategically beneficial or the result of frustration, not a cultural norm.76 Journalist Yoni Mendel disagrees, positing that In a society which gathers around the army as its focal point and which sees Judaism as a national identity, the Jewish-military discourse emerges almost naturally. Within this discourse, which becomes the society's common sense, certain (positive) behaviours are linked to the Jews, and certain (negative) behaviours are linked to the Arabs. Giving the media as an example, one needs to remember that within Israeli common sense, the themes of violence, aggressiveness, propaganda and incitement
74 Jonathan Cook, in interview with the author, 2010 (Included in Appendix). 75 Ran HaCohen, Israel, A New Decade, Antiwar.com, (http://original.antiwar.com/hacohen/2010/04/09/israel-a-new-decade/), 10/04/2010. Accessed 21/04/2010. 76 Ilan Danjoux, in interview with the author, 2010 (Included in Appendix). 24

Mendel reasons that the criticism directed towards Palestinian behaviour is rooted in what Israeli society understands about Palestinians, and cannot be merely situational as the entire apparatus of discussion is set up to portray them in that way. This is further made possible by the fact that within the Israeli spheres where this knowledge is being made, Arabs are not allowed, with barely any jobs in government, academia, or the media, that relate to the Arab world or the conflict, assigned to actual Arab citizens of Israel.78 Thus, the voice of the Orient is created by the absence of any genuine voice of the subject. The view of Israeli society as in throe to a deterministic worldview, where the nation is raised beyond the political, is corroborated by the reverence Israelis have for certain institutions, most notably the army (Israel Defence Force). This is related to the primacy of security, and its perceived demands, in Israeli discourse. The IDF is the most respected and developed institution of the Israeli state, and certainly one of the most pervasive, with conscription for all non-Arab citizens over 18, except for Haredi (Ultra-Orthodox) Jews. The army is ever-present in Israeli life, with the majority of the population (all able bodied men and women up to age 50, and sometimes older) effectively serving as reservists, creating a highly militarised society. Those few who do not conform are ostracised and vilified, with national left-wing playwright Shmuel Hasfari saying he would refuse to work with [Israeli actor who had not served, Itay] Tiran just like with any murderer or rapist.79 With the internalisation of state doctrine by ordinary Israelis, dissent is remarkably tame, and even that is a very marginal pursuit. This is acknowledged by the high ranking luminaries of Israeli society, with Air Force Commander Major General Dan Halutz, speaking about members of Gush Shalom, declaring that these people aren't even marginal. They are outside the margins of the State of Israel, while I feel that I am the moral compass and conscience of the nation of Israel ... There is no more moral army than the IDF.80 Halutz, when asked how he could drop a bomb knowing it would kill civilians and children, dismissed the question as not legitimate, that If you want to know what I feel when I release a bomb I feel a slight knock on the wing of the plane when the bomb is released. After a second it passes, and thats all.81 Such blatant glorification of violence is indeed condemned within Israel, though rarely punished, but the discourse is sufficiently pulled towards the right that opposition to Major General Halutzs very presence in the occupied territories is seen as dissent removed from reality, outside the margins of the nation of Israel. It must be emphasised that this research says nothing as to the contrary perceptions of Palestinian Arabs towards the Israelis, many of which are undoubtedly mirrored in the attitudes that have been shown here. It says nothing about any possible causal relationship that could exist between the two identities or the prejudices that each carry regarding each
77 Yonatan Mendel, Orientalism Still Matters in Modern Day Israel, The Guardian, (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/17/israelandthepalestinians), 17/06/2008. Accessed 16/04/2010. 78 Ibid. 79 HaCohen, Israel, A New Decade. 80 Dan Halutz in interview with Vered Levy-Barzilai, The High and the Mighty, Haaretz, 21/08/2002. 81 Aviram Zino, Civil Rights Group Challenges Halutz, Ynet, 24/07/06. 25

are Arab-oriented, while self-defence, response, restraint and morality are Jewish- Israeli-oriented, and rarely represent Arab behaviour or ways of thinking.77

other. Most importantly, it does not suggest that any of the attitudes and identifications found within the scholarship and media coverage are positive or negative, helpful or unhelpful. Though my own prejudices have undoubtedly become clear throughout, it is far beyond the remit of this study to denote blame, attach subjective value or condemnation to the behaviour of actors, or to prescribe solutions. Summary In summary then, the hypothesis advanced here is that modern Zionism, as a hybrid of Jewish nationalism, theological prescription, and a conditional identity, has imposed upon both Israel and the occupied Palestinians a pre-determined identity, and a resultant framework within which they can operate. The conflict has characterised Israel since before its birth, but most tangibly since the start of the occupation, and the identity of Zionist Israel is thus inextricably linked with what has always been its obstacle to overcome, the problem of the Palestinians. As John Lyndon, director of a grassroots peace movement82 in the region puts it (speaking in his personal capacity); Israel conceptualises its enemy (Arabs in general, and Palestinians in particular) as The other, intrinsically different from themselves and less likely to act rationally, governed instead by emotions and religious ideology. There is also an increasingly prevalent belief that Arab assurances and promises cannot be trusted, and that they are in some way predisposed toward double-dealing and dishonesty.83 The media and academia serve as mere case studies of this, but are instructive insofar as they represent the doctrinal tools of the dominant ideology, and thus set the boundaries for debate. No (significant) government censorship or external pressure is imposed in order to create these boundaries, rather they exist as a necessary function of a clearly defined identity, where to trespass beyond the limits of what this narrative outlines is to bend and distort the identity itself. The Palestinians are, as a group or Other, made to be the alien and yet familiar enemy. We know their nature, which is untrustworthy, fanatical in their disdain for life and the material world, purveyors of a culture of death, and so on. We know that their motives coincide with these implacable facets of their character, and so our knowledge was simply confirmed when Arafat refused Baraks generous offer at Camp David, proving himself to be the incorrigible terrorist they all are. These statements are not bigotry, but commonly understood linguistic conventions, and so shape the way Israel perceives the entire conflict. Conclusions Israeli discourse is by no means the product of a totalitarian system or mindset, and the media, though constrained in some ways, is certainly not Pravda. Within Israel, dissident voices are heard and are even prominent enough to achieve exposure to a worldwide audience, as evidenced by my own citation of Gideon Levy, Amira Hass, Avi Shlaim and
82 The OneVoice Movement is an international mainstream grassroots movement that aims to amplify the voice of Israeli and Palestinian moderates (www.onevoicemovement.org). Accessed 23/04/2010. 83 John Lyndon, in interview with the author, 2010 (Included in Appendix). 26

others in this dissertation. Nor is Hebrew society especially compliant towards the government and state officials, with a healthy disrespect for government authority figures surpassing that of many Western nations, and an average Prime Ministers tenure being around 2 years. We can make no mistake that Israel is a comparatively open society, and certainly the most free in the Middle East. Even in the Occupied Territories, certainly unfree under Israeli administration, the most diligent and reliable human rights organisations and activists are Israeli, with BTselem providing the benchmark. Any conclusions that can be drawn from this dissertation could not suggest a particular lack of freedom or coercion of thought in Israel, at least compared with its neighbours. What instead can we conclude? Israel, as a self-avowedly ideological nation, has constructed a narrative that informs and limits discourse on certain key issues. The very act of Israels statehood, its existence and prominence, is predicated on an inevitable conflict. By being part of, by participating in the flourishing of this young nation, the individuals which constitute Israeli society are defining for themselves a set of boundaries; a delineation of what makes us us, and thus what our corresponding Other is. What sets Israel apart in this respect is the clarity of such a demarcation, the clearly enunciated, in the press and elsewhere, narrative of the Israeli Jews as a nation under threat, and with a clear enemy. The lines are drawn and the participants encouraged to take a side, with both teams conveniently named and described by the commentators. The constituent parts of Zionism in its modern form are not just, as its proponents maintain, a recognition of what binds together and links all Jews; a language, a culture, a heritage, a homeland. It is predicated on a conflict, one that appears intractable. The Israeli identity is just as surely built, in part, on a negation of certain parts of the Palestinian identity as it is on an affirmation of the Jewish identity. For essentially the two peoples share the same land, and have done for a significant period of time. Israel as the Jewish State is a challenge, a situation which requires a securitization of the Palestinian threat, and a classification of the Palestinians as a threat. These linguistic truths are built in to the very fabric of Israel and its society, to contradict them is to step outside the boundaries of legitimate discourse. This is not to suggest that the conflict is manufactured or an illusion, it is very much a reality. Palestinian terrorism and anti-Semitism within the Arab world are not just linguistic constructs, and sometimes situations do amount to a security threat, and should surely be labelled as such. To suggest that just our language can account for all these perceived realities would be something like a vulgar post-structuralism, and as the late Edward Said observed, human rights are not cultural or grammatical things, and when violated they are as real as anything we can encounter.84 What is instead suggested is that commentators must necessarily frame the conflict in a certain way, and though this depends on their personal inclinations and persuasions, it is fundamentally determined by their environment, by what is within their linguistic and cultural capacity to say. With regard to the enemy, the Arab Other both within their midst, in their disputed territories, and across from them at their negotiating tables, the limits of descriptive discourse are largely pre-determined. An Israeli Orientalism is so manifest only because of the intimate relationship the Jewish State
84 Edward W. Said, Humanism and Democratic Criticism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), p. 136. 27

has with its supposed nemesis. The identity of Zionism is defined by the identity of its opponents primarily because it requires their defeat, or expulsion, and so the language of conflict is an inevitability in a state that instils this mentality in its populace. Every facet of what the Israeli media, academia, and to a basic extent society, have determined is the Palestinian nature is conditioned on its un-Israeliness. The Palestinians, especially during the case study of our 2000-2005 time period, are characterised as unreliable, violent, more religious, irrational, inciters, different, and irreconcilable as a people with the Western values that Israelis cherish. Again, like Said, it is not the researchers place to assess the veracity of these claims, or opine on whether such claims about the character of a people can even be made. Such subjective judgements are left for the reader. What can be demonstrated is that the dialogue within Israel is replete with this terminology, but more so that it is directed and formed within the contours of this mindset; that this is necessarily so. As with Saids exposure of Orientalism as a professional phenomenon both historically and in the present day, so too is this Israeli Arabist discourse the domain of academics, to a smaller degree, and the mainstream media to a much greater degree. They are the self-appointed investigators into the nature of the Other, they are the instigators of the dialogue of dehumanisation.
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Kressel, Neil J., Biased Judgements of Media Bias: A Case Study of the Arab-Israeli Dispute, Political Psychology (June 1987), Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 211-227. Mansour, Camille, Israels Colonial Impasse, Journal of Palestine Studies (Summer 2001), Vol. 30, No. 4: pp. 83-87. Mendel, Yonatan, Orientalism Still Matters in Modern Day Israel, The Guardian, (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/17/israelandthepalestinians), 17/06/2008. Accessed 16/04/2010. Mendel, Yonatan, Whats in a Word? On Israeli Translations of Intifada, Shahid, Hudna, and Islamic Movements, Cambridge Literary Review (2010) Issue 3, (Forthcoming). Newman, Leonard, and Ralph Erber, eds., Understanding Genocide: The Social Psychology of the Holocaust, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Nietzsche, Friedrich, On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense, in The Portable Nietzsche, editor and translator Walter Kaufmann, New York: Viking Press, 1954. Oren, Michael, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Philo, Greg, and Berry, Mike, Bad News From Israel, London: Pluto Press, 2004. Pilger, John, Freedom Next Time, London: Black Swan, 2007. Rabinowitz, Dan, Oriental Othering and National Identity: A Review of Early Israeli Anthropological Studies of Palestinians, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power (2002), 9: pp. 305-324. Richman, Alvin, Israelis Public Support for Dismantling Most Settlements has risen to a Five-Year High, World Public Opinion, (http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brmiddleeastnafricara/659.php?nid=&id =&pnt=659&lb), 15/04/2010. Accessed 21/04/2010. Robinson, Piers, The CNN Effect: The Myth of News, Foreign Policy, and Intervention, Oxon: Routledge, 2006. Said, Edward W., Culture and Imperialism, London: Vintage, 1994. Said, Edward W., From Oslo and Iraq to the Roadmap, London: Bloomsbury, 2005. Said, Edward W., Humanism and Democratic Criticism, New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Said, Edward W., Orientalism, London: Penguin, 2003.
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Said, Edward W., Palestinians Under Siege: Putting Palestine on the Map, London Review of Books (14 December 2000), Vol. 22, No. 24: pp. 9-14. Shahak, Israel, Commentary, Middle East International (26 May, 1990), 365 (1): pp. 21-30. Shlaim, Avi, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, London: Penguin, 2001. Shlaim, Avi, When Historians Matter, Prospect Magazine, (http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2008/06/whenhistoriansmatter/), 29 June 2008, Issue 147. Accessed on 24/04/2010. Viser, Matt, Attempted objectivity: An analysis of the New York Times and Ha'aretz and their portrayals of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics (2003), Vol. 8, No. 4: pp. 114120. Whitehead, Andrew, No Common Ground: Joseph Massad and Benny Morris discuss the Middle East, History Workshop Journal (Spring 2002), No. 54, pp. 205-216. Williams, Michael C., Words, Images, Enemies: Securitization and International Politics, International Studies Quarterly (Dec., 2003), Vol. 47, No. 4: pp. 511-531. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953. Zrubavel, Yael, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Newspaper Archives Haaretz Jerusalem Post Ynet
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Appendix
Interviews, conducted digitally and verbally, with notable authorities on the conflict. Questions 1. What, in your mind, is the dominant Israeli narrative regarding the motivations and national character of the Palestinians? Does such a narrative exist, and if so how is it manifested in Israel? 2. Between the intifadas, during the Oslo peace process years, what was the role played by the Israeli media and academia in framing the conflict? 3. Is, or was, there an Israeli Orientalism in discussion of the Palestinians? Does the way that Israelis perceive the Palestinians have an impact on negotiations and any possible resolution? Answers Noam Chomsky 1. It changes somewhat over time. There's a good article about it in the current J. of Palestine Studies by Ilan Pappe -- about historians, but as he notes, they reflect the shifts in mood. The dominant view by far is that Palestinians are worthless creatures who just want to kill Jews and block Israel's noble efforts to create a modern flourishing Jewish state. Whatever happens is their fault. 2. There are a few exceptions, mostly in Ha'aretz, but mainly the media are dedicated nationalists. Academia mostly as well, though there are notable exceptions. 3. Overwhelmingly. The majority of Israelis actually oppose the settlements. Here's one recent poll: http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brmiddleeastnafricara/659.php?ni d=&id=&pnt=659&lb=. Israeli refusal to compromise relies primarily on the support for their intransigence in the US, and to a substantial extent Europe. Ilan Danjoux 1. The notion of a dominant Israeli narrative with regards to the Palestinians is problematic. There was, and continued to be, serious disagreement among Israelis over the perceived Palestinian willingness to accept the existence of the State of Israel. This can be loosely divided into two camps (though the religious camp stands somewhat outside this debate). The security camp (or revisionist zionists) argue that Palestinians will never accept the state of Israel. This is evident in the PLO and Hamas charters commitment to the destruction of Israel. Violence against Israel only seemed to increase with the peace process, from stone throwing in the 1987 Intifada to suicide attacks on Israelis during the peace process and culminating in the much more violent al Aqsa Intifada. In its current manifestation, the election of Hamas and the fact that Israel
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security is most threatened in territories from which it has withdrawn(South Lebanon and Gaza) are evidence against a Palestinian desire for peaceful co- existence. Therefore, any territorials concessions should be made with Israeli security interests in mind. The Peace camp (or Liberal Zionists) believe that Palestinian national aspirations are not intended as a step towards the destruction of Israel and attribute the violence and terror attacks to extremist elements in Palestinian society. On a whole, Palestinians are tired of being caught up in conflict and want peace. Their leadership is either corrupt, inept or weak. The vote for Hamas was a vote against Fatah corruption and Hamas effectively seized control of gaza through violence. Most Palestinians are not happy about the situation. The misunderstanding and distrust that fuel animosity is not helped by unilateral action, such as the construction of the walls and checkpoints, regardless of how effective it may be at improving security. Honest discussion, negotiation and reconciliation are the best chance for true security. It is important to acknowledge that neither side wishes to rule Palestinians or want much of the territories annexed to Israel (with the exception of places like Jerusalem). The security camp sees holding onto territory an unfortunate necessity. The peace camp seeks to generate trust and wants strong Israeli and Palestinian leaders willing to sit down for talks. You may want to read Rotberg's book "Israeli and Palestinian narratives of Conflict". 2. The media and academia was largely supportive (and at times enthusiastic) of the peace process. This support waned as violence and suicide attacks increased after Rabin's death and the outbreak of the 2nd Intifada. There were minor papers (such as Arutz Sheva) that were skeptical of the process, however by 2000, it became difficult for even papers like Haaretz to be taken seriously by advocating a peace process when most of the public believed there was nobody to negotiate with. You may want to read Wolfsfeld's book on the media and the Intifada. 3. Early Zionism's view of Arabs can be seen as Orienatalist but I don't think this impacts contemporary Israeli perceptions of Palestinians. The notion that Palestinians or Arabs are inherently violence, for example, exists only on the fringes. A distinction is made between different factions (Fatah/ Hamas) and between the general population and their leaders. Where Palestinians support violence, this is because it is strategically beneficial or the result of frustration, not a cultural norm. As for the impact of Israelis view, see my answer to number 1. Gideon Levy (Phone interview, transcription may be off a little) 1. I think that the Palestinians are dehumanised and demonised systematically, this is an ongoing process which started in 48, continued in 67, continued in the first intifada and continued into the second intifada. This is almost a consensus in Israeli society. In those years that you were referring to there was still an Israeli peace camp, which is not the case now, but even in those years if you would stretch a little bit any leftist or right winger in Israel, you would find that basically there is no faith in the Palestinians, that basically they are not seen as equal human beings, I can give a lot of evidence for this. I think the media is the main agent for this, and it also has to do with the occupation because the occupation can last so long only thanks to this dehumanisation, because the Israelis feel very good about themselves morally,
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because they dont perceive the Palestinians as human beings, and so there are no questions of human rights, conscience, morality and things like this. So I think that by and large that attitude never changed, it was almost wall to wall in Israeli society, with a lot of quite exaggerated fears, along with not perceiving them as equal human beings. 2. Well I think the academia didnt play any role whatsoever. The academia has no influence in Israel, its very passive and really has no role. Here and there there are some individuals but the academia as such has no role in Israeli society, none whatsoever. About the media, as I said before, I think that the media, which is a very free media in Israel, and nobody recruited (?) it, its really suffering from self- censorship, from this desire to please the readers, which is the main motivation of the Israeli media, the majority of the popular parts of it, the Israeli media participated in two ways. On one hand, this process of dehumanising and demonising the Palestinians and the Arabs as a whole, on the other hand, really hiding the occupation. This has also been systematically carried out for years, and its become worse and worse, but the Palestinian agony, the Palestinian sacrifice, the Palestinian life under occupation is almost hidden in the Israeli media. You can hardly read about what is happening about half an hour from our homes, and if you read about it its always twisted and dehumanised, and always described in the wrong colours. Above all, the whole narrative which is being promulgated by the media and by the education system, the Zionist narrative, totally ignores and denies the Palestinian narrative from the beginning. So Israelis are not exposed at all to the Palestinian narrative, and for example nobody makes the connection between terror and occupation. For most Israelis there is terror because the Palestinians were born to kill, not because there is an occupation. So those goals were achieved mainly by the Israeli media. 3. Im not sure... Besides what I said before about the dehumanising and the demonising, its not Orientalism in Edward Saids usage, its maybe true about the way Israelis perceive the Arab world. The Palestinians are living among us or at least used to, in those years, I dont think this is the case, I think it refers more to the demonising and dehumanising. 4. (My extra question): Just to clarify a few things you said, you mentioned that the Israeli media is quite free and thus the main problem with it is self-censorship, in order to please its readership. Does this mean that the Israeli media is not so much an elite opinion-creating mechanism, but is actually reflecting the deeply held views of the majority of Israeli society? More and more so. The years that you are dealing with were a little better than today, things are now deteriorating in Israel and have become much worse in the last ten years, since the second intifada. I understand youre referring to the years before the second intifada, and things were better then, because the Oslo agreement still had some positive impact on public opinion and the media. In those years there was still some kind of belief that peace could be achieved, and the word peace was used which is not the case anymore. I think until the year 2000, which was the turning point, Camp David, when the Israelis were convinced into believing that there was no Palestinian partner, until that year the Israeli media did not play the same negative role as it does today. It was only in smaller quantities, smaller
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proportions, even though there was the same tendency that I described before. But in those times you could still see the Palestinians as a possible partner, which is not the case anymore. John Lyndon 1. In my opinion, you need to be careful identifying a dominant narrative in such a contentious and controversial context. In the case of Israel, this is particularly the case, as Israeli society is so multi-layered and complex, with so many nationalities and religious categories. However, in very general terms, perhaps the most prevalent narrative one finds in Israel since the second intifada is one of distrust and enmity. Many Israelis feel that the Arabs in general, and Palestinians in particular, are motivated by a desire to destroy Israel, with this often being framed within a context of antisemitism. Whilst many Israelis are, in theory, willing to make the kind of compromises that peace would likely require, they do not have any faith that these compromises would result in peace. 2. The Israeli media underwent a fairly substantial transformation during this period, with much of the centrist/left/Ashkenazi media mounting a campaign for compromise, whilst the right wing/religious press began to indulge in fantastic notions of messianic destruction, rekindling holocaust fears. Many of the great fissures we see in Israeli society today have their roots in this period. The academic and media establishment led a grassroots transformation with regards to how the conflict was framed. Many of the same figures who made their name criticising the Lebanon operations in the 1980s came of age, and began to genuinely lead a new civil movement that was asking difficult questions about Israeli policy and behaviour in the territories. The division was deepened by the assassination of Rabin, and the violent Intifada which followed. Both the left and right drew different lessons from this period, but on the whole the narrative of right wing vindication probably gained more ground, with the compromises of Oslo linked to the violence that followed, and a genuine belief in the impossibility of compromise. 3. Absolutely. Like most societies in a state of conflict, Israel conceptualises its enemy (Arabs in general, and Palestinians in particular) as The other, intrinsically different from themselves and less likely to act rationally, governed instead by emotions and religious ideology. There is also an increasingly prevalent belief that Arab assurances and promises cannot be trusted, and that they are in some way predisposed toward double-dealing and dishonesty. This has a consequence on negotiations, but is far more prevalent in how ordinary Israelis, rather than the political elite, conceptualise Arabs. This is a very toxic (and by no means one-way) phenomenon. Negotiations and compromise require a modicum of trust between both parties, as well as a high degree of certainty with regards to response to various actions. This widespread feeling within Israeli society is unfortunately compounded by the narrative that previous rounds of negotiations are seen through. If Arabs cannot be expected to act rationally, and their assurances cannot be trusted or depended upon, compromise (when your states very survival is at stake) becomes extremely risky, allowing a culture of conflict management rather than resolution to become the orthodoxy. Yonatan Mendel 1. First, it is important to note that there is no one Israeli narrative regarding the Palestinian motivations and national character, as there is no one Palestinian
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motivation or national character. However, after acknowledging this, it is safe to say that the majority of Israeli-Jewish society think and act within the limitations (or discourse - as you like) of the Zionist movement. This means that the wish and desire is to create as bigger Jewish state/homeland with as little Palestinians (non-Jews) as possible. This is also what currently motivates the majority of Israelis to create a Palestinian state/autonomy so Israel will 'get rid' of its non-Jewish citizens (and a popular idea is to encourage the Palestinian citizens of Israel to be part of the the future Palestinian state). Since a Zionist central line of thought argues for a zero- sum-game (either 'we' have this land/country/work or 'they') I believe that the majority of Israeli-Jewish, and definitely those who vote for Zionist parties, believes that the Palestinians have a practical political goal - which is a creation of a Palestinian state in (most parts of) the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and also a wishful/aspired goal: of coming back to their home in what is today the state of Israel. I believe that the majority of Israelis understand that a Palestinian state needs to be established (especially due to Israel's security and demography, and not due to the Palestinians' needs and rights) but the Israeli 'interest' is that this future state will be as weak as possible, and definitely as much as militarily/security/borders/aerial space/ports and so are concerned. We can see this view in PM Netanyahu's Bar Ilan speech (perhaps a year ago) where he stated - as a right wing Likud leader - the need in a Palestinian state (and then he actually elaborated on its future characteristics, which did not sound as a soveriegn state at all ). The wish for separation Jewish and Palestinian state - is a common denominator of Israeli parties: from Meretz, through the Labour and Kadima, and up to Likud and Yisrael Beitenu. 2. I would say that the role of Israeli media was always - and still much stronger in the framing of the conflicts, before and after the intifadas, than the academia. As an example you can look at the attack Israel launched in Gaza (December 2008) against Hamas. Israel's only senior academic expert of Hamas is Prof. Sha'ul Mish'al from Tel Aviv University. He said in an interview at the beginning of the war that this is a foolish act, and that Israel will not break Hamas, and that Israel needs to get into some kind of negotiation with Hamas, and definitely consider reaching a ceasefire with it - not a war. This was probably the last time he spoke in the media at that war. Not because he committed some crime, but because he said things which were in contrast to what the establishment needed, as well as the media. I believe that this story can be very revealing regarding the centrality of the media in Israeli society, and its recruitment to the Israeli-Zionist act, as part of the same discourse. Prof. Tamar Liebes wrote about it, and also Prof. Daniel Dor. You can also look at Reports of an organisation called Keshev, which analyses Israeli media discourse. Coming back to your question, I believe the media played an important part during the Oslo accords period. Its importance stemmed from the fact that whatever a certain politician is saying is his/her political views, but the hard-news in the newspapers are allegedly 'objective'. Unfortunately, during the post-Oslo years, Israeli media echoed the misconceptions spread in the Israeli government without challenging it, and without checking its validity. For example, during 1993-2000 Israel doubled the number of settlers in the West Bank, but the media chose to focus on
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what the Israeli government has called 'the Palestinian violations of the agreement'. In 2000 the media swallowed Ehud Barak's trick that he 'offered Arafat the most generous offer ever given', even though there was no proof for that, and therefore the media echoed perfectly the attack against Arafat and created among the public the notion that 'there is no partner'. This helped Israel to maintain its self imagine as a country looking for peace against the Palestinians who are looking for war, with the outbreak of the the Second Intifada in the background. Prof. Tanya Reinhart wrote a book about it called Lies about Peace. I think it was translated to English. Regarding the academia, I think that it played a minor part in framing the conflict. The belief that Oslo is a fair solution was debated in the political system but I believe that the academia went on with it and supported it with no questions and with no 'warnings' about it so many Achiless Heels (esecially the fact that all core-issues were delayed for future negotation..). Also - generally speaking, the Israeli society do not pay too much respect to the voices coming from the academia, and if they represent an intellectual, non-Zionist, or post-Zionist voices, then their credibility be even lower among the public. Therefore, I would argue that Israeli society usually pays attention to the academia when it is validating what 'we' already think we 'know', and what we already decided to do, and when this is not the case the importance of Israeli real intellectuals (not the same old lefty-Zionist authors) is not significant whatsoever. 3. I do believe that there is Orientalism in the way Israelis discuss Palestinians. You can read the book Orientalism and the Jews (the article of Raz Krakotzkin) as well as the work of Gil Eyal, Gabriel Piterberg, and also Ella Shohat, for further ideas. I also attach to this email an article of mine that will be published in the next journal of Cambridge Literary Review (probably in the next couple of weeks) which deals with Israeli Orientalist's way of translating Arabic/Palestinian/Muslim terms. This is definitely part of Orietalism and I am sure could be for your help, especially since I speak about the way translating this concept helps the establishemnt achieves its goals. I definitely think that the way Israelis perceive the Palestinians - as unreliable, violent, more religious, inciting, different - effect any kind of contact between the two: from the idea that Palestinians care less about their children (Golda Meir: 'there will be peace when they'll love their children more than they hate us'), through their 'otherness', and up to the analysis of any agreements/meetings made between the two sides. The article I attach will be again for your help. Jonathan Cook Those are big questions requiring big answers. i've set out a full (and complex) answer to these questions in my book blood and religion, which i'll try to summarise here. the problem with the question is that it assumes that israel has always treated the palestinians as a single entity. in fact, traditionally it has sought to break them down into constituent parts of its own imagining. that has made it much easier to undermine any national character the palestinians might claim. so for a long time in the israeli narrative, the palestinians inside israel were regarded as the "minorities" (muslims, christians, druze and bedouin); the palestinians in the OPTs were viewed as generic "arabs", who had many other
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states they could belong to; and the palestinian refugees were seen as "terrorists" or infiltrators", people with no rights to the territory they claimed. today, the situation has changed significantly. israel has come reluctantly to concede that the palestinians have some features of a national group. there is even a growing acceptance of calling the israeli arabs "palestinians". the question is why. my reading is that israel has decided that the only way of managing the conflict is to treat the palestinians much as apartheid SA did the blacks. it has therefore decided that the best way to defend jewish privilege from an anti-apartheid movement, claiming one person-one vote, is to create a series of palestinian homelands (bantustans) in which the palestinian people can claim some kind of sovereignty. but most importantly they must first renounce any claim to the territory that will be occupied by an expanded jewish state. the wall and the checkpoints are carving out the contours of those homelands. the gaza homeland has already been created. the ones in the WB would be further advanced had the gaza homeland not proved so difficult to manage. palestinians inside israel will be the final target, with their being forced to declare loyalty to a jewish state/privilege or be deported to a palestinian homeland. from this reading of israel's motives, one can start to understand the changing israeli narrative about the palestinian national character. israel needs to justify the confiscation of palestinian territory by the wall and the planned relocation of its own palestinian citizens into the homelands by claiming some kind of over-arching and conspiratorial palestinian national plot to destroy the jewish state. then israel's actions become defensive. this was the narrative ehud barak invented at camp david: we were so generous, the palestinians were unmasked, they only want to destroy us etc. this narrative is known. but there was also one that almost all observers missed, which was that barak argued (and his successors have continued with it) that the palestinians inside israel were in on the plot hatched by arafat to destroy israel. they were the "spearhead", as barak termed it. this also became the rationale for the law banning palestinians inside israel from marrying palestinians in the OPTs, which was presented as a necessary response to an attempt by palestinian citizens to implement the right of return through the back door through marriage. today, this view of the palestinian citizens - that they must exercise their national rights in a palestinian state(s) - has become the consensus, voiced by liberman, netanyahu, livni and barak. it should also be noted that this narrative shift was made necessary by oslo. oslo recognised implicitly the idea of a palestinian people, and that the palestinians had national institutions - the PLO and the PNA, eg. it was premised on the idea of eventual separation, either mutually agreed or, as israel's leaders assumed, imposed unilalterally (rabin was thinking of building a wall in the WB in 1995 and actually built one around gaza the year before). so this narrative set up as the implied end point of a process to create a palestinian homeland(s). the goal was to recruit arafat to head a vichy-style palestinian regime. israel was stymied at camp david and then had to recharacterise arafat as two-faced, an incorrigible terrorist etc. interestingly, it was during this oslo period that palestinians inside israel reached a crisis. where were they in this scenario of a separated palestinian and jewish state? they started demanding during the late 1990s a reform of israel, from a jewish state, privileging jewish citizenship, to a state of all its citizens, guaranteeing equal citizenship. this threatened the
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whole israeli project of separation. it therefore began the narrative shift associated with the architects of unilateral separation in academia, especially dan shueftan and arnon sofer, who characterised palestinian citizens as a demographic threat waging a "war of the wombs". this was slowly picked up by the media, but chiefly after the second intifada broke when these doomsayers were presented as visionaries. so, in conclusion, the short answer is that israel wanted briefly, during the oslo period, to present the palestinians in the OPTs (but not the refugees) as partners to a peace deal. since, it has preferred to portray them as an enemy (hamas), a fifth column (palestinians inside israel), and as an enemy that could possibly be reined in under the right leadership and with enough US pressure (fatah). i hope i addressed all your questions in this summary and wish you well with your thesis. feel free to quote any of it you like, and even to capitalise it where it needs to be done. all best, Jonathan

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