Palestinians shun fake mourning for Peres

Israeli Arabs carry Palestinian flags during a march in the northern town of Sakhnin, October 1, 2016. See second article. Photo by Ammar Awad / Reuters

Background of a Boycott

The boycott of Shimon Peres’ funeral by Israeli Arab MKs achieved its goal: placing the opposing narrative of the Arab minority at the media and public centre stage, backed by the power of the third-largest faction in the Knesset.

Haaretz Editorial
Oct 05, 2016

The decision by the Joint List MKs not to attend former President Shimon Peres’ funeral stated a very significant political fact. The leadership of the Arab public rebelled against the narrative of the Zionist majority, which ignores the history and feelings of the minority, and demonstrated dual political independence – vis-à-vis the official Israeli establishment, represented by Peres, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who came to the funeral.

Joint List chairman MK Ayman Odeh appeared on the establishment TV Channel 2, our “tribal campfire,” and faced barbs of criticism from the interviewers when he presented an opposing narrative – the memory of the Nakba, the massacre of Kafr Qasem,and the Arabs killed during the events of October 2000, commemorated in ceremonies in the Galilee and Wadi Ara. Never has a political figure from the majority Jewish community attended these events and they are not covered on prime-time television.

The boycott of the funeral thus achieved its goal: placing the opposing narrative of the Arab minority at the media and public center stage, backed by the power of the third-largest faction in the Knesset. The excoriations of Odeh and his fellow faction members for their impoliteness will neither disappear nor blunt their principled demand that the Jewish majority recognize the suffering and mourning of the Arab public as a necessary condition for the building of a shared identity and political cooperation in the future.

The right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offers to Israel’s Arab citizens more funding, promises of integration into the employment market and promotions in the civil service, in exchange for silence and forgetting their narrative. The prime minister often says the Nakba is a lie, that 90 percent of the stories about it are not true and that people who make the events public cause damage to Israel. No wonder his government insists on hiding the archive files that would expose some of the events of 1948 from primary sources.

Only recognition of a parallel Israeli story, at the heart of which are immoral acts by the majority toward the minority, can be the basis for shared citizenship

Any additional funding and action to close gaps between Jews and Arabs is welcome and important. But they will not buy the silence of the Arab community nor inspire the singing of the national anthem “Hatikva” in the streets of Nazareth, Sakhnin and Umm al-Fahm. Only recognition of a parallel Israeli story, at the heart of which are immoral acts by the majority toward the minority, can be the basis for shared citizenship and true integration. Jewish history teaches that peoples do not easily give up their narrative, even in the face of temptations and persecution.

This is the challenge that has now been set before the Jewish politicians who dream of replacing the right-wing government and stopping Israel’s slide down the binational slope. Their goal will not be achieved without the cooperation of the Joint List and its voters. Instead of taking a knee-jerk stand with Netanyahu and the extreme right, and chiding the Arabs for not being nice, they must find a way to win hearts in the minority community.

Joint List chairman Ayman Odeh. Photo by Reuters.

To All the Hypocrites Attacking Israeli Arab Politicians for Not Attending Peres’ Funeral

As in years past, no Israeli official came to Saturday’s memorial ceremony for the 12 Arab citizens killed by police in October 2000. Yet the Israeli establishment is outraged that Arab MKs stayed away from Shimon Peres’ funeral the day before.

By Jack Khoury, Haaretz premium
October 05, 2016

On Saturday 12 Arab families from the Galilee and Wadi Ara went to cemeteries in their communities and laid wreaths on the graves of their sons. That has been their custom for the past 16 years, since the days that changed their lives in October 2000.

Twelve graves, in Sakhnin and Arabeh, Kafr Manda, Kafr Kana, Nazareth, Umm al-Fahm, Mo’awiya and Jatt, along with one grave in Dir al-Balah in the Gaza Strip. Twelve of the 13 dead were Israeli citizens. The state owes them and their families the answer to a question: Who were the police officers who shot them? A state commission of inquiry was empanelled, and investigated the events of October 2000, but no one was tried. The state did not take care of the dead and their families.

Why? Because they’re Arab.

The dead were not politicians or prominent public figures. They were just young Arab citizens of this country. It was enough to look into the eyes of their mothers on Saturday, as they walked in the main procession held in Sakhnin to mark the 16th anniversary, with no official Israeli representative coming to give them answers or comfort them. No representative of a Zionist party found it proper to lay a wreath on the graves of their sons.

The few Jews taking part on the procession in memory of the dead of October 2000 are considered strange, on the margin of the margins. The Israeli mainstream was not there. Jews talk about coexistence and an egalitarian society, but the state is becoming more Jewish and more nationalistic.

Former President Shimon Peres died on the eve of the day marking the events of October 2000. A time of national mourning was declared for Peres, flags were lowered to half-mast. Everyone had to shed a tear, it was important that the pain be seen. And what a disaster. MKs from the Joint List did not attend Peres’ funeral. They are not human beings, they have no compassion, understanding or sympathy. Look at Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, why could he come and they couldn’t? We’ll get back at them, said a few Arab pols from the Zionist parties, self-designated spokesmen for the Arab community.

Abbas came to the international show, which is unlikely to have served him politically. Palestinian public opinion doesn’t care much about him. In any case he has no elections on the horizon. In any case the Palestinian parties are attacking him from the left and the right.

The Joint List has an audience and voters. Contrary to the “Arabists’” explanation, the tone is not set by the Balad faction, but by the younger generation, which expresses its anger and frustration and feels pushed into a corner. Hostility and racism are mounting before the eyes of that generation, the Palestinian dream of self-determination and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel is shattering right in front of it.

The Arab public did not view Peres as a grandfather or a father, but as a member of the establishment. This is the establishment that still looks at Arabs through a security prism and regard them as a problem that must be dealt with, a public whose room to act is circumscribed from the outset, and if it tries to break through, it will suffer.

Be human beings, our best commentators preached, as if in his lifetime Peres was criticized only by Arabs and not by his own people, who called him “Oslo criminal” and “traitor.” It was not the Arabs who invented an Arab mother for Peres; it was not an Arab who called him a “tireless schemer.”

An Arab man weeps in front of a portrait of the assassinated Prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin on November 6, 1995 shortly before the funeral of the Israeli leader. Photo by Maanoocher Deghati, Getty Images.

You who preach have forgotten that the Arabs and their representatives did take part in the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin, army chief of staff of the Six-Day War, the man who urged soldiers to break arms and legs. They came to pay their last respects to the man who launched a move that bore great hope for reconciliation and peace, who was not afraid to rely on Arabs to attain a blocking majority in the Knesset and who led a domestic policy of closing Jewish-Arab gaps. They wept over the process that was cut off, not over Rabin the warrior.

In Arab society, even in the Joint List, some people criticized the boycott of Peres’ funeral. That’s healthy, proper and essential. That’s the way a pluralistic party is supposed to conduct itself – without accepting an Israeli dictate, especially one from lovers of false coexistence and a fawning media.