NO PALESTINIANS HERE

NOVANEWS

An English AP test had a question quoting Edward Said on exile:

Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and its native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted.

The passage does not refer to either Palestine or Israel. But the test did describe Said as a “Palestinian American literary theorist and cultural critic,” which, according to the Forward, “has led some pro-Israel students to object that the test has been politicized.” Here is the reaction of one unfortunate soul, Ayelet Pearl, a senior at New York’s Bronx High School of Science, who will soon be quietly sidling off to the County Clerk to request a name change:

I was really startled to see that quote because both of the practice questions didn’t mention the writers’ nationalities…For me including this one clearly had political implications…I’m in a public school and most students here have the impression that Israel is the one attacking [the Palestinians]…To put a quote in like this subconsciously reinforces the idea that Israel’s the antagonist, the aggressor, the one in the wrong.

Refreshingly, the comments below the article on the Forward web-site were fairly critical of this viewpoint, although the critical comments were peppered with a few idiocies at the rough intellectual level of Kill the Arabs. For Pearl, the existence of Palestinian intellectuals politicizes the test. In the community in which Pearl was raised, Palestinian existence provocatively politicizes history and the world.
Jews are organic, a holistic component of the Middle East, happily growing oranges, learning Hebrew, designing drones for targeted assassinations, and renaming ethnically cleansed Palestinian towns in modern Israel. What Jews do in the Middle East isn’t politics. It just is, it’s normal and acceptable and constitutes life, full of silly commercials and inane television programming and Nope, There’s No Occupation Going on, and if anyone is dunderheaded enough to try to “politicize” a politics of apartheid and murder, don’t forget what happened 60 years ago.
Pearl and American Zionists are troubled by reality, which roughly comports with the “idea” that Pearl is afraid is being enshrined in her classmates’ consciousness. Pearl commented that that test-question “is very reflective of the widespread use of education and testing as a platform for anti-Israel propaganda,” namely, that Palestinians exist.
It would be easy to skewer Pearl for being an idiot. But I don’t think that’s because she was born stupid. She is right. Palestinian national existence is a direct challenge to a normalized present that tries to remove itself from politics.
I am perpetually stunned when I watch Israeli TV here in Gaza and watch the actors and news-presenters putter around with little mention of the occupation. Easier to have a couple years of traumatic military experience then forget it, on to normalcy. For American Zionists, it’s easier to just forget Palestinians exist in the first place. As soon as Palestinians exist, questions bubble up: where do they come from?
Why aren’t they there anymore? Are they actually there? Were they there first? What did Israel do to them? What is Israel doing to them? Only fascists actually tolerate honest answers to these questions: Israel dispossessed them amidst an ongoing process of imprisonment, ethnic cleansing, and politicide, so that it could create a Jewish-majority state in a populated territory. American Zionists are generally liberals, not fascists,* and so have to be made to believe a series of lies: no Palestinians [Joan Peters] Israels are angels [Alan Dershowitz] no settlement plans [Gershom Gorenberg] no relationship between modern Zionism and fascism [Liberal Zionists generally].
Ignoring reality and accepting a series of silly lies makes us silly generally, and so there’s no question that the test “creates a bias that can potentially make students feel very uncomfortable and make their ability to respond [to the test question] feel compromised.” Walla. You can imagine the pain.
*Peter Beinart has a trite, boring essay in the NYRB on this topic, interesting only because he said it and the NYRB printed it.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/jun/10/failure-american-jewish-establishment/Peter

Technorati Tags: American Zionism, Israel, Israel-Palestine, liberal Zionism, Palestine
Related posts: