Unholy Land

Season 6Episode 9

May 31, 2023

Written By Staff

In an apartheid state, peace and inclusion remain elusive.

Palestinians mourn over a body wrapped in the flag of the Islamic Jihad following Israeli military strikes in the Gaza Strip, on May 10. Modern Israel was founded in the wake of World War II with the goal of providing a new homeland for Jews after the Holocaust. But this new state was created in a violent act of its own: the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their land. Our guests today agree that Israel, and the Middle East at large, will not be at peace until its leaders redress this troubling legacy, rather than simply continuing to label any kind of Palestinian resistance to an occupying regime as “terrorism.”
*Anas Mohammed* / Shutterstock

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This May, the 75th anniversary of Israel’s founding was met with another round of fighting. As the Islamic Jihad fired rockets from Gaza, the Israeli military responded with brutal airstrikes. Meanwhile, thousands have been taking to the streets in Israel to oppose the authoritarian moves of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his plans to weaken the country’s progressive high court. Two analysts — one Palestinian, one Israeli — offer some context on these events. And they try to imagine the shape of real democracy in a land of much promise and meager hope.

Israelis demonstrate in Tel Aviv on April 22 against Netanyahu’s government and its plans to undercut judicial review of Israeli laws.
*Noa Ratinsky* / Shutterstock

Dahlia Scheindlin, an Israeli political analyst, says it’s time for Israel to face its historical mistreatment and displacement of Palestinians. “There’s no statute of limitations on history,” she argues. Meaning: it’s never too late to change the discourse and educate young Israelis about their responsibility to incorporate Palestinians as full citizens and address the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinian scholar and activist Yousef Munayyer puts the core issue bluntly, asking whether Israel — which lacks a written constitution — will be a democratic state or a Jewish one. As he points out, what Israeli Jews celebrate as the country’s founding is remembered by the descendants of displaced Palestinians as “the Nakba,” or catastrophe.

Yousef Munayyer

Yousef Munayyer is a Palestinian-American scholar of international relations and comparative politics. He leads the Palestine/Israel Program as a senior fellow for the Arab Center in Washington, D.C. Munayyer serves on the editorial committee of the Journal of Palestine Studies and regularly writes op-eds for The Nation. His work has also appeared in Foreign Policy magazine and the Washington Post, Boston Globe and New York Times. Follow Munayyer on Twitter @YousefMunayyer.

Dahlia Scheindlin

Dahlia Scheindlin is a political scientist, public opinion expert and strategic consultant. She runs Independent Opinion Research & Strategy Ltd. Scheindlin regularly writes on Israeli politics for Haaretz and appears on the BBC program Context. She has also written for the New York Times, Guardian and Washington Post. Scheindlin serves a fellow at The Century Foundation. She is based in Tel Aviv. Her forthcoming book is The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel: Promise Unfulfilled (De Gruyter, 2023). Follow her on Twitter @dahliasc.

Munayyer has written that the Nakba not only displaced but replaced 750,000 Palestinian Arabs over two years of violence, beginning a historical process of subjugation that continues to this day.

Writing for Foreign Policy in February, he explains why you won’t see many Palestinian Israelis — about 20 percent of Israel’s population — standing alongside other citizens in the latest protests. Munayyer argues that it’s hard to agitate for civil rights when an ostensibly democratic government is willing to open fire on Palestinian protestors. In 2018, one outbreak of state violence resulted in 200 deaths.

In Munayyer’s view, the current upheaval in Israeli politics is hardly radical in any case. The Israeli protestors who have taken to the streets this year are essentially asking to maintain the political system already in place, he says. And it’s a system that affirms the settler colonialism at the heart of the country’s birth.

He recently noted that appointments to Netanyahu’s cabinet do not bode well for the Palestinian people. National security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir is a political lightning rod who has been convicted of racist incitement “and whom the Israeli military considered too extreme to be conscripted,” Munayyer writes.

Western leaders and citizens have rallied to help Ukrainians resist Russia’s invasion, but tend not to see the plight of Palestine in the same light. It’s a contradiction Munayyer explored in an op-ed for The Nation last year.

Israelis demonstrate in Tel Aviv on April 22 against Netanyahu’s government and its plans to undercut judicial review of Israeli laws.
*Alessia Pierdomenico* / Shutterstock

In April, Scheindlin wrote that anger over persistent inequality in Israeli politics is as the root of the renewed calls for a written constitution. Many protestors are upset that ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel are legally exempt from military service, while Palestinians and non-Jewish residents continue to be denied basic citizenship rights.

In an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in January, Scheindlin emphasized the seriousness of Netanyahu’s corruption charges, pointing to the need for an Israeli constitution to counterbalance executive power. At Israel’s founding in 1948-49, the country’s foremost statesman, David Ben-Gurion, argued against a constitution in the name of national security.

Scheindlin warns that Netanyahu’s proposed changes to the Israeli judicial system could ultimately backfire on the right. She also took the Israeli right to task on Twitter, saying that the conservative government “triggers violent, racial lynch attacks on citizens.”

The Crooked Timber of Democracy will be available Sept. 4. It’s volume seven in a series called Democracy in Times of Upheaval, which also features books on the voting rights act, populism and a forthcoming number on digital democracy.

Israeli forces killed three Palestinians and wounded several more in a raid on Balata refugee camp in the West Bank on May 22. The BBC reports that bulldozers used in the raid prevented ambulances from reaching gunshot victims. The attack is part of a pattern of state violence in Nablus. A spokesman for the Palestinian Authority called the action “a major war crime.”

Palestinians skirmish with Israeli authorities in the West Bank, on May 15, 2021.
*Abu Adel / Shutterstock*

Days earlier, a parade celebrating the Israeli military’s 1967 capture of Jerusalem drew tens of thousands of marchers chanting “Death to Arabs” and roughing up journalists in attendance. Netanyahu OK’d the event despite security concerns.

A ceasefire between Israel and the Gaza-based Islamic Jihad began at 10 p.m. on May 13, but lasted mere minutes before it fell apart. Israel targeted Islamic Jihad training facilities and a store of hidden rocket launchers. Whether the ceasefire included an agreement to return Khader Adnan’s body from Israeli custody to his family is unclear; following news of the Palestinian activist’s death, Islamic militants fired more than 100 rockets from Gaza into Israeli territory.

Palestinian journalist Mariam Barghouti argues in Mondoweiss that the Nakba represents an “ongoing resistance” rather than a singular 75-year-old event. Scholar Walid Khalidi characterizes that history as a deliberate ethnic cleansing.

Barghouti planned to join us on this episode, but was held up writing on deadline about the violence in Palestine. She recently covered the introduction of a bill in the Knesset that would institute the death penalty for members of the Palestinian resistance.

She also wrote about a UN report showing that 2022 was the deadliest year for Palestinians in recent memory.

Heard on the show

We borrowed some clips from Al Jazeera, CNN, PBS Newshour and the U.S. State Department, in our intro. Between segments, you’ll hear a song by Revolution Void: “The Modern Divide,” from the 2004 record Increase the Dosage.

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Staff

Unholy Land