Israelism E-Book

Hassan A. Barari

• Herausgeber: Garnet Publishing
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 214

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

For decades, ideological discourses have dominated the Arab World. Inevitably this has had a profound impact on the mindset of many Arab scholars. In this book, Hassan A. Barari critically assesses the status of Israeli Studies in the Arab World. Scholars' incompetence and their lack of significant area studies skills have contributed to the underdevelopment of Israeli Studies in most Arab counties. However, the persistence of the Arab-Israel conflict, the injustice that has befallen the Palestinians and the hegemonic ideological discourses have also greatly informed the epistemology and ontology of Arab scholarship on Israel. The author argues that with a few rare exceptions, and despite the existence of a multitude of books, articles and studies that have tackled Israel, Israeli Studies in the Arab World remains, by and large, weighed down by one-sided projections, ideological spin, prejudice and a necessity to expose rather than to understand the other.

Leseprobe

ISRAELISM

Arab Scholarship on Israel, a Critical Assessment

Hassan A. Barari

ISRAELISM

Arab Scholarship on Israel, a Critical Assessment

Published by Ithaca Press 8 Southern Court South Street Reading RG1 4QS UK

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Ithaca Press is an imprint of Garnet Publishing Limited.

Copyright © Hassan A. Barari, 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

First Edition

ISBN: 978-0-86372-447-3

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Typeset by Samantha BardenJacket design by David Rose

To my late parents

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

*

1 Conceptual Framework

2 Pan-Arabist and Leftist Discourses

3 Religious Discourse

4 Arab Regimes and the Making of a Discourse

5 Conclusions and the Current Scene

*

Epilogue

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgements

There are a number of individuals and institutions to whom I owe a debt of gratitude and without whose support this book would never have seen the light. First of all, I would like to extend my appreciation to the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) for granting me a senior fellowship for the year 2006–07 to write this book. I would like also to thank my colleagues at the Jennings Randolph Program for International Peace for their constant support, especially John Crist, Lynn Tesser, Judy Barsalou, Virginia Bourvier, Shira Lowinger, Erin Barrar, Scott Lasensky and Steven Heydemann.

My two research assistants, Christopher Neu and Dina Khanat (both are graduate students of Georgetown University), deserve special thanks for their continuous support, enthusiasm and constructive feedback. I am also grateful to my good friend from Egypt, Said Okasheh, for his help in sending me some material and for his passionate support of me during the period of writing this book. All along my academic journey, my family in Jordan has been of great help. Undoubtedly, my family’s love, support and trust in me is unparalleled and words cannot describe how much appreciation I have towards them. I am really fortunate to have them in my life. Karol Streit and Ivan Streit were also of great help during my stay in America and they deserve special thanks.

Last but not least, I owe a debt of gratitude to Lindsey Barari, for her genuine love, unfettered encouragement, generosity and passionate dedication that has made my otherwise difficult transition in the United States a pleasant adventure. She has lent a sense of purpose and deep understanding to the unpredictable demands of academia.

Introduction

I srael has posed the greatest challenge to the Arab state system in the post-colonial Middle East. Hence, Israel occupies a central space in the daily debate that is taking place around the Arab world, which has clearly grappled, over the decades, with how it should respond to this challenge. The accompanying dispossession of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who became refugees after the creation of Israel, and the persistence of violent Arab–Israeli interaction, has shaped the way Arab writers have previously dealt and continue to deal with Israel. These events have left a deep-seated mark on the collective Arab mindset. Against this backdrop, writing on Israel has not been objective and has been linked to the conflict prism, which has defined much of the epistemology and ontology of Israeli studies in the Arab world thus limiting the understanding of Israel as a topic for study.

I am, by training, a political scientist. I have studied wider Middle Eastern politics, but have focused much of my intellectual energy on the Arab–Israeli conflict and the peace process. Almost all of my scholarly writing has dealt, directly or indirectly, with Israel. In order to make sense of Israel’s society and politics, and also positively contribute to the scholarship on Israel, I found it necessary to learn Hebrew. I have since read a good deal of Hebrew literature and consider myself a big fan of the Israeli novelist Amos Oz. I believe that my command of Arabic, English and Hebrew places me in an ideal situation to examine the conflict and the wider dynamic of the Middle East from an even-handed and unprejudiced perspective. I was determined right from the start to go beyond the intellectual confines of pan-Arabism and attempt to see things as they truly are.

Of equal importance, is the fact that I am an Arab who is very proud of his culture and historical legacy, yet I am open to other people, cultures and perspectives. I have read a great deal on our glorious past, particularly with regard to when the Arabs were the masters of world politics. The world has undergone a fundamental transformation at all levels over the last millennium. Throughout this time, the Arabs have been subject to varying forms of external pressures and colonization which have contributed to where we are today. Undoubtedly, the Arabs are lagging behind the Western world at all levels pertaining to human development. The majority in the Arab world attributes their decline, and what seems to be an age-old chronic stagnation, to external factors. However, while I acknowledge the destructive impact of external factors, I subscribe to the school of thought that contends that the reason for our contemporary underdevelopment is, by and large, internal. Sadly, many Arabs are in self-denial.

Before I embarked on what many would dub as a ‘controversial’ intellectual inquiry, I took a step back, thought thoroughly and asked myself what was it that I wanted to achieve. Was it politically correct as an Arab to harshly criticize the Arabs’ study of Israel, with the continued Israeli denial of the Palestinians’ inalienable right to self-determination? To be honest, I grappled with this question. Yet, my main concern was to highlight the importance of this topic to both Arab scholars and the Arab masses without manipulating their feelings. Arabs are known to be passionate about their feelings and dignity. It is not that the Arabs do not have talent. On the contrary, a quick look at academia reveals a number of amazing and world-class scholars whose contribution to the study of the Middle East is of great importance. But the fact remains that there have been objective conditions prevailing in the Arab world that make writing on Israel with detachment a difficult task to realize. Therefore, I contended that nothing short of exposing these conditions would help to change the status quo.

This study tackles an extremely important yet ignored topic: the underdevelopment of Israeli studies in the Arab world, and presents a critique of the status of Israeli studies in the Arab world. Evidently, substantial chunks of Israeli studies in the Arab world are weighed down by the domination of ideological epistemologies on scholarship. The situation is aggravated by the scholars’ perception of their role as being to expose and delegitimize Israel, rather than to provide a sound knowledge of the other. Put differently, Israeli studies in the Arab world, for a variety of reasons, has never properly taken off. Hence, the main question of this intellectual inquiry addresses the impediments that prevented the development of Israeli studies in a more objective way.

Writing on Israel has taken the form of Israelism: a term that I coin for the sake of this study to refer to Arab scholars’ style of writing on Israel. This style of writing is shaped by a set of ideas and misconceptions rooted in different ideologies and is one that is highly influenced by the perpetuation of the Arab–Israeli conflict. The outcome of Israelism is the failure to produce sound knowledge on Israel. Subordinating writing on Israel to the imperatives of the conflict has proved costly. Put simply, the conflict and ideologies should have less of a role in deciding the ontology and the epistemology of Israeli studies. The objective of the book is not only to provide a critique of the status of Israeli studies in the Arab world but also to argue that there should be an academic Arab perspective on how and what to study on Israel.

Given the sensitive nature of the Israeli topic among Arab scholars and media, I am aware of the possibility of accusations and labels waiting for me in the Arab world. However, I am ready and willing to face the criticism because my objective is to shake the foundations of the ‘pseudo field’ that has long been monopolized by certain scholars who claim absolute knowledge about the other. Yet, this will not change the fact that this kind of scholarship has to a great extent contributed to the weakness of the Arabs vis-a-vis Israel. Accusing and branding those who offer a new and controversial perspective will only negatively affect the Arabs’ ability to understand and consequently respond to Israel.

The purpose of my book is not to condemn the Arabs, nor to underestimate the injustice imposed on the Palestinian people by Israel’s continued denial of their right to self-determination. Writing a critique on this issue should be placed in its proper context and therefore should not take away a fraction of the Palestinians’ rights to liberation and statehood. In writing this account, my intention is not to blame the ongoing violence on the Palestinians or the Israelis, as that question is beyond the scope of this inquiry. Nonetheless, I remain convinced that the Palestinian problem is the root cause of all the instabilities and authoritarianism in our region. Furthermore, I am unable to envisage peace and stability in the Middle East without first addressing this intractable conflict, which is, in my opinion, a key catalyst for all kinds of radicalism in the Middle East. This conflict has also been used as a tool in the hands of Arab regimes to deny their subjects true democracy and political freedom. That said, I strongly believe in the path of peaceful coexistence and historical reconciliation between the Arabs and the Israelis. Addressing and solving this conflict remains a prerequisite for achieving a long-lasting peace.

My purpose is to offer a constructive contribution towards laying the ground for better scholarship in the Arab world. The Arab world is full of talent, but the conflict has been so paramount that writing on Israel becomes a matter of struggle and strife rather than a means of exploration. By exposing the underpinning reasons behind the status of Israeli studies in the Arab world, I hope that the ensuing debate will serve to improve the state of the field. This book is overdue and I am pleased to have finally had the time to sit and write this modest contribution. In this context I would like to stress my conviction that the status of Israeli studies need not be static, it could be changed for the better. A change of the status quo is possible with the commitment of Arab academics and on the contingence of the emergence of a younger generation who will defy conformation to the current prevailing mode of writing. Nothing short of doing this will redeem Israeli studies in the Arab world.

The development of Israeli studies has been motivated by politics. Arab academics have sought mainly to gain influence within their societies and to mobilize the masses against Israel. Thus, Israeli studies were deemed as instrumental to this, not as a subject to be studied for its own sake. In this regard Edward Said’s distinction between pure and political knowledge is important. Whereas Said argues that the Orient was studied in order to be dominated, this book makes the case that Israel was studied to be singled out as the main enemy that needed to be checked. The motivation is thus political. What is shocking about Arab specialists on Israel is their lack of the required skills for sound scholarly work. A handful of scholars are substituting indoctrination for scholarship.

The reason for the spread of this mode of writing on Israel was to help in the conduct of the Arab–Israeli conflict. For this reason, many scholars produced knowledge that was packaged to meet the needs of the ideological preferences of the Arab regimes and sometimes of the ideological oppositions. The result was distorted knowledge, with the goal of exposing Israel rather than attempting to understand the issue under study.

A range of political trends has emerged in the Arab world with regard to how to deal with Israel and the conflict. The first trend views the conflict as a zero-sum game: refusing to grant Israel a right to exist. This trend accepts the existence of Israel only as a fait accompli. Under no circumstances will Israel be dealt with lest this is seen as an aggression against Palestinian legitimate rights that are sacred and non-transferable. It sees Israel as a de facto force that has only the legitimacy of power that is derived from its organic link to Western states. Therefore, prudence is a must in this regard. The second trend, the liberal approach, focuses on Israel’s membership to the UN and asserts that the Arabs cannot defeat it militarily. Those subscribing to this trend find it possible to accept Israel so long as it signs a comprehensive peace with the Arabs based on the 1967 borders. They believe a peace agreement will help contain Israel’s expansionist tendencies. A third trend argues that Israel has no legitimacy whatsoever in Palestine and that it is not advisable to deal with it at all. Israel will never be a normal state and it is necessary to wait for a change in the balance of power in order to put an end to this country. A fourth trend is one adopted by Arab regimes. Each Arab regime adopts its own official discourse that constantly changes, and often clashes with that of other regimes. Their discourse has converged and diverged with the ideological currents (pan-Arabist and Islamic) according to the needs and leaning of a given regime. However, all of the Arab leaders have sought to use the conflict as a means to delay political reform, and to gain both internal and regional legitimacy. This is ironic because Israel was the main source of threat to these regimes.

Unfortunately, the outcome of all the above is that writing on Israel has become impressionistic or reactionary, angry or tense, or has simply been in line with the political atmosphere that has accompanied the peace process.

No agreement exists within these trends on the significance of studying Israel. It will suffice in this chapter to point out three opinions. The first opinion is apathetic toward the study of Israel and emphasizes the need to expose Israel’s behavior and continually express anger at its policy. The second view calls for the understanding of Israel, not for the sake of pure knowledge, but rather for the need to ‘know the enemy’. Here knowledge is instrumental in serving the ultimate goal: confronting Israel. The third and final view that I adopt in this study is the need to establish an Arab school dedicated to the study of Israel with the sole purpose of understanding Israel rather than in order to mobilize and fight. This view is what is lacking among the majority of Arab writers and academics.

Interestingly, the second and third views are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary they could complement each other. However, those who hold the second view will find themselves focusing on specific topics that will not ultimately lead to proper knowledge. The third and second views differ in scope. While the two views agree that the epistemology should be rooted in social sciences, their differences are concentrated on the ontological level. The goal should be to have sound and objective knowledge.

My research on published materials written up until the initiation of the peace process led me to the conclusion that the absence of well-qualified scholars is causing Arab scholarship to suffer. In fact, most of those who claimed expertise on Israel lacked basic yet indispensable skills, such as language competence and significant residency in Israel, and were therefore not equipped with the tools central to a sound analysis. One is rather struck by the sheer absence of Arab scholars who are able to handle the Hebrew language and thus overcome cultural barriers. This has been an enduring weakness in the field.

At this point, a brief history of the development of Israeli studies in the Arab world is in order. At the time of the establishment of Israel and the inception of the Arab–Israeli conflict, little had been written on Israel by Arab scholars. The few studies that did appear were meant to mobilize and present Israel as a fragile society that would collapse with the first bullet. These beliefs cost the Arabs dearly, and proved detrimental during intense times of war. One of the 1948 war participants confided in me their belief that Israel could be defeated with merely hundreds of good fighters.

To be fair, one should look at the intellectual and academic context of the early years of the conflict. Sound scholarly work and research in the Arab world was both poor and inaccurate, and there was little tradition of using social science tools in most Arab universities. Interestingly, much of the good writing on the region at that time was done by Western scholars and in English. Therefore, the underdevelopment of Israeli studies at that time was due to the state of Arab academia.

That said, the Six-Day War triggered a change in the Arab world. It sent a shock wave through a generation and triggered demands for an explanation of the defeat. It was obvious that the Arabs would stand to lose should this state of ignorance prevail. As Abdel Monem Said records, students of Cairo University who were to graduate and be recruited for the War of Attrition against Israel, demonstrated demanding that the university teach them about Israel. For the first time in 1970, Cairo University allowed the study of Israel’s political system within the comparative government course.1 Additionally, Egypt led the Arab world on this issue. In the aftermath of the war, the Center for Palestinian and Zionist Studies was established by al-Ahram and in 1970 it was renamed as the Center for Political and Strategic Studies. The objective was to study Israeli and Palestinian societies. Also in 1968, the PLO established the Center for Palestinian Studies in Beirut, which published studies on the Arab–Israeli conflict and Israel. In 1977, Al-Jalil Center was established in Amman for the purpose of translating books written in Hebrew into Arabic. The Center has translated more than 100 books over the last 30 years. The Center of Arab Unity Studies was also established in Beirut in 1977. The Center for Political Research and Studies, part of Cairo University, was also established. The proliferation of centers indicated a marked difference in the attention given to Israel.

Academic work from this period suffered from problems such as the non-utilization of Israeli sources and the minimal implementation of field research. Ontologically, these studies only focused on elements that reinforced the Arabs’ perception of Israel, and thus poorly contributed to the study of Israel’s domestic politics. Hence this period did not give rise to a proper understanding of the importance of internal dynamics in Israel’s foreign policy.

The attention to Israeli studies took a positive turn after the Oslo Agreement. Some centers opened in the West Bank and in Jordan. The Center for Strategic Studies (CSS) at the University of Jordan established an Israeli studies unit. It took the daring step of sending top students to study in Israel despite fierce criticism from many opposition groups strongly opposed to normalization with Israel.2 However, the eruption of the second Intifada in September 2000 and the impasse in the peace process restricted the center’s ability to recruit new scholars despite the CSSdirector’s efforts to do so. The Palestinians meanwhile established a new center Madar (The Palestinian Center for Israeli Studies) to study Israeli politics and society. The center was established in 2000 and has been producing relatively well-researched material on Israel.

Objectives

Beyond unmasking the inherent bias in Arab scholars’ study of Israel, this book exposes obstacles that have hindered the development of an understanding of Israel, such as inadequate scholarly communities in Arab universities and incompetent scholarship. Indeed, even today, few Arab universities run a teaching program on Israel. Despite the existence of some courses on Israel and the Arab–Israeli conflict, it was only very recently that Cairo University introduced a full program on Israeli studies. Moreover, even with the existence of good scholars who have sought, however belatedly, to correct the situation by equipping themselves with the basic skills of language competency and on-site residency, strong domestic opposition to any normalization of relations with Israel has prevented younger generations from traveling to Israel, thus failing to satisfy basic requirements for research.

A key objective of this intellectual inquiry is to set the historical, political and intellectual context that has propelled certain perspectives and discourses into hegemonic prominence. Needless to say this has greatly influenced the process of interpretation and understanding.

This book is both pioneering and timely. It calls for the establishment of an Arab school of thought for studying Israel based on the social sciences, which will utilize trainingmechanisms to equip younger generations of scholars with tools for objective knowledge. I strongly believe that developing a better and more vigorous scholarly project on Israel in the Arab world is a worthwhile undertaking. In fact, it is long overdue. The price of subordinating this crucial need to the imperatives of the conflict has cost the Arab world dearly and it is time that good scholars rose to the challenge. This book also attempts to identify the ideal conditions for developing the status of Israeli studies in the Arab world, and will hopefully stir a debate among experts on Israel in the Arab world, thus laying the ground for better scholarship in the region.

The importance of this book is threefold. Firstly, it aims to create awareness amongst Arab scholars that despite the abundance of books and articles on Israel, a sound accumulative understanding of Israel is absent. Secondly, the book has the potential to provoke a constructive debate concerning ways to overcome the impediments of developing Israeli studies in the Arab world. Finally, this book will potentially trigger the emergence of better, more thoroughly equipped scholars in the Arab world – certainly a progressive step regarding conflict resolution.

Given the critical nature of this inquiry, I am aware that many in the Arab world will be quick to attack this book, and describe it as ‘playing into the hands of the enemy’. Those expected to voice their harshest criticism, are precisely the ones responsible for creating set boundaries of what and how to study Israel and the limits of acceptable conclusions. Any book that challenges their deep-seated ideological inclinations may be accused of being a mere Western tool, or abandoning the Palestinian cause, in an attempt to delegitimize the book and the author altogether.These people are expected to dismiss the book while failing to present any counter-argument regarding the main issues it advances. Their main interest remains politically and ideologically motivated, which proves their alienation to scholarly work. Yet, the picture will not ultimately be gloomy. I am confident that there will be a number of Arab intellectuals who will do this book justice. I do not seek for them to concur with all of my statements or methodology, but I expect constructive criticism that will only enrich the topic under study. In other words, I hope that this book will jump-start a genuine dialogue and a debate over what went wrong and how to rectify the situation.

The Structure of the Book

The book is comprised of an introduction, four chapters and a conclusion. The introduction is a general tour of the evolvement of Israeli studies. Chapter One presents the conceptual framework of the book including the concept of area studies and how it has evolved. It sets the parameters of what constitutes area studies and also touches on the controversy of area studies and social science disciplines and answers the basic question of whether Israeli studies in the Arab world can qualify as area studies. Chapter One also pays substantial attention to the underlying reasons behind the underdevelopment of Israeli studies in the Arab world. Chapter Two examines the pan-Arabist and leftist discourses and how they delineate the boundaries of knowledge on Israel. Similarly, Chapter Three examines the Islamic discourse and its impact on Israeli studies. Chapter Four examines the role of Arab regime’s discourse and how the conflict was used to manipulate internal politicsin some Arab countries to permit the survival of regimes. The conclusion presents the main findings with particular emphasis on proposing mechanisms to equip younger scholars in the Arab world with different methodologies and perspectives to generate a more comprehensive knowledge of Israel.

Notes

1   Abdel Monem Said, al-Ahram al-Iqtisadi (Economic Ahram), 23 January 2003.

2   For a discussion of the controversy of normalization, see Hassan A. Barari, Jordan and Israel: Ten Years Later (Amman: CSS, 2004).

1

Conceptual Framework

Scholarly interpretation is never neutral or objective, it is always linked to certain theoretical and methodological perspectives that determine the course of understanding and interpretation.

Hisham Sharabi

Theory, Politics and the Arab World: Critical Responses

Introduction