Avi Shlaim: 'The essence of Judaism is non-violence '

Hindustan Times

2 days ago

You have been quite vocal in your criticism of the state of Israel for its policies of apartheid and occupation. What gives you the courage to do this? Iraqi-born British-Israeli historian Avi Shlaim (Corbis via Getty Images)
I grew up in Israel. Like many others, I served in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and was subjected to Zionist indoctrination. I was a patriotic Israeli but the turning point was the June 1967 War when Israel tripled its territory by capturing the Golan Heights, the West Bank and the Sinai Peninsula and became a colonial power.
My disenchantment with Israel began then and increased gradually. My real change of heart about Israel happened when I became a scholar of the Arab-Israeli conflict, went to the Israel State Archives and read the official documents. I found out that the official documents did not support the Zionist version of the conflict. They made it clear that Israel was much more responsible, much more aggressive and expansionist than the official propaganda would have us believe and that was the foundation of my becoming a so-called 'new historian'.
I am part of a small group of Israeli scholars; the other two being Benny Morris and Ilan Pappé. We are known collectively as the 'new historians' or the revisionist Israeli historians. We got together to mount a frontal attack on all the foundational myths that have come to surround the birth of Israel and the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948.
What I have said so far is only the first half of my answer. The second part has to do with being Jewish. The core values of Judaism are altruism, truth, justice and peace. Israeli society today is a racist society, very anti-Arab, with a lot of Islamophobia. I, as a Jew, completely distance myself from Israel for what it is doing.
The essence of Judaism is non-violence but the present Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu government not only suppresses dissent but violates the human rights of the Palestinians on a daily basis. It denies the Palestinian people their natural right to self-determination. It claims Jewish sovereignty from the river to the sea, and therefore I strongly dissociate myself from the present Israeli government and Israeli society.
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You identify yourself as an 'Arab-Jew'. How do people in Israel respond to this coming together of two identities that are often presumed to be oppositional to each other? What can other Arab-Jews like yourself do to hold Israel accountable?
To begin with, the term 'Arab-Jew' is very controversial in Israel. In fact, many Israelis deny that there is such a thing as an Arab-Jew. They say that it is a contradiction in terms, an ontological impossibility. According to them, if you are a Jew, you cannot be an Arab. Similarly, if you are an Arab, you cannot be a Jew. I completely reject this argument, and I define myself as an Arab Jew because I am a Jew who lived in an Arab country. For me the hyphen in Arab-Jew does not divide; it unites. It is like a bridge between Arabs and Jews.
This view is based on my own experience as a boy. For the first five years of my life, we lived in Baghdad. We were Iraqis whose religion happened to be Judaism, and it is not for my Zionist critics to tell me what my identity is. My family and I were very lucky because for us Muslim-Jewish coexistence was not an abstract idea or a distant dream. It was our everyday reality, and this reality was shattered by the establishment of Israel in 1948. A large number of Jewish people in the Arab world were forced to migrate, and they ended up in Israel.
My family and I were very happy in Iraq. We had deep roots in Iraq. We did not want to leave but we were conscripted into the Zionist project. We left Baghdad because of circumstances beyond our control. Israeli inculcated in me a new identity. It was only after I left Israel many years later that I was able to re-examine my identity. I reinvented myself as an Arab-Jew partly as a way of distancing myself from Zionism and from the state of Israel.
Tell us about your family's connection with Bombay (now Mumbai).
My family and I are Iraqi Jews. We have lived in Iraq for two-and-a-half millennia. My great-grandfather went to Bombay as a businessman. He worked for the Sassoon family that established an empire in Bombay and throughout the Far East. He did well. He was very wealthy, had an extremely comfortable life, made a lot of money, and he then went back to Baghdad. My grandfather was 16 years old when they went from Bombay to Baghdad. He always spoke Arabic with an Indian accent, from what I remember. That is my family's Bombay connection. This is my third visit to India but I haven't been to Bombay yet.
At the Jaipur Literature Festival, you said that Israel was created by and for European Jews and that as a Jewish boy who was born in Iraq you were made to feel like an outsider when you moved to Israel. What form did this discrimination take?
Zionism was a movement by European Jews. The Zionist idea emerged in Europe towards the end of the 19th century and the ultimate aim of Zionism was to create a Jewish state in Palestine. The Zionist founding fathers, who had a Eurocentric view, tended to look down on the Jews of the Arab lands because we were considered backward and primitive.
It was only the Holocaust that changed this Zionist perception. After the Holocaust, the Zionist founding fathers looked for Jews anywhere that they could find them including the Arab world. Their aim was to bring Jews from everywhere to the state of Israel. I used to feel uncomfortable in Israel because I was an Iraqi boy. I felt deeply that I did not belong there, and it wasn't my home though I lived there. I felt alienated from society. I never spoke in class at school. I sat at the back and fell completely silent. I felt that I was inferior because I was an Iraqi boy. This sense of inferiority governed my relationship with Israeli society.
There is a tendency for Israel to label any criticism of its policies as anti-Semitism. What are your thoughts on this changing definition of anti-Semitism?
In the last couple of years, human rights groups have issued statements and produced reports that document how Israel is an apartheid state. Israel has lost the argument, and it does not engage with counter arguments. Its response is to label anyone who criticizes Israel as an anti-Semite. The Israeli strategy worldwide is to try and smear anyone who is critical of Israel and its occupation, anyone who calls it an apartheid state, and anyone who supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Israel and its overseas supporters deliberately conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. To me, it is important to distinguish between the two because most of the criticisms of Israel are legitimate, evidence-based criticisms of Israeli policies, and they have nothing to do with hatred of Jews.
What gives you hope for the Palestinian cause?
There is a disconnect between the Western governments and Western publics. Western governments are completely pro-Israeli, like the Indian government. But it is worth noting that the publics throughout the West — and I suspect that is the case in India as well — are overwhelmingly supportive of the Palestinians. The genocide in Gaza has accelerated this process of disenchantment and anger with Israel, and built sympathy for the underdog. What gives me hope for the future is not a change of heart by the governments but growing action and protest by civil society. I believe that eventually Western foreign policy will come to reflect Western public opinion. To sum up, I am not optimistic of an improvement and of the success of the Palestinian cause in the short term. But I believe that, in the 21st century, apartheid is not sustainable and eventually the Palestinians will have self-determination.
Chintan Girish Modi is a Mumbai-based journalist who writes about books, art and culture. He can be reached @chintanwriting on Instagram and X.