What went wrong with Azmi Bishara?
Whether or not he decides to return to Israel, Azmi Bishara has declared himself to be an exiled political leader.
By Riad AliWhether or not he decides to return to Israel, Azmi Bishara has declared himself to be an exiled political leader. Even his political rivals admit that he is a man to be reckoned with - an important thinker who has succeeded in forging his way in Israeli and Israeli Arab politics and in the Arab world at large.
Bishara began his political career in the shadow of the hegemony of the Marxist Hadash Party, which championed the slogan: "Two states for two peoples - Israel and Palestine." But one state for the Jewish people and one for the Palestinian people did not satisfy Bishara. He wanted more, perhaps justifiably, and thus created what was supposed to be his magic formula: "A state of all its citizens" - a kind of intellectual exercise in escaping from the trap of 1948, the trap of the Nakba ("catastrophe" - the Palestinians' term for what happened to them after 1948).
But something went awry on the way to "a state of all its citizens." The underlying assumption was that the Israeli Arabs' partners in dialogue are the state of Israel and the Jewish people. According to Bishara, they were supposed to agree to relinquish the Jewish character of the state. In practice, however, no such dialogue took place, and Bishara spoke to Israel's Arabs while his gaze focused beyond the border. His interlocutor was, and remains, the Arab nation. Bishara's trips to Syria are just an example of this.
Bishara's supporters at political demonstrations always took care to make a distinction between themselves and others by waving the Palestinian flag. In the last Knesset elections, in a desperate attempt to persuade Arab voters not to vote for Zionist parties, Bishara coined a slogan that increased his notoriety: "If your vote is Zionist, then who are you?" No one bothered to ask him then, "And if you, Bishara, are a Knesset member in Zionist Israel, then who are you?"
A few years have passed since Bishara and his Balad party abandoned the dream of egalitarian citizenship in favor of the pan-Arabism of Egypt's late president, Gamal Abdel Nasser. They actively advocated for a strong, solid Palestinian Arab identity detached emotionally and intellectually from Israel - an identity that did not tie in on even the most basic levels with the "state of all its citizens" in whose name Bishara was originally voted into the Knesset.
Balad's explanation of this shift was that only an Arab citizen who is conscious of his identity can stand up for his national and civil rights. This is the background for Balad's war against the "Israelization" they viewed as threatening the Arabs in Israel.
An entire generation of Israeli Arabs was raised in this pan-Arab school of thought. Tens of thousands of young people underwent a process of heightening their Arab identities, while ostensibly dreaming of - and fighting for - the birth of a different, abstract state of Israel, one with no defined outline; an Israel in which one could live while still feeling as if in Palestine; an Israel in which one could sing the Palestinian national anthem in Hebrew - as a compromise - with the Palestinian flag in the backdrop.
Whether or not Bishara returns to Israel is already a marginal issue. What is important is his legacy: tens of thousands of young people who must bear the shattering of an unrealizable dream; a generation that lives with a sense of alienation and hopelessness while Israel, the Arab world and the rest of the world increasingly recognize a formula for peace based on a recognition of Israel's existence not as a state of all of its citizens, but as the state of the Jewish people.
It is obvious to these youth that Israel and the Jewish people will not relinquish the Jewish character of the state no matter what. And it is clear to them, as it is to Bishara, that the practical meaning for them of the historic compromise between the Arab peoples and Israel is the relinquishment of their vision of political independence. There is no Greater Palestine. There is no right of return. There is no state of all its citizens.
For Azmi, the man, apparently it was too much.
Riad Ali is a reporter for Channel One of the Israel Broadcasting Authority.
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America should give their own land to settle jews. Phalestine is not place for Israel. It is illigal occupation of Israel. It is carved by force with the help of America and Britain. These are terrorists.they killed millions innocent Arab peoples and jews occupation is absolutly illegal.
What are you talking about? We're a pluralist democracy, a country of all its citizens, and it took a long painful struggle to make it so (and we're still working on it). Here, in Britain, and in France one does not need to be a certain religion or ethnicity to enjoy the full rights of citizenship, nor to become a citizen. This is true despite our ethnic tensions. The article's last statement, "There is no state of all its citizens," in reference to Israel speaks volumes far beyond the fig leaf of maintaining Israel's "Jewish character." Racists, including our own White Christian racists, have long masked their aims behind the banner of defending their cultural/ethnic "character." American Jews have long been free to be as Jewish as they want, as are other ethnic and religious groups - despite all the racial conflicts in our history. When Israel becomes a state of all its citizens that is when it will become a true democracy instead of an apartheid state.
you probably don't know what it mean live with all of your human rights.we as israeli arabs are keep thinking that we should be happy with what we have and take it as its.no,i encourage students to get their education in the us or anywhere in the western world and to make friends there and spread our daily srtugle inside israel.wake up and be proud of being who you are and fight for all your right regardless of you religion.
Notwithstanding the cheap and petty tactic of throwing epithets like 'Apartheid' around, the reality is not very complicated. The definition of Israel is in its Declaration of Independence, which is part of the Basic Law: "WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions." Perhaps, Mr. Kaplan, you might explain to us how America guaranteed equality in its constitution for all Americans, yet kept the blacks as slaves and didn't allow women to vote until the 20th century.
I think Azmi is a brilliant enough to decide for himself. He is that typt of intellectual and a nationalist to advocate some of the forgotten rights of the non-Jewish Israel Citizen who are of Paelstinian origin. He undertood the Israeli system and went through that system with a non-violent agenda that can make any Israel extremist to stand still. It is the evolution of Democracy that NOBODY can stop. History speaks for itself. This guy is cool and great. I admire him very much.
"only democracy in the Middle East". Uh huh. If you're Jewish, you mean. How do you think the blacks in America would react if their constitution referred to the USA as a "white state"?
to the pa?
the reality is quite different.bishara is openly boastful in his appearances on al jazira.he puts himself forward as the expert on all matters israel. what doe she want?a higher salary then he gets in the knesset.
I have for the last 5 years read Haaretz religiously. I am a convert from the Jerusalem Post. While I don?t always agree with your opinions, I do find your analysis thought provoking. This article is possible the best your newspaper has written. I run an award winning South African Political blog www.supernatural.blogs.com and will certain do a post on this. Thank you for the insight.
In other words, Bishara worked to destroy Israel. "A state of all its citizens" is a lie. He really meant (and later admitted), put Jews into a ghetto, in Dhimmi status, under the tyranny of Arab Muslims. Indigenous Israeli Christians are truly a noble people, with a tragic Shakespearean flaw. Too many Israeli Christians are suicidal. They would rather let Muslims violate and oppress Christians, than let Jews cooperate and be friends with Christians. The centuries-long tradition of Israeli Christian Antijewish hatred is stupidly self-destructive. Im glad the winds of change are blowing. Bishara is gone. Indigenous Israeli Christians are now joining the Israeli army in record numbers.
hey Riad, how about pulling your head ot of your Uncle To Ass? I am sure your parents are ashamed of you.
Funny, never heard of France asked to give up its French character, England its English character, USA it USA character and so on. But a country the size of New Jersey with 5 million Jews and well over 1 million Arabs - who did not spare a stone or a word during one of the most critical times in Israel's struggle - oh yeh, this country, Israel, should give up its Jewish character. George Orwell once said: "Certain ideas are so stupid, only an intellectual could believe in them".
The odd thing about the supposedly brilliant Bishara is that he is not a Muslim. He is a Christian, a member of a minority that is slowly but surely fleeing from Islam. But, he seems not to know this crucial fact about his own people. Perhaps, he is not that brilliant.
Bishara was only interested in advancing his own interests. He imitated the style and contradictory political positions of other Arab leftists who have made careers for themselves both in the Arab world and more importantly in Western Countries, particullarly the United States. The adaptation of a pan-Arabist ideology allowed him to get close to intellectual centers of the actual Arab world and to the Syrian regime. It enabled him to me something more than a "Israeli Arab Academic," insignificant and marginal in a Jewish/Zionist state. Now he is a "star" in the Arab world and media and a persecuted intellectural with international stature.
He's always seemed to me to be half a civil rights guy ("state for all its citizens") and half an old style Nasserite Arab nationalist. As the article points out the two are not entirely compatible. John Hume, leader of the moderate Catholic party in Northern Ireland, used to have a good slogan "British rights for British Citizens"
So Riad is telling us: Israel sees you as sub-humans, treats you as sub-humans, and wants to continue doing that forever. This of course entails human rights violations and inequality. Riad is telling us that we have to learn to live with it, learn how to be a sub-human in your homeland, accomodate to your position as the eternal underdog. I say to Riad, and I think that most of Palestinians in Israel say the same thing to Riad: If you like your status as a sub-human, fine, I, on the other hand, will not agree to anything short of full human rights and full and meaningful equality on all levels, including political rights, and will be willing to fight and protest forever to achieve that end. Riad can go enjoy the Jewish identity of the state.
There is also no greater Israel. Each country has to give up on its own dreams. The Kingdom of Jordan is mainly populated by Palestinians. There will be -undoubtedly-a Palestinian State. Should Israel give up on its identity as a Jewish State to accomodate a third Palestinian country? Definitely, not.