Arts/Review

THE BIRTH OF ISRAEL: MYTHS AND
REALITIES. By Simha Flapan. Pantheon
Books, 1987. Hardcover. Available at
Duthie Books, Vancouver.

ISRAEL: AN APARTHEID STATE, by Uri
Davis. Zed Books, 1987. Paperback,
$14.50. Available at People’s Co-op Book-
store and Spartacus Books.

Fear of being labeled anti-Semitic and a
collective guilt over the Holocuast have long
stifled a much-needed debate in many cir-
cles about Israel’s foreign policy — in par-
ticular, the treatment of Palestinians.

Furthermore, the deliberately blurred
distinction between state and religion (Zion-
ism and Judaism) has effectively kept Israel
immune from scrutiny.

But on Dec. 9, 1987, the lid blew off.
Because of what television cameras recorded
in the early days of the uprising in the West
Bank and Gaza, Israel can no longer merely
shout “anti-Semite” or “terrorist” at critics
while continuing the policy of beatings,

' deportation, torture and murder — even if

the cameras, due to the recent press censor-
ship, are now turned off.

As Dr. Chris Giannou said in his Van-
couver talk last week, “The Palestinians are
the victims of yesterday’s victims.” And the
world is beginning to realize it.

While Israeli celebrates 40 years of state-
hood this month, people everywhere con-

a ke a

cerned for Israeli Jews and Palestinians

alike express horror at the present situation.
For readers who want to better understand
how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict evolved
to this point, a close look at two recent
books, both by Israeli Jews, is in order.

Simha Flapan was founder and editor-in-
chief of the Middle East monthly New Out-
look and from 1954 to 1981 was national
secretary of Israel’s Mapam Party.
Renowned for a distinguished academic
career, Flapan was also a well known peace
activist. He died at age 76 in Tel Aviv, while
his last book was going to ‘press.

That book, The Birth of Israel, offers a
thought-provoking and fresh analysis of a
sensitive subject. Utilizing recently declassi-
fied information from sources such as Ben
Gurion’s war diaries and minutes of secret
meetings, Flapan reconstructs key events in
Israel’s history.

His organizing thesis centres around the
belief that several myths ‘permeate the
Israeli psyche. This is not to suggest that he
blames Israel for the impasse in Middle East
relations. Rather, he explores each myth
with impeccable scholarship and allows the
reader to formulate his/her opinion.

The myths, as Flapan sees them, are:

® Zionists accepted the United Nations
partition of Palestine and planned for
peace, while Arabs rejected the partition
and launched war.

Success of Mayworks
spurs plans for ’89

The first annual Mayworks festival
was such a success, plans are already
underway for next year’s event, organiz-
ers of the eight-day tribute to May Day
and British Columbia’s working people
state.

More than 4,000 people reportedly
attended the trade-union sponsored fes-
tival’s exhibits, workshops, film show-
ings and concerts.

“We've already started planning for
the second annual Mayworks festival.
We have succeeded in building a new
bridge among the arts, labour and com-
munity groups,” co-ordinator Chris
Creighton-Kelly said.

The festival, which mirrors those in
Toronto and other parts of the world,
was supported by the B.C. Federation of
Labour, the Confederation of Canadian
Unions, several affiliated unions and the
B.C. Teachers Federation. The Van-
couver Folk Music Festival, the Dog-
wood Foundation, the BOAG Found-
ation, the city of Vancouver and the
Secretary of State also contributed
financing,

The festival began May | immediately
following the Vancouver May Day
march down Commercial Drive.

Festival organizers reported the mood

12th labour festival set

Once again, the former Finn Hall at
Webster’s Corners in Maple Ridge will
ring with the sounds of guitars, banjos
and other stringed things this year.

The occasion is the Labour Festival
that for 12: years — 10 of those as’ the
“Burke. Mountain Labour Festival”
— has featured the music of progressive
singer-songwriters from British Colum-
bia and from around the world.

The music (which of course will also
include singing, drumming and other
instruments besides the stringed variety),

10 e Pacific Tribune, May 18, 1988

was So contagious that when clowns and
musicians marching in the parade
entered a nearby coffeehouse, they came
out with several patrons who joined the
march,

They said the festival succeeded in
demonstrating the ability of art to act as
an agent for “social education” — a
theme related by artist Jack Shadbolt
and poet Dorothy Livesay when they
recounted such efforts in the 1930s and
1940s.:

During a Mayworks panel discussion
Daphne Goldrick of the Committee for
the Status of Artists said a federal bill
recognizing art as work will be intro-
duced in Parliament soon.

Although the festival officially ended
May 8, the visual arts exhibitions will
continue until May 28.

“Are you sure this work,” an exhibi-
tion of B.C. artists, continues at the Or
Gallery, 314 W. Hastings St. “Working
Artist” is on at the Video In, 1160 Hamil-
ton St. And “The Working Image,” a
photographic history of B.C. women at
work, continues at the Women In Focus
gallery at 456 W. Broadway. It features
special tours with curator Sara Diamond
at 7:30 p.m. on May. 12 and May 26.

festivities and food all begin around 12
noon on June 5 at the Websters Corners
Hall, 25470 Dewdney Trunk Rd., and
end around 6 p.m.

In addition to the music, there’ll be
sports and children’s games, including
the ever-popular face-painting and egg-
throw. And good home-made food and
refreshments, as usual.

Proceeds from the festival go to the
Pacific Tribune’s financial drive. For
more information, phone 251-1186.

Penetrating myths of Israe

Israeli soldiers operating in occupied ter-
ritories. (Inset) Author Simha Flapan in
Vancouver, 1980. =

@ Palestinians fled voluntarily, intending
reconquest, and all Arab states united to
expel- the Jews from Palestine.

® The Arab invasion made war inevita-
ble. “Defenceless” Israel faced destruction
by the Arab Goliath.

®@ Israel has always sought peace, but no

Arab leader has responded.
. Since these myths are also the classic
arguments put forward by iron-fist defend-
ers of all Israeli actions in letters-to-the-
editor columns, their detailed examination
is both appropriate and timely.

His concluding chapter offers a provoca-
tive critique of Israeli policy today, essen-
tially portraying the political parties Likud
and Labour as Tweedledum and Tweedle-
dee. They have joined together in a
“national unity” government, “not due to
their consensus on fundamental problems
facing Israel. . .but rather, on the removal of
these problems from the national agenda.”

Flapan views the 1967 war victory as “‘so
overwhelming that Israelis came to believe
that they could live forever without pea-

-ce...the Palestinians became Israel’s ‘water

carriers and hewers of wood.’” He blames
Diasporan Jewry, basking in Israel’s mil-
itary glory, for unconditional moral and
financial support — and the United States
for “the further militarization of Israel’s pol-
itical thinking and self-image as a mini-
superpower.”

Noting common features between the
wars of 1948 and the Lebanon invasion of
1982, Flapan writes that “by negating the
binational reality of Palestine,” the Israeli
military incursion became virtually inevita-
ble. Flapan believes that only a complete
change in thinking can prevent a major
catastrophe.

He states: “Diasporan Jewry and friends
of Israel abroad must realize that present
Israeli policy is doomed to reproduce over
and over again the violence that shocks our
sensibilities every time we read or hear of
wanton murder or bloodshed.”

Free of academic jargon, and supported
with several maps, The Birth of Israel is
suitable for novices and specialists alike.

Uri Davis, a prominent Israeli academic
now living in the United Kingdom, offers a
much more radical critique of the Israeli
state. He states that peace between Israeli
Jews and Palestinians is a total impossibility
while Israel remains an exclusively Zionist
state — which he says should be dis-
mantled and replaced by a democratic ~
Palestine with full rights and equality for
both peoples.

Like Flapan, Davis seeks the participa-
tion of the West in order to realize his aims.
He writes, “this work is intended to con-
tribute to the development in the West of an
anti-Zionist moral understanding, political
framework and climate of opinion as the
best practical option to secure the welfare of
both the Arab and Jewish peoples of Pales-
tine as equal future Palestinian Arab and

Palestinian Jewish citizens of Palestine.”

Davis writes that while political Zionism
claims to offer a valid solution to the ques-
tion of anti-Jewish racism through the res-

tructuring of Palestine as a soverelgn,
exclusively Jewish state, such a solution
depends on the dispossession and mass
transfer of the Palestinian Arab population.
Therefore, he contends, Zionism is 42 MOTe
ruthless and dangerous ideology that South
African apartheid.

He explains: “. . . the Israeli procedure of
denationalization is far more radical and
far-reaching than its South African equival-
ent .... South African apartheid recognizes
the legal personality of its black inhabitants
in a way that Zionist apartheid with regard
to the Palestinian Arabs does not. _

“While aiming to exclude its black inhab-
itants from citizenship in the Republic of
South Africa [Davis writes], South African
apartheid still recognizes them as legal pel
sons (albeit inferior), and thus predicates the -
legal mechanism of their exclusion on the
replacement of their citizenship, namely
citizenship in one of the ten bogus ethnic
‘new independent states.’ Through this
mechanism the majority of the inhabitants
of the Republic of South Africa ... are Ten=
dered aliens in their own homeland, but
they are not defined out of legal existence.

Davis states that since the legitimacy of
Israel’s existence as a Jewish state was chal-
lenged at the beginning in diplomatic and
political arenas throughout the world, “It
was therefore politically impossible for the
newly established state of Israel imme-
diately to contravene terms of the U.N.
Charter by passing open and explicit apat-
theid legislation.”

Instead, laws such as the Law of Return
(1950), allowing Jews from anywhere in the
world to attain Israeli citizenship upon artl-
val, and the Absentee Property Law (1950)
acted as effective instruments of de
nationalization. :

Without mincing words, Davis says that
Israeli Jewish suciety is being subjected to
an escalating process of ‘‘Nazification.” He
maintains that “the Zionist enterprise Was
in the ascendancy until 1967 and has clearly
been in decline since 1973. The Israeli inva-
sion of Lebanon, and the various stages of
Israeli policies which we can expect in the
next decade, can be fully understood only if
we recognize that they are directed to coun-
ter this decline.” :

Despite the gloomy prognosis, Davis
believes that Israel will eventually negotiate
with the Palestine Liberation Organization
and his vision of a democratic Palestine will
come to pass. Meanwhile, he recommends
that the PLO not recognize Israel within its
pre-1967 boundaries — those in place
before its seizure of the occupied terri-
tories — and therefore deny legitimacy to
the Zionist state. ;

This book is a well documented piece of
work, rich in information and punctuated
with appropriate quotes, and contains a
thorough bibliography. After reading Israel:

' An Apartheid State, one is not surprised at

the atrocious state of Israeli-Palestinian
relations today. _ =< Mander’ BAC